Heres some good news for new year as I’m such an optimist, happy new years 2019 I hope you had a blinder whatever it was you got up to during the break.
I wrote about Wallisdown road consultation and invited you to contribute back in July. Well the Plans are online now shown below and the work has started on the first stage which is trimming the greenery on the south side of the road. Notice how the plans here are those that Engineers work on, nothing like the designers pictures are they? (some of those shown at bottom of page, and more from Castle Lane West July 2015). Pleased to report that my suggestions for the south side of road section have be entirely adopted by the Council. During the Forum advisory group meeting one point didnt go my way – the hedge that is adjacent to the road I was vetoed on the suggestion of running the cycletrack inside the hedge, with the preferred option to continue alongside road after re-alignment of this hedge. (DCC are currently re-aligning a hedge alongside the Longham- Bear Cross road as part of the track building going on there too). Final decision on that is still pending as you will see from reading the webpage. This is all good news as my aims even before becoming the chairman of the Cycling Forum have been to make the best of what is already there- of which theres lots of– space. There will also be the addition of an advisory lane on the entire North Side of road, which may help longer distance commuters too. As you might expect in 2019 the idea of modally filtering a side road like Alton was far too progressive a suggestion but it didnt hurt to plant the seeds of ideas into Council heads as is my aim. This page of further information is now updated too with lots more evidence of what works emerging all the time here and abroad. Do share and comment, big well done to the Engineers of Bournemouth Council we look forward to seeing another road improvement for Active Travellers.
Here is the link to website page for your own downloads.
Moving onto Baltimore U.S.A where Ive just returned from heres some real world examples of how a 3 lane road can be transformed into bi-directional cycletracks. No parking is lost but the lanes are protected by placing and the light segregation wands. This is such good quality-Cathedral St if you want to look it up.
In the same city there are also Bus lane type cycleways, with signage and used by E-Scooters. Not sure about these as an active transport option, they are zoomers rather than scooters you just twist and go no energy needed, also where they go is inevitably on and off roads at junctions where footways are given dropped kerbs. From watching them in Baltimore doing this-my jury is totally out as to whether they are an improvement or not.
Now Lime Bikes have appeared in Baltimore, as they have in Milton Keynes- Im wondering if they will be the dockless provider in Poolemouth? If you have this information please do share.
Lastly heres some design work recently published, now these are like what is produced before the actual plans are made, by different people who arent engineers looking at the sizes available for use, so must be taken with a pinch of salt. The first two are Bermondsey, a road Ive ridden hundreds of times to Surrey Quays and beyond from town, also home of the great CTUK. The last two are a good modal filter picture and lastly what might become of Old Street roundabout, you can see the designers remit is to make an office place of the space. With all the architects and others now talking about 5G and new workspaces look out for these sorts of suggestions in Landsdowne area of Bournemouth one day soon
