NYC Active Travel Updates
North Yorkshire Council has produced an Active Travel Updates report in advance of the Harrogate & Knaresborough Area Committee meeting on 27th November 2025.
There’s also a Delivery Schedule that gives a rough idea of when things might happen.
These are the main points that emerge.
Parallel Crossing of Oatlands Drive
The planned parallel crossing of Oatlands Drive should be delivered in February 2026.
Victoria Avenue
NYC say they are still intending to build cycle infrastructure on Victoria Avenue. Para 4.1 of the report says:
‘Once NYC receives the as-built drawings, design work for the cycle upgrade scheme can commence’.
Bilton Crossing and Killinghall Greenway Access
The long-awaited crossing of Bilton Lane for the Nidderdale Greenway is, apparently, in design phase.
The next step is (another!) informal consultation on the crossing point and associated Traffic Regulation Orders.
Access improvements at the Killinghall end of the greenway are delayed while council officers ‘resolve the landowner issue’.
NPIF
NPIF funding originally included an Otley Road Cycleway, which NYC abandoned despite majority support for it to go ahead.
The rest of the money is being frittered away on ten ‘nothing’ schemes.
Replacing the traffic lights at the Cold Bath Road junction so as to speed up throughput of motor vehicles is scheduled for January-April 2026.
Tinkering with bus stops on Otley Road has been lumped in with the West Harrogate urban expansion – work which might happen in Summer 2026 (but almost certainly won’t).
A couple of non-crossings (priority to motor vehicles) near Western Primary on Cold Bath Road and Ashville College on Green Lane are due to be delivered at an unspecified time.
HTIP
The Harrogate Transport Improvement Programme (HTIP) rumbles on with no results.
A report to the Environment Executive is promised before the end of the year.
20mph
NYC has put up 20mph signs on residential roads in south and west Harrogate where speeds were already low.
The next phase of work is streets which need traffic calming. The include Beech Grove, Cold Bath Road, Arthur’s Avenue, Pannal Ash Road, Green Lane and Oatlands Drive.
The traffic calming measures seem likely to be sinusoidal ramps, combined with other meaures (para 9.4).
The schedule is long and slow:
- November 2025 to February 2026 – design development
- January to February 2026 – baseline monitoring
- March to May 2026 – informal and formal consultation
- July 2026 – report to the council Executive
- sometime later – work by contractors
It looks very much as though nothing will happen, in terms of actual work on the ground, in the whole of 2026.
Bilton to Hornbeam Park Route
Bilton to Hornbeam Park is one of NYC’s Local Cycling & Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) routes.
The council belatedly started looking into designs for it. It now says that instead of building the northern part of the route via the A59 Skipton Road, it is just going to signpost people to the existing Nidderdale Greenway.
The council will save time and money by not building anything, but at the same time there will be no improvement on the existing provision so no one should expect there to be any increase in cycling rates.
For the rest of the route (East Parade, Stray Rein etc), we are told that there will be an officer/consultant meeting in November.
A59 Missing Link
This is the missing link from High Bridge Knaresborough for about 150m until a cycle path starts further up the A59.
The design is difficult, and NYC is seeking further advice from Active Travel England.
We are promised a standalone report “in the new year”. This is a phrase that NYC uses to mislead people.
The New Year means January, or at a pinch February, except when used by North Yorkshire Council. Then it just means ‘not this year’. It could reference any time next year, or some other unspecified time further in the future.
Cycle Network Priorities
NYC has been consulting with unspecified ‘stakeholders’ – most likely just internal discussions – about its Cycle Network Priorities.
The priorities themselves are so diluted that they are now entirely devoid of ambition.
The timetable is to present a report to the Environment Executive “in due course”.