Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan

The Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) is about making our streets work for everyone and our district a better place to live, work and visit. By creating designated spaces for cycling, and creating routes that better connect our town centres, we want to help people get about safely and cut down unnecessary traffic, so that people want to spend time in West Berkshire.

Our LCWIP provides a new, strategic and long-term approach to developing cycling and walking improvements, and reflects our shared ambition with central government's Gear Change Strategy to make cycling and walking the natural choices for shorter journeys, and for part of longer-distance journeys.

Increasing the numbers of cycling and walking journeys is central to tackling some of the country’s pressing challenges, including carbon emissions and the climate emergency, poor air quality, physical inactivity, poor public health, and levels of traffic congestion. Better active travel infrastructure can also improve access to jobs, education and facilities, enhance economic vitality, improve mental wellbeing, reduce social isolation and improve the environmental quality. The LCWIP is one of the key means by which West Berkshire Council is seeking to address these issues.

Our LCWIP will be developed over time, improving active travel networks and aligning to corporate objectives, transport and planning policies. We have worked in partnership with local stakeholders to identify priority areas and locations for planning, and providing infrastructure to enable more cycling and walking journeys to be made.

This first version of our LCWIP focuses on routes in the following urban areas:

The LCWIP process is intended to create walking and cycling networks that connect people with places and activities. It focuses on areas which have the highest existing demand, and greatest future potential for increasing the distance and frequency of cycling and walking trips. This typically means built-up urban areas which contain most key trip origins and destinations within walking and cycling distance. However, the LCWIP is intended to be live document which can be expanded over time to include significant new developments, and widen the geographic scope to cover journeys in and between our more rural settlements.

The LCWIP process has a particular emphasis on utility journeys, which are everyday journeys made for a purpose, such as commuting to work, accessing education, healthcare or retail attractions. Directness and journey times are often important considerations when making utility journeys. However, our LCWIP also identifies leisure corridors to be developed. These were informed by public feedback from previous council consultations, and stakeholder comments submitted to date.

The consultation period for residents to have their say on our proposed LCWIP has ended.

Following the close of the initial consultation, your feedback and suggestions are being considered, and we will publish the results and the next steps shortly. You can still view other people's comments.

However, if you have any specific walking and cycling proposals of your own, or wish to comment on a location which falls outside of the LCWIP routes please use the West Berkshire Active Travel Heat Map to choose a location and add your suggestion in the comments. The Heat Map is open for comments until Friday, 2 July 2021.