This Tuesday’s meeting of the Local Committee was held especially to approve the plan and Programme for Woking that Surrey County Council has to submit to Cycling England to get hold of the £1.8M awarded to Woking, as one of ten towns emerging successful from bidding for the title ‘Cycling Town’.

Money

We don’t just get handed the money - it has to be matched by an equal amount raised from other sources. Given the general state of Surrey’s roads, the huge sums of money needed to repair them, and the cuts we are actually seeing Surrey County Council making in planned spending on Woking, it would be unwise to rely on County Hall handing over that sort of sum of money simply because this is a good, ecologically sound idea.

Contributions to matched funding will come from ’section 106 and section 27B’ money paid by developers and negotiated when planning permission is given; plus money squeezed from Woking’s ‘local allocation’, used for local road schemes - improvements such a controlled pedestrian crossings.

The paper to the committee says the ‘programme will need to be reviewed on an annual basis and the Local Committee for Woking decide on the priority given to the elements of work included within the Woking Cycling Town against other Integrated Transport schemes which are funded using the Local Transport Plan devolved budget.’

I think this message from the Local Highways Manager roughly translates as: ’Look, there’s a great two-for-one offer here but you guys on the Local Committee are going to have to fight out between you what gets dropped while we grab it.’ With the unspoken extra thought: ‘Unless you can get your Dad (ie County Hall) to stump up some more.’

(If you see the Developers as rich uncles, they’re less rich than they used to be … )   

But for the moment Surrey, in partnership with Woking, is going forward with a ’we’ll make it happen’ approach, which I find I have to applaud - this really is going to be a great improvement, and a practical contribution to reducing traffic congestion and sparing the environment.

The six essentials    

• Improving existing routes
• Making the Basingstoke Canal path a great route through the Borough with good links off it, including ways to and through the town centre, with a way of riding from the Canal to the station through the centre of the town.
• A better North / South route that will join up with National Cycle routes at Chertsey and Guildford.
• More bike parking, especially at stations. 
• Encouragement for people to cycle more.
• Links with schools

The Fancy Bits

There’ll be better signing. The trails will be named after planets and their moons. (Other towns have been looked at to see how they do things, and themes are common.) Lighting is currently not on the plans, but is recognised as being highly desirable, at least for the heavier use parts of the canal path near the centre of Woking.

I asked whether we mightn’t have some sculpture, as I’ve seen on some trails? This hasn’t been thought of yet, but the bridges will all be clearly named, so that they can be used as landmarks.

What it means for Knaphill and Goldsworth West

Although strictly only the stretch of towpath from Hermitage Bridge to Brookwood is in Knaphill, this is a significant route, as I saw when I bicycled it at the end of the school day last Monday. A number of children from the Winston Churchill school walk down along the Hermitage Road, cross fast-moving traffic, and then walk along the muddy and difficult path to the north of the canal, through the Country Park. Some primary school children also go in the opposite direction, from Brookwood school back towards Knaphill.

This route, on the same side as the Brookwood Hospital Estate, is broader than the towpath on the South side, but anyone using the Canal as a through route would have to cross the canal to change sides at the Hermitage Bridge, which has a very narrow path.  So the current intention is to provide an extra footbridge over the canal, so that pedestrians can avoid the crossing on the Hermitage Bridge, and then use the North side up to the bridge at Brookwood Crossroads.

Unfortunately that will make the rather splendid wheelchair-friendly ramp down to the southern path (itself currently impassable to wheelchairs) redundant. But I think it’s probably the right decision, given the number of people who will be able to access the northern path relatively easily.

As I understand it, the surface should be as good as the currently existing stretch from Woking Town Centre to Kiln Bridge. (The next section, to Hermitage Bridge, isn’t quite finished but should also come up to that standard.)

A good, safe pedestrian and cycling  route into St. Johns  or indeed all the way to Woking, will be a real benefit, for all ages.  One of the big problems for young or less well off people on the Hospital Estate is how to get off it - buses are expensive, parents not always available to drive.  And the more people who use the path, the safer even nervous people should feel it is to use.

(Which is not to guarantee there will be no problems - for example, motor cycles are going to have to be deterred from using the track, for everybody’s sake.)

So eventually, if we can get this section properly sorted out for Knaphill (including the new Hermitage Bridge) plus improvements and even some extensions to existing bike routes through Knaphill, I think we’ll be doing quite well. 

The improved routes into and out of Woking and will be good for Goldsworth West too, and its likely the whole of Goldsworth park will be targetted quite early on for ‘personalised travel planning’. What this’ll be I don’t know; I trust it will be a benefit and not a nuisance.

The launch will be this coming Monday, 22nd September, from 10.00am to 4.00pm at The Lightbox. I hope it doesn’t rain, so that I can get there comfortably by bike!

In my part of Woking, appreciating the Basingstoke Canal and wanting to see it well cared for and used is, in political jargon, ‘motherhood and apple pie’. Like good food or family loyalty people are automatically in favour of it, and don’t want anything to spoil it.

Yesterday’s meeting of the Basingstoke Canal Joint Management Committee showed, albeit in a civilised, polite manner, the clash of interests underlying any decisions made about its management.

I’m one of the four Committee members representing Surrey County Council.  There are another four from Hampshire, which is a joint owner of the Canal with Surrey County Council. Then there are Councillors from the Boroughs and Districts it runs through, from the Surrey and Hampshire Canal Society, and from Natural England.

I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the whole meeting, just some highlights from the report by Ian Brown, the Canal Director.

Risk

I’ve put this first because, being a risk-averse person myself, the heading ‘Risk Management ‘ and the words ‘the canal now represents a significant increased risk to the joint owners with certain critical areas going from amber to red condition’ attracted my attention.

It’s ‘interesting’ to note that owning the Canal is not a barrel of laughs for either Surrey or Hampshire - as was noted rather ruefully by the Chairman, a member of Surrey County Council’s (overwhelmingly Conservative) Executive, when he said that for both Hampshire and Surrey the Basingstoke Canal carried the highest of any ‘corporate risk’.

A major contributing factor to rating risk highly is the serious potential consequences of a canal breach. ‘Mitigation’ in this case means vigilance, monitoring the state of the canal and, for example, removing trees that have reached the point where they ‘are directly damaging or threatening the integrity of the canal bank side.’

The ‘amber to red’ comment refers to staffing level problems. In answer to my question about the nature of the risk, I was told that though a ‘number of embankments and cuttings’ give concern, the risk is well controlled and we are ‘not expecting a major, major disaster’ - though it will be good when there can be more assurance after a full condition survey, which unfortunately won’t be completed until 2010.

In the meantime Ian Brown said that ‘if I’m woken up by rain and high winds then I do worry - especially with the tree cover,’ but he has a ‘very good team’. In June last year, when there was a problem with a collapsed culvert, rangers were on the spot within half and hour and the problem was being brought under control within two hours.

Trees - too much of a good thing?

Discussion of the Conservation Management Plan, which should be finalised and submitted for approval next October, inevitably led to questions about tree-cutting, and trees felled in St. Johns to considerable outcry in the local papers. Ian Brown said there were ‘just three trees  … we take tree management very, very seriously … the three trees in St. Johns were three out of nearly six hundred.’ There had been a ’significant risk to the structure of the canal’ , which is only constructed of green sand, with the ‘windmill effect’ of full-grown trees. ‘

He said that there was also generally a need to let in more light for ‘flora’, especially the marginal and sub-aquatic plants that are important to the canal’s SSSI status. The SSSI’s condition is currently assessed as ‘unfavourable’ and needs to be brought into ‘unfavourable, recovering’ and , ideally, to ’favourable’ .

There is also evidence that encroaching mature trees badly affect the water levels in the canal, which is bad for boat-users, wildlife, and the structural integrity of the canal itself. 

It’s one of those paradoxes that trying to ’save’ trees along the canal does no favours to ‘nature’.

Navigation v. nature?

Similarly it can sometimes seem that there is a conflict when boats passing along the canal and the work necessary to make this possible arapparently disturb wildlife and destroy some of the vegetation - but only this disturbance and destruction allows the canal and the SSSI to continue to exist. ‘In the short-term, channel vegetation owes its diversity and conservation interest in part to the disturbance regimes sustained by low density boat traffic and/or vegetation control’; while in the longer term, without dredging the canal would silt up leading to ‘extinction of the waterway and its aquatic communities.’

Navigation v. British Rail?

Canal users have been considerably put out by the length of time it has taken for the old iron and steel railway bridge at Ash Vale to be replaced. The canal has had to be closed at that point, preventing boat-owners on the Hampshire side coming down to the Wey navigation. According to members of the public asking questions and commenting at the meeting, this has caused upset and indignation. The Canal Director explained at some length the complexity of the work in engineering terms. Early approachs had not worked as well as hoped, but ’at the end of the day, the job had to be done’. The bridge had reached a point where safety was the issue and a complete replacement the only realistic option.

The current hope is that the work will be finished by the end of June.

Improvement v. neglect?

The project to improve the Canal towpath, bringing it back closer to its original width and providing a better east-west route not only for cyclists but also for parents with push-chairs and for the disabled in wheelchairs, is going ahead. The first stretch, from Kiln Bridge in St. John’s to Monument bridge in Woking, is now supposed to start by the end of this month,  going on through May. The surface will be tar and chip.

Formal planning permission has been gained from Woking. It was unfortunate there had been ’bad press’ in the local papers.  ‘Rest assured, we are not going to destroy the habitat,’ Ian Brown said.

Potential bad behaviour of cyclists was the concern of one member of the public, who seemed to expect old people frequently to have their bones broken or children to be knocked into the canal and drowned. Ian Brown said that if necessary physical barriers would be put up to reduce cycling at speed; and that there were bye-laws and the authority would be prepared to ‘make an example’.

A more temperate questioner asked whether a risk analysis had been carried out - ‘Yes, Sustrans did a risk analysis … cycling must be self-policing … only a very very small minority [cause problems]’

‘Could a bell be made compulsory?’ a member of the Committee asked.

No commitment to that, but ‘there will be close monitoring’. And not only of cyclists - there’s ‘also a problem with dog-walkers’.

Personally, I am very much looking forward to using the new track to as part of my journey to Kingston for Council meetings, if only the stretch of it taking me into Woking to catch the train. 

The work being started on the tow path between St. John’s and Woking is routine maintenance. Three dead trees are being taken out and dead wood pruned out of another six trees. The lovely row of oaks is not being rooted out.

Between Kiln Bridge and Parley Drive two sections of the bank are going to be restored where they have eroded in the past and narrowed the tow path.

The application for planning permission to widen and improve the tow path more generally has not yet been decided. If it is allowed, the present maintenance work may overlap with these changes, but it is not pre-empting the planning process.