Worthing Prom to Sea Lane

2018 has seen a new wave of interest from local politicians and residents to make it possible to continue to cycle along the prom from George V Avenue west to the Sea Lane cafe and beyond !!

Cycling has been allowed on the Worthing Promenade for some years now, and this has proven to be extremely popular with cyclists of all ages.

However there is no facility to reach the Promenade, or leave it, at the western end. There is a "No Cycling" sign a little way from the end, but no clues at all as to how cyclists are supposed to proceed.

There is funding available to widen the footpath to the west of the Prom, effectively extending the wide promenade further west. This would provide enough space to continue the non-segregated cycle route at least as far as the sailing club, if not nearly all the way to the Sea Lane Cafe.

A cycleway here was included in the WSCC application for the Local Sustainable Transport Fund second tranche. Sadly, although WSCC were awarded 50% of the funding (nearly £2.5 million!) not a single penny of this money will be spent in Worthing. The cycleway was costed at half a million for the LSTF bid, apparently a lot of the cost was for drainage, which seems odd given that most of the route sits on top of shingle!

Cost

The original plan, to widen the existing footway between the Prom and Sea Lane, plus the path to Allinora Avenue, was included in WSCC's Local Sustainable Transport Plan second tranche bid, costed at £500,000. This seems to be extremely expensive for some path widening, working out at £333,000 per km.

For comparison, the recently opened cycleway from Falmer to Woodingdean ("New Downland Cycleway Opens" press release) cost £190,000 for a 2.5km route. That works out at £76,000 per km for a brand-new cycleway, just a quarter of the cost that WSCC quoted for the Prom extension.  If we used the Falmer-Woodingdean path cost as a guide, the Prom extension would be estimated to cost closer to £100,000, rather than half a million.

Sustrans Support for this as National Cycle Network route 2

Sustrans, naturally, would like to see this resolved as part of the completion of National Cycle Network route 2 along the south coast. This nationally-important cycle route currently stops at the western end of Worthing Prom.

Here is the Sustrans proposal to support Option 1, widening the existing path to extend the shared-use Promenade as far as Sea Place:  NCN2 Worthing George V Avenue - Sea Lane Proposal (JC).pdf

May 2014 update :-

Now that it is understood WBC & WSCC have resolved the ownership of the land abutting the Sea Place development, WCF are pressing WBC's principal engineer to progress the proposed scheme - to widen the seafront footpath from George V Avenue to Sea Place to allow for a cycle path - which is already funded by the developer's S.106 contribution.