News

A bid for £4.7million worth of improvements and initiatives for cyclists and pedestrians has been put forward to encourage active travel choices in West Sussex.   Tranche Two of the Department for Transport’s Emergency Active Travel Fund was submitted on Friday 7 August and includes projects for:   

This is taken directly from the WSCC website.   Construction work starts on the first of seven temporary cycleway schemes in West Sussex in the week begining July 27th and is likely to take about a fortnight to complete.   The Chichester scheme will connect the Spitalfield Lane, hospital area with the city’s railway station, creating a 2km-long “keyworker corridor” for safe cycling. The route will also link to the central retail area and other major employment sites, such as the University of Chichester.

The DfT has £225M for Local Authorities to use in support of the measures in the TAL of May 9.  It is in two tranches - 20% and 80%.   As in the letter to LAs of May 27, both will need to be bid for.   The amount for West Sussex is £3.919M of which 20% is 784K and that has to be bid for by June 5 - and was.  The amount for each LA is relative to the amount of commuting by public transport in each LA as in the latest census.    WSCC put a bid in for one scheme in each of the Ds and Bs and a response from the DfT is awaited.

The West Sussex Cycle Forum (WSCF) believes that the current emergency has provided few benefits, but one of them is the increase in people now cycling on our roads and cycle paths. Clearly, with fewer cars on the roads this has reduced the perceived fear, and the actual risk, of conflict between people on bikes and people in vehicles. Bike shops report record levels of repairs being done on bikes rescued from sheds and garages.