16 February was a rather gloomy day, as these photos show, so apologies for the grainy quality, but this was a really impressive sight, as a massive — and I mean massive — crane swung into action. It was a slow process, carefully done.

There were quite a few of us gathered by the river to watch this old bridge deck being lifted out. Imagine how many trains have trundled across it, crossing the Ouse, over the years.

I’ve a fondness for the Scarborough line, not only because it goes through my patch of the Bootham/Clifton area and sometimes brings us steam locomotives, but because this was the line my railwaymen ancestors helped maintain, way back at its beginnings in the 1840s — a bit further out, in the Rillington and Knapton area, where they worked as platelayers and lived in cottages right next to the line. Eventually my great-grandfather, a porter on the railway, ended up here in York working at the station this bridge leads into.

A more symmetrical view next, from Lendal Bridge, from a friend who also wanted to see this impressive local happening. (One of the little figures standing by the water tower at Marygate Landing is probably me, taking that photo above. )

I had a wander round the back of the riverside houses to where the enormous crane was doing its thing. I’d already been to see this impressive piece of machinery when it appeared in the car park, and stood there gawping at the vast size of the thing.

I’m sure there have been plenty of photos and videos of this crane-related action, and with that in mind I thought I’d pop off to Sainsbury’s and come back when things had progressed a bit. The procedure was rather slow, understandably. Bridge decks aren’t the kind of thing you can just fling around.

When I returned, the old rusty thing was on its way to being lowered down into Marygate car park, where many people were watching, including Network Rail staff who appeared to find this as interesting as we the public did, suggesting that swinging bits of old bridge about in the middle of built-up urban areas in a tight space isn’t something they do every day.

Old graffiti decorating its rusty old bulk became more obvious as it was slowly lowered into its temporary resting place in the car park.

I headed off home, up the steps at the bottom of St Mary’s, where there’s a convenient change of level allowing a good view across the car park area, closed to the public during the bridge work and full of activity and vehicles of a type not normally seen down here.

Around the perimeter of the car park and near the bridge itself were many helpful and informative signs. These were so helpful and informative I’ve included another page just about them.

A more recent view taken on a much brighter day, of the newly refurbished bridge:

Work continues, but it’s all open again, with trains running and the riverside walkways open as normal.

To the pedestrian it all looks very much the same. The love-locks are still in place on the steel mesh alongside the footbridge part.

The combination lock rather than a key operated one is probably a good idea, as perhaps in a couple of years the lovers will want to come back and remove their lock. Because it looks likely that at last, in the next few years, we may have a new and more accessible footbridge alongside those shiny new railway decks.

As previously discussed on the earlier page the pedestrian part isn’t Network Rail’s responsibility, it’s up to City of York Council to replace and maintain it. In recent weeks the council has announced that funding will be available to improve this part of the bridge.

Improved access is definitely overdue here. It would make our old Scarborough Bridge, originally constructed in the 19th century, fully fit for the 21st century for cyclists, wheelchair users and pedestrians.

As it is now for trains:

Great to see the trains running on schedule after an early completion #scarboroughbridge @networkrailPR pic.twitter.com/e48AQNAw0L

— Story Contracting (@StoryContractng) February 24, 2015

The post Scarborough Bridge: update appeared first on York Stories.

… If you are planning to go to Scarborough Bridge, or rather, across it, best check first that it’s actually open. Major refurbishment work is taking place here over the coming months. An exhibition today at Marygate car park provided further details. It included some very impressive lego.

It’s York’s least attractive river crossing, but it’s a vital link for pedestrians as well as for the York-Scarborough railway line. People on trains crossing here probably won’t have noticed what pedestrians can clearly see, that it’s quite dilapidated, with rusty bits and crumbling bits.

It’s not that long since it underwent some kind of restoration. In 2009 it was closed for a time. Whatever was done clearly wasn’t enough, and it’s now about to undergo a major overhaul. Part of this work, early next year, will involve a crane lifting new sections into place, from nearby Marygate car park.

Between the rail line as it leaves the bridge and Marygate car park alongside there’s an area of greenery, trees and shrubs, behind a fence. A large area of it, here at the riverside end, has been removed since I took this photo a month ago. I knew this was going to happen but it still looked rather desolate and brutal when I looked this evening, the fenced-off area full of tree stumps where healthy trees have been removed.

Still, it’s necessary, as clearly it’s more important that a bridge carrying a railway line and pedestrians over a river is safe, and if making it safe involves removing trees in order to get to it then we have to accept that. And there are still plenty at the other end of this stretch alongside the car park/rail line.

At the exhibition I had an interesting conversation about the plans to replant trees and shrubs after the work is completed. I wondered how this would fit with the other major aspect many of us wonder about, improved pedestrian/cycle access.

The walkway on the bridge alongside the railway line is narrow and accessed by steps. Which means cyclists have to carry their bikes up the steps, or wheel them up the flat bit alongside the steps. A more accessible crossing has often been mentioned, sloped at either side rather like the Millennium Bridge at the other end of town.

Many people have wondered … if work on Scarborough Bridge is taking place, could we perhaps have this sloped pedestrian/wheelchair accessible/cycle accessible part put in at the same time?

Well no, because that’s the city council’s domain. This work is Network Rail’s responsibility, but the pedestrian access part is up to the council to sort. So we’ll be waiting a while for that.

I was a bit concerned about all those newly planted replacement trees getting their roots down then having to be removed again if/when the improved sloped access is constructed. Apparently the planting is designed to fit around that future possibility. So that’s good.

Meanwhile, there are some very informative posters on the edge of the site.

#ScarboroughBridge will perhaps be quite a talking point in the coming months, and certainly in February I expect there will be quite a crowd gathered to watch the new sections being lifted into place. Rail enthusiasts and crane enthusiasts and nosy locals like me.

I wonder what will become of the ‘love locks’, as the bridge has acquired a small collection of these in recent months.

Love locks on Scarborough Bridge, Aug 2014

Probably because it’s such a romantic location. Or something. Or perhaps just because it’s the only bridge with suitable mesh, after the ones on Millennium Bridge were removed.

I wonder how Network Rail are going to deal with the removal of these tokens of eternal devotion.

Just by the bridge, as you head out of town towards the Leeman Road area, I noticed an earlier and more traditional memento of love: initials carved into the tree trunk.

Perhaps a safer bet if you want a lasting memento and record of your devotion. Or, as more and more city centre trees are being removed, perhaps not.

More

The other point, of course, about improvements for pedestrians and cyclists via sloped access points to the sides of the current structure is that this would mean accessing the bridge from a higher level than the current riverside walkway, which would mean the bridge could still be accessed when there’s flooding. A page from autumn 2012 includes photos of the river level here at Scarborough Bridge, to remind us why that might be a good idea.

The post Are you going to Scarborough Bridge … appeared first on York Stories.

Recently all eyes have been on Lendal Bridge. A less glamorous bridge deserves our attention: Clifton Bridge. This week marked 50 years since it opened.

I meant to mention this on the actual day (28 October) of the 50th anniversary of its opening, indeed had been planning to for months, but on the day I was grappling with the innards of a new WordPress theme for my ‘new-look’ site (more on that story later) and so I didn’t get around to it. Which is kind of appropriate, as Clifton Bridge is generally unappreciated.

It tends to be upstaged by the more glamorous bridges in town. The Press had a photo competition marking the 150th anniversary of the opening of (photogenic, ornate) Lendal Bridge. Perhaps in a 100 years there will be a similar focus on Clifton Bridge. (Or perhaps it will be a crumbling wreck in a desolate landscape, after we’ve used up all the resources, polluted everything and destroyed the planet. A few survivors might be living on Mars, looking nostalgically at these old photos of mine of Clifton Bridge on some big backup of the internet they took with them.)

Here it is, pictured a few years ago. I don’t know why I’ve got photos of Clifton Bridge, but I have. It’s kind of concretey-looking, without the fancy ironwork and painted bits of Lendal and Skeldergate bridges, and not handsome stone and curves like Ouse Bridge. It just goes straight across the Ouse, no messing about, a proper 1960s bridge, quite sleek and clean. Well, clean lines, grubbied by mud and graffiti and river water.

It deserves our appreciation though, this plain-looking road bridge, as it carries a heavy load these days. All the extra vehicles diverted from Lendal Bridge between the hours of 10.30 and 5. How many more, I’m not sure, but predictions suggested that this, the next road bridge along from Lendal on this side of town, would see a large increase in traffic.

Apparently when it was built some people thought it wouldn’t get used. Doesn’t that seem funny and strange now.

It’s hard to imagine it not being there. This image from the archives (© City of York Council) might help. Where the brick wall and railings are, on the right, is now the concrete of Clifton Bridge. The slope still exists down to the river and the riverside path, as does the brick wall on the left.

Before the bridge there was a ferry here to take you across to the opposite bank. Many residents born before 1963 will remember it.

Lendal Bridge also replaced a ferry. The ferryman’s redundancy is one of those oft-quoted historical snippets. ‘Records show that he received compensation of £15 and a horse and cart.’

I wonder what happened to the Clifton ferryman. Perhaps compensated with a car?

Anyway, here’s to Clifton Bridge, and its fifty years of usefulness.

Elsewhere on the web

A nice article on The Press website: Bridging the gap at Clifton on the construction of the bridge

Their archive of photos includes a photo of the temporary bridge erected before Clifton Bridge was built and another of crowds on the bridge after it was officially opened

The post A tale of two bridges appeared first on York Stories.

It could be proof that walking is quicker than driving in York city centre. Or that it isn’t. It could be proof that too many people drive along Gillygate and Bootham. Or it could be proof that the traffic lights at that junction are badly organised. Or that they’re deliberately set to annoy drivers so that everyone will give up trying to drive up Bootham or Gillygate. It could be proof that on sunny Sunday afternoons most residents don’t want to go into the centre of York but would rather be stuck in traffic on the A64. It could be proof that Lendal Bridge isn’t actually a particularly congested place after all. It could be proof that Bootham and Gillygate are almost always congested and therefore you might ask whether the Lendal Bridge restrictions will help with that or make it worse.

There’s no such thing as ‘the truth’. There are different truths. There’s also, increasingly, skilled manipulation of the facts to suit particular agendas. The agendas only matter really if they’re the agendas of the people with the power, eg local authorities, wealthy investors. The rest of us, we’re just thousands of small journeys, making our way across and around the city.

But many of us, me included, are suddenly a lot more interested in traffic flow. Today I saw two photos posted online taken by pedestrians. One at Lendal Bridge, showing it looking just as it used to do, before the trial, with cars and vans travelling along it. Presumably because the message hasn’t quite got through and people haven’t seen the signs or haven’t understood them. The other showed a traffic-free Gillygate. They were taken by two different people about 20 minutes apart. I found it interesting and amusing that a traffic-free Gillygate was taken as a sign that the bridge trial was working, while the photo from the bridge appeared to reveal that everyone was ignoring it and driving across as normal.

Some things can be scientifically measured of course, already have been for some time, like pollution, at certain points in the city. It’s also true that all the data gathered can be and no doubt will be interpreted in different ways. I think most York residents believe that whatever happens the bridge restrictions will remain.

It seems that a central concern is to look impressive and brave to people beyond the city, to get attention for doing things that grab the headlines elsewhere and get the city noticed. And to put a positive spin on everything, regardless.

I’ve found it interesting that there’s been more focus on air quality on the bridge, as if this was the main point of the exercise. The leaflet delivered to households had absolutely no mention of pollution or air quality: it seemed to be all about how things looked.

Maybe worth mentioning though that one of its ‘Did you know?’ points was ‘many more people cross Lendal Bridge on foot, bicycle or bus than drive over it every day’. Yet now we’re seeing suggestions that somehow it was a smog-filled hell suddenly transformed into clean-air heaven.

(In the interests of transparency, if you can see through the smog, I should point out that all the photos on this page were taken at various times in the last couple of years. I haven’t been monitoring the ‘trial’.)

Observations, questions, utter confusion

I hadn’t given much thought to the automatic fines that would be incurred, and it seems that motorists haven’t either, as many are still driving over the bridge as normal. Aren’t people who are about to be charged a fine supposed to be given a clear advance warning of this? And why wasn’t the whole trial presented with this as the headline, rather than the whole ‘closure’ or ‘trial’ thing?

Why wasn’t it presented as ‘congestion charging about to begin on Lendal Bridge’? As that’s what it is, isn’t it? Or not? The ‘congestion’ may be open to question, but it seems there’s definitely a charge. So are we welcoming visitors with our big ‘unclogged corridor’ of grandeur or are we thinking ‘good, let’s get a load of confused drivers on the bridge and then get their dosh before they’ve even got to the shops’?

The inaccurate descriptions of the thing haven’t helped. I’ve seen people refer to it as pedestrianisation — it clearly isn’t, and anyone who thinks it is is likely to be rudely awakened from their idyllic wanderings by a looming bus, taxi or cycle. Or perhaps a bin lorry, or a Royal Mail van, or that NRM road train mentioned earlier. Because one of the things that has come to light, aside from the lack of clear signage, is that these other categories of vehicle are also exempt from the restrictions. There are probably others by now, it looks like we’re making it up as we go along.

And if there are these exemptions, why those and not others? Apparently minibuses aren’t allowed through, though buses are. Blue badge drivers aren’t allowed through, which seems particularly indefensible. If someone already has difficulties with access, why would a local authority think it reasonable to increase those difficulties by sending them on a long detour? I think I’d just give up coming in to town and go to Monks Cross instead.

I heard an interview on the radio suggesting that funeral processions aren’t included in the exemptions, and that this would affect funeral services at the churches in the vicinity. It would mean, I guess, that either the cortege trails its way round the roads on the outskirts, going the long way round, or the fine is added to the undertaker’s bill. Either way, it can’t be right, can it? I’m hoping I’ve misunderstood or misheard, as it would mean a mindset exists I really don’t want to believe exists. The dead can’t really get on a bike, can they. And of course if Richard III ends up getting buried in York Minster his cortege wouldn’t incur a charge would it. Some are more equal than others.

That’s the worst thing about this experiment, as we get into the detail of it. What it says, about who is welcome and who isn’t, whose journeys are considered important and whose aren’t. Some of the people being inconvenienced by this really shouldn’t be, they’re ordinary hard-working people doing a range of jobs which depend on using their own transport. Or people with mobility difficulties. Or indeed, dead residents. Maybe we could transport their coffins to the churches on one of the vehicles with special privileges — the NRM road train perhaps, that goes at a suitably slow pace.

Like I said before, I’ve no need to drive over Lendal Bridge, or indeed anywhere. But that doesn’t stop me noticing the issues involved, the confusion, value judgements, lack of information, and spin.

‘Reinvigorate York’

This ‘trial’ is just one part of ‘Reinvigorate York’, as the ‘Lendal Bridge Trial’ leaflet makes clear. This transformational programme continues on its journey, obsessively decluttering the streets, except where it needs to put up new road signs on the theatre advertising the Lendal Bridge changes (which no one can see past the buses parked there). And next stop King’s Square, with far more permanent and damaging effects, including the felling of a tree.

It all makes sense, doesn’t it?

. . .

All facts are correct to the best of my knowledge at the time of posting this page. If not, please add a comment and I’ll amend accordingly. I’ve no wish to add to the massive confusion already out there.

Elsewhere on the web

Why Lendal Bridge is closing to traffic, 13 June 2013, The Press
Lendal Bridge — who can use it, Minster FM

The post Going for a spin over Lendal Bridge /2 appeared first on York Stories.

So here we are, on Bootham, about to join a queue of standing traffic. It’s 3.03pm. It’s a Sunday, so it should be quite quiet, but it’s also the Sunday of the last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer, and it’s a lovely day. What will this mean for traffic? I have no idea. I’m an occasional passenger, not a driver. But on this occasion I’m carefully observing.

I wasn’t intending to present you, dear readers, with a load of photos taken through a grubby car windscreen. I was just trying out the replacement compact camera I finally got around to getting, making sure it worked. It vaguely crossed my mind that these photos could illustrate a page, but that only seemed worthwhile when looking at them later, when I realised that the time stamp told a story in itself. One that many drivers are no doubt familiar with.

The queue began around the end of Marygate. It’s a very short distance from there to the traffic lights, at the junction near Bootham Bar (the top section of Bootham Bar is visible on this photo, above the roof of the car in front).

We were sitting here for some time. The queue edged forward very slowly. I walk past these queues of traffic often, and often they’re stretching back much further.

I got so bored I forgot to take more photos for documentary purposes. We discussed traffic light timings.

Through the lights, turning right, no other traffic ahead, so we reached the next lights in a matter of seconds after leaving the end of Bootham. It’s 3.11pm. Eight minutes, waiting in the queue at the lights on Bootham. I could walk that stretch in a minute or less.

As we passed the Theatre I looked for the massive sign I’d seen a photo of which advertised the imminent restrictions on Lendal Bridge. It was completely obscured by a bus at the bus stop.

Suddenly a whole load of things I’d never really thought about much came to mind. Like, how was it going to be enforced, and where were the signs to tell drivers they were about to incur a fine, etc.

So now we’re on Museum Street, approaching the famous bridge, focus of so much attention of late. It has been presented as being constantly in a state of gridlock, heaving with traffic, so the trial is a brave move at ‘unclogging the corridor’.

Seems to have worked already, two days before it starts.

No visible traffic. Just us and a bike. Just like so many other times I’ve been over it, as a pedestrian.

A couple of days later I’d see photos like this, views of the bridge (without the dashboard and car windscreen) posted online as evidence that the Lendal Bridge trial had achieved some kind of pedestrian nirvana never before seen.

Oh, but hang on, another vehicle. It’s the NRM road train, trundling along taking people from the NRM to the Minster. I wonder if this will be fitted in somehow in the ‘bus’ or ‘taxi’ category. I expect so.

Even though it appears to be causing a congestion problem of its own, with bored motorists in cars behind it.

And so we escape the hellish gridlock of Lendal Bridge and head under and around the walls, by the station.

And as that handy timestamp shows, we’re on Nunnery Lane by 3.14pm, having gone through three sets of lights since we arrived on St Leonards Place at 3.11pm.

What does it all mean?

I don’t know. It could mean anything you want it to. Like all the other photos I’ve seen in recent days and weeks of Lendal Bridge and other parts of town with or without traffic.

Further discussion needed, clearly. And another page …

The post Going for a spin over Lendal Bridge appeared first on York Stories.

‘OUR VISION…
Following the example set by the likes of Bruges and Barcelona, the Reinvigorate York programme is transforming the economic, cultural and recreational offer of York’s city centre … The Lendal Bridge trial is the latest chapter in this transformation, unclogging the corridor from the rail station to the shops and cultural attractions’

— Lendal Bridge trial, leaflet from City of York Council

Bridges, they’re symbolic aren’t they. All cultures have sayings/proverbs about bridges. We talk about ‘building bridges’ when we want to unite warring factions, heal divisions. We used to burn bridges to stop enemies in pursuit. We still talk about burning our bridges when we’re leaving something behind. Past events, past mistakes, are ‘water under the bridge’. Future problems: ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’. Or not, perhaps, in the case of Lendal Bridge.

It’s 150 years this year since this bridge opened. At present it’s the focus of angry debate. Its imminent ‘trial’ closure to private vehicles begins on Tuesday. It’s not a complete closure, it’s a(nother) traffic restriction, to some vehicles, during certain hours. But it has provoked what is generally referred to as a ’storm of protest’. I’ve also seen comments of exasperation: ‘It’s just a bridge, get over it!’, answered with ‘We won’t be able to, from Tuesday onwards’.

The bridge is of course an important river crossing, but it isn’t ‘just a bridge’. It seems to have taken on a wider significance, a symbolic importance. Having read many of the online comments, trying to gauge public reaction, it looks like the majority view is that this proposed trial is ‘a bridge too far’.

The phrase ‘tipping point’ comes to mind. Many residents seem to have had enough. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much angry feeling expressed about a council plan. It’s as if all the ire and frustration built up over many years, the feelings of many York residents about the local authority — its increasing focus on tourism, its perceived bias towards the needs of certain groups, its ‘not listening to residents’ — has focussed on this bridge.

The leaflet sent out to local households clearly states that the Lendal Bridge trial is part of the wider scheme to ‘reinvigorate’ York. A ludicrous word. The place isn’t lacking in vigour. It’s the most vigorous I’ve ever seen it, in the city centre at least. It’s certainly packed full of visitors — around 7 million a year now, apparently. I can believe that, I reckon there were about 3 million of them in Petergate last time I tried to get to Barnitts.

York residents have been accommodating the needs of visitors/tourists for many years. The shift towards the ‘visitor experience’ has seen the place becoming more gentrified, and more pedestrianised, with more litter on the pavements and in the parks, less room to move. We’ve accepted the inevitable changes, tried to forget about all the things we’ve lost, and we try always to be helpful when visitors ask us directions.

The city’s authorities have to balance the needs of residents and visitors, a difficult job. The city is now so reliant on tourism, on its ‘visitor offer’, its ‘cultural offer’. Everything is so focussed on ‘offering’ it’s quite difficult to stomach sometimes. This particular plan to restrict vehicle movement appears to be the latest and most controversial example of the obsession with the ‘visitor offer’.

I don’t drive, I walk past lines of standing traffic, sometimes cycle by them. But in those lines of traffic are people trying to get goods from one place to another, maybe into the city centre so we can buy them from the shops there, or they’re maybe plumbers, electricians, who can’t really transport their tools on a bike, or they’re maybe carers visiting people in their homes. I care about all these people, and their quality of life on a day to day basis, more than I care about people who arrive at the station for a visit and are only here for a couple of days.

I thought the local authority were also supposed to care more about the needs of residents, those people who vote for them, and pay the council tax. Increasingly it looks like there’s an obsession with ‘visions’ and ambitions, and in it all I see a turning away from the real York I know. It doesn’t matter what residents think. It matters what visitors think.

So, the Lendal Bridge plan is just part of the wider ‘vision’ to ‘reinvigorate’ York. I must remember that when walking past the queues of traffic on Bootham, the stressed drivers with their blood pressure rising. I hope the residents of the Leeman Road area will remember it too when more traffic passes their houses. I wonder how reinvigorated we’re all going to feel.

Elsewhere on the web

If you live in York, you should read this:
How the Lendal Bridge closures could affect York residents (Nathan Jackson, Beacon Dodsworth)
— proper detailed analysis of how journeys might be diverted through other streets and across other bridges

Background documents on the City of York Council website (not a comprehensive list):
Overview of the Lendal Bridge Trial (PDF)

City centre improvements FAQ

Council cabinet meeting, 7 May

Some of the complexities over signage etc (PDF)

Get York Moving – progress overview — the Lendal Bridge trial described as a ‘Highly ambitious access restrictions experiment’

There’s some uncertainty about how long this ‘trial’ will last. Back in May a transport-focussed publication reported the York plans, stating that ‘Councillors have approved an 18-month trial’. Seems none of us noticed it: York to close city centre bridge to cars (Transport Xtra)
… until this month:
Bridge closure order to 2015 (The Press)

In favour of the restrictions, though it certainly didn’t convince me: Lendal Bridge traffic ban will make York a more pleasant place to live (Simon Wallace, yorkmix.com)

And on the opposing side, with far more convincing arguments, properly located, with a ‘sense of place’: Nick Eggleton, also on yorkmix.com.

Important footnote

For the record, I’m a pedestrian/cyclist, non-driver, recycler, environmentally conscious person, and a Labour voter.

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