Earlier this week Infrastructure Minister John O'Down launched a public consultation on the Department's long-overdue Active Travel Delivery Plan.
The Delivery Plan covers "42 settlements across 10 council areas". Ards and North Down is one of them, with the "settlements" of Bangor, Comber, Donaghadee, Holywood and Newtownards identified as needing work with respect to "priority routes". It is encouraging to read that in Bangor our suggestion that the Newtownards Road Roundabout, the South and West Circular Roads and the Bloomfield Road Roundabout all need work appears to have been taken on board.
It is less encouraging that nowhere in the Delivery Plan mention is made of linking the Comber Greenway to Bangor's city centre (currently on hold because someone in DfI decided that a 200m section along the A21 must under no circumstances facilitate bicycles), nor is a link of the Comber Greenway extension from Newtownards to the Green Road in Bangor (already in planning) and on to Ward Park included in Atkins' map of Bangor.
I suppose that's what you get when you task non-local consultants to come up with a Delivery Plan. Do these "consultants" not liaise with anyone in ANDBC's Parks and Cemeteries team? One phone call would have plugged those obvious gaps... I dread to think what has been overlooked elsewhere in the province.
Under "Future Routes" for Holywood Atkins' map shows "Connections to Bangor" along the A2 dual carriage way. Not only is this the busiest section of A road in the province, it is also the most dangerous and polluted one. Seriously?
Footnote 7 of the DfI Announcement mentions the Sydenham Greenway being one of its "six Active Travel Signature Projects". For some reason known only to themselves, Atkins' plans for Holywood do not mention this Active Travel Signature Project at all on page 6 of the AND Appendix. When is a Signature Project not a Signature Project? When either Atkins forget about it altogether or, possibly, DfI decide to quietly bin the project! Atkins is losing credibility with each page we read. And DfI is paying for this? It would be funny if it weren't our tax revenues that pay for this "work".
I was amazed when I discovered that the Active Delivery Plan contains a glaring omission: Multi-modal travel is not mentioned once in the document. If we really want to shift the needle on greenhouse gas emissions we need to make it easy for people to do medium-length journeys (10-50 miles) by combining different modes of transport, such as walking, cycling and using public transportation.
Start by forcing Translink to set up an Active Travel team. Then force Translink to embrace multi-modal journeys. Many commuters want to combine their train journey with cycling from their home to their place of work. At the moment this is difficult because Translink forbids the carriage of bicycles before 9:30. Get rid of that rule. Not only talk the talk, walk the walk! As long as Translink ignores Active Travel, DfI will not be able to get people out of their cars.
I would ask every reader of this blog to respond to the consultation by February 25. Feel free to raise some of the points I covered. And ask your local MLA to request a refund from Atkins. Their "plan" isn't formulated properly. Just as well that there is a consultation to correct many of the oversights and omissions...
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