A LIBERAL Democrat councillor said he was “appalled” at how long the production of a Local Transport Plan (LTP) was taking as councillors were given an update on its progress.

Cllr Christian Vassie said City of York Council was “falling down on the vision” when it came to the future of transport in the city.

Julian Ridge, the council’s sustainable transport manager, gave a presentation on LTP 4 at a meeting of the climate change policy and scrutiny committee on Tuesday.

He said the council was still waiting for guidance from the Department for Transport (DfT) on how best to write the latest LTP and that in the meantime the authority could produce a Local Transport Strategy as a place-holder.

A full LTP could then be produced and go out to consultation in the Autumn, Mr Ridge said.

Cllr Vassie, committee chairman, said: “I’m appalled at how long this process is taking. I see that we go over and over the analysis of the current situation and we’re very good at that.

“I think we’re beginning to get some sense of the targets, though they’re extraordinarily difficult. What it seems to me is continuously lacking in this process is a clear vision.”

The council’s carbon reduction strategy says York as a city needs to cut its transport emissions by 71 per cent by 2030 in order to reach its net zero target.

Cllr Vassie said nine case studies of transport best practice from other cities had been produced by September last year, but since then nothing had come of them despite there being “political will” across the council for change.

Mr Ridge said: “This is a very bizarre thing for someone who’s a transport planner to say, but I wouldn’t want to overplay the importance of transport – nobody travels for the sake of travelling.

“So the vision has to come from elsewhere. What you do on your transport network is to serve your carbon strategy and your economic strategy and your health strategy.”

Cllr Rachel Melly also said she was frustrated with the delay.

She added: “It means that big projects – York Outer Ring Road, the station frontage, York Central –  we’re having a strategy that’s been designed with them being assumed as done and finished, rather than those big projects with huge transport implications being designed to fit with a strategy. 

“And the longer having a transport strategy takes, the more you are building in car dependency.”

Mr Ridge said: “At the moment it’s not the case that we don’t have a transport strategy, we do have LTP 3 and it has been looked at by the Civic Trust and found generally fit for use and actually, a lot of the next local transport plan will probably be quite similar to it. 

“That is always guiding what we’re doing – it is seeking to reduce things like car ownership and car use anyway.”