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A short, 300m section of Wood Street in Kingston upon Thames neatly sums up the past and the future of transport. It forms one leg of a 1960s one-way system around the town centre which is dominated by fast‑moving traffic. More recently, it has become the site for a brand-new cycle hub next to the railway station, connecting it to the wider area via a new, dedicated bridge and cycle path.

The cycle hub is a cut above the standard offering found in stations around the country,  which mostly resemble glorified bus shelters with bike racks. Unusually, it is designed by an architect, Sarah Wigglesworth, who has taken design cues from Kingston’s history.

The truss-type structure of the bridge and hub features a series of strong diagonals arranged in a V formation that references the crowns of the many kings whose coronations took place at nearby Hampton Court. The diagonals are also suggestive of movement and the work of Eadweard Muybridge, who was born nearby in 1830 and used photography to study the movement of people and animals.

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