Tag: urban design

#365daysofbiking Ring around

January 31st – I shoot around Walsall’s new ring road all the time, and it’s not a road system I like at all. The junctions are complex and often, badly thought out; it’s unfriendly for bikes and the signals are only just seeming integrated with each other after ten years of being fiddled with.

However, it does have it’s plus points. Sweeping over the hill and canal bridge from Place Road past the old Smiths Flour Mill and up towards the Magistrate’s court is a delight, which flows well on a bike if the traffic lights and drivers will allow.

It’s also rather beautiful.

Don’t be deceived though; despite the marking and seemingly wide cycle lane there, it’s shared use, full of obstacles and soon Peters out to nothing.

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#365daysofbiking Here I stand:

November 6th – One thing I forgot in the years I hadn’t been coming to Redditch is a small rule that also applies to fellow new town Telford – never risk an unknown shortcut when in a hurry.

I was dashing for the train. I took what I thought would be a route around by the bus station and under the subway to the station. Instead, I lost all sense of direction totally and ended up on a ringway flyover overlooking it, a good 10 metres above where I needed to be with no easy way back other than to retrace my steps.

Urban design on such an inhuman scale does not make for intuitive routes.

Redditch should come with a decent cheat sheet for those on foot and cycling….

November 3rd – After a spring and summer of waiting for something to start, the 80s footbridge that links to two sides of Telford Station with the nearby retail park and town centre is finally being removed and replaced.

Some details seem off. There’s always been a ramp down to access the Staples store over the road, but now that will not apparently exist and a pedestrian crossing has been installed over the slip road. I’m also concerned about the ramp arrangement on the Shrewsbury-bound side of the station.

It has to be said though, replacement is desperately needed. The bridge, although appearing disabled-friendly is not; there are no braked in the inclines and negotiating it in a hand-propelled chair requires strength and skill. 

The bridge supports have now been fenced off and it’ll be interesting to see how this project develops.

January 21st – On a grey, depressing day, I stopped to check out the new magic bicycle symbols added to the footpath in Pleck just by the motorway Bridge on the Darlaston Road. I guess this is part of the commitment to safer cycling routes with the road improvement scheme here. It’s dismal.

A bit of tactile paving, blacktop some verges and a splurge of magic paint. A grim, shared use path hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists, along the front of a factory gates with little visibility.

The people who design and implement this rubbish aren’t cyclists. They aren’t thinking about cyclists. They’re ticking boxes on a form to satisfy a requirement.

This is why we can’t have nice things, people…

October 15th – I passed through Churchbridge on the A5 between Cannock and Great Wyrley. This is a horrid, horrid landscape; there is no accommodation within it for pedestrians or cyclists, who do battle with it rather than inhabit it. The architecture and urban design is on a massive, non-human scale which dwarfs pre-existing houses and even the the electricity pylons.

This is not a place for those without a car. An utterly discriminatory piece of urban engineering. I hate it with a passion.

October 17th – one of the nicer features of new towns like Redditch and Telford is their off-road cycle facilities. They don’t all work, or indeed, are even maintained, but where they are they are very useful and often rather quirky. This subway lies on my commute when I work in Redditch, and I’ve never, in over five years, seen another soul use it. The lights are on every day. The sloping, banked walls have always made me want to race down the access ramp and mount them like a wall of death, but I’ve never had the courage.