Where has ‘positive changes’ cash gone?

AS reported in the Leicester Mercury back in July 2020, the Leicestershire County Council cabinet member for highways and transport said, “Nationally, there’s been a 100 per cent increase in cycling and walking for leisure purposes as a result of the lockdown so we want these positive behavior changes to continue”.

Around that time Leicestershire County Council received an allocation of £335,000 for the delivery of immediate measures (i.e. those which will be implemented over the period to August 2020) to three separate schemes.

Three projects, Market Harborough, Birstall, along with Leicester Forest East (LFE), were due to benefit from this funding, which for LFE proposed additional on-road cycle markings and also included a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order (TRRO) Speed Reduction Order, which would have temporarily reduced the speed limit from 40mph to 30mph from the LFE boundary at Beggars Lane to Braunstone Cross Roads approx 1.5 miles/2.4km.

All this work should have been completed by August 2020 to enable cyclists and other vulnerable road users to traverse the A47 through Leicester Forest East with increased safety and to join the existing cycle lanes on the A47 Hinckley Road.

To date, some cross hatching has been removed from the roads to accommodate additional painted white lines on the road which apparently, according to LCC, is all that’s required to become a bona-fide cycle lane!

A similar scheme on the A6 in Birstall has been in place since July last year and caused a bit of angst with the Birstall Parish Council where the speed limit was actually reduced. This is probably why the Road Safety and Traffic and Signals Teams at the county council decided not to implement the speed reduction order in LFE, although this cannot be verified because they would not confirm it.

Reducing the speed by 10mph along this section of 1.5 miles/2.4km would add 45 seconds to the journey for vehicles to traverse that section.

The survival rates of a cyclist or pedestrian being struck by a vehicle at 40mph is 10 per cent, it increases to 80 per cent at 30mph.

The county council had already received the first of £300,000 for the delivery of immediate measures (i.e. those which should have been implemented over the period to August 2020).

A further £900,000 of funding has been received for the second permanent measures to be completed – a total of £1.235,180 from the government’s Active Travel Fund. Where has all the money gone?!

J. Mitchinson, Leicester