Two Tunnels Greenway

A new link path for Bath and North East Somerset

  Vote until Monday 10th December: high noon.

Vote for Connect2 by phone:
ring between noon today and noon on Monday: 0870 24 24 602

Also, use your email account to vote for 'Connect2' at the Peoples 50 millions web site, and help catalyse the formation of a new shared-use path for the city of Bath, UK, and its neighbouring settlements of Midford, Wellow and Radstock/Midsomer Norton.

You can help. We've reached a key stage and this week have planning permission: read more. Now we need funding. Vote for Sustrans' 'Connect2' lottery bid before 10th December using the People's 50 millions' link above.

Also, sign up and join over 400 supporters -
at our 'Yahoogroup' mailing list.

Download, print and display our ... Two Tunnels/Connect2 poster. PDF - 278 kilobytes. It has a white background - it won't drink your ink - that's a thumbnail of the poster at the top of the page. Print it at home - and display it at work, on noticeboards, in a window.

Watch a two minute TV clip courtesy of ITV West (9 megabytes - select the link and be prepared to wait while it downloads)

If you're on 'Facebook', join the Two Tunnels Facebook group. We need supporters from schools, colleges, athletics groups and the local universities - major users of the proposed path but under-represented on our own support group. Now that you've discovered this project, spread the word and help it to happen.

Campaign beer! Look out for the 'Last Mile'.

Send our own 'Connect2' video to your friends. That hound's heading for the 'Connect2' vote! 'Connect2' video on Youtube or alternative link. (3 megabyte download)

The path will use an old rail trackbed to burrow beneath Combe Down - the high ground south of the city - creating an almost level and direct route between the city centre of Bath and the Sustrans path NCN 24, 2½ miles south of the city. NCN24 then takes up the self same trackbed, across Midford Viaduct and to Wellow. NCN 24 is the gateway to an emerging wider network of other shared use paths.

If you're worried that these paths are a highway for antisocial behaviour, experiences elsewhere shows that shared use paths have the opposite effect - once derelict land is treated as an asset for the community, antisocial behaviour falls - see our 'Ifs and Buts' page. Good design and maintenance as well as adoption of the path by its community are contributors to this.

Reusing long rail tunnels can seem alarming to the uninitiated, but experiences worldwide are most positive, and there's formal research to back this up. In the UK several long tunnels are in successful use as paths, including one at Staple Hill, Bristol, on the Bristol to Bath path, less than an hour's cycle ride from the 'Two Tunnels' route - and the police have told us that they've met no particular concerns about the safety of users in that urban tunnel over many years.

Look at it this way

If this line had been opened fifty years earlier, we'd value it as part of Georgian Bath.

Instead, its structures are 'Blue-brick patchwork Victorian'. Unglamorous, the line carried millions of people to holidays on the south coast, carried the beer from Burton to Dorset, carried the coal that gave Bath the grimy black and silver appearance that many people will recall from the days before its buildings were cleaned.

It's as much a part of Bath's history as Pulteney Bridge, and as a national rail link, it was the stuff of legend, which makes its local neglect all the more unfortunate.

Who is this for though?

• People on bikes, both local and long distance
• People who need space for exercise, but can't manage stiles and narrow muddy paths
• People who exercise by running. A circuit via the complete Two Tunnels shared path and then back via NCN 24 and 4 is a half marathon in length ...
• People looking for space to enjoy easy walking in groups.
• People on horses - some sections of this path will add valuable routes for people on horseback
• Children love the thrill of tunnels.
• Elderly people appreciate paths of this nature
• People with pushchairs and children.
• People the world over who look to conserve the route of the line

Safety and Neighbour Concerns

South of Midford, this line is now carrying people on cycles and on foot, but this use peters out on the approach to Bath. Why the NCN24 itself doesn't take this route is down to the perceived cost of reusing those engineering works at a time when there was less finance around for this type of project, but also safety perceptions and misinformation about the tunnels.

Neighbours to derelict land see it as a source of problems with vandalism and unwanted visitors. Tunnels are perceived as unsafe. However, experience elsewhere indicates that opening shared-use paths reduces vandalism and antisocial behaviour, as the land and structures are no longer seen as derelict.

Studies also find that managed reuse, of even long rail tunnels, does not have negative implications for the safety of the users: and that reuse brings benefits to the local economy. Here's a link to a study carried out in America on reuse of a wide range of urban and rural tunnels including examples of 1½ and over 2 miles in length

Environmental Aspects

• Parts of the proposed path adjoin wildlife reserves
• much of the route has outstanding flora
• Combe Down Tunnel is inhabited by bats.

Development of the path does not preclude improvements to its immediate environment - clearing saplings promotes the more rare grassland habitat that flourished on the railway's banks until forty years ago. The tunnels must be assessed to bring them back into use without negative effects on the bat populations

Timescale

With permissions and legal aspects in place,
path construction may take 15 months.

Priorities

Maintenance of structures

At particular risk is the large viaduct at Tucking Mill (ownership unknown) and a smaller viaduct in Lyncombe Vale, owned by B&NES. Both cross public rights of way. They are neither of them in poor condition, but will be at risk from avoidable deterioration. Both need a decision: either demolition, or a planned preventative maintenance programme to secure their future. For Tucking Mill Viaduct, once questions of its ownership are resolved, an early task is vegetation removal - the urgent threat to the structure being tree roots from saplings on the viaduct deck.

Finances

Grants are available for this type of path, bringing money into the local economy, turning liabilities into assets. Two of the three viaducts in particular need maintenance or demolition. Both approaches represent expenses, but these structures are assets: it's better to seek grant money that enables their reuse rather than eventual demolition through neglect.

If anything, the major obstacle is a perception that this is all too expensive. A previous bid for funding costed this project to the tune of around £8 million in 1996, something that's now cited as a reason not to proceed. However, a quality path can be built for a small fraction of that sum, which, among other factors, costed the existing rail tunnel as a new excavation!

Consider Midford Viaduct, now reused by NCN24, courtesy of a £163,000 grant from the Department for Transport, or the recent restoration of Midford aqueduct, at a cost of £850,000. The 'Two Tunnels' route will still cost rather more than both of these put together, but it is achievable, desirable and, given the benefits, not unaffordable. If you'd use this resource and you've got this far, do something today to help this happen.

Support

Join our support group, it's free, and there's more information as to why this will help here.

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