Saturday, January 22, 2011

”Cycle Route Signage” – Soar Valley GI Signage Scheme

Keith outlined this Scheme – well, the little we know about it so far - in his November 15 2010 contribution to this blog.

Rory James, Heather Massey and Richard Himan met at Keith’s house on Saturday Jan 15th to chat about the GI (Green Infracture) Signage Scheme and its implications for Sustrans and our Group’s work, and to ride some of the routes in the northern part of the affected area. There’s been no further detail of the content of the scheme yet, so we agreed to ask the County Council immediately for more detail, and for another seat at the table in the Steering Group for the Scheme for Rory to take up. We’re writing this week to the Council to that effect.

Rory cycled from home in Glen Parva to Keith’s place in Birstall - at some speed (remember the strong southerly wind on Sat 15th?)! Richard had a hard push into the wind from Loughborough. We then rode with Keith through Watermead along the unsigned part of Route 48 from Birstall to Syston, where signage rather surprisingly starts, and continues to East Goscote.

On the way, we experienced the superb new cyclepaths through Watermead Park, then the most recent tarmac paths along the Canal past the Hope and Anchor, and into Syston itself.

Building of these paths is all part of the Connect2 Scheme, but they will need
signing, which, we hope will be provided under this GI Signage Scheme. (Nothing if not complicated, these Council ways of working, but, of course, these days you grab funding wherever you can get it!)


OUT WITH THE OLD "NO BIKE" REGIME


Watermead Park is being equipped with the Council’s latest version of an entrance gate – the ‘A-frame barrier made by K Barriers Ltd. We negotiated several on the way, and, well, have mixed views about them. They may be easier to negotiate than the ‘kissing gate’ type for those using recliners, tandems and other ‘stretched’ bicycles and those towing kids bikes or trailers. Also for mobility scooters, pushchairs and pedestrians. For a ‘normal’ bike, they’re not really too much trouble but regular use would drive a commuter to take a hack saw to their handlebars. Anyway: go and see for yourselves.


The GI Signage scheme actually starts in the City Centre, and includes a link from London Road Station to the route of NCN 6 along the River Soar. But we have no details of that yet, nor of the route which it’s intended to use between the St Nicholas area and Abbey Park. When that’s clear, we may be asking for help from other Rangers to review what the Council proposes by way of signage for this – given that it interacts at least with NCN Route 6, if not Route 63 as well.”

It was a good day, and we felt we were at the start of a positive programme of works! :-))