Funding has been agreed to help make roads safer in Lancashire, as part of a programme of investment which will also see improvements to footpaths and bus stops.
Lancashire County Council has approved £1million for road and cycle safety schemes at locations where at least five collisions have resulted in people being injured within a five-year period. The schemes include improved safety markings and signage, speed humps, toucan and puffin crossings and other interventions designed to reduce risk.
Other investments agreed included £300,000 of funding for Public Rights of Way improvements – including investments in footpaths and bridleways in Burnley, Ribble Valley, South Ribble and West Lancashire – and £100,000 for ongoing improvements to make bus stops more accessible for people with disabilities.
The cabinet approved a report which detailed £6.1m of extra investment, including contributions to major infrastructure projects including Lancashire’s successful Levelling Up Fund bid, the South Lancaster Growth Catalyst garden village, and active travel schemes planned for the future.
Andrew Mullaney, director of environment and planning, said: “We’re committed to encouraging more people to choose cycling or walking for short journeys, and making our roads and paths more welcoming and accessible is an important part of this. We also have an ongoing programme of improvements to bus stops to ensure they provide easy access for everyone, including people with disabilities.
“We’re always working towards making our roads safer and have prioritised a number of improvements for locations where there has been a pattern of incidents and we’re able to engineer measures to reduce the risk of incidents in future.
“There are also a number of transport improvements in the pipeline where we need to provide match-funding to secure investment in our infrastructure, and where we are setting funding aside over a number of years so that we are in a position to deliver these investments which will help to support our wider economic ambitions across the county.”
