Miscellany: Cross town traffic
16 February 2009
16 February 2009
This is how Councillor P B Curran described York in 1971:
"Empty and derelict property, scattered like running sores all over the city, acres of sterilised valuable land crying out for development, solid jams of traffic locked right in the very historic core. Members of the council making pathetic excuses to explain it all away".
(Yorkshire Evening Press, 3 August 1971)
It doesn't sound good, does it. While I was playing with empty cardboard boxes and counting the candles we had for the power cuts - or whatever it was that we small children did in the early 70s for entertainment - the powers that be were debating the construction of a new, big, inner ring road - a 'tarmac necklace' as it was dubbed at the time.
It was seen as the best solution to the growing traffic problems. York was besieged - not for the first time in its history - but this time by a constant onslaught of cars and lorries and vans.
Five years ago, while involved in a particular bit of research in the archives, I came to see the full hideousness of what had been planned for York. I've just retrieved the photocopied press cuttings again.
As mentioned elsewhere, the areas of land we now use as Union Terrace and Marygate car parks featured in these ring road plans. The new road would link them, taking out a fair number of houses and a hefty section of green space on its way.
While standing in Marygate car park - or indeed anywhere in the area, imagine a massive road - raised up for some of its length I guess, on those attractive concrete supports - cutting through the car park and heading up towards Bootham. Unbelievable, still. keep having to check my pile of photocopied cuttings, as I can't believe that in my lifetime a group of people thought that was a good idea.
The plan seemed to be to take out the left hand side of the street called St Mary's to get the road up to Bootham. Then it would go over Bootham, through what must have been seen as a handy 'gap', in the form of Bootham Park Hospital grounds and the playing fields of Bootham School, where the road would be 'screened by trees'. (So you'd barely notice it, obviously.)
I thought it would be amusing to take one of my photos of Bootham and find a picture of a bit of concrete motorway that I could superimpose on it, a kind of cack-handed 'artists impression' (above left). Technically I think the Bootham part of the road was going to cross the existing road at ground level, not on a big flyover, but having already gone to all the trouble of messing around in Photoshop, I wasn't going to start all over again ... Perhaps more accurate is the other 'artists impression', of the road bridge landing on the riverbank at Marygate (above right). This one superimposed on an old photo of my dad's, as he'd taken a photo of this view, must have liked it. Bet he wouldn't have liked it with a big concrete road bridge right across it.
Back at Marygate, going the other direction, the ring road was to be carried on a bridge just alongside the present Scarborough Bridge, but a bit higher, I think, thereby replacing the beautiful river view from Scarborough Bridge towards Lendal Bridge with, err, concrete I guess (see above for 'artists impression'). Then the road would swing round behind the station.
It's hard to follow the different variations of the route as suggested at the time, but as it continued on its concrete way it seems that St Paul's Church on Holgate would be demolished, and there would be a couple of hefty great roundabouts, one in the middle of the Mount.
This wasn't just an idea, it was going to happen. Most of the debate seemed to be about which historic buildings could be done away with and which views could be ruined without people feeling too bad about it. Vast amounts were spent on consultations with experts and public consultations, compulsory purchase orders were sent out to householders and businesses whose properties were in the way, and an inner ring road plan was approved by councillors.
It was defeated after a public enquiry, after an outcry from citizens and the formation of a pressure group, York 2000.
The debating and wrangling about the proposed road went on for years, as my pile of cuttings attests.