Access to Truro bridge project 'fundamentally flawed' and 'danger' to cyclists and pedestrians says report

A proposed cycle and pedestrian crossing in the heart of a busy Cornish industrial estate is ‘fundamentally flawed’ and will put cyclists and pedestrians in danger, according to a safety report.

 

Cornwall Council wants to put a diagonal 12 metre crossing across Newham Road on the Newham Industrial Estate in Truro to access a proposed lifting bridge between Lighterage Quay and Boscawen Park to create a walking and cycling loop around Truro Harbour.

But businesses on Newham, which is home to 180 companies employing around 1,500 people, fear the crossing could put pedestrians and cyclists at risk from heavy goods vehicles using the estate, where there are around 2,000 vehicle movements every day.

While not opposed to the bridge in principle, they are calling for a fundamental rethink on how it would be accessed from the nearby Newham Trail and have published a video highlighting their concerns.

The bridge is the flagship project of the £23.6m Town Deal plan to revitalise Truro. A planning application from Cornwall Council was due to go to its councillors in April but was pulled after opposition from Truro City Council and the police over safety concerns, and Natural England over potential environmental impact.

It is understood that the fate of the project will be decided at a crunch meeting on 12th June when the Town Deal Board – according to its own minutes from March – will be asked to make a “definitive decision of options” amid spiralling costs.

Now the Newham Business Improvement District (BID), whose role is to promote Newham as a business location and to support businesses on the estate, has highlighted a safety assessment of the bridge access proposals it commissioned from a firm of transport consultants, TPA (Transport Planning Associates).

The TPA report concludes: “The various risks to vulnerable road users add up to a scheme that is fundamentally flawed, will generate additional cycle and pedestrian traffic and will place those cyclists and pedestrians in danger.”

The report adds that Cornwall Council’s own safety audit of the scheme “highlights multiple safety concerns which have not been mitigated but rather have simply been accepted.”

BID Chair Leigh Ibbotson said: “The main concern is one of safety. The amount of traffic going through this junction now is huge and we’d see walkers and cyclists all crossing the widest point of the junction from corner to corner to go to the bridge.

“The original plan was to have a boardwalk along the edge of the river, and then the majority of the people coming from Truro would not have to cross any roads at all. Our message to Cornwall Council and the Town Deal Board is either do this safely and properly, or don’t do it at all.”

Cameron MacQuarrie, managing director of Macsalvors crane hire, which employs 70 people at Newham and operates more than 100 vehicles including 37 heavy duty cranes which would pass over the proposed crossing daily, is also concerned.

He said: "At the moment it’s just one massive compromise that just isn’t going to work. The safety in this is paramount. The bridge we don’t have an issue with, it’s the access to and from the bridge and making it safe that is the problem.”

The BID has highlighted its concerns to both the Town Deal Board and Cornwall Council.