Tomorrow (Thursday 20th November), Cambridgeshire County Council will be at Rock Road Library, presenting the designs for the new road layout on Hills Road. If you looked at the Council’s original cycle lanes designs you should notice some changes from what the Council proposed earlier this year.

Residents raised a number of concerns with the original scheme, about safety, rat-running and access to properties. Councillors communicated these concerns to the Council and asked County Council Highways officers to do further work to address safety issues. A number of changes were made to the original proposals before the scheme was approved, to address concerns about conflicts between pedestrians and cyclists. There are full details on the County Council website but here are the key points: http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/hills-road

• There is now a clearer division between footway, bus stop and cycleway.
• All the bus stop islands will be at least 2 metres wide and all waiting facilities will be on the island, so passengers won’t have to cross the cycleway as the bus arrives.
• As the cycle lane approaches the bus stop it will veer left and narrow to 1.5 metres; there will then be a short ramp up to the level pedestrian crossing point, which will have tactile paving and be a different colour to the cycle lane. These differences are to alert cyclists of the need to be mindful of pedestrians.
• The kerbs will now be sloped to allow cyclists to mount more easily should the need to leave the carriageway arise.
• Although there will be double yellow lines, there will not be a loading ban to allow commercial vehicles to park briefly.
• New gullies will be installed and a full CCTV drainage survey carried out to identify any necessary repairs.

There are concerns that if there are additional traffic hold-ups, motorists may evade them by using smaller streets off Hills Road – four of which have schools/ nursery schools. It is hard to predict the effect in advance, but I shall be asking for a traffic survey to be carried out before and after the scheme is input.

3pm-7.30 pm, ROCK ROAD LIBRARY, 20th November.