HIGHWAYS bosses have promised to introduce a series of measures to Get York Moving again.

Roadworks on the A64 at Copmanthorpe are to switch to a seven-day week in an effort to get the first phase completed more quickly.

The Highways Agency and City of York Council hope the introduction of Sunday working will mean that the eastbound carriageway can be reopened before retailers' two busiest Saturdays of the year in the crucial run-up to Christmas.

It may also speed up completion of the second phase of the works before the scheduled finish next July.

At the request of the council and the Evening Press, the agency is also to look into the possibility of additional lanes of traffic on the eastbound carriageway during the second phase, which starts on the westbound carriageway in the New Year.

But the agency and council, which spent all yesterday discussing the A64 roadworks and the knock-on effects on traffic congestion across York, say extra traffic lanes will depend on safety issues which must be discussed with police.

Roy Templeman, York's director of environment and development services, also warned that if the normal lanes are narrowed to create extra lanes, the speed limit would probably have to come down from 50 mph to 30mph for safety reasons.

The authorities would have to be sure that this limit could be enforced, and also that more traffic could get through on two lanes at 30mph than on one lane at 50mph.

David Phillips, the agency officer in charge of the Copmanthorpe project, has also agreed to:

Investigate better signing of traffic to divert through traffic away from the congested city centre, and to provide better information for people wanting to come into the centre

Bring forward the closure of Top Lane's access and exit on to the A64 at Copmanthorpe, so that traffic flows more quickly along the dual carriageway

Provide a free-flowing filter lane from the end of November for traffic on the eastbound carriageway wanting to turn left into Tadcaster Road.

But Mr Phillips dismissed calls by the Evening Press and many of its readers for full round-the-clock working at Copmanthorpe, saying there were a range of reasons including health and safety issues why it was not feasible. He said the introduction of Sunday working would be a more efficient way of speeding up completion of the works.

But he stressed that some work could not be speeded up - for example, some concrete had to be left for weeks before it had fully set.

News of the measures came as congestion worsened in York following the closure yesterday in both directions of Cemetery Road for sewer repairs, and as Top Line Travel announced it has been forced to temporarily change some afternoon peak journeys on its Circle Line bus route between the University and Monks Cross because of the traffic chaos. Buses will run up to 15 minutes later and some journeys on the Y29 route will be diverted away from Fulford Road.

Updated: 10:36 Saturday, October 27, 2001