PLANS have been announced to invest £1.4milllion in a major revamp of York Road here in the City
Leicester City Council is planning to carry out improvements to York Road – which connects Welford Road and Oxford Street – and create a safer and more attractive route for pedestrians and cyclists.
The improvements will be funded with Government cash as part of the council’s successful bid for £7.8million from the Department for Transport’s Transforming Cities Fund.
As part of the proposed scheme, the road will be pedestrianised between its junction with Oxford Street and Newarke Street car park.
Traffic flow along the road will be adjusted so that vehicles leaving the car park will be required to turn left onto Welford Road, leaving the majority of York Road free from traffic.
Vehicle access along the main stretch of York Road will only be permitted for residents, blue badge holders and businesses in the area.
Footpaths will be widened in some sections and reconstructed in high-quality blocks, similar in appearance to Silver Street and Guildhall Lane.
Improvements will also be made to Newarke Street car park. These will include the creation of an additional exit gateway and the introduction of automatic number plate recognition to help improve the flow of traffic in and out of the car park.
The planned scheme will fill a missing link between the new £35milllion development on King Street, at the city centre end of New Walk, and De Montfort University’s campus on Millstone Lane, which has also recently seen a multi-million pound investment.
It will also link to improvement works currently under way on nearby Grange Lane and Bonners Lane.
The York Road scheme will be the latest phase of the wider Connecting Leicester programme, which is improving routes into and through the city centre and helping to make it more attractive to residents, visitors, businesses, investors and developers.
City Mayor Peter Soulsby said: “York Road has the potential to be a really useful and direct link between the recently redeveloped New Walk Centre site and the DMU campus, which has also undergone a wonderful programme of improvements.
“At the moment, they are connected by a road that is shabby and chaotic. We want to change that and transform York Road into a much more attractive route for pedestrians and cyclists.
“At the same time, we’ll be introducing some key improvements to Newarke Street car park to make life easier for the hundreds of motorists that use this facility every day.
“The York Road proposals were part of successful bid for £7.8milllion from the Transforming Cities Fund. That is a tremendous endorsement of the value and importance of this scheme.”
Work is expected to begin from Monday 15 April and complete by late-summer 2019.
Objections to the related traffic regulation order proposals were considered at a meeting of the Planning and Development Control Committee in mid-February.
The council has listened carefully to concerns raised and has amended the proposals to provide more available parking for Blue Badge holders.
A formal decision on the funding for the York Road scheme is due to be taken on Monday 25 March.
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