Taxi drivers launch Blossom Street junction protest

9:16am Thursday 18th March 2010

By Richard Catton

TAXI drivers in York have launched a petition against council plans to reduce the number of traffic lanes in Blossom Street.

Members of York Private Hire Association described the plan to convert a traffic lane into a cycle path in Blossom Street as “unthinkable” and “devastating”, at a meeting in The Winning Post pub in Bishopthorpe Road yesterday.

Now the association committee will ask members to place the petitions in their cars where they can be signed by passengers.

Association chairman Barry Hamer said that while members were not against cycle lanes, the three suggestions put forward for Blossom Street by the council were going to do “no good whatsoever”.

A fellow driver said: “We got a taste of what it might be like a few months ago when they repaired a water main on the corner and we had traffic backing up to the station and right up Holgate Road – and that was just on an evening.” Another driver said: “To reduce it down to two lanes would just be devastating.”

City of York Council is currently carrying out a public consultation, asking residents to give their views on three proposals for Blossom Street. Two of these would see the widening of the footpath into the road to provide a lane for cyclists.

A similar scheme which was introduced at Clifton Green has been the subject of criticism from motorists who say it has led to long queues of cars at the traffic lights.

Their demands came as the city’s transport boss revealed most responses to a public consultation on the proposals were against cutting lanes.

Coun Steve Galloway, the council’s executive member for city strategy, said there was little need for the association’s petition.

He said: “The emerging preference is not to reduce the number of traffic lanes on Blossom Street, but there’s quite a lot of support for the cycle and pedestrian link from Lowther Terrace to the station car park.”

The Blossom Street plans are part of the council’s commitment to improve citywide facilities for cyclists after receiving funding from the Government.

City junction lights to stay

REMOVING the traffic lights at a busy York junction has been ruled out despite the easing of rush hour traffic queues while they were temporarily out of action.

The lights at the junction of Blossom Street and Micklegate stopped working yesterday between 7.30am and 9am, due to an electrical fault.

The glitch left drivers having to negotiate the busy four-way junction themselves, but there was a reduction in queuing traffic as far away Acomb Road – cutting journey times by up to half an hour.

However, City of York Council’s member for City Strategy, Steve Galloway, said: “We are not considering removing the lights at the moment. They are there for safety reasons as much as anything else and we would not consider removing them without an in-depth, audited safety report.”