Since the last Campaign News in the spring there has been a Cycle Forum meeting and a Traffic Management Sub Committee.
The Cycle Forum on 27 February was attended by RCC committee members and representatives from other cycling organisations.
The RCC did not attend the March TMSC meeting, which had little opportunity for useful intervention.
Town Centre
There still appears to have been little or no action by RBC yet on signing and other improvements in the town centre which were agreed over a year ago. The signing and easy issues were supposed to be completed by this spring.
NCN422 – Bath Road to Wokingham Road
Construction works on the Bath Road section are not yet completed, with the junction by Liebenrood Road and the widening by New Lane Hill into West Berks still to be done.
Work on the NCN422 on Berkeley Avenue does not appear to have started yet; we were expecting this to be well under way by now, but we hope the delay is trying to incorporate RCC’s suggested improvements.
Following the Cycle Forum a meeting was held with RBC staff to propose improvements to the Berkeley Avenue proposals and to comment on what we consider to be very poor proposals for the basic shared-use path on the Wokingham Road section.
The current scheme is apparently restricted by the current inadequate budget. Some better longer-term proposals for Wokingham Road are needed preferably in conjunction with parking reductions mainly needed because of the university attendees parking.
Vastern Road Roundabout
No work has been carried out on site yet to improve the dangerous conditions for cyclists, nor has the Campaign seen any proposed plans for improvements.
There were six reported cyclist injuries, two serious, during 2017 and a total of 19 injury collisions shown in the official STATS19 figures for 2015/6/7.
The delays to making improvements since the problems became apparent will inevitably result in more cyclists’ injuries, probably at the same rate of about one every two months.
If this was motorists’ or pedestrians’ injuries we would expect to see some more urgent action. Why so slow action for cyclists?
We accept that resolving most of the problems for cyclists will take some time, but some interim measures are overdue.
John Lee, RBC Campaigner for RCC
