" Paused" is defined as "interrupting an action briefly" but this pause is not brief. There is no funding from West Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority nor Kirklees for this part of the scheme and there is no plan to take it forward. So "shelved" or even "cancelled" seems much more accurate a description.
It has been a long campaign to save these trees along what is regarded as an iconic and beautiful tree lined route through Edgerton into Huddersfield. I am full of admiration for the determination of the campaigners. They lobbied Councillors in the rain outside Huddersfield Town Hall, put questions to the Labour Cabinet members in Full Council meetings and staged "Banners at the Junction" protests on numerous Saturday mornings. At times it seemed that success was unlikely but now it is clear that they have succeeded.
The success is not an admission of error by either WYCMA or Kirklees. The reason given is funding constraints and overprogramming. Basically, due to inflation and other factors they haven't got the budget they need to do everything they want to do. The campaigners' victory is down to them making so clear that this is such an unpopular scheme that it was top of the list to be cut. So unfortunately, no revelatory moment from the Labour Cabinet or the West Yorkshire Mayor.
The arguments against the widening and tree felling were very clear. The carbon emissions calculations were dubious, the impact on heritage ignored as was the effect on local biodiversity. These arguments were amplified by the Council's own Tree Officer, the Kirklees Climate Commission and the Woodland Trust. Their arguments against were never properly addressed by the Labour Cabinet member. Instead of addressing their arguments he decided to accuse me of making up my own facts when all I was doing was repeating their facts. Got to say I wasn't impressed.
So, what next? People's lives have been affected. Some homes and parts of gardens would have been lost along the route. Saying the scheme is "paused" does not give them the closure they need. Kirklees owes it to the householders who have been disrupted for the last few years to have the certainty they need to get on with their lives.
As a reminder of the reasons that we needed to save these trees here's the campaign video
Unfortunately they have also “paused” the cycling, walking and public transport improvements in phase 4 of the A629 scheme as well.
ReplyDeleteGiven phase 1-3 of the road building part of the scheme have already or are about to go ahead at least some of phase 4 should still happen.
Getting people to use active travel for short journeys and making the buses more attractive for longer ones would completely undermine the arguments for bringing back the phase 5 road widening in the future by reducing congestion without increasing the number of cars journeys.