Friday, April 3 2009
Transport planner and engineer JMP is helping the National Trust with a key bridge project as part of its most ambitious landscape-scale habitat restoration project, the Wick Fen Vision in Cambridgeshire.
National Trust has appointed JMP, together with Transport for Leisure, to undertake a feasibility study for a new bridge crossing the Burwell Lode as part of delivering the Wicken Fen Vision. This will build on a recent collaboration between the two companies to develop a visitor travel plan for the Vision area.
The Wicken Fen Vision is an ambitious 100 year project by the Trust to create a landscape- scale nature reserve covering 56 sq km to the north of Cambridge, in an area under extreme pressure from population growth and housing and infrastructure development.
Keen to reduce the environmental impact of visitors, the National Trust wants to encourage walking, cycling and horse riding to access and move around the Vision lands. The central spine route will need to cross a number of historic fenland waterways, known as lodes, and the crossing of Burwell Lode is an important element of providing access through the area.
The existing Wicken Fen Nature Reserve and neighbouring Anglesey Abbey currently attracts in the region of a quarter of a million visitors each year. Providing a strategic link in the form of a central spine route between the two Trust properties is a fundamental element in encouraging visitors to explore the area while ensuring that the important areas of conservation interest are protected from the avoidable impacts of human activity.
Martin Revill, a JMP associate director, commented: “Providing this new crossing of the Burwell Lode will help to unlock a range of links to local communities through the fen.”