Bradford Living Streets, Manchester Road Bridge
An ambitious part of this project is the replacement of an old, narrow, life expired existing pedestrian footbridge across Manchester Road, with an impressive new bridge which will sweep over this very busy main road, towards Bowling Park, continuing the traffic free 'Living Street' concept from the town centre.
The 'Living Street' is a people orientated, street environment that links up people with places using broad, high quality, avenue-like routes for pedestrians and cyclists linking up housing, schools, shops, health care, parks and town centres.
This fantastic new bridge will link together local communities on either side of the bridge, providing a pleasant route for cyclists and pedestrians and enabling quicker and easier access to the town centre. The bridge is situated closeby to Newby primary school on St. Stephen's Road giving local children the opportunity to walk and cycle to school and the more gradual, less steep ramps will also mean easier and safer access.
New walking and cycling routes will connect to either side of the bridge and provide essential missing links between the existing living street areas by developing new, wider and more accessible walking and cycling routes. Surrounding areas that will be linked together include the existing living street area situated alongside high rise accommodation at Radwell Drive, near A647 Senior Way then past the recently developed playground and park area on Hutson Street, which leads on to the local supermarkets and shops. The development of these Connect2 links will continue the route, south of the bridge towards Bowling Park, providing essential missing links and connecting communities in this area.
"Linking both sides of the road which in the past has been very tough, the Manchester Road has been a great geographical boundary in terms of people doing things only on ones side - it's like opening up a bridge between the two communities." Charlie Burn, Bradford resident
"I like the design of the new bridge; I ride my bike alot so I'm looking forward to going over it on my bike and having a new route into town. It's good for the community to have something noticeable and an important piece of landscape within our midst brings a sense of value and self worth as a community" Jimmy Hinton, Vicar at St. Stephens Church, Bradford
"The area is crossed by major roads and some of the walkways were quite enclosed and forbidding particularly for people with a young family or for an older person. The idea was to create a situation where those walkways were opened up, better lit and attractive to encourage communication and movement on foot rather than people just driving round". Ian Greenwood, Bradford Council leader
Latest news
Works update
Works are progressing well and on time and the project site is beginning to take shape. All of the concrete columns have now been constructed and work has started on the paving.
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