A MAJOR tourism group has thrown its weight behind calls to dual the A64.

Sir Gary Verity, chief executive of Welcome to Yorkshire, added his voice to the Just Dual It campaign ahead of the bank holiday weekend, which traditionally sees huge volumes of traffic and long tailbacks on the A64 across to Scarborough and the Yorkshire coast.

Sir Gary said: “Congestion is a serious issue as our roads are becoming even busier.

“We’re always encouraging people to come to our county and see everything Yorkshire has to offer and we want it to be as convenient as possible for them to do this.”

Just Dual It is the campaign by the so-called A64 Growth Partnership, formed in 2017 by businesses, MPs, local authorities, trade organisations and the York, North Yorkshire and East Riding enterprise partnership.

The group was formed to increase the pressure on government for major long-term investment in the A64 between York and the Yorkshire coast.

It wants to remove one of the most notorious “pinch-points” in Yorkshire’s main road network to deliver “economic growth, investment and to address safety concerns”.

Sir Gary added: “Our coastal towns are seeing a resurgence that we want to celebrate and make the most of; without a major link road to these destinations we risk losing out on these visitors, which could be detrimental to many businesses.

“For that reason, the A64 has to be dualled. It’s something that has been talked about for more than 30 years and we could do with a timetable sooner rather than later.”

The A64 Growth Partnership has already yielded a potential boost for the A64 at the Hopgrove roundabout.

In December, Highways England concluded that further improvements to the Hopgrove junction alone would fail to deal with notorious congestion problems, and the pinch-point created by the single carriageway to the east needs to be tackled.

Its transport specialists are now working on four different options to provide a dual carriageway - three of them along the full 9.5km of existing single carriageway between the Hopgrove roundabout and the next dualled section.

Two of the options take a new alignment before re-joining the current A64 near the Jinnah restaurant, a third option follows the current route as far as possible, and the final option would provide dual carriageway as far as Towthorpe Moor Lane.

Details of the proposed routes will be revealed this year.