Today I have been sent the plans for Chorlton Cycleway on Barlow Moor Road. There's a fair bit to like, especially near the park, but there's also some worrying designs that do not meet the latest LTN1/20 standards in terms of safety and quality.

My main worry is just how much unprotected painted cycle lane there is. The red pictures of cars represent offroad parking, so obviously car access is needed, but could a stepped cycle track not be used to provide some protection?

These are areas with endemic footway parking

The carriageway is persistently wide at the expense of narrower cycleways. It's a bus route but fairly straight, so 3.0m (or 3.25 maximum) lanes should be used to allow for suitable width cycleways. Both cycle lanes and cycle tracks should be at least 2.0m according to LTN1/20

There also appears to be no proposed continuous footway/cycleway over vehicle entrances for shops, meaning a disjointed footway and no protection for cycling from turning vehicles.

LTN1/20 outlines side road treatments: none of these are being proposed here:

Possibly most egregiously, council is proposing to spend cycling money on widening the general carriageway (removing grass verge) to provide a longer extra lane for motorists, while providing seemingly no safe way for cycles to get back on the road when the offroad cycleway ends.

I don't want to sound like I'm being overly negative so here are some of the very good points: Some sections have wide cycleway with rain garden segregation. Carriageway narrowing at the toucan crossing. Parking protected cycleway. Bus stop bypasses for cycles.

I just hope that it can be brought up to the latest standards, there's no point building just OK stuff now and locking it in for 10-20 years. Is it really a major design change to widen cycleways/narrow lanes, provide protection where none is proposed, and bin the road widening?

Plans can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EhJxSIYVBO37C-C9WPxOFR9GspyScI2F?usp=sharing