A View from the Handlebars: Bransholme

Back in June (it seems ages ago, it’s only been a month though) a few of our members went for a ride round Bransholme. We checked out the bike infrastructure that’s already there, rode round the quieter streets, and started to get an idea of the area’s potential. In short, the layout of the estate, that has been criticised for decades, could come-of-age as active travel becomes more and more important.

Like the rest of Hull, there’s more bike paths than a lot of people realise; also like the rest of Hull, a large proportion of these paths don’t show up in the ‘Biking’ layer on Google Maps (we’re working on it). Unfortunately, at the minute the story is always the same - the lengths of bike path don’t have the connections - controlled crossings, priority over side streets and property accesses (see below) - that they need to succeed.

It turns out, our timing couldn’t have been better - the government announced that they were looking for areas outside of London that could be granted central funding to be developed in to ‘Mini-Hollands’. As you may have seen recently on social media or in the local media, Hull CC intend to bid for the funding. We were in a position to propose a vision for what Bransholme could look like if chosen as the area to be developed. We have already shared our vision with Hull CC, and had a meeting with west Carr Ward cllr Rob Pritchard to further explain what we’ve proposed. Who knows, hopefully a view from the handlebars in Bransholme might look very different in the not-too-distant future…