CYCLING CITY DAY 3: Continuous cycle lane for Marston on the cards (From The Oxford Times)

CYCLING CITY DAY 3: Continuous cycle lane for Marston on the cards

12:00pm Wednesday 1st August 2012 in News By Damian Fantato, covering Summertown, Jericho and North Oxford. Call me on 01865 425429

CYCLING through Marston is set to get a lot easier as plans are afoot to extend a cycle lane along the whole length of Marston Road.

It is part of an £800,000 scheme from Oxford City Council to help make the city a more welcoming place for cyclists.

A total of 57 schemes have been listed to be carried out across the city and the Marston Road project is one of them.

Oxford City Council has said the cycle lane, which would be along the outbound stretch of the road, would cost £30,000 to create.

Local city councillor Mary Clarkson said: “Any dedicated cycle lane has got to be a good thing.

“The more we join up our cycle lanes and the more people cycle, the better.

“The pavement is really wide there and you don’t get a lot of pedestrians using it.

“But I feel very strongly that you need to keep pedestrians and cyclists separate because particularly the elderly will feel quite intimidated by cyclists.”

Cash will come from a number of different sources.

The council will spend £100,000 from its capital budget in each of the first two years of the scheme followed by £50,000 in each of the following years.

It then plans to spend £10,000 from its revenue budget in each of the four years of the scheme, with an additional £500,000 coming from Section 106 money that is paid to the authority by developers to help with infrastructure within communities.

Colin Cook, the city council’s board member for city development, said: “We have already got a cycle lane part of the way down Marston Road.

“So anything which goes towards improving that is a good thing.”

It is understood the council will be removing the central line from the end of Marston Road towards the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and putting all the parking on one side of the road to create a continuous path.

Richard Mann, of cycling campaign group Cyclox , said: “It is an excellent idea.”