Tag: ramp

#365daysofbiking The Crossing:

December 13th – A bright, glass hard, cold day saw me in Telford mid-morning, and in the week or two I haven’t been here, the new footbridge has opened.

Man, is it a curate’s egg.

First thing is, someone clearly booked the possessions and plant to remove the old bridge for a fixed date, and the new one had to open. Regardless. So it’s not in even a nearly finished state. Brick cladding is still being laid. The access ramp to the cycleway on the Priorslee side is still being built. Bits of it haven’t been surfaced properly or at all. Workmen still mingle with commuters. It’s a bloody mess if I’m honest.

The bridge itself is an interesting, open construction that’s light and airy. It makes the journey between platforms one hell of a lot shorter. The lifts are welcome. It feels stable and the thing seems to be a nice, rigid design.

But there’s a huge, massive, glaring issue.

There is no ramp access to the Shrewsbury side of the station. So wheelies and those not able to use steps are confined to the lift. If that isn’t working, someone alighting here from Brum or Wolves will be stranded on a platform next to a 6 lane road with no means to cross it. There is no simple way around.

I can’t overstate how bad this is if it’s the final design.

If the bridge does not eventually provide ramp access to the Shrewsbury platform, then it will have failed in its primary objective – to make life easier for those that found the old ramp too steep. The designers will have spent 10 million quid making the use of this station for those with limited mobility much more of a gamble.

I hope I’m wrong and a ramp is sorted. If not, the council and Network Rail really need to rethink this urgently.

The bridge is nice, but too reliant on lifts, and at the moment is very much unfinished. Open too soon, and at the moment, looking critically flawed.

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December 5th – In Telford again, and the work on the footbridge replacement has taken an interesting turn. On the west-side steps, curling around the bridge pillar, a tortuous square spiral ramp is being built in scuffed and wood.

I assume this will be to take the place of the existing ramp, which must be in the way of the new structure, which is to be built closer in towards the station buildings.

That’s quite some ramp and it’ll be fun riding a bike up and down that…

December 8th – In Telford briefly, I tried a different route to Hortonwood and the cycleway led me from a lower path up to an elevated road.

Telford is crisscrossed by cycleways and paths, many totally undocumented and unknown to casual visitors, but once discovered, they’re lovely. Note these steps have a ‘wheeling channel’ up the right hand side so you can walk up them whilst wheeling your steed.

February 1st – I’m coming to realise the value of multi-storey car parks as crow’s nests for taking a view of a town. I rode up to the car park on the roof of Aldridge Shopping Centre to see if I could find a decent photo, and I wasn’t disappointed. 

One thing that’s always piqued my curiosity here is the truncated access ramp that never was; at the back of the centre, an unfinished sloping access way is abruptly truncated on the edge of Rookery Lane, hanging in mid air without explanation. Legend has it that the required planning permission was not in place to complete it, or denied, and the alternate spiral one further down was built instead.

Wonder if that’s true?

January 15th – Today, I had to go to Butlers Lane instead of Blake Street, as I had somewhere to call in on the way. I’ve passed through this suburban halt many, many times, but never alighted here. I was impressed with the ramp/steps design for access. No good for the disabled, obviously, but this was clearly an old solution. I’ve documented steps with bike gutter-channels before, but this is a new one. You could, conceivably push a pushchair up there. The access to both platforms is the same. Neat, really.