Warwickshire secures funding for active travel schemes
Just a quick thing...
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Active Travel England has announced its latest round of funding in which Warwickshire has secured £4.761m towards three schemes in the county, one of which is in Nuneaton!
£1.15m will go towards providing a 2.2km (1.36mi) route along the A47 Hinckley Road between the outskirts of Nuneaton town centre to the junction with Eastboro Way and the Long Shoot. This is a particularly important scheme because it will complete the route from Nuneaton to the A5 along the A47, along with the long-promised Long Shoot scheme. It also provides the connection to other destinations in addition to the town centre, including schools, accommodation, and shopping.
Other funded schemes in the county include £961k for sections of the flagship Kenilworth to Leamington (K2L) scheme which is currently under construction, and £2.65m for the Rugby to Leamington Spa route.
These are important flagship schemes that will help build out the backbone of the county’s active travel infrastructure, enabling more people to choose walking, wheeling, and/or cycling for more local journeys.
The important thing now is to get these schemes built, where long-promised existing funded projects are yet to be delivered. According to the press release from the West Midlands Combined Authority when announcing their own award, schemes have to be ready for construction by the end of March 2024.
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This is good news. Even better news if it means we see boots on the ground actually building the infrastructure rather than the money disappearing into years of design, planning, consultations and nothing changing. I’m beginning to worry that the existing schemes may appear as “painted cycle gutters” at some point just so they can say they’ve been done.
It is good news, especially when comparing to other LAs like Leicestershire and Oxfordshire who appear to have received no funding this time around. However, it’s still a relatively small amount of money when compared to general road schemes (take the £38m A46 Stoneleigh Junction upgrade as a case in point). The time to develop schemes is a constant source of frustration. They always seems to be years away, even relatively small projects. Hopefully this apparant deadline of March next year will force the issue, although I don’t know what happens if it’s missed – does the money have to be returned? Does it just impact on future awards with no penalty on these funded schemes? In theory at least, standards should be good – Active Travel England’s remit is only to fund good quality schemes, so rubbish painted lane “infrastructure” shouldn’t cut it.