Widen Lower Ham River Walkway

The walkway from Lower Ham Road to the start of Canbury Gardens needs to be widened for Health and Safety reasons.

Since covid, people have taken to walking in a big way, and walking into Kingston is by far a relaxing way of doing so, it aids everyone’s health and wellbeing and has encouraged more people to walk into Kingston and not drive.

Its nice to see the Canbury Gardens walk through has now been widened to take cyclist and walkers, but getting there from Ham or North Kingston, is not so good.

Mums with buggies especially, struggle to get past others coming in the opposite direction so do people walking side by side, the current pavements are uneven and force people to walk in the mud track (or fall into a bush), widening would give pedestrians amble room to walk past each other without having to stop and let them through.

So, my suggestion: Widening the entire pavement route from Lower Ham Road to Canbury Gardens into a 3mt wide walkway, there is able room to do so (albeit work needs to done to remove bushes, old stone walls, etc) and it would tidy up the area at the same time, there is also a lot of the vegetation from the houses along that route overhanging the walkway which owners need (forced) to cut back.

I’m not a cyclist, but it would help them if a defined marked cycle lane be painted on the road. It would make it safer and not force them to use the pavement.

The remodeling of the road itselfe would be benificial, make it one way, and remove all parking bays, then paint on a cycle lane

I know there are certain areas of the walkway that can’t be widened for obvious reasons, but we should at least look at a 95% improvement

To aid people's well being and encourage more people to walk and not drive, my sugggestion above will make the whole process of walking to Kingston, memerable, safe and reduce polution.