Aberdeen Street to Heath Street Shared-Use Pavement
Between Aberdeen Street and Heath Street there is a short length of shared-use pavement. I understand why this has been done; there's limited available width and there's a bus stop here. However, the reason why there is limited available width is because the city council would rather have a four lane road through a local centre than reduce the number of lanes, which will result in traffic evaporation and provide more space for pedestrians and cyclists. The better environment that results from traffic reduction is proven to increase trade in local centres. Having four lanes does allow there to be a bus lane, but that bus lane is not a 24 hour bus lane (as Push Bikes pushed for), so its benefits (which include increasing the separation between people engaging in active travel and the noise, stench, and danger associated with large numbers of private cars) disappear out-of-hours and the lane fills up with private cars. And if that were not incentive enough to take the route of traffic reduction, right under this point the bridge arch has a large crack in it and is threatening to collapse. So whilst from a cycling perspective it's not terrible, the decisions made here are.
