We now have draft plans for Malvern covering cycling and walking! The county council has put these out for consultation until the end of October, and are purposely very sketchy at this stage – the key focus is on “whether the most important walking, wheeling and cycling routes have been identified”. You can comment via an online survey, starting at this county council page, or skip directly to the survey site – a good idea to have a look at the FAQs tab first and then select the Malvern one (and/or the other South Worcestershire plans, for Droitwich, Pershore and Worcester) to view the routes.
There are eight primary routes (A to H), and six secondary ones (I to N). While you can only comment on one route at a time this way, there is space to give your views on aims, objectives and more generally. To make things easier, we are happy to collate any overall plan comments (e.g. missing routes) and get them fed into the consultation process.
Cycle Malvern is keen to take this opportunity to get to grips with the real issues that are discouraging cycling or changes that would help get more people using ‘active travel’. This term includes walking and wheeling, and despite the group name, Cycle Malvern also wants to see improvements across the whole range, and how active travel connects with public transport too. Please do let us know your thoughts via our contact form, or join the Facebook group.
I was hoping that we would see plans for the A449, linking Malvern and Worcester.
Sadly not. There were indications at one stage that routes between towns might be included, but that has been left to one side for now. The original idea behind LCWIPs (from the government) was as a way of getting much more active travel by 2030, and improving facilities in towns is likely to be the quickest.