If you’re on the Beastway email list you should already have heard about the Open Meeting this Weds 30 March that’s been organised by the Eastway Users’ Group. There are two plans on the table for the New Eastway which should open in May 2013.
The first is from the Olympic Delivery Authority. It’s funded, agreed with the users and it has planning consent to be built as soon as the Games are done. There is a road circuit in open parkland spanning the River Lea and separate decks of the bridges take off-road trails around the river banks and up into areas north of the A12. It’s suitable for MTB XC racing and would allow for something approaching the original Beastway which regularly exceeded its field size of 200 riders on Weds evenings through 15 weeks of summer. Cyclocross is also planned for in the off-road schemes, and of course the road circuit is pretty good. Users seem to like the plans which might not be perfect, but they are a massive advance over the fist draft of a legacy plan which a previous open meeting got thrown out (Too much history to go into here, but the basic principle applies that planners should simply ask what people think and then go ahead in cooperation.)

The second ‘alternative’ comes from the Olympic Park Legacy Company which cmae up with its own plan, free of any cycle sport input. This was probably because it needed to get a parcel of land in the legacy parklands so it can build posh houses on it and it’s certainly the case that there are a lot of people with housing development backgrounds now seeking to put up a plan which shoves the agreed scheme out of the way. It’s very tight on space and it doesn’t easily connect up with the trails that go N of the A12.

Anyhow, you would want to know the detail of each plan in order to make your mind up properly.

EUG has called a meeting and invited both the above organisations to come and present their schemes so riders can decide which is best. This will be useful information to guide everyone who’s been involved in the planning and it’s your chance to find out what your public money is being spent on. In case you think this is so much hot air and ordinary people can’t get plans changed, you could not be more mistaken, since it’s users who won the right to a relocation and a legacy, when the first plans offered nothing in return for the loss of Eastway.

Hope to see you at the open meeting which takes place 7 – 9pm this Wednesday 30 March at the Mathodist Hall in Approach Road, Bethnal Green London E2 (on the W side of Victoria Park)