Lottery grant puts cycle route wheels in motion

Woman on her way to work on a bicycle

A lottery grant of almost half a million pounds has resulted in the proposal of a cycle network across Rochdale.

As part of Sustrans’ Connect2 bid back in 2007, Rochdale received £450,000 of the £1.7 million figure. This will be devoted to developing routes for walking and cycling, centring around the canal towpath which links Rochdale to places such as the Oldham boundary and Kingsway Business Park.

Additional routes would create greater and greener accessibility between Rochdale, Littleborough, Middleton and Heywood.

The proposed bid will see existing paths widened and the towpath itself will be rebuilt to meet the National Cycle Network standard and eventually provide a safer link for young cyclists travelling to and from school as well as providing better access for less mobile people.

Some plans are already beyond the pipeline, with connections between Clegg Hall, Milnrow, and Littleborough already benefiting from an improvement of Branch Road.
"We are immensely grateful to everyone who got behind the scheme,” stated John Grimshaw, Sustrans CEO. “As a massive public consultation exercise Connect2 has engendered a huge amount of goodwill from all sectors. It has confirmed our belief that people want to walk and cycle more when given the right surroundings.”
Sustrans selected Rochdale Council’s Connect4 scheme to join 79 out of over 400 similar ideas nationwide. Sustrans went on to win the lottery bid, beating off competition such as the Eden Project in Cornwall and Sherwood Forest.