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£10m to improve the A316 in Richmond upon Thames

An additional £2m for links to Twickenham

Richmond Council has announced that the A316 is to be improved thanks to £10m of cycling funding from the Mayor of London. An additional £2m will also be provided to deliver cycling links between the A316 and Twickenham.

Councillor Stephen Speak, Richmond Council Cabinet Member for Highways, said:

“This is long awaited good news. The A316 improvements should be a real help for local cyclists using a major borough artery and the Twickenham work will improve cycling connectivity to the town. I look forward to working with TfL to turn these ideas into reality.”

Last year, Richmond upon Thames was one of five shortlisted London boroughs to miss out on funding as part of Mayor of London Boris Johnson's 'Mini-Hollands' initiative. However, it seems the Mayor’s cycling adviser, Andrew Gilligan, was nevertheless impressed by the bid.

Speaking at the time, Transport for London's director of surface transport, Leon Daniels, said that he had been ‘blown away by the ambition and scale of the proposals from boroughs across London’, adding that all eight finalists were ‘of exceptional quality’.

TfL will be leading the work to improve the A316 and the council have said that they ‘will be looking to them to fully engage with residents and local cycling groups to ensure there is a thorough approach to creating a suitable cycle route and good interconnections with existing facilities.’

In July of last year, 40-year-old Henry Lang from Twickenham was killed while cycling on the A316 through Richmond after being hit by a refuse lorry. Later in the year, proposed changes to Richmond roundabout, where the incident took place, were described as having 'no significant safety benefit' for cyclists by campaigners.

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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ron611087 | 9 years ago
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I often use the A316 as part of my commute so I'm curious to see what changes are proposed. The shared use facilities are unsafe for fast commuting and motorists dish out abuse when you cycle on the road, particularly over the bridge between Richmond & Twickenham.

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thereverent | 9 years ago
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The cycle lane anglingside the A316 is a mix or poor quality cycle paths (as shown in the photo) and narrow shared use pavements. Faster cyclists almost always choose the road instead.
I hope these improvements will be good, but they need to make some tough choices over giving the cycle lanes enough space, and priority over side roads.

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congokid | 9 years ago
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So TfL's director of surface transport, Leon Daniels, was ‘blown away by the ambition and scale of the proposals' and all eight finalists were ‘of exceptional quality’.

Has he spent any time at all visiting the Netherlands to see what 'exceptional quality' infrastructure actually looks like?

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