What a dog's breakfast they're making
of the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone. Here's the latest of a
string of lost opportunities....
A couple of key cycleway initiatives
that were adopted and funded to help workers reach jobs in the TQEZ have been
quietly – very quietly - ditched by the council and the Local
Enterprise Partnership. It seems they needed the money to make up
for overspends on the budget for the flagship parts of the scheme –
Temple Way realignment and Arena access.
Cabinet had approved the spending on
off-road cycleways back in March 2014. One was to be along the
Conham towpath, the other a key realignment of the slow and hazardous
Whitchurch Way, to take it beneath Bath Road on a disused railway
track.
That one, part of NCN Route 3, had been part of the Cycling City project, too, but never made it to fruition then either.
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| Not the Whitchurch Way - a cyclepath in waiting... and waiting |
That one, part of NCN Route 3, had been part of the Cycling City project, too, but never made it to fruition then either.
Hard to say who made the decision this
time, and whether they asked anyone else, elected or not. The news
emerged in Mayor Ferguson's belated reply (see the comments) to a public forum question
at the last full council meeting. It seems that 'the council'
secured the agreement of 'the LEP' to forget the two cycleways –
but, whoever that might have involved, no-one seems to have thought
it should be made public.
Especially in a European Green
Capital.
