Wider pavements for pedestrians in Bedford are putting cylists at risk, says campaigner

I wonder if Councillor Charles Royden has been able to work out why they only got 25% of the funds they wanted?

As ever with councillors who want to drive everywhere and are too afraid to actually deal with the real problem the simplest solution is missed once again. Bedford, like so many towns and cities wrestling with this problem fail to do the easiest thing and make situations far worse for everyone.

If you really want to make everyone safer from Covid-19 and pollution, while ensuring that retail space has room for everyone to move around ban the motorists from the area while the shops are open. That still gives ample opportunity for deliveries to be made at the start and end of the working day.

Motorists don't need to be able to park at the store front, perhaps with the exception of blue badge holders, but anyone sensible could facilitate limited parking for genuine blue badge holders.

The biggest problem in urban centres is that the powers that be are motorists too, so see everything from that point of view and of course the vast majority of pedestrians got to the town centres by vehicles in the first place.

Then again, once the second wave has ripped through the economy later in the year there won't be any reason to go into town and city centres anymore. Retail and leisure opportunities are going to be decimated over the next 12 months. Riding a bike might be the only way many people will be able to afford to move around by then.

"We must have cars in the town centre or the shops will die." You've had cars there for years and the shops are indeed dying.  Maybe try something different? 
My home town. The High Street has in my lifetime always been one-way, southbound, carrying the A6, only by-passed in the last couple of years. A good example of a place where the traffic engineers have done their one-way best over the past 50 years - surely that's run its course now. 
The stretch pictured, looking southwards has become a rather scuzzy and unpleasantly trafficey bit - used to be nicer - eg nice market square further up. 
There's been nothing worth bothering with behind the camera for years. Not somewhere you'd choose to hang about in, or go for leisure.
The largely pedestrianised east-west road seen on the right became the centre of shopping, until recently when Beales and Marks closed. Now, like everywhere else, retail capacity now grossly exceeds demand, and it's time to re-think and to re-inhabit many central areas where people largely stopped residing after WW2. 
Over the Town Bridge and into a stretch of car-ised desert, as three southbound routes split off and it becomes residential again. 

Simon MacMichael wrote:

In fact, figures disclosed today reveal that in total, the government had allocated £607,000 in emergency funding for walking and cycling to the borough, which is home to more than £107,000 people.

They sound like sterling citizens.

Ban cars from the centre. Simples.