Bike Worcester: Musings on Kepax Bridge (and beyond)

Kepax Bridge on a beautiful winter’s morning

Kepax Bridge

So straight out the traps here…we (as in Bike Worcester) think Kepax Bridge is brilliant. No ifs, no buts, it’s a fantastic asset, already well used (albeit anecdotally), and enables and encourages journeys to be made on foot or bike, either by providing a more direct route for people travelling across the river for journeys in the north of city, or by providing an additional route via Gueluvelt Park and Pitchcroft into the city centre. And it’s attractive, nay gorgeous, as in nice to look at and experience, and walking or cycling in parks or green spaces is much more pleasant than sharing space with motor vehicles, amaright?

From a personal perspective it features in a number of journeys I now make across the city each week, and I’ve got work colleagues that use it on a daily basis, but we were already making these journeys by bike so unfortunately no modal shift there. But it will happen for others. It always does when you add quality infrastructure to a network.

So there we go. This is officially Bike Worcester’s shortest blog. Bosher. Knocked it out the park.

Oh, wait uno minuto, I seem to have misread the brief; what’s that bit up there in brackets?

And Beyond

OK, so it’s not just about the bridge right? It’s also the connectivity at either end. I get it.

Let’s take a look at what was originally conceived.

On the 17th June 2020 Worcester City Council published this blog, which mentions the figure of eight route (linking Diglis, Sabrina and Kepax), improvements to the Severn Way south of the bridge, improvements to a route on the east to the city centre, and links to Hallow and Broadheath. The Worcestershire County Council page here also mentions the figure of eight route along the River Severn, a popular riverside route.

Diving a little deeper and looking at the documents tabled at the County Council Planning and Regulatory Committee 28th September 2021 [Agenda Item 6] [links to all documents here] (it’s a lot of reading, granted; let me know your personal highlight in the comments below) there’s some other tasty morsels, such as access to the Severn Way on the west side being highlighted as a key trip attractor; FYI the Severn Way is now closed to the north as a result of erosion, with no plans for minor diversion or repair, and to the south the message is ‘it is not a defined public right of way, so is not maintainable by our Public Rights of Way team’. So nowt to do with us mate. This despite a lovely inviting path luring walkers and bicyclists alike to the riverside path (despite recent news reports it is passable when it’s not flooded (strong recommend on wellies or walking boots), but has been a mud bath since the bridge opened in December, partly caused by increased foot fall; it needs some TLC). The document also references that Section 106 funds and additional funds from Department for Transport would be spent on associated improvements. To our knowledge, no additional spending is currently planned.

Captain Collier on the west riverside path

So what’s your beef? You’ve got the bridge, shut up already!

No you shut up already!

(apologies; I appear to have drifted into an imaginary argument with myself)

The project was quite rightly sold as more than a bridge, with bold ambitions for behaviour change (notably modal shift) and to enable and encourage more active travel with wider connectivity to adjacent villages (Hallow and Broadheath). Let’s have a quick run down of some of grumbles (in the spirit of continuous improvement):

The concept

I’d love to know where the original seed of the idea came from for Kepax, like who gets the credit? If you really wanted to connect Hallow (and Grimley) to Worcester, a crossing at Bevere would have provided low traffic links from the villages on the west, and low traffic route into the city centre on the east. It’s a narrower crossing, and could have saved a stack of money. This was mentioned by Cllr Scott Richardson Brown, member for Hallow, during one of the Council meetings.

Connection to Hallow

From Hallow to Worcester is about 3 miles, so an hours walk. This is OK by foot, as there’s a footpath all the way, albeit the surface isn’t great (currently being patched up) and there’s a section of road with a 60 mph limit. By bike this takes about 15 minutes but this involves sharing the road with motor vehicles, which are at times travelling at speed. I know it well, as it’s my commute to work. It’s a hotspot for close passes.

So without improvement, it’s either a long walk (not that people don’t do it), or (be diplomatic) an unattractive, or (be honest) an unpleasant and disturbing bike ride, probably unsuitable for inexperienced or younger riders. An obvious improvement would be to resurface and in places widen the entire footway as far as Kepax and make it shared use, but no plans for that as we speak. Write. Type.

The Figure of Eight

Put simply, it only exists as a concept. I’ve both walked and cycled it, or rather I’ve joined up the 3 bridges in something that resembles it. There are challenges beyond a muddy path, and I’m surprised the phrase was ever used, coined by people (a person?) who are either ignorant, don’t care, or both, and then repeated in council documents, meetings and in the press. In latter reports the adjective ‘attractive’ has been added. By bike it involves cycling on busy roads, in some cases 3 and 4 lanes of traffic travelling in a single direction, on shared use paths, and crossing a dual carriageway. On foot is better (but less likely due to the distance), but includes narrow footways adjacent to busy roads, and the same desire line crossing at the east side of the road bridge. I’d be interested to hear the experiences of anyone who has done it in a wheelchair, or other mobility vehicle.

The lovely ramp inviting users to the west riverside path

The cost

The current number used for the cost of the scheme is £16,000,000, but I suspect it will end up higher than this. If we’d spent this much money on improvements to cycling infrastructure across the city, we could have had a much bigger impact on increasing cycling rates. I mean, it’s just about enough to buy every resident a (cheap) bike.

‘Duh, funding doesn’t work like that, Dan’.

I know, funding doesn’t work like that.

It’s a lovely bridge, but I suspect there might have been cheaper designs out there, maybe quicker to build. C’est la vie, but one to think about for future projects.

Other gripes / suggested improvements

If we want to understand whether any piece of infrastructure or intervention is having the desired impact, we need to measure it. In this case the intention of the bridge was to increase active travel rates, and enable modal shift for journeys currently undertaken in cars. The planning documents also make reference to expected usage rates. So we need to measure this, which in this case would involve counting people using the bridge. Both Sabrina Bridge and Diglis Bridge have pedestrian and bike counters installed (albeit reliability seems to be a problem) but we’re not aware of counters going in on Kepax. We’d love to be wrong (we’d also love access to the data).

The signage is currently poor. Some of it’s obscured by foliage, and directing people from slightly further afield (eg. from Droitwich Road) is currently absent.

There are no benches on the approach to the bridge from the west side. It took a while for the penny to drop for me, but benches are a big enabler for people with a limited range when walking. Which is why Bike Worcester volunteers mapped the city benches a couple of years ago.

There’s also a desperate need for more waste bins.

Also given people have been walking and exercising dogs on the top of the landfill for years, and there are steps to access the field from the Severn Way, why are we now faced with locked gates to enable access from the new path on the west side of the river accessing Kepax Bridge?

Summary

So there we have it. The bridge is ace, the bits around the edges less so, and as far as the project as a whole is concerned, there’s still plenty to do meet the brief as conceived and signed off during planning.

We look forward to the continued improvements.

Kepax Bridge is well used