Chris Donegani lives on Piccadilly and was a regular participant in the workshops we ran to look at the reshaping of public realm along Piccadilly earlier this year. Having been part of the various conversations and given a lot of consideration to the various issues involved, Chris put down on paper some proposals which illustrated his thinking.
A key element of his proposal is moving away from the requirement that two buses can pass at any point along Piccadilly at any time. He’s dealt with this partly by traffic routing, and partly by acknowledging that bus drivers are capable of reading the road ahead and giving way where appropriate – as they regularly do elsewhere on the streets of York due to traffic and parking.
Let’s start at the city centre end of Piccadilly and let Chris walk us towards Fishergate…
“From Merchantgate to Dennis Street the carriageway would be bus movement both ways, but traffic only northbound (so buses only southbound, and southbound car traffic going via Walmgate). The carriageway would be wide enough for buses to pass, but when the bus stop or hotel drop-off are occupied, bus drivers would need to give way when necessary.
Bollards, traffic Islands and highlighted pedestrian crossing zones would be used to slow traffic. The narrower carriageway would allow space for a segregated cycle route on the east side of this section of road – effectively across the frontage of the current Spark site – so it could be incorporated into thinking when the site is redeveloped into a long-term use. At the southern end of this section – before Dennis Street junction – the cycle route would cross the carriageway diagonally with a raised/coloured surface.”
“As we move away from the city centre, the area in front of Ryedale House has a different character. Trees would be added here to add to existing trees next to Ryedale House and Piccadilly Residence. The road would meander in order to slow traffic, in combination with further traffic islands and pedestrian crossing points.
The segregated cycle route would continue southwards to the west side of the carriageway – in front of Ryedale House – with the road meander giving ample space for this”
“Moving further we have a new gateway to Piccadilly, formed at the Mill Street junction by extending the new public paved area from the new Foss bridge across the carriageway. Traffic would be slowed by this being raised and paved, but also by narrowing it with bollards. The remainder of this section of Piccadilly would be narrowed so as to just allow cars and buses to pass both ways, and hotel drop-off bays provided to the Holiday Inn and Travelodge.
The segregated cycle route would continue across the new apartment block frontage, linking with the cycle/pedestrian route across the new Foss bridge. This would in turn also link across to Mill Street, which could be cycle and pedestrian only with trees and planting to match the new public areas and provide a pleasant environment linking in with cycle priority routes towards Hungate.”
If you’d like to catch up on the broader discussion about issues regarding Piccadilly and how it could be reimagined, take a look at other Let’s Make Piccadilly blogs (click on the Piccadilly tag in the Blog Page word-cloud) or take a look at the Post-Its on our Flickr site here.
I hope this alternative design is being seriously considered.