Finally, at another arbitrary point, it’s all over; cyclists who were supposedly enticed to shift modes by the chance to use this short wanded lane, must negotiate a lane change to the right, and two busy multi-lane, signal-controlled junctions to bridge the gap to town centre.

How could it have been done better?
1. Should’ve used cones to test it. 2. Lanes are too narrow. 3. Reallocate space. Ditch the hatching; sacrifice some grass. 4. There has to be a segregated safe route through the junction. 5. Connect two nodal points fully.

Oh, and sweep the street and prume the trees before starting! Bottom line is, there’s enough room for fully compliant segregated cycleways on this road, which would be truly game-changing. The “bold and ambitious” approach would be simply to do that. We’d be delighted to see it.

We still haven’t seen the @mycountycouncil EATF Tranche 2 bid. It’d’ve been a logical PR coup to have put it online and heralded content on @BBCNorthampton this morning. We’re left waiting for FOI responses and looking at botched, day-late-dollar-short stuff like this, instead.

We keep having to dig in and highlight that @SmithersJason leadership has been weak. That @NNHighways seem clueless about approaches commonly used elsewhere in the U.K, never mind abroad. That @BCWboro is fixated with cars parking. That £351k is underspent and badly spent.

Transparency’s been lacking. We’ve had to use FOI requests to obtain basic info the council should have been proud to publish, (others were!) and little has been delivered. Bus lane hours changes, tree stump removal and cycle counters akin to rearranging deckchairs on Titanic.

We continue to expend significant energy advocating & working for better. Other HAs are leading the way, and all of us trail behind the example of the Dutch. We are still hoping beyond hope that things will improve - we are very keen to support good schemes! End. @Laura_E_Coffey