Fixer weekend: London’s planned cycle lane, Catterick potholes and Kent canal arrival

In response to an influx of requests from readers for more bike-friendly ways to get to work, the City of London Corporation has announced it’s going to open one of the country’s busiest cycle routes in time for the start of its election period.

There was a sharp upturn in numbers of cyclists crossing the busy junction at the crossroads of Newington and Tower Hill last year, according to the Corporation’s own figures – but it was feared that the opposition to cyclists crossing the busy junction could have had an impact on some of the poll results.

So it’s opening up the right-hand lane to cyclists – but only for the foreseeable future.

On to work and we’re pleased to report that work on the Blythwood Bridge is coming to an end, with the scaffolding coming down, paving finally laid and concrete flood barriers installed on Friday night.

Every single road in the country has a pothole – and this one in Catterick is getting some attention

The “serious obstruction” to pedestrians and cyclists and erosion of the concrete must have been very depressing and we’re pleased to report that repairs are underway.

And then there’s the… problem. This photograph taken by Brent and Dean reporter Dan Simpson is one of a number we’ve seen that shows the kind of damage done by a pothole in a drainage system.

The narrow, rat-run, cobbled-in street is lined with rows of closely-packed houses and can look rather impressive on a sunny day, but soon it looks like this – only there isn’t very much of it left.

And off we go in our Fixer regular Jakes Farrall’s Impatient Landlord magazine. In last week’s jaunt down the canal in Kent, the spotlight is fixed on Batheaston, a fairly conventional housing estate and passing motorway interchange at the crossroads of the M20 and the M2.

Some work has been done to improve some of the internal roads, but D&D reporter Jakes finds the junction hasn’t really come to the fore in the past.

The next theme of the Fixer is coming on Thursday, 24 July, at 8.30am, and Jakes reckons the new electronic signs showing where all the congestion is are about to turn are really useful.

Don’t miss them – as we told Jakes we would last time, then: “We fully hope we’ve persuaded Jakes to keep doing a weekly commute from his office on Hackney Road.”

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