Cycling bid wins £50million contest

Local support has helped a cycleway lottery bid win a £50 million funding competition.

Online voting opened in late November (Monday, 26 November) for the Big Lottery Fund’s: The People’s £50 Million contest and asked local communities to give backing for their favourite scheme. The Sustrans’ Connect2 Lottery bid was one of four shortlisted for the £50 million grant and has been announced as the overall winner on Wednesday, 12 December.

The Connect2 project aims to get millions of people walking and cycling. As part of the project a new cycleway is proposed in Carlisle. The route aims to link Kingmoor Park in the North with Currock in the South of the city and local cyclists will show their support for the new plans. The new cycleway is being planned by the City Council in partnership with Sustrans, the UK’s leading sustainable transport charity.

The vision is to create a virtually traffic-free north-south route across the city to complement the existing east-west Hadrian’s Cycleway. The route will run from Parkhouse Road in the north down through the Kingmoor Park nature reserves, across the River Eden, and follow the River Caldew to the existing Caldew cycleway, and turn east into Currock via a new approach ramp to the existing crossing of the Carlisle-Barrow railway.

The route will offer a number of environmental, transport and recreational benefits including:

• access from residential areas to employment areas on either side of the River Eden;
• safer routes from residential areas to educational, social and retail facilities in the city centre;
• an opportunity to improve air quality on Scotland Road due to more people travelling by bike; and
• improved health and recreation through access to the rivers in the urban area and links to other green spaces.

Each of the four shortlisted projects was the subject of a television programme on ITV1. Voting took place online and by phone vote. Online voting for The People’s £50 Million Lottery Giveaway opened at on 26 November at www.thepeoples50million.org.uk. Telephone voting took place over the weekend 7-10 December.