Bury New Road
During 2020 Bury Council secured funding from the government's emergency COVID19 fund to put in pop-up cycle lanes and new crossings on Bury New Road. WRPW would like to see safe and segregated bike lanes along all of the A56 from Bury to Manchester so we were delighted to see Bury put in this application. In response to Bury's consultation on the initial proposals we put together a photo survey of things we thought could be considered (download a copy below).
The results of the scheme are a bit of a mixed bag! The two new pedestrian crossings at St Mary's Park and in Sedgely are fantastic additions. The pop-up bike lanes, though an improvement on before are a bit patchy.
To find out what happened WRPW put in a Freedom of Information request to the council. We were quite impressed when we saw the full proposal - there was to be a bike lane all the way from the Longfield to the Salford border and 'wands' and 'orcas' as used on the Broughton Cycleway to create a barrier between the road traffic and the cycle lanes.
So, why didn't it all happen?
The results of the scheme are a bit of a mixed bag! The two new pedestrian crossings at St Mary's Park and in Sedgely are fantastic additions. The pop-up bike lanes, though an improvement on before are a bit patchy.
To find out what happened WRPW put in a Freedom of Information request to the council. We were quite impressed when we saw the full proposal - there was to be a bike lane all the way from the Longfield to the Salford border and 'wands' and 'orcas' as used on the Broughton Cycleway to create a barrier between the road traffic and the cycle lanes.
So, why didn't it all happen?
- There was pressure to spend the money quickly. Unfortunately across the country local authorities were trying to buy wands and orcas at the same time and Bury couldn't get any.
- Some bus companies didn't like what they saw and objected to COVID schemes. Councils wanted to avoid court cases. This was a factor in the bit of the bike lane near Scholes Lane being removed a few days after being painted in!
- Salford's plans to continue the bike lanes were not as advanced as Bury's.
- Bury decided that to spend the remaining money in the time the government had given them they would put in an Active Neighbourhood in Brandlesholme.
wrpw_a56_bury_new_road_survey_-_final.pdf |