My cycle route into city will not be safer

Hurrah for B&NES! A Bath clean air zone and a proposed cycle route from the city to the university – what more could I want?

I thought my luck was in until I studied the plans more closely.

Then I realised how misleading the proposals are.

My cycle route into the city will not be safer – there is no improvement to the junction of North Road, the A36 and Beckford Road. It is dangerous now. Encouraging more cyclists to battle with the HGVS will make it worse.

And to encourage more schoolchildren to use it in its current state is, in my view, plain silly.

Unless you want them to cycle illegally across two pedestrian crossings and up a footpath. I get off and push my bike every time because it is far safer!

The current cycle route from the Bathwick Hill roundabout up to Cleveland Walk – beautifully marked out on the road and muchused by cyclists like me – will not be extended up Bathwick Hill to the university.

In fact, it is not even on the council’s cycle consultation map. Even the Chronicle is confused – it was used to illustrate an item on North Road cycle routes. Why is this route being ignored? Surely it is the more direct route from the city to the uni? Why is this fragment of a route not being completed? And why is a North Road fragment being suggested instead?

I thought the combination of the clean air zone and new cycle routes would make life more pleasant for those of us who use inhalers.

But if the proposed North Road cycle route goes ahead my commute to work in Wiltshire will only be possible by entering the clean air zone, driving a mile through it, and then exiting it again – all due to the intended North Road bus gate and new one-way road at Cleveland Walk.

Sorry fellow inhaler users, I will be adding to the pollution. And many more motorists will be forced to do this too.

The pollution around King Edward’s School will not improve – parents who currently arrive and depart in both directions along North Road and Cleveland Walk will be forced into a narrow oneway road funnel outside the school and along Cleveland Walk, choking the residents.

How does that fit in with the B&NES “low traffic neighbourhoods” and improving air quality?

I have submitted my views on the current scheme to improve cycle provision in the central Bath – university corridor via the council website.

I hope my submission – and those of my neighbours - are read and taken into account. Our questions were ignored in the council “consultation” webinar.

I am concerned that this is a consultation in name only. I would like to have some hope of everybody being heard, not just a few in the hardcore cycling lobby.

For your information, I am a cyclist, pedestrian, motorist and Bathwick resident.

I have a strong interest in the proposals for altering North Road, Cleveland Walk and Beckford Road for the benefit of cyclists, motorists and pedestrians.

I use all three roads to travel to work, cycle into the city centre, access the canal towpath and travel up to Claverton Down on foot, on two wheels and on four.

In my view, this proposal is illthought through and appears a rush to insert another incomplete fragment of cycleway that stands to be more, rather than less, dangerous and more polluting rather than less.

My own and other people’s critical observations will not be heard because the consultation is seen to be weighted in favour of the councillors who will drive this through, whatever local citizens try to say.

I think the cycle route proposals need to be reconsidered and improved; local residents’ and all local schools’ opinions need to be fairly heard.

The council should live up to its straplines of being a “liberal democracy” and allow us to ask questions, be given answers and tell it what we think.

I would appreciate the proposals for a North Road cycle route being fairly, openly and transparently dealt with. At present I feel they are not.

Sian Macdonald