Don’t create car-dependent green spaces

Why are so many green spaces and parks around York designed to be driven to by car? If you’re visiting for fresh air and exercise and want to appreciate the beauty of nature, does this make sense? Even more bizarrely, York’s much heralded new Community Woodland at Knapton is going to feature a car park!

So this flagship environmental scheme, that is supposed to be a carbon offset, will become just another car-dependent, out-of-town amenity like a retail park – guaranteed to generate more car journeys, congestion and carbon. Doesn’t that somehow miss the point? Emblematic, perhaps, of the lack of any kind of joined up strategic planning in this city. (More on this below.)

A truly game-changing approach would use this once-in-a-generation opportunity to embed the York Community Woodland as a key node, anchor and destination within a new cycling and walking network on the west side of the city. With cycle routes criss-crossing it and reaching right into the city centre, it should also have excellent bus provision and of course, first-rate parking facilities – for disabled people only. We have many lovely existing green areas that are very difficult to access by cycle. Some, just beyond the outer ring road, are very nearly, but not quite accessible and would require the minimum of work to open them up. Wheldrake Wood, for example, only needs 500m of cycle path. We should connect up all these green areas throughout the city as part of a new cycle network and make the journey part of the destination.