Woodley Cycle Route

Work set to start on Woodley cycle route

We have agreed to progress plans to create a new cycle link from Woodley’s town centre into Reading Borough at Palmer Park with works due to start later this year.

This will be completed in phases, connecting the precinct to Palmer Park via Woodlands Avenue, Church Road, Palmerstone Road and Culver Lane.

We're planning for work to start at Palmer Park and progress towards Woodley. Have a look at the detailed plans and a summary of the route.

We’re still finalising parts of the plans with Reading Borough Council, as the route connects into its area, and will update once these details are confirmed.

We've consulted residents several times and removed less popular aspects of the original proposals, like making part of Woodlands Avenue one-way.

Changes for the final designs include:

• Ensuring the road on Woodlands Avenue, between Howth Drive and Crockhamwell Road, is at least 5.5m wide.
• Keeping the Woodlands Avenue laybys next to the park and green space.
• The shared-use path on Woodlands Avenue, between the leisure centre and Church Road, will remain. It may be widened, subject to future funding.
• Making the section under the railway bridge to Palmer Park entrance on Culver Lane shared use.

This is funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) via Active Travel England.

Why we're building the Woodley to Reading Active Travel Route

We’re aiming to improve our borough’s routes to make walking and cycling the natural choice for local journeys - and parts of longer ones where possible. Increasing cycling and walking can help us tackle some of society’s most challenging issues – improving air quality, combating climate change, improving people’s health and wellbeing, addressing inequality and tackling congestion on our roads. 

This aligns with a number of the borough’s strategic objectives including keeping the borough moving, enjoying a clean and green borough, and the actions within the Climate Emergency Action Plan and our new Local Transport Plan 4.

Woodley to Reading is one of the key routes which have been identified in our emerging Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan, a borough-wide strategic document. We asked residents to choose from three different locations for us to spend our active grant on, and this location was highlighted as being the most likely to encourage more active travel. The link would create a safe, inclusive and direct access to Woodley town centre while connecting it to several schools and leisure facilities.

As part of the Government’s Active Travel Fund, we’ve secured funding to improve the cycling and walking connection between Woodley town centre and the Reading borough boundary at Palmer Park.

The borough’s Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) has been consulted on and adopted by the Council, and this is our primary strategy for delivery of high-quality walking and cycle routes across the borough. The long-term aspiration is to deliver the entire network.

The whole network will require substantial investment which we are mainly dependant on developer and grant funding to deliver. Delivery of this first link in the network is key to demonstrating to the funding bodies (most notably Active Travel England) that Wokingham is committed to delivering high quality infrastructure and the resulting performance of the route will be monitored closely to assess its success, enabling us to learn from this for future active travel schemes. Active Travel England (ATE) have a grading system for Local Authorities, and by continuing to have a good grade Wokingham is able to attract a higher level of funding from DfT.