Crunch time for Harrogate's cycling dreams as councillors face a tricky decision on £11.2m Gateway project

Members of the Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Committee could end up having the onerous duty of deciding on the town’s entire future direction on road use when they vote on the £11.2 million Harrogate Gateway project.

Should councillors at the meeting on Friday, May 5 come out against North Yorkshire Council’s plans for new cycle lanes and partial pedestrianisations in the Station Parade area, it could prove a crossroads in the battle between environment and business in Harrogate.

Members of Harrogate District Cycle Action already fear the worst, warning that a ‘no’ vote would mean Harrogate's ambitions for a new connected cycle network would be “in tatters.”

To some, that may feel melodramatic but recent events suggest a pattern in the town’s green journey.

Time after time, the range of Government-funded schemes in Harrogate floated by the county council to ween the town off its dependence on cars, backed, incidentally, by the public in 2019 in the biggest consultation ever conducted in the district, have been abandoned, diluted or delayed.

Last month saw the county council’s transport leader Coun Keane Duncan express his regret that the bid for more than £2 million from the Government’s Active Travel Fund (ATF) to create new segregated cycle lanes on Victoria Avenue and on the A59 Knaresborough Road between Mother Shipton’s Cave and Harrogate Golf Club had been rejected.

While there were few tears at the news from Harrogate business groups who fear the impact of anti-car measures on customer numbers, what has depressed pro-cycling and environmental campaigners isn’t a lack of Government support but those reversals which have originated closer to home.

Residents and traders opposed to recent transport proposals may have complained about the ‘power of the hardline cycling lobby’.

But cyclists themselves, having engaged in dialogue with the authorities in a fact-based way to little or no avail so far, say the results on the ground prove this is simply not the case.

The list of sustainable transport measures led by North Yorkshire Council which haven’t been successfully carried out recently includes:

Otley Road cycle lane

Victoria Avenue and A59 cycl elanes

Beech Grove low traffic neighbourhood

New cycle lane on Oatlands Drive

New crossing for cyclists and walkers on Bilton Lane at the Nidderdale Greenway

Keen on local input from the beginning of the troubled saga, Tory transport leaders at North Yorkshire have said they will be will be guided by a meeting on May 5 of Harrogate and Knaresborough councillors on the area committee when it comes to the ultimate fate of the £11m Gateway project.

In theory, the meeting should have been straightforward for the resurgent local Lib Dems who now enjoy a majority on the committee and have long championed sustainable transport.

But years of consultation have served to raise the political temperature in Harrogate on roads and traffic, leaving the Gateway project the very definition of a political hot potato.

In theory, this will be only one decision.

But to anyone who wants to see a new direction in Harrogate on cycling, it might just feel like the final nail in the coffin.