Stops on Manchester Metrolin’s Bury line are set to get upgraded cycle storage facilities following the awarding of a grant through the Mayor’s Challenge Fund (MCF). £1.2 million will be invested which will see high quality cycle parking installed at eight stops with the aim of making it easier and safer to scoot or cycle to the stop.
Amongst the facilities to be upgraded will be the addition of covered Sheffield stands including lighting and CCTV in highly visible and accessible locations. Its all part of the overall Bee Network vision for Greater Manchester which is seeking to introduce an integrated public transport and active travel system.
The new facilities are to be installed at Radcliffe, Besses o’ th’ Barn, Prestwich, Heaton Park, Bowker Vale, Crumpsall, Abraham Moss and Queens Road Metrolink stops. These have been selected for the work as they are some of the oldest on the network. Work is already underway at Radcliffe with all sites expected to have been completed by mid-May.
Currently around 500 million journeys of fewer than three miles are made by car in Greater Manchester each year. Its hoped that by providing these enhanced facilities it will encourage more people to travel actively for shorter journeys instead of using their cars.
Dame Sarah Storey, Active Travel Commissioner for Greater Manchester, said: “I know from my own experience how hard it is to plan a journey that includes cycling to the station, when there is nowhere safe to leave your bike. Building these cycle parking facilities at local Metrolink stops, where there is currently no suitable provision for leaving a bike, will give an additional choice to local people who don’t live within an easy walk of their local station. I hope after completion, they are well used and enable more people to utilise the Bury line of Metrolink.”
Burnham and his cronies are obviously deeply delusional and have no concept whatsoever of value for money.
One point two million pounds- say it out loud, slowly, to store bikes and scooters, the use of which on our roads is of dubious legality anyway, defies belief.
What is needed is a means to get to or to interchange between public transport modes, not to devise puerile misuse of the english language and suggest that “active travel”is not a step back to Victorian times when there was no alternative but to walk to tramlines.
We have progressed far beyond that but unfortunately due to advancing years whilst my mind may be active my ability to walk, cycle or “scoot” does not keep pace.
Provide neighbourhood transport, Ring and Ride, but expect me to walk or go back to a push bike – it ain’t going to happen!