Craigavon’s Black Paths face a 10km test: can a fragmented network become a useful daily route?

There is a reason a path can be perfectly pleasant and practically useless. It may be smooth, quiet and surrounded by green space, yet stop just before the road somebody needs to cross or deposit a cyclist on the wrong side of a railway station. A network succeeds only when ordinary people can use it to complete ordinary journeys. That is the central test of a new proposal to join and upgrade Craigavon's Black Paths into a continuous connection between Portadown and Lurgan.

The Department for Infrastructure has announced an early engagement exercise for the Black Paths Active Travel Signature Scheme. Its stated ambition is a walking, wheeling and cycling route of approximately ten kilometres between Portadown and Lurgan railway stations via Craigavon. The emphasis on continuity is significant. Rather than describing a single brand-new leisure trail, the proposal is to extend and improve an existing network and connect it more effectively to communities, employment, public transport and local services.

The public consultation was listed to open at 9am on 16 November 2026, after this article's research date of 7 November. At that point the department's consultation page said further material would be published when engagement opened. It would therefore be misleading to present a settled route alignment, agreed budget, construction programme or guaranteed completion date. The declared objective is clear; the design and delivery details are still being developed.

The difference between ten kilometres and a network

Ten kilometres sounds like a useful measure of ambition. It tells us the broad scale of a possible connection. It does not say whether the route is direct, whether every crossing is convenient, whether surfaces meet the needs of mobility-aid users or whether the station approaches are genuinely accessible. The best way to appraise a transport network is to start with complete journeys: a pupil heading to school, a worker going to an early shift, a person using a wheelchair travelling to a station, or a parent accompanying children to an appointment.

For a commuter, the final hundred metres can matter more than an attractive kilometre in the middle. A route that requires a difficult road crossing or offers poor visibility at an entrance may discourage regular use. A badly integrated station approach can turn a promising cycle trip into a confusing detour. Conversely, connecting existing infrastructure with modest but well-chosen interventions can offer substantial practical value. That is why asking residents where a journey breaks down is not an optional extra: it can determine whether the scheme meets its stated purpose.

The department identifies communities, destinations, transport hubs, employment areas and local services as intended beneficiaries. Those are different journey types. A path to a park may suit recreation. A route to a shift workplace needs safe access when it is dark. A station connection needs reliable links to platforms, cycle parking, ticketing and onward travel. An accessible route should consider gradients, widths, crossing points and obstacles that could exclude people using mobility aids. Calling all these movements 'active travel' must not hide their differing requirements.

Craigavon already has a history of investment

The Black Paths have their own local history, and recent improvements show that the proposal is not emerging from a blank map. The community project documenting the network reported a £180,000 investment in 2025 to upgrade a further 330 metres between Drumgor Centre and the Curlywurly footbridge. It also reported work beginning on a replacement pedestrian and cycle bridge at Moylinn, with a stated £750,000 project value. Those figures refer to distinct previously announced pieces of infrastructure, not the price of the new ten-kilometre scheme.

They provide useful context nevertheless. A short upgraded section can transform a local connection if it fixes a critical gap. A bridge can be disproportionately important because crossings over busy roads or waterways cannot be improvised by pedestrians and cyclists. The existence of earlier projects also raises a legitimate question about coordination: will the next design make use of improvements already funded, or will new priorities require additional work in places that have recently been altered?

The project's own public information describes the Black Paths as Craigavon's active-travel network, with roots in the planned new town. That is more than a quaint historical aside. Craigavon's physical layout, with distinct centres and green corridors, means connected routes can play a role different from that of cycle lanes squeezed into older town-centre streets. But planned-town geometry does not eliminate present-day barriers such as road crossings, fragmented access, neglected edges and uncertainty about who maintains particular sections.

Why the railway stations matter

Naming Portadown and Lurgan train stations as the endpoints turns the idea into more than a local amenity scheme. A usable link can increase the area from which residents can reach rail services without a car and make multi-stage journeys more plausible. Yet a route drawn between stations should not be judged merely by whether the two names appear at either end of a plan. The test is whether it connects to station entrances safely, whether people can leave bicycles securely and whether the total journey competes sensibly with available alternatives.

There is evidence that rail demand is changing. Official Department for Infrastructure statistics report 15.9 million rail journeys across Northern Ireland in 2025–26, up 2.6 million or 19.2 per cent from the previous year. That is a substantial network-wide increase. It cannot be translated directly into a forecast for Portadown or Lurgan, and it does not demonstrate that cyclists will suddenly appear on the Black Paths. It does, however, make the integration of rail and local access an important question at a moment when rail travel has grown strongly.

The same statistical release reports 84.0 million public transport journeys in 2025–26, compared with 81.1 million the year before. Bus journeys rose only modestly, while rail accounted for most of the increase. Those numbers describe travel recorded across Translink's network, not the performance of one proposed route. Their relevance here is contextual: transport planning should look at how people reach the wider system, not consider the train as if every passenger begins their journey at the station door.

If the scheme can make a practical difference to local journeys, there should eventually be a way to measure it. Counts of walking and cycling trips at several points, user surveys, station access data and maintenance records could show whether improvements create sustained use. No completed before-and-after evaluation of this new proposal is available yet, because the scheme has not been built. Claims that it has already cut traffic or emissions would be premature.

Safety is more than separation from cars

A route away from moving traffic can be attractive, particularly to families and less confident cyclists. But absence of cars on one section is not the full definition of safety. Intersections, secluded passages, sightlines, lighting, path condition and conflicts between different users all influence whether a route feels and functions safely. Wheeling includes people using wheelchairs and other mobility aids, so a design that is nominally open to everyone but obstructed by awkward barriers would contradict its own language.

Shared-use paths also involve trade-offs. Pedestrians, faster cyclists, wheelchair users and children may move at different speeds. Where space permits, design can reduce conflict; where it does not, the chosen layout and behavioural expectations become more important. An effective public engagement exercise should ask not only whether people support the overall idea but where existing sections cause trouble and for whom. A simple majority in favour of 'better paths' would not answer those details.

There is a familiar risk in public projects: consultation material can make a network appear unbroken while the unglamorous details remain unresolved. A town-centre crossing may require separate approval, a footbridge may need inspection or repair, and maintenance responsibility can fall between organisations. These are not allegations about this particular scheme. They are the kinds of practical tests any credible feasibility assessment must confront before claiming a continuous route has been delivered.

Three meetings, three different sets of local knowledge

DfI has announced drop-in events at Portadown Town Hall on Monday 16 November, from 1pm to 7pm; Brownlow Community Hub in Craigavon on Wednesday 18 November, from 1pm to 6.30pm; and Lurgan Town Hall on Thursday 19 November, from 1pm to 7pm. The different venues are useful because a traveller's experience near one end of the route may reveal very different problems from those encountered in its central sections.

Residents should go beyond expressing general support or opposition. Useful evidence includes the exact junctions people avoid, routes they already use, poorly maintained links, journeys that require an unnecessary road crossing, obstacles for buggies or mobility aids and concerns about lighting or personal security. Where a proposed route passes near schools or work sites, the times of peak use can also affect the appropriate design. Specificity helps engineers distinguish a popular aspiration from a deliverable solution.

As of the early-engagement announcement, a comprehensive publicly confirmed price for delivering the full connection has not been established in the sources reviewed. Nor should the £180,000 and £750,000 previously reported for separate improvements be added together and presented as the budget for the new scheme. Funding will matter, as will route choice and the cost of long-term maintenance. An attractive new surface that deteriorates without a maintenance plan would be a poor legacy.

The real decision will happen after consultation

Northern Ireland has other active-travel schemes at different stages, including a proposed Newry Inner City Greenway connection between the canal towpath and Carlingford Lough Greenway and route-option consultation work around Bellarena and Bishop's Gate. Those are separate projects, and their route conditions differ. They show that the department is considering connected networks across multiple areas, but they do not establish that every proposal will be funded or built.

For Craigavon, the next questions are concrete. What is the preferred alignment? Which missing links require land, bridges or junction changes? Where will the route meet stations and shopping areas? Who will maintain it? Will the surface and crossings accommodate the users the scheme says it wishes to serve? How will planners measure actual journeys once construction is complete? Until those answers emerge, the ten-kilometre figure remains an objective rather than an achieved transport link.

The Black Paths are an interesting test of a wider principle. Useful transport improvements do not always require an entirely new corridor. Sometimes the most valuable work is to join what already exists and remove the obstacles that make ordinary journeys inconvenient. The question for Portadown, Craigavon and Lurgan is whether the proposed investment will do that with enough care to turn a collection of paths into a reliable piece of everyday infrastructure.