Hull traffic problems - 22,000 have an opinion, now council has to find answer
PLEDGES TO ACT ON FINDINGS BUT THERE IS LIMITED ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE
THERE’S little doubt it’s a topic that gets the people of Hull talking. More than 22,000 responses were submitted to Hull City Council for the city’s biggest ever transport survey.
Whether it’s cycle lanes, bus lanes, the state of Hull Paragon station or general congestion, the council now has to bring together a workable strategy to satisfy as many of those thousands as possible. The resulting plan laid out by council leader Mike Ross aimed at addressing many of the issues is limited in scale and constrained by cold, hard reality. It underlines the fact that while highlighting congestion problems in election campaign leaflets might be easy, actually solving them once in power is not straightforward.
At a press conference launching the survey results yesterday, Cllr Ross was like a magician without a wand or a handy rabbit waiting to be plucked out of a hat. To be fair, some of his pledges to tackle some of the many and varied public concerns over traffic and travel issues in Hull represent easy and achievable wins for a Liberal Democrat administration still finding its feet at the Guildhall.
For example, few could argue with a commitment to clean up existing off-road cycle tracks where negotiating obstacles of all kinds, from overgrown vegetation to smashed beer bottles, are part of daily life if you happen to be a regular user.
“The first thing we will do on this front is get out and clean up cycle tracks. Issues like cleanliness and glass on existing cycle tracks are clearly significant for a lot of cyclists and people want to cycle more,” he said.
While some might argue that keeping offroad cycle tracks clean and today should already be part of the council’s day job, it’s still a step in the right direction. On-road cycle lanes, however, present a different problem.
“Simply painting more cycle lanes on roads is not the answer,” said Cllr Ross. “Much of what the council did in the past was about the quantity of on-road cycle lanes. Going forward, our focus will be on quality rather than quantity and about safe, properly segregated off-road cycle lanes.”
Off-road cycle lanes
However, the recent roll-out of on-road cycle lanes on Hull’s main roads was more about squeezing every last penny from one-off emergency government funding released during the pandemic than strategic longterm planning. What is in place today is the direct result of the “use it or lose it” funding deal offered to Hull by the then transport secretary Grant Shapps.
Using the cash also directly helped unlock further government cash to upgade large sections carriageway of Hessle Road, Anlaby Road and Holderness Road. Without painting all those green cycle lanes, none of the much more costly road rebuilding works would have happened so quickly afterwards.
Cllr Ross accepted the recent on-road cycle lanes are likely to remain in one form or another, including the ones in Freetown Way
in the city centre which are expected to be tweaked as part of a proposed £4m redesign possibly starting next year once a £1m funding gap on the project has been closed.
As for brand new segregated cycle lanes, the so-called “Mini-hollands” scheme in Kingswood and Bransholme is likely to take centre stage.
With funding already secured, the scheme will mark a shift away from shoehorning cycle lanes onto existing main roads and concentrate more on developing neighbourhood-based cycling networks. The idea is to make cycling a safer travel option for shorter journeys such as school runs and trips to local shopping centres.
Under this approach, it’s hoped new cyclists will be able gain more confidence in their bike-handling skills as well as in their surroundings and see cycling as a natural way to get about before graduating onto the challenges of actually riding on busier main roads. Much to his own horror, Cllr Ross revealed his seven-year-old son was already a big fan of cycling on busy roads
Bus lanes being reviewed
The future of Hull’s all-day bus lanes is less certain. The survey results suggest the majority don’t like them and Cllr Ross has already asked officers to prepare a report detailing options on reverting enforcement hours back to peak times in one direction.
Any change in policy would require a cabinet decision as well as a convincing case for such a switch being made to the bus operators and emergency services who have solidly supported the all-day lanes since they were first launched. Both bus firms Stagecoach
and Midlands and East Yorkshire - have reported improved efficiency and quicker journey times as a result.
There is also a school of thought that traditional peaks in rush-hour traffic in the morning and late afternoon no longer exist. Instead, recent traffic studies have shown a trend towards high volumes of vehicles throughout the day, accelerated by the increase in delivery vans as a result of the growth of online shopping.
Reverting back to limited enforcement hours on bus lanes would also fly in the face of what are now long-standing policies at both local and national level around trying to encourage more people to leave their cars at home and switch to bus travel instead. Bucking this policy could also risk government funding directly linked to so-called modal shift.
Put bluntly, the less a council is able to demonstrate policy supports that kind of shift, the less transport money it is likely to receive from Whitehall. It’s a conundrum already taxing some minds at the Guildhall after one particular recent funding blow.
Whitehall funding
At the press conference, Cllr Ross vowed to continue lobbying the Government for funding towards a proposed new rapid bus transit route between the city centre and Kingswood. What he didn’t mention until asked by Hull Live was how realistic his chances of success actually were after the Government had recently rejected Hull’s funding bid for the same idea while, at the same time, handing £17m to York to improve its bus network
He said even more lobbying was planned, highlighting the fact that because Hull had once again been overlooked it actually made the council’s argument for greater support even stronger. At this point, his invitation to Mr Shapps to visit Hull to see the city’s traffic issues for himself was raised along with the polite reply from a junior aide saying he was too busy.
Since the latter was penned, Mr Shapps has briefly been Home Secretary and is now Business Secretary. Perhaps the moment has passed.