£45m riverfront plan will get more people walking, cycling and onto buses, says DFI technical officer

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A senior technical officer at the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) says a £45m plan to transform Derry’s riverfront under the City Deal programme is a major step in prioritising public transport, walking and cycling.

Mr. Darren Campbell, principal professional technical officer at DfI, said the proposals to totally revamp the public road network at Queen’s Quay and the Guildhall will get more and more people onto buses.

Mr. Campbell was asked about the plans by Foyle MLA Mark H. Durkan at the Stormont Infrastructure Committee.

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“The Derry riverfront project looks absolutely fabulous. It will be transformational for the city centre, but it is even more ambitious than it looks. It is more than reshaping the public road scheme. Has additional investment for public transport been factored into the costings for that?” asked the SDLP infrastructure spokesman.

A computer-generated image of how Harbour Square might look under the new proposals.A computer-generated image of how Harbour Square might look under the new proposals.
A computer-generated image of how Harbour Square might look under the new proposals.

Mr. Campbell responded: “You are correct that the riverfront is planned to be transformational. It will bring that area of road into the city. That is what they are trying to do, and to promote active and sustainable travel and reshape that whole area.

“Within the funding envelope that they had, we developed the scheme and had done detailed costings, a detailed programme for delivery and identified the team that would be required to oversee its delivery within that £45 million.”

The plans, said the civil servant, will get more and more people onto buses and encourage people to adopt healthier and more environmentally friendly means of transport.

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“That will deliver the key infrastructure around public transport — the potential for additional bus lanes and the physical aspects of public transport infrastructure.

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“For future public transport, a level of traffic modelling has been done with the existing bus fleet. With journey time reliability, more people will use the buses.

“It will allow and attract more people to use them, which will then take the pressures off the roads. It is part of a bigger plan and part of the council's wider local development plan for the city, and it will also feed into the north-west transport plan.

“There are a number of pieces of the jigsaw associated with this project around infrastructure. It is a major step in the right direction around prioritising public transport and getting more people to walk and cycle within the city area,” he declared.

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