WATCH: Rainwater ‘pooling’ in £1m Hereford city street scheme

Questions have been asked about the quality and design of a central Hereford road scheme costing over £1 million.

Non-aligned councillor Jim Kenyon questioned the work on the cycle “contraflow” in St Owen Street, on which work is ongoing, during last Friday’s full meeting of Herefordshire councillors.

“I made a video of the ‘pooling’ along the freshly laid cycle lane. It’s an awful job,” he said. “Who appointed the contractors?”

The council’s transport portfolio holder Coun John Harrington said that the council’s public realm contractor Balfour Beatty “were commissioned, and contracted a subcontractor” to do the work.

The work, “including the issue of pooling, will be quality checked as a normal process”, he said.

“We have a response that the pooling was because of the heavy rain that day. I’ve said that’s not good enough, and to go and check it. We will pass on their response.”

Conservative councillor Carole Gandy said she had also examined the work this week, and found it “poor”.

“What I find bizarre is that cyclists are able to go in either direction,” she said. “But if you park there, I can see drivers pulling out without looking for cyclists coming in the other direction.

“Why did we decide cycles could go in both directions, with a cycle lane only in the direction of the city centre?”

To which Coun Harrington said: “You might ask your cabinet, because it was their scheme. It’s a very good idea in my opinion, because it’s a desire line, people were going up it anyway.

“The issue is how do we protect people [from cyclists] going the other way [from traffic]. The previous administration’s scheme did that, but it wasn’t compliant with new legislation saying you had to segregate cyclists where you could.”

Coun Kenyon later said he had seen cyclists going in both directions on the dedicated one-way cycle lane, and that he had also noticed a potentially hazardous “lip” at the lane’s edge, “where people are going to fall over”.

The work forms part of a wider £6 million package of improvements around the city centre jointly funded by the Marches local enterprise partnership (LEP).