Abbey Lane Accessibility Scheme
Since December 2020 members of Friends of Ecclesall Woods have been campaigning for improvements to Abbey Lane to enable safe crossing between Wood 2 and 3. We’ve used the active travel map, crossing counts and finally a change.org petition to highlight local support for improvements here. The petition was presented at the council in March 2021 and a feasibility study about improvements was commissioned by the council.
This was presented to us at a public meeting in the woods on the 20th May, see the Powerpoint slides for the full presentation. We were delighted about the amount of thought, work and progress that had been happening. The proposals include a plan to review the speed limit and multiple central refuges to enable people to more easily cross the roads. Much consideration had been given to how the footfall flows across the woods and how to do improvements with as little impact on the habitats on the woods. The next steps will be for a formal public consultation with the plans to be hosted on the Connecting Sheffield website soon.
We have been really fortunate to have considerable cross party support for our campaign and particularly thank Barbara Masters, Douglas Johnson and Julie Grocutt for their support and help to push this forward.