HS2 | Contractors to turn temporary roads into 320km cycle path
A new 320km walking and cycle path will be created out of the temporary access roads used during the construction of HS2.
In order to build the high speed rail line through the English countryside, temporary roads must be built all along it for the workers to access the site. In his last Parliamentary report, rail minister Andrew Stephenson said he has asked HS2 Ltd to look into repurposing these roads into walking and cycling schemes, which can then be conjoined with other local pathways to create one super footpath. Stephenson says this would “provide a wider active travel network along the spine of HS2”.
The plan is to create a 3m-wide cycle path adjacent to a 2.5m-wide footpath, separated by a grass verge. It will run in parallel to the HS2 track but be separated from it by some distance.
Work is already underway on the first 80km stretch of the path, known as the Buckinghamshire Greenway. It begins at the Colne Valley, just below the Chiltern Hills – an area of outstanding natural beauty – and runs to Stowe, just north of Buckingham, via Waddesdon Manor near Aylesbury.
The funding for the project is likely to come from the government’s £2bn cycling and walking budget, rather than from HS2’s budget. However, The Sunday Times reports that a Downing Street has not yet fully approved the scheme as it is unconvinced whether it will be popular.
A feasibility study for the project was commissioned in 2013 and the final report, co-authored by Royal HaskoningDHV, Phil Jones Associates (PJA) and John Grimshaw and Associates, was published in 2016. PJA chairman Phil Jones said: “The whole is greater than the parts. You could build a hundred cycling schemes in a hundred towns, but by linking them together it becomes something more substantial.”
The feasibility report outlines multiple benefits of the greenway, stating: “Such a network [of cycleways] would create a project of national significance and would serve as both a valuable benefit to local communities as well as encouraging a wide range of leisure and tourism activities
Such a facility could then serve as a catalyst for greatly improved cycling infrastructure nationwide to a level that is seen in the likes of the Netherlands; and would bring the associated health and economic benefits to the communities that it serves.”
If the full 320km path from London to Manchester is completed it will become one of the country’s longest trails, almost as long as the Pennine Way.
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