Active Travel Route Update
With the fantastic spring weather we’re enjoying at the moment, it’s been fantastic to see so many people cycling and walking through the village, and we gather there are record numbers of pupils getting to school on foot and bike. With the increased interest in active travel, we’re pleased to be able to report some more progress in developing our plans for an active travel route through the village – making it safer and more enjoyable to walk, cycle and “wheel” (covering any other non-motorised transport, i.e. scooters, mobility aids, wheelchairs, etc.).
In the last few months the team has been looking at two main areas:
- Considering the scope for other “placemaking” measures to make the route through the village more attractive;
- Developing the plans which were the subject of consultation in August/ September 2020.
We’re almost ready to unveil these proposals, and in early May we’ll share them in a further round of on-line consultation, together with drop-in sessions at the community markets on 8th and 15th May. We’re also putting together an exercise for the primary school, to capture the ideas of the children. Watch out for leaflets with more details, coming through your letter box soon!
Placemaking
By “placemaking” we mean the street furniture and features along the route that help to make it an enjoyable experience to walk and cycle, over and above the obvious benefit of getting from A to B. We’re already engaged on a major placemaking project with the village green at Glascairn, and we’re looking at ways to integrate that with the Active Travel Route. In addition, we have also commissioned some preliminary designs for gateway features at each end of the village, and for improvements to some of the public spaces along the Active Travel Route, and we’ll be looking for feedback about these in the consultation.
Developing the route
Mostly we have been adding engineering detail to the route plans, which will have very little practical impact on residents. However, we are proposing a few more tangible changes. Firstly, the feedback from villagers has been pretty clear that the existing chicanes aren’t popular, nor were the initial proposals for alternative traffic calming measures. However, the chicanes do (mostly) slow traffic down, and we remain concerned that if we take them away without some alternative physical structures, traffic simply won’t keep to the new 20 mph speed limit. To address this we have changed the plans in those two areas, adding in a shared-use path for pedestrians and the less confident cyclists in the centre of the village, and inserting a single build-out in place of the chicane by the new Glascairn development. Secondly, we have reviewed the places we envisaged the new speed limits. At the western end of the village, the existing 30 mph sign will change to 20 mph, and we will have a 50 mph limit from there to the A9 at Duncanston. At the eastern end, we propose taking the 20 mph zone a bit further out from the existing 30 mph sign, to make sure the footpath to the football ground/ playpark entrance is safer.
Consultation
Most of the feedback we’ve had to date has been generally supportive of our plans, but there are lots of people we haven’t heard from – so do please have a look at the consultation on-line and complete the questionnaire, or if on-line stuff isn’t really your thing, come along to have a chat with us at the market on 8th and/ or 15th May.
|