Thursday 3 January 2013

Priorities for busway cycle track

A few weeks ago it was announced that Cambridgeshire County Council was to spend £95,000 on installing solar powered lights on the busway.

A letter in this week's Huntingdon & St Ives News & Crier ( 3 January, page 6) calls on the County Council (and Councillor Ian Bates in particular) to make the St Ives end of the cycle track usable before 'the section nearest Cambridge was given gold-plated treatment'. The writer, from Godmanchester, is referring to the fact that the cycle track  between St Ives and Swavesey has been under water for the past 4 weeks.

The letter also refers to a comment by Nigel Brigham of Sustrans about wanting people to 'still feel able to ride their bikes for their everyday journeys' - which they can't do while the track is flooded.

2 comments:

  1. the letter writer is clearly wrong; the only reason the cycleway isn't as bad towards Cambridge is that the land was already at the same height as the busway is now. If the land hadn't been level, I'm sure we'd have seen problems at the Cambridge end too.

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  2. Thanks for your comment, Al. You've highlighted the fact that is just chance that the Cambridge end is OK. At the St Ives end the cycle track was simply laid at ground level, and initially it was a gravel track. Money was found to raise the level a bit, but hindsight has shown it wasn't enough, and also provide a tarred surface.The cycle track is supposed to double as a 'maintenance' track. But how it can do that beats me, when for several weeks it has been under water - at one place 2 metres deep. I think the County Council needs to find money to raise the track, and I think that is more important than installing solar lights.

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