The City Council is consulting on plans to improve access within the city centre.
The plans include the initial route for the Very Light Rail (VLR) system and a fully segregated cycleway around the city centre. The aim is to reduce air pollution and make the city centre a healthier and safer place.
The Coventry Very Light Rail route will go from Warwick Road to the former IKEA building initially, as part of a trial installaton, and later to Pool Meadow bus station. The cycleway will connect the Railway Station to Pool Meadow bus station. It will also link to some of the new routes coming into the city centre from Coundon and Foleshill.
To improve bus journey reliability and get ready for Very Light Rail, the Council will be installing a red route. This is shown on the map above and includes Warwick Road to Pool Meadow bus station along Corporation Street, the Trinity Street/Burges loop as well as Bishop Street to Ring Road Junction 1 and New Union Street to Ring Road Junction 5.
A red route means that where there is a double red line along the kerb, no stopping is allowed at any time, even to drop off or pick up passengers or deliver loads.
Red routes help keep traffic flowing and reduce congestion. The red route will be enforced using smart camera technology which will capture the vehicle registration numbers of motorists who stop their vehicle or park illegally.
Red route restrictions will not apply to emergency service vehicles, blue badge holders or taxis. All other vehicles will need to use specific parking bays which will be clearly signed and marked on the road to stop along the route.
To implement the red route, the Council will reduce the size of the current city centre restricted parking zone. This will mean that certain streets where yellow lines were previously removed, you will see double yellow lines re-introduced. This will be done at the same time as the red route. Parking will be available in the car parks or the marked parking bays. The majority of existing parking bays on the red route and double yellow areas will remain.
Coventry Very Light Rail route
The Council claim that Very Light Rail is intended to provide an alternative to cars, help to improve air quality and reduce congestion. The new vehicle and track will provide a reliable, frequent, environmentally friendly, hop-on hop- off transport system in Coventry and other cities and towns, at a lower cost than conventional light rail tram systems, whilst still providing the same benefits.
They state that installation of the system will secure local investment, provide local, high-skilled jobs, and put Coventry at the forefront of the green industrial revolution.
The Coventry Very Light Rail trial route will showcase the track and vehicle in a real city environment. You can find out more here.
Work to prepare the area for the trial section of Coventry Very Light Rail will begin in Spring 2024.
Segregated cycleway
The new section of segregated cycleway will be positioned between the pavement and the road and be physically separated from both. The cycleway will be located alongside the demonstrator route, starting from Greyfriars Green (Starley Statue) all the way to Pool Meadow bus station. The Council hope to start work on the cycleway in Autumn 2024.
They also plan to make some changes to allow cyclists to travel in the opposite direction on a number of one-way traffic streets. The following streets will become contraflow streets for cyclists:
Bishop Street (from Tower Street to Ring Road)
Cheylesmore
Greyfriars Lane
Lamb Street
Manor Road
Salt Lane
St Patrick’s Road
This will make it easier for cycles to access parts of the city centre that are further away from the proposed new segregated cycleway route.
Consultation
The consultation takes the form of a short questionnaire on the Council’s “Let’s Talk” platform and can be accessed from here. The deadline is 17th December.
Coventry Society View
The Coventry Society welcomed the previous council policy of removing the clutter of street signs and yellow lines in the city centre and it is disappointing to see it return.
However, yellow lines were hastily painted over so now we have a patchwork of speckled black and yellow lines with nothing to tell drivers that parking in parts of the city centre is only permitted in marked spaces. For the future, the installation of both yellow and red lines as well as retaining no-waiting areas without yellow lines is likely to be confusing to motorists and might bring the City Council into disrepute.
The Coventry Society welcomes the proposed cycleway, especially following the recent banning of e-bikes in the Precinct areas. However, we have concerns about the contraflow cycle lanes, which are a potential danger to cyclists. They will need to be clearly marked on the street, unlike the existing one in St. John Street.
We welcome the introduction of the VLR experiment in the city centre, but an open-minded approach to monitoring and review will be needed to see if there are any genuine advantages over buses. Considerable public support will be needed if the Council is then to make a bid to build the route to University Hospital.
We are disappointed that the VLR route and City Centre South appear not to have been designed together. We would have expected a more co-ordinated approach. The proposals also seem to be isolated from the current local plan review. With the city’s reputation for corporate planning, we would have expected a closer alignment of land use planning and transport planning.
The council’s plans for City Centre South already significantly reduce the amount of car parking in the city centre and the recently increased car parking prices and night-time charges all carry the risk of reducing trade in the city centre. This might reinforce the decline of the city centre.