Please try and get along to the council’s staffed drop-in session this Friday, 10-2, where they’re displaying the plans for phase I of the Hayling Island Pedestrian and Cycle Improvements.
Sorry it’s such short notice – the publicity has been useless – and I know it will be difficult for many of you, being in working hours.
They say this is a display, not a consultation, but if you care about cycling, please try and politely make the point that we need real cycle path improvements, and to ask them to hurry along with the succeeding phases, which will hopefully be more cycle-oriented.
Phase I is mostly about pedestrian and traffic improvements (not that they aren’t important as well), but it does include a proper tarmac path across the legion field to Mengham Junior school and to Hawthorn Grove.
But you might like to ask about the short existing footpaths at the south east corner of Legion Field, linking to Shute Close and onwards to Mengham Lane and the south-east of the island.
In particular, what they think a ‘rural style footpath’ is doing in the middle of urban Hayling as a very short key link between tarmac paths? That’s despite a strong request for an all-weather path from the headmaster of Mengham Junior School and Cycle Hayling, so that their children and parents do not have to dress up in wellingtons and battle gear just to walk to school. And we wonder why people drop their kids off by car and why obesity is such a challenge?
(Clue: a rural style footpath is stony, hard for pushchairs, bikes, scooters and wheelchairs, gets full of mud and puddles in wet weather, and needs re-surfacing every couple of years. But it’s a bit cheaper – in the short term).
Please do get along if you can, and mention Cycle Hayling!
More details at https://www.hants.gov.uk/transport/transportschemes/elmgrovecrossing