Derby City Council are bidding for £5 million of funding from the Department for Transport for developments in sustainable travel.
To help secure the funding, the project needs letters of support from the people of Derby and from businesses which operate there.
Please write today to Rachel Harvey at the address below to express your support for the project:
Rachel Harvey
Transport Planning Group Manager
Neighbourhood Directorate,
Derby City Council,
Saxon House,
Friary Street,
Derby,
DE1 1AN
The bid covers several themes, engaging with local employers large and small to develop better integrated walking, cycling and public transport initiatives.
This project will see many improvements to the cycle network in the south east of the city, including the lighting of the Riverside Path between Alvaston Park, and the new Raynesway Park Industrial Estate and will create better access from Spondon with Raynesway, and help develop cycle routes with the forthcoming West Chellaston and Raynesway Park Business Parks. It will also allow Cycle Derby to continue to expand and improve their promotion of cycling through training, information and events, which have been so influential in getting cyclist numbers rising so fast in the past few years. Their successful strategy which has got so many thousands of children cycling regularly to school every day will be expanded to promote cycling to work in a similar way.
Even if the project is not in an area you think affects you directly, it will ensure that Derby City Council continues to employ those committed people who deliver the many cycle facilities which have been built in Derby in the past. Over the last decade there has been a continual improvement in the overall quality of the cycle routes developed by the Sustainable Travel team, and they have slowly been expanding the network as meagre funding allows. Some routes are by common agreement not satisfactory, but the strategy is to create routes which will enable less confident cyclists to start to ride; in the fullness of time, as cyclist numbers rise, it will create the justification for more funding to improve the routes.
If this LSTF funding is not secured, many of the council team may not have a job and all of us will see much less cycle route development in the future.
Please support the council bid in writing.