Last week, News OnTheWight published a Letter to the Editor from Cathy Foulkes in relation to the Ryde Interchange plans.
We asked Cllr Phil Jordan, the Cabinet member for Transport and Infrastructure for his response to Cathy’s view. See below in his own words. Ed
The Ryde Interchange is a time-stamped project that must be completed by March 2023 to receive the funding. It is a transport interchange project that services four transport operators; the ferries, hover, trains and buses as well as taxis, pedestrian and cycle access.
Impositions by grant funding conditions, revisions to project due to grant reductions, carbon neutral targets and requirements of the National Bus Strategy have impacted the general design of the scheme.
Work must start by January 2022
In addition to the public realm area, the pier is to be improved with £3m of the overall funding by Wightlink and the station upgraded with another £3m of the funding pot by rail operators.
The award of the funding was made and confirmed in October 2020 and work must start by January 2022 to meet finish target date of March 2023.
We are out of time on design
At this point, after numbers of years and revised obligations due to government policies and legislation especially around sustainable transport, with a very, very tight timescale to deliver the project it is just not possible to even consider major revised plans with all that entails and then secure the funding.
Put simply, we are out of time on design and very much in pressure to deliver the project. The contract to deliver the project has to be placed with contractors before September 2021.
Public consultation imminent
A public consultation is due to be released in the next two weeks and will be circulated as widely as possible through stakeholders and Ryde Town Council, as well as councillors and social media.
There are opportunities to comment and affect the final public realm area of the project in terms of finishing, colour and street furniture, greenery etc in the 1,000sq m of extra public area space being created within this project.
Plans and details will be contained within the public consultation documents.
Cutting off our noses to spite our faces
Design can be subjective and it’s probably true you cannot please all of the people all of the time, but suggestions that Ryde, the transport interchange and the Island generally, should give up £10m of grant funding to address our transport hub in Ryde because of the overall conditioned design seems a bit like cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
The impact of turning down a grant funding bid from DfT will have serious reputational damage to the Isle of Wight Council at the very moment we are bidding for large sums of DfT funding for the Island.
Cannot refuse to deliver funded projects
Once awarded grants we cannot undertake to refuse to deliver the projects funded.
The door to future funding would likely and understandably be firmly shut in our faces if we ever adopted that strategy.
Image: © Google Maps/Streetview
