Cambridgeshire County Council met on Tuesday (29/9) and gave Cycle Cambridge the go ahead to start a programme of projects to improve facilities for cyclists and pedestrians including the Milton to Impington Cycle/Foot Way which caused some comment both from villagers and the parish council.

Despite the parish council asking (Adobe/PDF 59KB) for various changes to improve the scheme and wanting a guarantee that the school bus would continue none of this has been accepted by cabinet. Instead the county council just stated that:

Some of the schemes may affect the current provision of free school travel for pupils. These effects will be considered separately after the cycleways have been built, in accordance with the normal procedures for reviewing safe routes to school.

We are advised by the parish council that as the whole route will then probably be deemed to be safe for an accompanied child to walk, even if it’s still not safe to cycle, then the free school bus will be lost (see point 3.0 of the County Council’s Home to School Transport Policy (Adobe/PDF 939KB) and Appendix D of the same).