Cycling route bid for old rail track
FOR AT least 700 years, since it got its charter, the people of Hull have been trying to control the river that gave the city its name.
The medieval waterfronts of Hull are still there buried deep behind later defences, large sections of which are now at serious risk of collapse.
Unnoticed by the majority of its residents, since last April workers have been constructing formidable new defences – using 60ft long piles driven into the silt by 160-tonne cranes.
The work only really came to people’s attention in the spring when sections of Bankside and now Wincolmlee had to be closed to traffic to allow the huge cranes which straddle the entire carriageway to do their work.
The project is critical as Hull is the city which is second-most at risk of flooding outside London.
Many of the defences were in a parlous state and just a few years from collapse – which would have quickly led to widespread flooding.
“If there was a flood because of the topography of the city, it is like a bowl. It would spill out from the river and quickly fill up a lot of the city,” explained Hull City Council’s flood manager Rachel Glossop.
Some of the older defences are buckling and cracked.
Even the more modern structures, dating to the 1940s and 1950s, which are made of steel and look in reasonable shape, are badly corroded.
Putting the new defences in front – consisting of rows of piles, with steel sheets inbetween and a concrete cap and beam on top – will take the Environment Agency another three years to complete at a total cost of £55m.
In all, 65 sections will be rebuilt to a one-in-200-years standard of protection.
Some of work will be round the entrance to the old dry docks on the River Hull, which are earmarked for a new visitor attraction and will house the country’s last sidewinder trawler, Arctic Corsair.
Adding to the woes of motorists, a new phase of work further down Wincolmlee will require the road to be reduced to a single lane towards the end of the year.
But the gain should be well worth the pain in a city which experienced devastating flooding in 2007.
Senior adviser to the Environment Agency Andrew Barron said: “The investment in flood defences is essential to the future growth and prosperity of the city. It is part of the vital infrastructure that reduces flood risk.
“In just six years, over £200m will be spent on reducing the flood risk in the area – underlining its importance to the local economy.”
Retired archaeologist Dave Evans said the river was only fixed in its present position from around 1750, and had become much narrower as a result of merchants reclaiming land to make their riverside plots in the Old Town bigger.
Mr Evans said: “The big heavy iron gates in High Street in the Museums Quarter sit more or less on top of the west bank of the Hull – almost everything to the east has been reclaimed.
“There were various works (on the defences) in the 1990s and 2000s but this is the first really large-scale work for a long time.
“It is being done on a scale that we haven’t seen in half a century.”
A new walking and cycling route could be built along a disused railway track.
Sustrans Limited has applied to form the route from Green Row Bridge at Methley Junction to Castleford Greenway. It would form the second phase of a project to connect Wakefield and Castleford for cyclists and walkers.
The plan forms part of the West Yorkshire cycling network City Connect programme.
A key part of the route is also a new bridge over the live Leeds to Castleford railway.