Bradford District Plan: Fancy decoration around a poisoned chalice?

The District Plan includes policies on transport, the environment, and a section on the ‘Canal Road Corridor’. So Bradford Shipley Travel Alliance commented with our focus on that ‘corridor’ and our concerns on health, safety and averting climate catastrophe. We made it clear that our response did not distract from comments that any of our supporting organisations may make.

We applauded the policy for 15-minute neighbourhoods with all services close to housing developments. We welcomed the policies favouring housing developments without increasing car traffic, and the policy for carbon neutrality by 2038. All were all positive and necessary. But there seem to be major contradictions between these strategic policies and the current plans for Canal Road, which were drawn up a dozen years ago under different priorities.

We said that “The Plan’s strategic priorities should be defended against contrary measures in current plans, not tucked around them like fancy decoration around a poisoned chalice.”

The District Plan does not temper or alter the Canal Road scheme in order to meet the new priorities. The housing developments in Bolton Woods have no conditions to reduce car travel, no conditions to insist on car clubs, active travel (bikes and walking), or buses. The plan protects a route for creation of extra traffic capacity between Bradford and Baildon (the Shipley Eastern Relief Road). It sees Canal Road and Valley Road becoming “a streamlined high-capacity route”. These plans fly in the face of the Council’s support for Carbon Emissions Reductions that require a significant reduction in car traffic. The scheme incorporated into the District Plan puts more pressure on the traffic bottleneck of Shipley rather than reduces it.

Isn’t it poor planning to declare the destination is one place, traffic reduction and sustainable development, but accept without comment projects that will instead take us to somewhere else? 

The full responses from BSTA are at https://bsta.org.uk/wp/wp-admin/upload.php?item=105

Shipley Town Council’s gave an extensive response to the District Plan, which can be read here: https://shipleytowncouncil.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/draft-local-plan-response-final-ja.pdf. It included a comment on the road plan between Bradford and Shipley: “We are concerned about the impact of the Bradford-Shipley Route Improvement Scheme on Shipley. This road scheme is designed to increase road carrying capacity on Canal, Valley and Otley Roads and as a result will, through induced demand encourage more traffic onto the roads. This increase in traffic is highly likely to have a specific negative impact on Shipley. It will increase congestion, air and noise pollution as well as rat-running and will have a negative impact on community wellbeing through community severance caused by wide, congested roads.”