SHOULD a cycle route be built through Boscombe shopping precinct?

That’s the suggestion from the chair of Bournemouth Cycling Forum.

John Hayter said: “I’d like to see waymarked route that cyclists could use without breaking the law.

“I think it would be very well used.”

The precinct was pedestrianised and closed to cars and bikes in 1990.

The Echo reported in June how police were cracking down on illegal cycling after a series of near misses with pedestrians.

Mr Hayter, a former Lib Dem councillor for Wallisdown and Winton, said: “I know there’s great objections to people going through the precinct at the moment.

“But surely there must be a way of accommodating cycling through that wide area?

“The only alternative is cycling around the Sovereign Centre where there are two quite difficult roundabouts to negotiate.

“You have to move into the road to turn right and the traffic is fast and pressing.

“Boscombe has been regenerated but cyclists have been left out.

“We have to keep pressing the council to get safe cycling through that critical area of Boscombe.”

Mr Hayter raised the idea during December’s meeting of the Cycling Forum at Bournemouth town hall.

The members had just heard plans for a contraflow cycle lane on Roumelia Lane – but Mr Hayter thought that was not enough.

He said: “We need to make more substantial efforts if we are to get people to use their bikes. Certainly people don’t really want to cycle down the lane, where, after all, our MP Tobias Ellwood got a black eye when he accosted somebody.”

Councillor Dave Smith pointed out that Roumeila that has itself been improved since that incident and is now ‘quite a buzzing area.’