Sunday 2 March 2014

Bridge over A444 at Whitley - Planning committee adds conditions


To recap, here's a diagram of the original proposal:


 




To see the area in its current state, go to google maps and put 52.387153, -1.492980 into the search box.









So to cross from Black Prince Avenue (at the bottom left hand corner of the diagram) towards  Whitley Academy (off the top right hand corner of the diagram), school children would have to use four Toucan Crossings.  Plenty of temptation to take shortcuts across the commuter traffic going to the Jaguar Land Rover plant and the Whitley Business Park (at the bottom right hand corner of the diagram)!

On 6th February Coventry Council agreed to make some improvements to the scheme:

Coventry Council also promised to look into possibilities for reducing the number of Toucan Crossings for pedestrians and cyclists travelling between Black Prince Avenue and the Jaguar Land Rover plant / Whitley Business Park.  Both the original and the new proposals have us crossing three carriageways. One idea is to provide subways under the two new slip roads and a path along the south side of the new bridge. The new slip roads are to/from the A444 south of the bridges.

Toucan Crossings are not as safe as some people think. See this article about a driver jumping a red light on a Pelican crossing and killing a cyclist.

Update September 2015
The final result is a bit different from either of the above plans.  The differences from the second diagram are:
  1. The Toucan crossing at the extreme east is now staggered into two halves.
  2. The subway along the river (under the carriageway) has disappeared.
  3. There's a shared use cyclist/pedestrian path along the south side of the new bridge, with  light controlled crossings over Leaf Lane and the slip road from the northbound A46.  There's no lights on the crossing over the slip road to the southbound A46.