A £10 million pound project to create a cycle ‘superhighway’ along the A4 has piqued the interest of the government.

Back in November 2020, Slough senior councillors were presented with early plans to create a “paradigm shift” in the town by transforming the existing wide verges, service roads, and shared paths from Huntercombe to the town centre into segregated and part-segregated cycle routes.

The scheme is meant to improve cycle safety, ease off traffic on the busy road, decrease air pollution, and encourage more residents to take up cycling.

Speaking in November, Savio DeCruz, the service lead for major infrastructure projects, said this plan could make Slough a “forerunner for other urban towns”.

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At a cabinet meeting on Monday, January 17, Mr DeCruz provided senior councillors with the progress since presenting the early proposal.

He said the council received £250,000 from the Department for Transport (DFT) in 2021 to prepare the design of the cycle ‘superhighway’.

However, that work was put on pause late last year to discuss the bid, which could cost £10m and is the highest bid DFT has received, with the government.

Mr DeCruz said: “The main reason we paused it is because we don’t want to spend the £250,000 on the design and then they [DFT] give us a quarter of the amount to implement the scheme that we want to.”

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But cabinet members heard the DFT officials were “interested in taking it forward”.

A decision on whether or not the council has been successful in the bid is expected to be given by early spring. Once the funds are secured, the design process will be restarted in implementing the scheme, Mr DeCruz said.