Stop press: We’ve just been told that work will start on these improvements on 21st October, with completion by “spring 2025”. More details on the council’s website here.
At a decision day meeting on September 9th, Hampshire County Council approved funding for implementation of cycle and pedestrian improvements on Worthy Road.
The improvements will include a new parallel crossing on Worthy Road near Stoke Road, to connect the recently completed pedestrian and cycle route to the new development at Kings Barton (via Stoke Road) to the north-west and the city centre to the south. The existing shared use cycleway / footway will be widened and improved for a section of around 200 metres, encompassing Dyson Drive and Stoke Road.
It’s pleasing to see the latest LTN 1/20 government guidance being adopted, notably with cyclists and walkers being given clear priority across the entrance to Dyson Drive. As LTN 1/20 says: “This enables cyclists to maintain momentum safely, meeting the core design outcomes of safety, directness and comfort.”
This is meant to be the first phase of wider improvements along Worthy Road, providing a usable cycling and walking path linking the Worthys to the city centre and the station. As yet there’s no news on when the future phases will happen.
Cycle Winchester is pleased to have contributed to the design of the new scheme, and, while we have some concerns, we were happy to support its approval.
Here’s an excerpt from our submission to the decision day:
We support the improvements proposed in the report. Though we were disappointed to see some elements removed, the resulting plan should be beneficial to the city.
Combined with the forthcoming access changes to Middle Brook Street, this project will establish a low-traffic cycle route stretching from Kings Barton through Abbots Barton to the city centre, taking in River Park and St Bede School along the way.
We think this will encourage more residents – especially older people, people with mobility issues, and families with young children – to consider making short journeys by cycle rather than driving. This will help to reduce motor traffic on Worthy Road and in the city centre and create a healthier, happier community.
The project is also important as the first (long-overdue) practical step in the process of upgrading the Worthy Road cycle path to a level that would make it fit for purpose.
It will also demonstrate that Hampshire County Council is capable of delivering a cycling and walking facility in Winchester that meets current standards and is both useful and usable – something that has been lacking to date.
We were happy to have been involved in the development of this scheme. We believe that it benefited from our practical, real-world experience of the problems that deter people from cycling in the area.
We have some minor concerns about details but hope that these can be easily addressed in implementation. For instance, some of the estimated travel times on the signs seem odd: we have previously offered to provide volunteers to test these times with real journeys (as recommended by the government’s LTN 1/20 guidance) and that offer still stands.
However we do have two more major concerns:
- This project continues the recent HCC pattern of loading active travel projects down with the extra costs of highway maintenance and repair jobs that should have been done under the general maintenance budget, thereby making the active travel project itself look expensive.
In the development of this scheme, several features were removed from the initial plan. We conceded that this was necessary because of budgetary constraints, so it’s disappointing to see the final budget then being inflated by work that has no direct connection to the active travel facilities being installed.
While we understand the desire of highways engineers to “sort out” long-standing problems before adding new features, it seems misleading and unreasonable to portray these as being part of the cost of providing an adequate active travel facility.
- It remains unclear when or how the whole Worthy Road/London Road cycle route, between the station and Kings Worthy, will be progressed.
HCC has already received funding on two occasions to work on this and has gone through a detailed design process with two rounds of public consultation and multiple revisions of the plan, yet it seems we’re still at the stage of having to do yet more design work before pursuing more funding.
There also seems to be a lack of communication within the council on this: the recent draft “District LCWIP” consultation document made some proposals for the London Road section that showed no awareness of the detailed studies and design work that had already been done on that section. Effectively it proposed starting again from scratch.
We note that the funding for this scheme includes money to progress the full Worthys route: we hope that will lead to physical changes at last.
