8:50am Tuesday 24th November 2009
By Will Kilner
A number of major road innovations designed to ease traffic congestion in Bradford have been delayed, it has been revealed.
Construction work on a bus priority project along Tong Street and on to Westgate Hill Street should be starting in January but will not now start until June.
The delay will allow extra work to take place to assess the impact the scheme could have on the highway network in neighbouring Kirklees.
There will also be at least a six-month delay to a bus priority scheme on Leeds Road, around the junction with Killinghall Road, Laisterdyke.
Design work is now scheduled to get under way in March due to a delay in securing funding, according to a report that was presented to Metro’s Local Transport Plan Steering Group.
The report also provided an update on Bradford’s Car Share scheme, stating that the completion date for design and the date for the start of work had passed with no progress reported.
Bradford Councillor Chris Greaves, chairman of Metro’s Local Transport Plan Steering Group, said the delays had been caused by a number of factors.
He said: “There has been quite a lot of slippage but we have been assured that the money for these schemes is not going to disappear. They will happen – it’s just a case of when. One reason for slippage is that each scheme has to go out to consultation and there could be concerns from local residents, in which case we have to rethink or juggle certain aspects of the scheme."
In relation to the car share scheme, Coun Greaves said: “It’s something that’s being pushed through the green agenda and it has been shown to make virtually no difference from a carbon-saving point of view.”
“Where it does come in is that it saves people money and it does take a car off the road.”
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