SIR: Over the last 20 or so years Winchester has not seen any meaningful addition to its cycling infrastructure; indeed in that time provision has steadily got worse with the removal of cycle parking spaces, the adverse impacts of changes to the one-way system and more recently narrowing of roads to accommodate social distancing.

It would have been nice to have celebrated the arrival of the “cycle” link between Domum Road and the new leisure centre as a positive improvement. Unfortunately the scheme is flawed in its design incorporating a number of text book examples of how not to design good cycle infrastructure. It has all the hallmarks of someone (presumably not a cyclist) determined to provide a scheme in an unsuitable location so that a “cycling access provided” tick-box could be ticked. The outcome was never going to be great. Sadly no one seems to have been brave enough to question or stop the scheme.

The general principles of designing cycle routes are that they should be coherent, direct, safe, comfortable, and attractive. This scheme fails on most of these criteria.

Particular low points include short sections of shared pavements (one at barely three metres long should get an award for its brevity); a risky and unnecessary road crossing that is both near a junction and on a bend, a 90 degree bend followed by a 180 degree turn (tricky to actually cycle round) finishing by a row of low level posts to catch the unwary. Part of this is a narrow shared walk way which could bring cyclists into conflict with pedestrians who are more likely to use this route. However the good news is that, in practice, conflict may be minimal as the link is not especially useful for bike journeys in any case. Chesil Street will be the more direct and accessible route for most journeys by bike.

This is a good example of taxpayers' money being spent on something that manages to be both badly designed and not particularly useful. Please can we have some useful and well thought out schemes for Winchester's cyclists.

Jeremy Mortimer,

Harrow Down,

Badger Farm,

Winchester