Working with Welwyn Hatfield Council to improve and promote cycling in the district
Welwyn Hatfield Cycling Forum works with Hertfordshire Highways on cycle route plans for our district. The information below is what WHCF currently know about plans. Comments and corrections are welcomed.
Cycle route development in Welwyn Hatfield is part of the Urban Transport Plan for each town. They will next be updated in 2013 with publication in 2014.
Cycle routes are listed as:
The next route planned in our district is along Black Fan Road, Welwyn Garden City. This will connect the existing cycle path at Morrisons (part of National Route 61) to the cycle route along Bessemer Road at Mundells. A branch path down The Ridgeway will link to route 61. The project is being funded by Hertfordshire County Council and Sustrans, the national cycle route charity. The work should be done in the autumn of 2011.
Hatfield: railway station to Business Park: This project has been split in to two phases.
Phase 1, from Hatfield station to the west end of French Horn Lane was completed in 2010. Not included was a link to Old Hatfield via the Batterdale subway as this is deemed too low to be safely used, despite there being other routes in other towns which are much lower. Sustrans says in its guidelines "we consider it preferable having "substandard" clearance than either a blockage or a dangerous road crossing".
Phase 2, from French Horn Lane to Comet Way, has been delayed due to technical issues with buried pipes and cables. A revised scheme will come out for consultation later this year with the construction in the financial year 2012-13. The scheme is funded by developer contributions from the business park (Section 106 contributions.) At the moment the key issues and plans are as follows:
Hertfordshire Highways have recently (June 2011) produced an updated list of 90 projects across the county with criteria such as population size, school on route, accidents, etc used to rank the list into a priority order.
The routes in our area are shown in the order listed in the plan with the ranking out of 140. In any year the top 10-15 projects will be looked at to see what can be funded within the limited funds available. In 2009/10 Hertfordshire spent £1.4m on cycling works of which only £400,000 was county money, the rest being from developers, which is why Hatfield has had lots of cycle paths built using money from the business park and why other areas have lots of projects in the queue. This also means schemes will jump the queue if developer money comes to HCC.
In some cases we know very little about the route other than the description in the list. As soon as we know more, we will update this page.
11 - Birchwood Avenue Hatfield
This is assumed to run from the Airfield Pub on Comet Way along Birchwood Avenue past the primary school and the Mid Herts Music Centre to Homestead Road and then up to join the Alban Way.
17 - Hatfield town centre to Travellers Lane
This would run along Woods Avenue and Travellers Lane linking 4 schools and joining the Great North Way (NCN12) at St Audrey's Close. This would by pass the NCN12 section in Stream Woods and provide a much faster link between Hatfield and Welham Green. This scheme is one of WHCF's top priorities for Hatfield as it has huge potential for encouraging cycling to school. The latest notes from Herts Highways to us say this is now being actively developed as it has "good potential for increasing cycling journeys in the town."
27 - Tesco to NCN61 along Great North Road Hatfield
Another route new to WHCF! We assume this is a simple link along the busy road and over Wrestler's Bridge. What it then lacks is a connection on to Hatfield station from the north, from the houses in the north of the town.
28 - Mundells to Black Fan Road Welwyn Garden City
This route is to enable people to cycle from Welwyn GC town centre to Morrison's. This is going ahead as noted above.
85 - Tesco to NCN12/NCN61 Hertford Road Hatfield
There is a major housing development planned for the former county council depot at Mount Pleasant, so this path is assumed to be planning gain from that project to link the residents to Tesco and to the wider cycle network at both Tesco and Hertford Road. Work is currently in progress to widen the footpaths behind Tesco which form the western part of this scheme, but so far these are only regarded as footpaths, despite construction to cycling standards. We shall see what happens...!
102 - Stanborough Roundabout to Stanborough Lakes Welwyn GC
This is a very short link of 200m. We have no more information on this at the moment, so are not sure where it will go. We assume this is a link under the A1(M) to/from the current cycle path from Tesco to Gosling.
129 - Wewyn Garden City to Welwyn and Oaklands
A 3km route either extending the Bessemer Road path or by some other route to Welwyn and then up the Great North Road. This would be of major benefit to children at Monks Walk School so it is surprising it is ranked so low. However it is ranked as difficult to do as it has to cross the A1(M) at some point which will be expensive, assuming the subway cannot be used.
135 - Oaklands to Welwyn North station plus Bessemer Road to Welwyn North station
The link proposed is 700m. Oaklands is north of Welwyn and a direct short link to Welwyn North station would need to come cross country to the station and then we assume across the Digswell Valley to the A1000 Bessemer Road. Or this might be an extension of 129 along the main road. Again, as soon as we have more detail we will post this.
Longer term aspirationsThese are routes referred to in the Urban Transport plans dated 2008 but as they are not in the ranked list, we can only assume they are very long term aspirations unlikely to be built for many years.
HatfieldNot listed is any route round Hatfield town centre. We have part of Queensway painted as an on road cycle path. However as this goes round two roundabouts WHCF regard it as dangerous and would like to see it removed and replaced. Our preferred route is along Dellfield Road and then via the east side of Queensway. This would link up all the built and proposed off road paths in the town centre and create an off road link from the station to the University. Queensway could the return to being a 4 lane road as built.
Welwyn Garden CityNot listed are any plans to aid cyclists trying to get across the Campus gyratory system. This is a priority project in our view as the Campus is a major barrier to cyclists to/from the north west of WGC.