The scope of the work

Some 18 plans and strategies written by a variety of public bodies all proposed a cycle route along the Lea Valley between the edge of London, Harlow, Bishop’s Stortford and Stansted Airport. The proposals were written in varying levels of detail but none had led to any firm detailed scheme. Accordingly, in early 2019, Hertfordshire County Council commissioned Transport Initiatives to produce a definitive route up the valley.

The A1184 has a mostly narrow carriageway and even narrower footways. It’s difficult to find the space for a compliant pedestrian path let alone space for cycling

For the bulk of the route there were only two complete options; one running on or alongside the A1184 Harlow to Bishop’s Stortford Road and the other along the bank of the Stort Navigation. Neither were perfect; there were narrow sections, pinchpoints and awkward junctions; where you thought you could widen the footway there were mature trees and that lovely safe road you spotted turned out to be private. There were additional options through Bishop’s Stortford and Sawbridgeworth but again none were perfect.

The Stort Navigation is a really pleasant path, quite well used but it does not meet any guidance in terms of widths. And there are narrower sections…

So having ridden everything and devised potential schemes for many of the problem points we needed to sift and prioritise all the options.

The Route Selection Tool can be altered to compare more than two routes. We did re-draw the output to colour code it with our route plan

We used a modified version of the Route Selection Tool to compare the route options. The Route Selection Tool works best when comparing two very similar routes. As the differences between the routes become greater the tool handles things less well. In the case of the Lea valley one route ran close to the A1184 and through all the towns and villages while the other main option ran via the Stort Navigation and skirted the edges of settlements at best. Essentially one was a utility route and the other primarily recreation. And given this dicotomy you just have to decide what sort of route you want; the Selection Tool won’t help you with that. The tool is also not much help where the route options are braided and there are multiple route combinations. Eventually we just rebuilt the tool to enable it to assess more than two options at once.

The M11 cut the original railway track bed, luckily there’s a subway under it, although it’s maybe not the most salubrious

While we were asked to focus on Stansted Airport at the north east end of the route there is a nearby path on a disused railway called the Flitch Way. Connecting to this would improve the options of recreational riding from Bishop’s Stortford and give us more ways to reach Stansted Airport. It could also potentially extend our edge of London to Stansted Airport route as far east as Braintree. Conveniently Uttlesford District Council subsequently asked us to review the Flitch Way giving us a second chance to review the inter-county link between Bishop’s Stortford and the railway path.

When we bid for a project, one of the ‘deliverables’ we promise is a copy of all the photos taken during the course of the work. No one has ever asked for copies of any photos except for the client of this job. Did they want a picture of the issues with the A1184 or the potential path along the Stort Navigation? No, they wanted a picture of a cat. (posted 27/11/23)