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

Transcript

00:00Just on the Derry Riverfront project, I think it looks absolutely fabulous, it'd be transformational

00:06for the city centre, but I think it's even more ambitious than it looks, just in terms of

00:12it's more than reshaping the public road scheme. I wonder, factored into the cost and stuff like that,

00:20is there additional investment in public transport?

00:23I suppose you're correct in saying the riverfront is planned to be transformational and effectively

00:33bring that area of road into the city. I think that's what they're trying to do and to promote

00:39active and sustainable travel and reshape that whole area within the funding envelope that they

00:47had. We developed the scheme and have done detailed costings and a detailed programme for delivery

00:53and the integrated team that would be required to oversee its delivery within that 45 million.

01:02And I suppose that will deliver the key infrastructure around the public transport,

01:07the potential for bus lanes, additional public transport infrastructure, the physical

01:14aspects. In terms of the likes of future public transport, there has been a level of

01:23traffic modelling has been done with the existing bus fleet. And with journey time reliability,

01:31more people will use the buses. So it will actually allow and attract more people to use them,

01:36which will then take the pressures off the roads. So yeah, it's part of a bigger plan and part of,

01:43I suppose, the council's wider LDP for the city and will feed into the North West Transport

01:51Plan as well. So there are a number of pieces of the jigsaw associated with this project

01:58in terms of infrastructure, but it's a major step in the right direction around

02:07prioritising public transport, getting more people to walk and to cycle within that city area.