Huge £5m bill to make just over 500m of road more cycle friendly

The full cost of a new cycle route through Cardiff's Roath Recreation Ground has been revealed. The project includes the cycle route along the side of the playing fields as well as changes for buses, pedestrians, parking and drainage on nearby roads and will cost nearly £5m.

Cardiff council's £4.7m plans for the route have already been contentious as the park is losing one of its football pitches for eight months while the construction takes place. The work began in February and is expected to be completed at some point in the autumn.

The cycleway is dubbed "phase one" of a wider scheme. The length of the new cycleway is around 560m. It is the latest of several cycleways to be built in Cardiff in recent years, including those along Tudor Street, Cathays Terrace and Allensbank Road.

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Residents were consulted on the plans but some were frustrated at plans to permanently close part of a well-used road and temporarily close a sports pitch during construction.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act show the cost for phase one of the scheme (which includes the entirety of the segment currently being built), is £4,730,000. This is broken down into £3,432,000 for construction and a further:

• £196,000 for surveys

• £388,000 for design

• £209,000 for accommodation works

• £490,000 for project management

• £10,000 for monitoring and evaluation

• £5,000 for promotion

Some of this money will come from the Welsh Government via its Active Travel funding. A spokesperson could not confirm how much of the £3,333,000 spent in the 2024/25 financial year came from the Welsh Government but said £1,059,648.38 was contributed from the Welsh Government across 2022/23 and 2023/24. The FOI data confirmed a total of £1,397,000 was spent on the project before 2024/25 including the council's contributions.

A council spokesperson said: "This scheme is a significant investment into cycling and walking routes in this part of the city providing better facilities for recreational cyclists as well as those that want to go shopping, go to work, or go to school. The council consulted on this scheme with local residents and representatives in March 2022 and again in December 2022/January 2023. Following the feedback all comments were carefully considered and specific design changes were made as appropriate.

"When installing a cycleway such as this it is essential that we strike the balance between different transport modes to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians are safe, bus travel is improved, and junctions are re-modelled to ensure motorists are still able to get to their chosen destination. The council is committed to improving cycling and walking routes across the city and this scheme is a further step towards developing a city-wide segregated cycle network that will interconnect with public transport routes to provide a credible alternative to travelling by private car."

Work began on phase one in late February and is expected to cause disruption for a total of eight months. When completed, the council says it will include:

• A new segregated cycleway between Wellfield Road and Alder Road and improved footpaths in the playing field

• Improvements to Penylan Library and Community Centre car park, which frequently flood

• Improved drainage around the community centre using sustainable drainage techniques and new collection chambers

• Improvements to the junction of Wellfield Road, Marlborough Road, Penylan Road and Ninian Road to improve pedestrian waiting areas, junction capacity and bus travel

• A new cycleway crossing across this junction to connect the existing Wellfield Road pop-up cycleway with the new Roath Park cycleway

• Replacing the priority narrowings on Ty-Draw Road with four ramped up pedestrian crossing points

• Improvements to bus travel, including a new bus stop travelling northbound on Ninian Road and building out some of the existing stops to improve access

• Improving the zebra crossing on Ninian Road at Pen-Y-Wain Road and building a shared footway for cyclists and pedestrians towards Roath Park Primary School.

Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns at Cycling UK, said the cycleway was part of wider plans for "much needed" cycle routes and active travel options north of the city centre. He added: "As the recently published Cycling and Walking Index for Cardiff shows, this is what the people of Cardiff want, with 56% supporting more space for people walking, wheeling and cycling, and only 26% opposing.

"As for the cost, transport infrastructure spending always sounds expensive, but the cost of cycling and walking schemes is tiny when compared to other road schemes, and critically, the return on investment is much higher, with every pound bringing nearly six pounds back in wider benefits."