Ten-year active travel plan for Shropshire lauded as 'huge opportunity'

Shropshire Council’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) took a step forward after the authority’s cabinet gave its backing to the wide-ranging scheme of projects to improve the county’s “active-travel” corridors.

A final draft of the plan will now go before a full meeting of Shropshire Council with a recommendation to be formally adopted as council policy.

The full proposals contain hundreds of smaller schemes to improve cycling and walking routes and include proposals such as creating a dedicated cycle path along the River Severn between the English Bridge and the railway station in Shrewsbury, and creating segregated cycle lanes in Oswestry town centre.

The project has already attracted around £6million of funding from central government, and Shropshire Council’s Green group say the investment into the county’s cycling and pedestrian routes could provide wide-ranging opportunities for the area’s tourism industry.

“In terms of connecting villages to market towns, as we see more and more electric bikes out in the market, that opportunity is huge,” said Julian Dean, Green group leader.

“It’s also huge in terms of our tourism industry, if we can really connect some of the beautiful places in Shropshire into the hubs and into the public transport network with really good cycling opportunities then I think that’s a huge opportunity for us which should not be missed, so I would welcome further work as we go forward on that.

“In the latest local authority active travel capability ratings, which rate every local authority on a scale of 0-4, we are one of the five local authorities on zero.

“That clearly isn’t good enough, hopefully this will drag us off the bottom,” he added.

A consultation concluded last year attracted over a thousand responses to the proposals, which have specific improvement schemes for all of Shropshire’s major towns, and the authority say they have tweaked the proposals as a result of the feedback they received from the public.

Transport portfolio holder Ian Nellins told the council’s cabinet that the authority had already moved up a level on the rankings, which would enable the authority to access more funding opportunities.

“Shropshire Council has previously missed out on funding due to not having a plan. This plan will strengthen our bids for future funding,” he said.

“The LCWIP aims to deliver on the Shropshire Plans key strategic objectives by providing a high quality active travel network of routes which will enable more people to choose walking, cycling and for short trips.

“This in turn will help Shropshire Council to deliver on its ambitions to develop more opportunity for active travel in Shropshire with a range of related benefits.”