Residents do not feel safe cycling through St James

Today, St James is largely overrun by housing, which has a negative impact on quick and easy transport.

Those who cycle through the Main road in St James (A4500) find the journey to be difficult.

Northampton resident Tyler Watts uses a bicycle as his main form of transport around the town, cycling through St James End to get to the University of Northampton each day.

Watts discussed how unsafe he feels when having to cycle through the area “St James is bad for cycling”

“There’s no cycle paths because of terrestrial houses”.

With no spaces to cycle on the path or the road, Watts has frequently injured himself whilst cycling to university.

“Cycling at the roundabout outside St James retail park is really dangerous. Last week I saw a car and a cyclist crash into each other”. 

St James also lacks the space to cycle for leisure.

As of today, there are two official cycle routes that pass through St James End, both of which have great views of St James’s greenery scenes.

One of the St James End cycle routes connects to Brampton Valley Way, a beautiful rail trail which begins next to the Northampton Train Station.

The traffic-free cycle lane stretches almost 20 miles through fields. 

The other cycle path is the Riverside Trail, which goes through St James’s Foot Meadow (the name given due to its frequent flooding). 

Part of this trail was recently reopened after two months of an ill-informed closure, which stopped cyclists from accessing St James from Bridge Street. 

Watts discussed the lack of cycle space in the area “There should actually be more of them, Brampton Valley is the only good one I can think of”

 “The Brampton Valley Way is really good”

“I did the route in the summer and it took me six hours”.