Here's the latest update from the council on the work happening on The Parade this week:

Work on the new cycleway, pedestrian crossings and bus shelters is all on track and due to be complete by mid-February 2016.  

Humber Street

Most of the remaining construction work is happening in and around this intersection as we put in bike by-passes around the north and southbound bus stops and install a new pedestrian crossing.

The northbound bus stop is being relocated a little to the south of its existing location and will have a new shelter.

The new kerbline outside Patricia’s Pies is finished and we’ll be completing the ramps for the new pedestrian crossing this week (from 1 February).

Work is continuing on this side south of the intersection too. We plan to pour the northbound bike by-pass and the concrete pad for the new shelter this week.

One of the biggest issues with the yet-to-be-completed cycleway is the mobility parks outside the Medical Centre. The design just doesn't work. At the moment a driver with mobility issues is forced to get out into traffic and a passenger with mobility issues has to get out into the buffer zone and then cross the cycleway. The former is a bigger problem than the latter but it's still not ideal overall.

Here's a suggestion for a very simple and obvious solution. Move the entry point to this section of cycleway from it's current position so that it is 20m further south (from point A to point B in the photo). The mobility parks (and the single parking space behind them) can then be moved across so that they are directly adjacent to the kerb. This will allow passengers with mobility issues to get out directly onto the pavement. Re-paint the buffer space on the other side of the car-parks so that drivers with mobility issues can also get out into a nice, wide protected space that is separated from traffic. People on bikes will simply carry on cycling for another 20m in 30 kph traffic before they enter the cycleway. They have already biked through approx. 100m of 30 kph shared space at that stage so another 20m seems like a reasonable compromise to make. This solution involves nothing more than a new paint job so it should also be cheap to do.

​The Medical Centre could also choose to be part of the solution. They have parking space at the rear of the building and more of that could possibly be made available to their patients (one of the parks is already marked as a mobility park). A slightly more radical idea is for the Medical Centre and the owners of 163 and 163B The Parade (home to Brew'd and South End Motors) to agree to remove the fence between them and operate a single shared driveway. That would create room for additional parking spaces on either side.