The City Council has secured £116 million additional funding to support its recently published Transport Strategy, through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS). This takes the total investment in Coventry’s transport network to just over £250 million for the next 5 years. A report considered by the Council’s Cabinet on 30th August seeks approvals to enable the funding to be drawn down and the schemes designed and delivered.
The Coventry elements of the region wide scheme include:
Coventry Very Light Rail (CVLR) – £54 million investment for ongoing research and development, network development and the delivery of the CVLR City Centre Demonstrator route, match funded by a further £3.2m from Coventry City Council. The scheme forms part of a wider Very Light Rail Regional Package, with a further £17.5 million CRSTS funds allocated towards the VLR Innovation Centre in Dudley and ongoing research and development.
Coventry South Sustainable Transport Package – £17 million allocation towards a package of transport improvements focused on the London Road corridor supporting the Gigafactory and other developments planned for the area and within the London Road corridor. This package will be supplemented by £2.3 million match funding, comprising Section 106 from adjacent development sites. The package will improve walking and cycling routes, reduce traffic congestion and create new accesses to development sites.
Foleshill Transport Package – £4.5 million allocation towards a package of transport improvements focused on the Foleshill Road and A444 corridors. This is supplemented by £0.8 million match funding. The scheme aims to decrease congestion on the Foleshill Road by removing through traffic by improving junctions on the A444 to improve journey reliability on that route, and will also improve the environment for pedestrians, bus users and cyclists.
Regional Park and Ride including Tile Hill Station– total allocation of £4.5 million which will include funding for the Tile Hill Station Strategic Park and Ride improvement scheme, which will deliver an improved experience for passengers, better links to public transport interchange and an increase in car parking capacity.
In addition, £30.6 million funding is allocated within the five-year CRSTS programme for Highway Maintenance and the Local Network Improvement Plan.
In addition to the CRSTS funding, the Council has recently been successful in securing £5.3 million additional funding for cycling and walking improvements from two additional sources:
Active Travel Fund 3 – the Binley Cycle Route has received an additional £2.7 million Active Travel funding, taking the total scheme funding to £8.6 million. WMCA has allocated a further £1 million for two Active Travel Neighbourhoods, in the Earlsdon and Naul’s Mill areas of the city.
Paths for Everyone – £1.63 million has been awarded from this fund, administered by Sustrans for the DfT, for improvements to the National Cycle Network routes linking to the University of Warwick campus.
To provide an element of contingency within the programme, a reserve list of schemes has been developed that cannot be funded through the main programme, but which could potentially be brought forward into the programme should slippage occur with the delivery of other schemes. For Coventry, the reserve schemes are: Keresley Link Road (for which alternative funding is being sought to enable early delivery in advance of S106 funding being secured) and cycle ‘superhighways’ to Keresley, Eastern Green and the University of Warwick.