THE cycling app Strava is set to be used by Devon County Council to decide where some of the additional £27 million of spending on Devon’s roads will be allocated.

The £58 million total is the largest ever annual investment in Devon’s Road Network, with smaller and unclassified roads receiving the majority of the extra cash.

And the extra spending will go towards roads that are used by cyclists or walkers, with the county get to use the cycling app Strava to get data over which routes are popular. Strava is an internet service for tracking human exercise which incorporates social network features. It is mostly used for cycling and running using GPS dats.

The decision made by Devon County Council’s cabinet on Wednesday follows one of the wettest winters on record and the funding from the Government’s Potholes Fund, will be used to repair road surfaces, increase pothole prevention and to combat the damage caused to highways, bridges and structures during the winter months.

The extra money will enable the county to improve the plans that were already in place to tackle the effects of weathering and previous storm damage and use community knowledge to highlight specific areas that require maintenance.

An extra £6 million will be spent on Devon’s principal road network, with £3.2 million extra of bridges and structures, with £17.7 million to be spent on smaller roads, such as ‘C’ and unclassified roads, with a focus on improving the condition and resilience of high-usage local route networks.

Cllr Stuart Hughes, Devon County Council Cabinet Member for Highway Management, said: ‘The announcement of additional highway maintenance funding is great news for Devon. It will be integral to providing appropriate long-term repairs to Devon’s road network and the safety of our highways. All parts of Devon benefit as a result of this funding.

‘Devon’s Covid-19 recovery has also introduced different challenges and new considerations for the improvement of Devon’s highways and the funding will be invaluable in enabling high-usage routes to be safe, properly maintained, and appropriate for active travel, like walking or cycling. We need to ensure the shift in active travel is underpinned in well maintained services and routes.’

Of the total of the £58 million, less than £2m is to be spent on cycleway, a figure that concerned Cllr Frank Biederman who said that it looked ‘too small’.

But Meg Booth, chief officer for highways, infrastructure, development and waste, said that in proportion, Devon didn’t have that many cycle ways and that a lot of active travel takes place on the more rural roads.

She said: ‘We are making a huge investment in the non-classified roads and that is where the majority of cycling at the moment happens. There is some money for cycle tracks but there aren’t that many of them. The focus is on the rural network that is by cyclists,’ adding that the council was working with Strava to get data on some roads that are popular with cyclists.

Cllr Hughes added that Devon County Council has also been awarded £5m from the Department of Transport, in support of the A380 Teign Viaduct to Ashcombe Cross major maintenance scheme.

The scheme is approximately six miles long and comprises of a maintenance programme of upgrades which include resurfacing, drainage, bridge maintenance and structural repairs, with the cash ringfenced for this purpose.