Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-07-11 06:21:04 - Graham Ellis
At the West of England partnership meeting last Tuesday, I attended one session that was looking towards healthier and greener transport; to a very great extent, that session had been taken over by the advocates of cycling - and indeed they had the most dramatic increases in cycling to report, and it's very likely to continue to be a big growth area, with official targets being set and handsomely achieved, and talk of more radical ones to be set for the future. And at the Melksham Climate Friendly Group meeting last Wednesday, we saw proposals for a cycle route through back streets and paths from the south to the north of the town - to cut out the main road routing of cycles through the town at present.
But success of cycling campaigns and a dramatic increase in numbers is leading to conflicts between cyclists and walkers in places. I listen to the talk on the new route of a couple of "pinch points", I look at the recently painted markings on the pavement just 100 yards up the road from us, and I'm a little worried. Health and safety has (in my mind) been overdone at times - but this work which appears to designate a cycle path in the middle and two tiny walkways to the side - one in the bushes, the other beside the A365 with cars and heavy lorries whizzing past within inches - strikes me as an accident waiting to happen. I do hope that time proves me uninformed and wrong on this.
But why is that pavement looking so clean and new? Because is is new - newly widened, and extended further out of the town to the new Melksham Oak school. It's the main walking and cycle route to the school from the town, so in the morning before school starts, and in the afternoon when school breaks for the day, it should be rather busy. It's certainly expected by "the powers that be" to have significant traffic, judging by all the investment they've made in it - and the three new light controlled pedestrian crossings installed off it.
A letter to the editor in the most recent edition of the Melksham Independent News is headlined "An Apology to the people of Seend". Written by a resident from near to the old George Ward school - at the other end of town (resident withheld name), it's a song of joy that the school is moving away, taking its litter problems, children who answer back on their way to school, etc, away from that end of the town. Now I know that we'll have to be a lot more careful as we pull out of our driveway, that there probably will be more litter, that the dog will have to be on our lead more ... when the school is open for pupils just a few hundred yards from us. And the letter to the press gives us cause for concern - asking "what do we have coming to us?". But then I look at the care home for younger people that arrived in our street, quietly, a year or so back, I look at the huge extra building program in Bowerhill since we arrived and see much more foot traffic, I look at the groups that I've seen before going to and from the old George Ward, and I wonder "can it really be that bad?". The answer has to be "I don't know", but I have grounds for optimism as well as caution; the correspondent to the paper seems to have his/her facts wrong - the school's over a mile through the countryside from Seend, and much of the text reads as if it's from a person who was perhaps a little frightened by the groups of younger people that a school inevitably brings. And who met that fright by an aggressive and somewhat overloaded response which only served to make small matters into big ones.
I know we'll have small matters with the new school, as we have elsewhere as the town develops / changes / grows. But I look forward to those changes as a positive move for the future, and I'm sure the community can and will work to resolve those tiny matters.
But success of cycling campaigns and a dramatic increase in numbers is leading to conflicts between cyclists and walkers in places. I listen to the talk on the new route of a couple of "pinch points", I look at the recently painted markings on the pavement just 100 yards up the road from us, and I'm a little worried. Health and safety has (in my mind) been overdone at times - but this work which appears to designate a cycle path in the middle and two tiny walkways to the side - one in the bushes, the other beside the A365 with cars and heavy lorries whizzing past within inches - strikes me as an accident waiting to happen. I do hope that time proves me uninformed and wrong on this.