Opinion: We must thank Kenilworth's young cycling campaigners for holding the council to account

By Guest

25th Feb 2022 | Opinion

The school cycling campaigners Isadora McAinsh and George Bell deserve our thanks and encouragement for their efforts to hold Warwickshire County Council to delivering safe cycling facilities that it has promised.

WCC's leader, Cllr Izzi Seccombe made positive, if rather casual approval of the campaigners, but sadly, local authorities in our area have a consistently dismal record of heel dragging when it comes to real action for safe cycling.

This negativity flies in the face of repeated support for action in surveys of Kenilworth people.

For example the 2013 town council survey recorded support for the connection of the Kenilworth Greenway to the rest of the National Cycle route 52 with a segregated track through Abbey Fields.

A perfectly practical plan was proposed by Sustrans, but the scheme was suppressed and then buried by WDC's ruling party on feeble grounds, with all questions ignored.

A look at WCC's list of planned works for cycleways shows that exactly zero are planned for Kenilworth, other than K2L, which we are now being told is a "some day" project.

If the full length of the K2L run requires difficult land purchases or design challenges then we must call for the Kenilworth portion to be implemented immediately, while the difficult paper exercises are tackled.

Safe cycling routes that connect the new school with other areas of the town and National Cycle Route 52.

These local cycleways will be required regardless of the route of K2L.

Actual construction work will show whether Cllr Seccombe's words are in earnest or simply milky platitudes.

     

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