THE leaders of a local authority managing a 5,750-mile highways network look have defended plans to sink nearly £8m into improving a road junction after the cost of the work soared.

The executive members of North Yorkshire County Council, which is facing a road repairs backlog of more than £300m, will consider a plan to cut congestion at the A1(M) junction with the A59 York to Harrogate road and ploughing a further £9.85m into a long-held ambition to improve rail connectivity on the rail line between the city and the county’s largest town.

The schemes are both key elements of the council’s drive to improve east west-connectivity across England’s largest county, an issue which business leaders say has traditionally held back North Yorkshire’s economy.

The authority’s highways boss, Councillor Don Mackenzie, said the work around junction 47 was needed to cope with growing traffic as many thousands of houses were planned for the area between Knaresborough and Green Hammerton.

He said it had proved difficult to estimate the cost of upgrading the junction to include traffic signals, widening slip roads and adding an extra lane to the eastbound A59 between the Flaxby roundabout and the A1(M) junction and the lowest tender had come in millions of pounds above the authority’s forecast cost.

Cllr Mackenzie said despite the cost being much higher than envisaged it was important to press ahead with the scheme as thousands of homes and business premises were being planned for the area. He said: “It is a junction that has become busier and busier, and it is likely to become much busier with the plans for housing and other developments for the A59 corridor. It is a key junction in terms of serving new homes and businesses and already we can see queues building up on the A59 and the slip road to the A1(M).”

However, despite the concerns over increasing traffic on the A59, Cllr Mackenzie said the authority had no plans to upgrade the route to a dual carriageway in the near future.

A report to executive members states while the junction 47 scheme was a joint venture with Highways England, the government agency had rejected calls to cover the extra funding needed “due to other commitments in their forward programme”.

It added the cost of the scheme to double the number of trains from York to Harrogate to two per hour by improve signalling at Cattal would come in “substantially under budget by £3.146m”, enabling the authority to fund the 2.57m junction 47 scheme shortfall. The report states: “The delivery of both schemes will deliver substantial benefits for the public in the growth corridor for all transport modes and it is proposed to adjust the county council contributions in order to achieve this.”

The report concludes Covid-19 social distancing measures are likely to have an impact on start dates, programmes and costs for the A1(M) scheme.

It is anticipated that there could be an increase of around £200,000 but it is possible that direct costs contributed to Covid-19 measures could be reclaimed, but this is not yet confirmed at this stage. The construction of a Nightingale facility in Harrogate will also be taken into account when looking at phasing of carriageway works.