Council Removes Dishonest Claim that York Outer Ring Road Dualling is in Line with Carbon Reduction Ambitions

City of York Council (CYC) has removed a dishonest claim on its website that dualling York Outer Ring Road (YORR) is ‘…in line with our carbon reduction…ambitions.’ The council intends to dual the A1237 between the A19 and the A1036.

Previously, CYC appeared to be intent on misleading visitors to its website into believing that dualling YORR would result in carbon reduction:

Now the text reads:

‘The upgrade of the road and the roundabouts will help to reduce congestion and journey times, encouraging traffic out of the city centre and onto larger roads where flows can be managed effectively.’

text on cyc’s yorr page

A claim of ‘a reduction of traffic emissions’ remains under the heading Benefits of the Scheme:

Still missing from the YORR page is any section headed Disadvantages of the Scheme.

Anyone prepared to plough through the documents accompanying the planning application can work out that the scheme releases greenhouse gases, but this fact is not stated on CYC’s YORR page.

Induced Demand

CYC’s planning application claims that the expansion of road capacity ‘…is not anticipated to generate significant levels of new traffic…’

On the other hand, their YORR page states that where other parts of YORR have been upgraded, there has been a huge increase in traffic – 30% in 8 years.

‘Surveys of traffic flows at roundabouts on the A1237 which have already been upgraded in recent years have shown that journey times have reduced by up to 4 minutes even with a 30% increase in the number of vehicles passing through the junction (evidence from the A59/A1237 roundabout, upgraded in 2014).’

Text from cyc’s yorr page

There is no explanation why the latest proposed road capacity expansion scheme would not generate traffic when previous ones have.

York’s draft Climate Change Strategy (page 20) says a 25% reduction in vehicle miles travelled is required by 2030. It is impossible to see how dualling YORR is consistent with that.

Carbon Calculations

The project will result in net greenhouse gas emissions of 50,638 tCO2e.

York’s total annual transport emissions are 261,000 tCOe. The city’s climate objective is to reduce that total by 71% by 2030 (page 16 of the Climate Change Strategy).

That would mean that in 2030 annual transport emissions should be 75,690 tCO2e.

The emissions from the YORR dualling project (50,638 tCO2e) amount to 67% of the 2030 annual carbon budget for transport.

Looking at it another way, emissions from transport must decrease by about 10% a year to 2030, but emissions from the YORR dualling alone will increase them by 10% a year during the 2 years of construction.

The dualling project is unhelpful in terms of reaching York’s climate targets. Going ahead with it would make people wonder if CYC is sincere about reducing emissions.