Rougier Route Consultation
Report
June 2026
Contents
Methods of consulting & headline results
Who we reached & how we engaged
Results evaluation: Online version, question by question
Results evaluation: Blueberry Academy learners’ insight
Results Evaluation: Written responses, emails and in person events
Annex 1 – Public Consultation Leaflet
Annex 2 – Bishophill & Guildhall residents’ information sheet and letter
Introduction
This report sets out the approach to, and results from, the first three phases of public consultation on the Rougier Route proposals. If approved, the scheme itself is designed to be a trial, running as an Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO), the 18 months of operation will form phase 4 of the consultation.
· Phase 1: stakeholder engagement in early 2025
· Phase 2: full public consultation in late 2025/early 2026
· Phase 3: targeted engagement with Bishophill residents in spring 2026
Phase 1: Stakeholder engagement
This key, early phase of engagement sought to bring initial ideas to groups which could be most affected by the proposals. We included in the briefing sessions information on how the project had come about via BSIP funding and how our modelling showed each of the early options may affect wider traffic. We also demonstrated the other measures around the whole city and how the Rougier Route is part of a key target to reduce congestion and improve access to transport.
Briefings were held with:
· York Access Forum
· York business groups
· Tourist Advisory Board
· Bus operators
· Taxi trade
Phase 2: Full public consultation in late 2025/early 2026
Following stakeholder engagement in early 2025, a wide-reaching public consultation was held from 19 November 2025 to 12 January 2026. It was designed to encourage residents and businesses to share their views in an eight-week consultation setting out how the Rougier Route could work, how it responds to resident, business and visitor needs, and the anticipated benefits and impacts.
Phase 3: Targeted consultation with Bishophill residents
Following significant feedback from Bishophill residents within Phase 2, project officers returned to residents in April 2026 with revised proposals. The front cover of the leaflet produced for this is below.
Methods of consulting & headline results
Initially called the City Centre Sustainable Transport Corridor, the project was renamed Rougier Route to give it more relevance to people travelling around York and to encourage greater interest and take-up in the consultation.
All materials were written to a reading age of 9 and guided by the Social Model of Disability’s language. The Rougier Route consultation followed on from the Local Transport Strategy which sought to make transport issues more interesting and engaging, to ensure we hear a wider range of voices.
To ensure the consultation was widely communicated, a full communications and engagement plan was produced and followed.
The consultation was launched to the public on 19 November 2025. Launch activity included;
· A media briefing attended by the BBC, Local Democracy Reporter and Bauer radio
· Online version of the consultation using Citizen Space
· Live-action video to explain the reasoning behind the proposal
· An animation to show how the proposals could work
· Promotion on CYC social media platforms
o Facebook (21k followers)
o Next Door (34k followers)
o Instagram (5.5k followers)
o LinkedIn (19k followers)
· In the first week, across all platforms our posts promoting the consultation received over 28,000 views.
· Advertising of and holding in person events & workshops – held locally to Bishophill and at York Explore
· Promotion in e-newsletters with links through to Citizen Space
· Copies of the consultation leaflet (Annex 1) issued to all libraries and Explore centres in York
· Letter written to over 2000 households within the YO1 6xx area (Bishophill) (Annex 2)
In December 2025, a pre-election period was called which meant we paused proactive work but the consultation remained open and continued to receive responses.
Who we reached & how we engaged
There were five key methods of engagement:
1. Online survey using Citizen Space
This allowed us to host all materials, including technical drawings, to allow residents and businesses to scrutinise the proposals. We also embedded the video and animation which explained the project in more detail. The data collected via Citizen Space is presented later in this document.
Using Citizen Space as a platform meant we could clearly and cleanly explain complex data and embed materials such as maps and videos, so that everything was in one place.
A screengrab of the consultation homepage.
We also made two videos – one live action to explain the issues, and one animation to show the proposals and how we have listened to residents:
The live action video was presented in BSL and included footage as well as testimony from bus drivers about the issues that congestion cause for residents:
2. Proactive engagement with external media
In order to ensure the widest possible audience for the consultation, we worked extensively with local and regional media. The consultation featured in York Press, York Mix, BBC (across multiple platforms, from radio to web), and coverage helped spread the word among non-residents who commute in to York for education, leisure or work.
Media coverage included a series of articles at launch, and throughout the consultation to encourage people to take part. The BBC also attended one of our in-person events and spoke to residents to get their thoughts on the proposals for tv.
3. In-person events, briefings and workshops
We hosted a series of sessions dedicated to residents and businesses so that we could hear and learn from their responses to the proposals. Events open to the public were communicated in advance via press activity, letters to residents, social media and newsletters, plus listed on Citizen Space, to ensure as many people as possible could attend.
a. Public events held in accessible venues
These were very well attended by Bishophill residents in particular, with over 300 people speaking to the project team.
In order to prevent future rat-running in the streets around Bishophill, measures were proposed including new bollards and access restrictions. Events were held at Middleton’s Hotel locally, with a mix of times and dates to encourage as many people to attend as possible and to understand what the proposals meant for them. The events were also publicised in letters posted to YO1 6xx residents at the start of the consultation. A further event was also held at York Explore in the late afternoon and evening. All events were held in accessible venues with accessible toilets, and had technical, comms/engagement and transport staff present, as well as the Executive Member for Transport, present. We also had leaflets available to take away with full contact details of how to take part.
Across more than 9 hours in total, we met several hundred residents, listening to their comments and making notes of the conversations.
In addition, project officers were invited to an in-person meeting of the Bishophill Action Group, where they spoke to residents and listened to the debate.
b. Stakeholder workshops held both in person and online
Disabled resident engagement:
York’s network of disabled residents were represented at briefing sessions including with the York Access Forum. At launch, materials were shared with disability groups via CYC’s Access Team.
We also engaged internally with CYC’s SEND school transport and York Independent Learning and Travel (YILTS) team to understand how the proposals may impact on young people they work with.
Business engagement:
In addition to project officers visiting affected frontages during summer and autumn 2025, Micklegate traders held an event attended by Ward Members and the transport project team to discuss delivery and access needs.
Businesses and York’s hospitality industry was also engaged via presentations to the Tourism Advisory Board, hosted by York St John University.
Taxi trade:
Private hire and Hackney carriage operators received dedicated briefing sessions, including how the proposals could operate and how our modelling predicted possible shifts in traffic.
Operators told us how passengers could face increased costs if congestion worsens around the railway station and Nunnery Lane if taxis were not allowed to use the bus priority measures. They also highlighted how SEND school transport could be impacted by additional journey times and the importance of keeping journeys as short as possible. They also raised the issue of times of day the bus measures could operate and a desire to keep them to the same as Coppergate, especially for night-time journeys to the railway station.
SEND learners:
In order to hear directly from York’s SEND community, we invited learners from Blueberry Academy to meet the transport team and Executive Member. We then paid a return visit several weeks later to Blueberry where learners had prepared their own responses to the consultation and described how they travel around York.
4. Emails and phone calls
The CYC dedicated email address for consultations – OurBigConversation@york.gov.uk – was used for the entire period and is in fact still receiving enquiries, which are being responded to individually.
In particular during the November 2025-January 2026 period we received high levels of emails with several hundred people writing in, mostly from the Bishophill area. We also received questions from residents of the wider York area about how the project may affect them, why we had selected these streets, etc.
Each one of more than 125 emails received a bespoke response from the project team within a week of being sent, and many conversations were entered in to via email. All emails were logged and have been read by the project officers.
We also ensured that anyone who wanted to speak to us by phone could do so, and we received several calls via our Customer Service desk. These included some very insightful conversations with local residents include those who hold a Blue Badge but do not have their own car or access to the same vehicle each time they need to travel by car.
5. Materials in York Explore centres and libraries
As the proposals had potential benefits and impacts on a very wide audience, we worked with York Explore to ensure that copies of the consultation leaflet were made available in every Explore centre and library across the city.
The front cover of the leaflet, and a map from inside, are shown below:
Results evaluation: Online version, question by question
We asked a range of quantitative and qualitative questions with several having free-text boxes for people to give longer responses. This was in addition to the email where people could, and did, send in feedback.
Question 1 asked people to confirm they had read the privacy notice.
Question 2: We asked the respondent’s postcode to ensure we heard from local and regional people rather than further afield, which often happens with transport consultations. The map below shows the postcodes of people who took part:
Key facts and figures:
1175 people responded online [this includes people who sent in a paper copy of the questions, and were inputted to the platform]
Ages of respondents: This consultation received a higher than average response rate from working age people, including 22% from those aged under 39 and 29% aged 40-55.
The split in gender was less balanced, with 51.66% of responses from men, 36.34% from women and 1.36% from non-binary, with 9% preferring not to say.
11.15% of responses were from disabled residents, which is representative of 2021 census data which shows 10% of York’s population are disabled people.
· Question 3: How much do you think York is negatively affected by traffic congestion? (all respondents)
When we look at the responses by age, the highest response to ‘very negatively’ came those aged 25 to 39 (65.5%). Those aged 16 to 24 gave the second highest response to ‘very negatively’, with 62.8%.
· Question 4: Have you ever had to take a bus earlier than you needed, because you were worried you might be late? (all respondents)
· Question 5: If you’ve tried the bus before and it’s been late, has that made you change your mind and travel by car the next time you made that trip? (all respondents)
· Question 6: Would you use buses more often if we introduced dedicated priority routes for buses and sustainable transport? (all respondents)
Here, ‘yes’ and ‘maybe’ totalled 58.09%
Again looking at age of respondents, we saw the highest response to ‘yes’ from younger people, in particular 69.8% of people who said yes they would use buses more often. The next highest response to ‘yes’ came from the next age bracket up, 25-39 year olds (51.1%).
· Question 7: Where would you like buses to take you from and to?
As you can see from the map, we received a significant number of responses with considerable variety in the routes people want to take. This information is being passed to the York & North Yorkshire Combined Authority as they take bus networks under their control in the coming years.
We also received 74 text answers to this question, and a sample of these is below:
· Question 8: Thinking about the journey that is most important to you, what is the purpose of the journey?
We’ve looked at the age categories for this question. Younger people (aged 16-24) featured highly for education trips, while 60% of people aged 40-55 use buses for work.
We also looked at the answers here from disabled residents; 38.8% of respondents said that work is the most important reason they use the bus.
Within this question we also sought to understand the barriers to people using the existing bus network:
And we then asked if they do not use the bus, why not? Here, the top answer was that buses do not run often enough (40.87%) and then ‘it’s not reliable’ with 39.83%:
· Question 9: Would you consider switching from driving a car to using the bus for some of your journeys if it was quicker and more reliable?
This question also included a free-text box and we received many insightful comments. Below is a sample from Blue Badge holders:
· Question 10: Would you consider switching from driving a car to cycling, wheeling or walking for some of your journeys if it was along routes with less vehicle traffic?
While there are greater numbers of people who said no to this question, it is encouraging to see the high percentage of people (37.72%) who would consider using an alternative to driving a car.
Under our adopted Local Transport Strategy, we have a target to reduce miles driven by 20% and the 37.72% of people who said yes here could make a significant contribution to reducing congestion.
Again, this question included a free-text box and a sample of responses is below:
· Question 11: Are you a Blue Badge holder or responding on behalf of someone who is?
Just over 6% of respondents (71) said they have a Blue Badge.
We wanted to ensure that we heard from Blue Badge holders and how they currently travel in York. We included a free-text box with this question and 82 people gave us comments. A sample of these is below:
· Question 12: Do you agree or disagree that encouraging more people to travel by bus will reduce congestion?
When we look at the answers by age category, again, younger people
made up the majority of support here, with 83.3% of people aged
16-24 saying they felt that encouraging more people to go by bus
would help reduce congestion:
Looking at responses from disabled residents, we received a higher proportion of ‘agree’ answers (56.2%) to disagree (33.1%).
· Question 13: Do you think our proposals will help make York’s bus services more reliable? (all respondents)
We’ve included here how these answers were broken down by age:
Looking at answers from disabled people, there was an even split around whether the proposal will make buses in York more reliable or not:
o Proposals will make buses more reliable: 35.1%
o Proposals will not make buses more reliable: 35.9%
o There were identical splits of responses from disabled residents when asked if the proposals would help reduce bus journey times too.
· Question 14: Do you think our proposals will improve bus journey times?
Again, young people were the most supportive:
· Question 15: How do you feel the Rougier Route bus priority measures should operate? (all respondents)
We also looked at the answers for this question where the respondent has a Blue Badge:
· Question 16: What times do you think the bus priority measures should operate? (all respondents)
We also looked at responses to this question from Blue Badge holders. We had 71 responses and there was less support here for 24-hour operation:
We also included a free-text box on this question and a sample of responses from Blue Badge holders are below:
· Question 17: What impact would it have on your travel if taxis were not permitted to use the Rougier Route? (all responses)
Blue Badge holder responses:
This question also included a free text box for more detailed replies or to tell us their ‘something else’, and a sample of the responses is below. In total, 71 people gave their comments. Among them were:
· Question 18: How frequently do you travel along the Rougier Street / George Hudson Street / Micklegate route by the following modes of transport? (all responses)
Cycle:
Bus:
Walk, use a wheelchair or mobility aid:
Taxi:
· Question 19: Would you support a 20mph speed limit on this corridor? (all respondents)
· Question 20: Do you have any comments about making Toft Green and Micklegate a one way loop (with cycle contra-flow)? (all respondents)
This question had a free-text box only, and we received 773 responses. A sample is below:
· Question 21: Are you a resident of Bishophill and/or the roads directly affected by these proposals?
This should be viewed in the context of a very high proportion of the emails received being from Bishophill residents, and several hundred residents attending our in-person events to give their feedback, which was also recorded.
· Question 22: Where would you like to see us install new Blue Badge parking bays within this area?
We had 155 responses in total. The map below shows where people have dropped pins to identify where they would like to see more Blue Badge parking installed.
We also ensured there was a free-text box for people to respond if they did not want to use the map, and 28 people did this.
· Question 23: Where would you like to see us install new cycle parking within this area?
We had 389 answers to this question, with many identifying locations outside the Rougier Route remit. Below are the ones in the area most closely associated with the bus priority proposal.
· Question 24: Do you have any comments about making Micklegate a one way loop?
We had 693 responses to this question, all in the free-text box, and a sample is below:
Results evaluation: Blueberry Academy learners’ insight
We were very keen to hear direct from York residents with SEND, not just to understand how the proposals may affect them, but also to understand their experiences of travel in York.
We were delighted that Blueberry Academy agreed to take part and brought a dozen of their young learners to meet our transport team and see how we operate traffic lights and systems in the city. We then sat down with the Exec Member for Transport; the access team; York Independent Learning and Travel (YILTS) (who had travel-trained and worked with many of the learners) and the team behind the Rougier Route proposals to hear learners’ experiences of our bus network, as well as their experiences walking and using mobility aids in the city.
In the discussion, they raised said of them rely on taxis to get to college and some travel by bus, either independently or accompanied. They all very much enjoy bus journeys but feel worried when services run later than timetabled. This can lead to anxiety and have an impact on them for several days. When we asked “what do you do if a bus is late?”, one young person told us they get so anxious that they “give up and go home”.
A few weeks later, we were invited for a return trip to Blueberry Academy where the learners had prepared presentations for our team. Some of these are below and we are very grateful to the learners and staff for all the time and thought given to the project.
Results Evaluation: Written responses, emails and in person events
Written responses:
We received a number of written responses from groups and individuals, including from:
· Bishophill Action Group
· Buckingham Court Management Company
· Buckingham Street residents
· Copmanthorpe Parish Council
· Taxi operators
· York Access Forum
· York Bus Forum
· York Civic Trust
· York Cycle Campaign
· York Disability Rights Forum
· York Environment Forum
· York Green Party
· York Liberal Democrats
Emails and in person events:
Using the dedicated engagement email address Ourbigconversation@york.gov.uk meant we could monitor and respond to queries quickly and in a personal way. We received over 150 emails, all of which were responded to individually.
Largely they were from Bishophill residents. Very clear themes emerged from the public consultation phase:
· Residents in Micklegate would like access through Bishophill or they could potentially face longer journeys and travel delays around the railway station
· Do not stop residents’ access through Victoria Bar. Instead install ANPR cameras and allow exemptions for local residents & businesses
· Do not move the existing bollards on Bishophill Senior or Lower Priory St
· Do not place a physical modal filter (ie planters or barriers) at Fetter Lane or St Martin’s Lane; instead use ANPR enforcement with local exemptions
· Improve the Skeldergate / Bishopgate St junction to ensure traffic can exit safely
This feedback resulted in the project team revising the proposals and returning to Bishophill with a further, targeted phase of engagement.
We have grouped analysis of the emails and in-person resident events together as they largely had the same issues. Below is part of the leaflet used in the targeted phase, to help explain how we had listened and responded to the feedback:
In the targeted phase of engagement where we returned to Bishophill with the revisions seen above, there was a lot of gratitude from residents for the project having listened and taken on board their initial feedback.
We did have very small numbers of people say they were still not sure of the wider concept, but largely, people gave their support to the bus priority as long as the impact on resident movements into and out of Bishophill was not negatively affected. We are grateful to all residents who came out to meet us and give us their thoughts across the different stages of engagement.
Demographic analysis:
Across all respondents, we received a higher than average number from younger people, particularly the 25-39 age group:
Looking at the gender of respondees, we received the greatest number of responses from men:
Looking at the ethnicity, White - English / Welsh / Scottish / Northern Irish / British was the highest with 76.9%. 13% preferred not to say; other ethnicities represented in small numbers included Black Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Chinese.
Annex 1 – Public Consultation Leaflet
Shown here for illustrative purposes – full size copies are still available.
Annex 2 – Bishophill & Guildhall residents’ information sheet and letter
Accompanying letter:
ENDS