And yet, as I travel down St Peter’s Valley on my way to St Helier, not on a daily basis and not in ‘rush hour’, I marvel at the number of vehicles, men and materials – not to mention temporary traffic lights – being used to construct what? An expensive cycle path.
Now, it must be more than six months ago that your paper carried a picture of the Infrastructure Minister, suitably adorned with the regulatory safety cycling helmet and half a dozen colleagues, lining up to open the first stage of this money-burning project. That picture shows more cyclists than I have seen in total using the path since. In all those months I have seen precisely one cyclist and not a single pedestrian. How can that vast expense be justified?
During the early winter, when leaves were tumbling off the trees, I noted there was no attempt to clear the path, and thin bicycle tyres plus wet leaves equals potential disaster. Maybe this lack of maintenance put the cyclists off for good.
This is the same department that got through eye-watering amounts of money in making so-called ‘improvements’ to the road systems in St Mary and St Aubin. We all know your readers’ views on that.
