Whittlesford Station - not safe for cyclists or their bikes

I was one of the Whittlesford residents who met with the County engineers yesterday to complain about the new parking scheme for Royston Road and Station Road, and the dangers and inconvenience it is causing to local residents and people getting to the station. If you cycle to Whittlesford Parkway rail station, as I do, or your kids cycle to get the train to school, you first of all take your life in your hands getting there, because the new parking restrictions on the approach road have clogged the street with cars, so you can't see vehicles up the hill, and you may find your bike smashed up while you are away, because of increasing vandalism at the largely unsupervised station, which has no CCTV.

People were angry with the result caused by the new parking scheme put in place earlier this year, and told the County engineers in no uncertain terms.

I chaired a Parish Council meeting last month where residents pressed for a face to face meeting with the highways officials. A number of local residents have since contacted me with their complaints. Some of these are elderly residents fed up with commuters parking and blocking their drives, and some are parents whose children cycle to the rail station to get to school.

A Station Road resident wrote to me to say: "Since the introduction of 'parking areas' and the removal of restrictions, the situation is now worse than ever. Cars often race down the road to the Station; large articulated lorries have great difficulty reversing up the road on a daily basis. On leaving our property it is impossible to see cars travelling down the road past a long line of parked cars to the West. By the time these fast cars reach the area of our driveway they are already pulling out to get around cars parked on the other side of the road. We have had several very 'near misses'."

At the same time, people cycling to the station run the growing risk of finding their bikes smashed up when they return. Regular cycle station users told me on Thursday afternoon that the situation is getting worse, as we surveyed the latest vandals handiwork, and commiserated with a teenager who returned to find both his bike wheels removed and the lock smashed. Next to his bike was another one with the wheel kicked until it was bent out of shape. A cycling commuter said to me "This is getting worse, and there is no CCTV here, and the British Transport Police just take down the details and that's it."
I have written to the British Transport Police and I will be bringing it up at Sawston next Monday at a meeting with the policing team who are responsible for Whittlesford, to see if they can send a patrol car down to the station to act as a visible deterrent. And a bit of parking enforcement would not go amiss either!