Article from the Cumberland News
A significant development has been made to the campaign to reopen a viaduct as a footpath and cycle path.
The Carlisle Waverley Viaduct Trust have been given a major confidence boost in its mission to reopen the viaduct to pedestrians after university students produced a survey.
The survey, which the five postgraduate students. from Northumbria University Newcastle created, will help the trust clearly justify its reasons for reopening the viaduct. David Ramshaw of the Carlisle Waverley Viaduct Trust said: “When we started this project ten years ago, we went around all of the pubs collecting signatures. “We got 5,000 signatures that said that we wanted to see the viaduct reopened, but that is all that was said. “This survey is a brand new survey – it asks questions like ‘are you aware of the trust trying to reopen the viaduct?’, ‘how did you find out about this?’ and ‘would you be prepared to volunteer as a Friend of the viaduct?’ If we can get enough people to fill it in, we will have a survey similar to the other one with a large number of people, but we will have data that we can to a funder [with] and say ‘look, 40 per cent of the people who have responded have said they are willing to support us in [these] particular ways.
“They would give all the reasons why they want to cross the viaduct. In some cases this might be commuting to work, or walking your dog. “Not only can we say that we have got this support, but we [can say] that we have got this support with these reasons as to why they want to see the viaduct reopened and that might help us to get in money.”
Carlisle city councillor Les Tickner, who is also a lecturer at Northumbria University, arranged for the students to help the trust. The students are also helping by conducting research and creating a viable plan for the viaduct something the Carlisle Waverley Viaduct Trust has been campaigning to have reopened for 11 years.
You can take a look at the survey at https://northumbria.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/carlisle-waverley-viaduct-trust
