Rossett Drive Barrier

Rossett Drive is a useful Quietway-style cycle route in Harrogate, but there's a metal barrier at the end of Parson's Intake.

On a standard bike, you have to stop and wiggle through. Non-standard cycles like cargo bikes or trikes don't fit through at all.

Barriers like this are probably illegal under the Equality Act 2010.

You'd think the solution would be simple: remove it.

The highways authority, North Yorkshire County Council, can do big projects. Often, these are to increase capacity for motor vehicles, as at J47 of the A1M. Even the long-delayed Otley Road Cycleway appears to be finally getting under way.

When it comes to small adjustments to the local network, it is unbelievably painful trying to get them to do the right thing.

North Yorkshire's dream is to leave everything exactly as it is. Change nothing. Inertia is the strongest force at work here.

Is it because it's too much work for already stretched officers? Are they worried that any changes will generate more complaints than doing nothing? I don't know.

Rossett Drive LTN

If you proposed a new LTN on Rossett Drive now, it would provoke a lot of howling and wailing from a vocal minority.

'What about ambulances delivering fridges?' they would cry. (I may not have got the details quite right, but it matters little).

They would suddenly become anti-air pollution campaigners, claiming that drivers would have to go the long way round, emitting more noxious gases. Their interest in air pollution would immediately expire as soon as the LTN question was resolved.

A historic LTN like this one provokes no controversy. People like it. It stops drivers using Rossett Drive as a cut-through between Leadhall Lane and Pannal Ash Road, which they would, if they only could, they surely would.

It makes Rossett Drive a calm, quiet neighbourhood to live in, and allows people to walk with dogs or children, in the road, without fear of being run over.

Rossett Nature Reserve Shared Path & Housing Development: A Missed Opportunity

A path along the edge of Rossett Nature Reserve links Rossett Drive to Blenheim Way. It is a useful cycle route, but it's only about 2m wide, which makes it hard to pass other people.

Houses are being built on the old British Telecom site on the opposite side of the path to the Nature Reserve. It's a big development with a lot of houses.

Why wasn't there a plan to require the developers to build a new 3m cycleway, as a planning condition? The existing path could have been left to those on foot.

In theory, the planning process is supposed to be used to improve active travel facilities.

In practice, no one was thinking about active travel at all. This is a missed opportunity.

Rosset Drive: Map

The map above shows Rossett Drive and the surrounding area.