# Landowners Blocking Cycleways?



## mjr (1 Dec 2015)

I wrote in a cyclist down comment "it's sick that landowners are allowed to block cycleways, but if it was a motorway and only one or two landowners, it'd be compulsory purchased in a heartbeat". Between the two cities involved there, the Sustrans cycle route is 23 miles (and contains dirt and gravel sections) while the busy rural A road is 14. Parts of the A road have a sub-current-standards cycle track on one side, but there's a 7.5 mile middle section with nothing, not even a footway for much of it.

Riding directly alongside a rural A road is only slightly nicer than riding on it but it could be quick. As usual, there are tons of possibilities, such as: 2 miles of new cycleway along a farm track and byway to cut the 23 mile route to 17; 2.5 miles of parallel farm track upgrades to connect the A road cycle tracks into a 15 mile route; making 3 miles of parallel B road cycle-friendly (an 18 mile route); or simply filling the 7.5 mile gap, mostly within the highway verge (14 mile).

Loads of possibilities, but as usual, it seems like nothing has moved on since the 23-mile route opened in 2005.

As I understand this situation, a highway authority can make a Bridleway Creation Order under Section 26 of the Highways Act 1980, then make it up under Section 27 if needed - except that needs political will and there's compensation due under Section 28. An easier explanation is at http://microsites.lincolnshire.gov....-map/public-path-orders-ppos/creation-orders/

So do you know of anywhere using that power to create cycle routes, or does everywhere allow landowners to block cycleways?


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## sheddy (2 Dec 2015)

Where ? (suggest an edit to include more detail - post not clear when read in isolation)


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## mjr (3 Dec 2015)

The above is between Ely and Cambridge, but I'd be interested to know if ANY council is making Bridleway Creation Orders to override blocking landowners.


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## Flying Dodo (3 Dec 2015)

How many cyclists would actually cycle between Ely & Cambridge? That's the issue though. A council isn't going to spend lots of dosh trying to buy up sections of land for a very, very small proportion of the population. Sadly, that's the reality. That's exactly why Sustrans routes are often far longer than a direct route, as they have to piece together available sections.

Here in Bedfordshire, Central Beds Council do use Bridleway Creation Orders to add new bridleways, but they have to demonstrate there's a need for the new bridleway , in line with Section 26 of the Highways Act 1980, the gist of which is:- 

_The authority must have regard to the extent to which the footpath or bridleway would add to the convenience or enjoyment of a substantial section of the public or to the convenience of residents of the area. This means that an authority may choose to provide a route by means of a creation order if it is convinced of the need of either local people or the general public, and that such a route may be provided for reasons of convenience, utility or as a recreational facility._


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## Spinney (3 Dec 2015)

I imagine it's a vicious circle - in the example given, not many people cycle between Ely and Cambridge because the route is (choose any applicable)
- longer than necessary (for the Sustrans route)
- unpleasant (direct route)
- unsafe (subjectively, and possibly objectively) (direct route).

So it would be very difficult for the council to tell (even if they had the will) to work out how many _would_ cycle if there was a pleasanter/safer/shorter route.


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## mjr (3 Dec 2015)

Flying Dodo said:


> How many cyclists would actually cycle between Ely & Cambridge?


I think we don't really know. This is a widespread problem with planning cycle routes. Highway authorities just dismiss any requests by saying that there aren't enough _current_ cyclists... but as they say, you don't judge demand for a bridge by counting the people swimming across rocky rapids.

And then, we don't even really know how many currently do it. http://www.dft.gov.uk/traffic-counts/cp.php?la=Cambridgeshire suggests there's only about a dozen cycling on the A10 each day, but the obvious alternative routes cross no count points. Clicking the southern/central Ely blob on http://commute.datashine.org.uk/#mo...msoa=E02003735&zoom=11&lon=0.2561&lat=52.3223 suggests no-one was cycling to Cambridge for work in 2011, which seems surprising when there's 300 cycling between and within the two Ely blobs, or when you click the Waterbeach blob (the furthest north up the A10 with cycle-friendly connection to Cambridge) and see 88 cycling to Cambridge.

But we don't know how many _would_ do it if there was a 14-mile tarmac route (so maybe an hour if built properly) instead of a 23-mile part-dirt-and-gravel one (maybe 2.5 hours on a good day). Adding numbers up from that datashine, about 2000 people commute from the two Ely blobs to the various Cambridge ones in total. Driving that route at peak time sucks and the trains are overcrowded (and starting work removing the Ely junction bottleneck has just been punted back at least 3 more years).

What modal share we could justifiably expect for an hour's cycle commute? Central St Ives is 15.5 miles away from Central Cambridge but has a fairly good cycle route (not perfect but the best I can think of in that area) and 7 out of 117 St Ives-Central Cambridge commuters cycle, which is nearly 6% - if that could be reproduced on Ely-Cambridge then that's 120. And then maybe apply the same multiplier to get from commuting to all traffic in general on the A10, where total was nine times commuters, so possibly a bit over a thousand cyclists a day!



> That's exactly why Sustrans routes are often far longer than a direct route, as they have to piece together available sections.


I thought Sustrans routes are often far longer because they wanted to get 99% of population within X miles of one of their routes, but they don't have funding to signpost enough routes to do that while keeping a reasonably direct transport network, so the routes sometimes detour to "cover" more people. So we get absurdities for long-distance trips (Route 1 ignores the back roads and cycle tracks Lynn-Sutton Bridge-Long Sutton and goes 14 miles further Lynn-Wisbech-Long Sutton), for many local trips (Route 1 into Wisbech detours 2 miles onto a busier road then through West Walton and some of the worst housing estate cycle tracks I've seen in years, instead of entering on nicer roads via Emneth Hungate) and sometimes three routes multiplexing while a parallel route is left unnumbered (Routes 1, 11 and 30 multiplex into Lynn from the south), yet the A10/A149 cycle track is unnumbered.


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## the snail (3 Dec 2015)

Can't answer your question, but I suspect the answer is few or none. Councils are generally unwilling to go to court if they can help it because of the cost/time involved. Also a lot of off-road routes rely on landowners consent, which would probably be difficult to obtain if they think that it will lead to a compulsory purchase order if they change their mind later.It is annoying though, one of my favourite rides was the beautiful 3 miles or so to Lacock for a pint, now a no through route since a new landowner withdrew consent for the last 100 metres. 
I'm not really convinced that these sort of routes really do much to increase modal share. The typical user type seems to be parent + kids on a weekend pootle, whereas the big growth in recent years has been the commuter/mamil types, who realistically are going to be riding on the road for the most part.


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## mjr (3 Dec 2015)

the snail said:


> Can't answer your question, but I suspect the answer is few or none. Councils are generally unwilling to go to court if they can help it because of the cost/time involved.


And yet, they'll do it for motorists. There's a thread elsewhere on here grumbling justifiably about the diversion of almost £1m of cycling grant in Norwich to repave an area for pedestrians and remove a roundabout for buses, yet the local councils there have spent £10m on the northern bypass before any building work has started.



> Also a lot of off-road routes rely on landowners consent, which would probably be difficult to obtain if they think that it will lead to a compulsory purchase order if they change their mind later.It is annoying though, one of my favourite rides was the beautiful 3 miles or so to Lacock for a pint, now a no through route since a new landowner withdrew consent for the last 100 metres.


I don't follow the logic in that - surely it would be easier to get landowner consent if there's a realistic prospect of a creation order and lower financial settlement from a land tribunal?

I share your pain on the loss of a permissive route. A stone road near me closed last autumn as a landowner withdrew permission, lengthening my route to the next town east by a mile. At least it's still possible without cycling on a rural A road, thanks to an existing gravelled bridleway.



> I'm not really convinced that these sort of routes really do much to increase modal share. The typical user type seems to be parent + kids on a weekend pootle, whereas the big growth in recent years has been the commuter/mamil types, who realistically are going to be riding on the road for the most part.


Sure, these cycle tracks should be built as effectively mini-roads safe for 20mph cycling, so that they're useful for as a transport link.


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## classic33 (8 Dec 2015)

It's one reason I posted this The Great Western Greenway, the law is on the landowners side over there, Ireland, so when such a scheme is carried out I tried to make it known.
We are fairly lucky in this country,at the moment, when it comes to accessing the countryside


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## Drago (8 Dec 2015)

What's the financial benefit to the nation compared to a motorway? While morally I'm with you in reality the bar for compulsory purchase needs to be set high or everything will end up being forcibly bought to meet the whim of every user group, hobby group or self styled militant minority.


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## Saluki (9 Dec 2015)

There a a few cycleways here - off road ones - where the farmer has a locked gate across with big signs saying 'private, keep out' on them. The cyclepath is clearly marked on googlemaps, I'm told it's marked on an OS but have not looked for myself as yet. We climb over and carry on along the cycleway. If the farmer starts yelling, we show them that the route is on our Garmins. We are polite and point out that we are doing no damage and only following an official cycleway. Not been chucked off the land yet.
Some farmers are just numpties and like to block footpaths, bridleways and cycleways for the hell of it. There are numpties in every profession.


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## mjr (9 Dec 2015)

Drago said:


> What's the financial benefit to the nation compared to a motorway? While morally I'm with you in reality the bar for compulsory purchase needs to be set high or everything will end up being forcibly bought to meet the whim of every user group, hobby group or self styled militant minority.


A cycleway

 is relatively cheap to construct (£320k/mile for the highest-spec we've built so far and that was in an urban area - rural sections have fewer junctions, signals and others obstacles, so would usually be cheaper), 
 enables physical activity which improves public health and saves the NHS money in the long run, and
 usually removes single-occupancy light vehicles from other congested routes (the single-carriageway A10 in this case) which frees capacity for commercial traffic,
 enables people to travel on cycles which are cheaper than cars, on average, so enabling more money to be spent in local economies instead of sent away to mostly foreign-owned oil companies
 are relatively cheap to maintain well (not that we even do a realistic minimum just now).
whereas a motorway

 is very expensive to build (on average £30m/mile, according to the Highways Agency)
 enables pollution which harms public health and costs the NHS money, 
 often severs communities either side of the motorway, 
 has higher vehicle operating costs than general roads and 
 has higher ongoing maintenance costs for the nation.

Cycleways seem a slam-dunk compared to motorways, yet the Cameron government is funding motorways and not cycling. The last-but-one round of the Cycle City Ambition scheme offered a Benefit-Cost ratio of £5.50 of benefit for each £1 cost despite things like the Norwich "omnishambles", whereas motorways still get built despite being at risk of falling below £1 benefit per £1 cost if oil prices rise again and barely above it if not. If we're willing to compulsory purchase for tiny-benefit motorways, we should be at least as willing to do it to provide good cycleways and footways.


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## mjr (9 Dec 2015)

And I guess that might be part of the problem. Most current motorists seem to welcome new motorways, yet most current cyclists seem against even cycleways which seem obviously better than the current nasty-or-indirect choices, despite being no more required to use them than motorists are to use motorways.


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## LCpl Boiled Egg (9 Dec 2015)

For what it's worth, I'd cycle between Ely and Cambridge if it was like the guided busway path all the way and I could (for the majority of the route) avoid the A10. If they had a well-maintained path along the side of the rail track it would be great.


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## sidevalve (9 Dec 2015)

mjray said:


> A cycleway
> 
> is relatively cheap to construct (£320k/mile for the highest-spec we've built so far and that was in an urban area - rural sections have fewer junctions, signals and others obstacles, so would usually be cheaper),
> enables physical activity which improves public health and saves the NHS money in the long run, and
> ...


Could be motorway carries several hundred thousand vehicles a week + freight + income from vehicle tax [no not the 'road tax'] the millions from fuel tax vehicle import duty and the hundreds of jobs the motorways provide. The vast majority [and I mean majority] of people want to use their cars - want to get their goods delivered and yes actually they are paying for it. Include reduction of pollution [less jams in city centres] less vehicle density in small towns/villages and saved time in freight deliveries. Communities are liked by underpasses /bridges [yes this even applies to farms for cattle movement] As opposed to maybe a hundred or so riders a week.
What next compulsory purchase of land for off road m/cyling ? Sound ok to me but it aint gonna happen. Horse riding courses - but no all that land being used up by compulsory cycleways might be in the way. 
Add in the constant whines about I don't use cycle paths, ways, lanes and it's a dead end.


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## screenman (9 Dec 2015)

Lincoln to Woodhall Spa, lovely tarmac track miles from the road, all messed up by a bit the British Sugar owns at Bardney, which means a muddy rutted track or a quite unpleasant 2 miles of road.


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## Smurfy (10 Dec 2015)

Saluki said:


> There a a few cycleways here - off road ones - where the farmer has a locked gate across with big signs saying 'private, keep out' on them. The cyclepath is clearly marked on googlemaps, I'm told it's marked on an OS but have not looked for myself as yet. We climb over and carry on along the cycleway. If the farmer starts yelling, we show them that the route is on our Garmins. We are polite and point out that we are doing no damage and only following an official cycleway. Not been chucked off the land yet.
> Some farmers are just numpties and like to block footpaths, bridleways and cycleways for the hell of it. There are numpties in every profession.


I feel lucky to live within easy distance of a national park, as I think that with all the right to roam areas, landowners are more relaxed. In all the years I've walked and cycled, I've never once encountered anyone shouting 'geroff moy laaaand'.


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## classic33 (10 Dec 2015)

It's more common where people have bought a piece of land, possibly with a house(or a view to building one) or where they are renting the land and assume they have sole ownership over it's use.

I ride a road vehicle, I'd like to be able to continue to ride on the roads. Seperate the cyclist from the rest of the traffic and two things become noticable:
1) Increased risk of accidents where the two systems meet.
2) Increase in anti cyclist attitudes. "We've spent all this money building this, you should be using it, not the roads!" Drivers simply see something that has been built for a minority of road users, who don't seem to understand that now its there for their(cyclists) use, they "should be using it".

Also provides in a number of cases, convenient off-road parking for motor vehicles.


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## mjr (10 Dec 2015)

sidevalve said:


> The vast majority [and I mean majority] of people want to use their cars - want to get their goods delivered and yes actually they are paying for it.


Care to explain the maths behind making the opposite claim of the usual? Vehicle taxes are so low that we're all subsidising motorists.



> Include reduction of pollution [less jams in city centres] less vehicle density in small towns/villages and saved time in freight deliveries.


Again, what's the logic there? Building rural motorways just delivers peak-time surges of motorists to city centres more quickly and as opponents of urban cycle tracks are happy to point out, space there is rather limited, so the effect is:








> Communities are liked by underpasses /bridges [yes this even applies to farms for cattle movement]


Who cares what the underpasses and bridges like?!?! They're flaming inanimate objects and our villages should not be considered merely scenic settings for motorway architecture.



> As opposed to maybe a hundred or so riders a week.


See the calculation above. On Cambridge-Ely, it could easily be a thousand a day if it mirrored the guided busway experience.



classic33 said:


> I ride a road vehicle, I'd like to be able to continue to ride on the roads.


And no-one much is arguing for stopping you (except for Highways England, who argue for banning bikes WITHOUT providing any alternative route). Which Ely-Cambridge route would you ride?



> Seperate the cyclist from the rest of the traffic and two things become noticable:
> 1) Increased risk of accidents where the two systems meet.


That's an urban legend, ill-supported by research, as we've covered in other discussions so I guess we're unlikely to agree.



> 2) Increase in anti cyclist attitudes. "We've spent all this money building this, you should be using it, not the roads!" Drivers simply see something that has been built for a minority of road users, who don't seem to understand that now its there for their(cyclists) use, they "should be using it".


Again, I don't experience this increase and I've seen little evidence for it. Sadly, some motorists are quite happy to abuse cyclists and tell them they should be off the road even when no alternative exists on a route.



> Also provides in a number of cases, convenient off-road parking for motor vehicles.


More common in urban areas and a tougher nut to crack because the authorities seem unwilling to recognise that it's clearer cut than pavement parking - for pavements, the offence is either "driving on the footway" or "obstruction of the highway", whereas for cycle tracks, parking on them is an offence in itself.

I think parking on rural non-roadside cycle tracks is rarer, isn't it?


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## classic33 (10 Dec 2015)

mjray said:


> More common in urban areas and a tougher nut to crack
> 
> I think parking on rural non-roadside cycle tracks is rarer, isn't it?


First one I never mentioned pavement parking. I said off road parking areas. Not all my cycling is in towns/built up areas.
Second, it was a case of "we've spent all this money building this". Drivers seldom can make this claim, tends to be the authorities that do this.

And just because you have either seldom seen something or never seen something, doesn't mean it isn't happening.


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## mjr (10 Dec 2015)

classic33 said:


> First one I never mentioned pavement parking. I said off road parking areas. Not all my cycling is in towns/built up areas.


OK, so I'm still not understanding that. What "provides in a number of cases, convenient off-road parking for motor vehicles"?



> Second, it was a case of "we've spent all this money building this". Drivers seldom can make this claim, tends to be the authorities that do this.


Well that's relatively easy to reject with "you should have built something useful and attractive instead of p'ing our money up the wall then" and if they do actually propose a ban from the carriageway (which would have no legal grounds in current law), then we can ridicule them with "they built something so bad that few choose to use it and they're trying to force people onto it" as well as objecting legally to the ban TRO/TMO.



> And just because you have either seldom seen something or never seen something, doesn't mean it isn't happening.


And just because someone writes that it's happened to them, doesn't mean it's widespread, so I'd like more people's views or some supportable numbers.


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## classic33 (10 Dec 2015)

mjray said:


> OK, so I'm still not understanding that. What "provides in a number of cases, convenient off-road parking for motor vehicles.
> 
> And just because someone writes that it's happened to them, doesn't mean it's widespread, so I'd like more people's views or some supportable numbers.



Until you can understand the first one, trying to explain it will be hard.

On the second, I could take the same stance as yourself. And at present it's you banging your drum the loudest.


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## shouldbeinbed (10 Dec 2015)

Manchester had golden opportunities with the Metrolink to incorporate cycle lanes with much of the infra but didn't & both what TfGM spend money on and then conversations had at my council bike forum (seems to have died a death now- must make a nuisance of myself again) don't inspire by confidence at all.

As for Ely to Cambridge: both centres that people go to in their own right more than shuttling one to the other in appreciable numbers???


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## LCpl Boiled Egg (10 Dec 2015)

shouldbeinbed said:


> As for Ely to Cambridge: both centres that people go to in their own right more than shuttling one to the other in appreciable numbers???



An awful lot of people commute from Ely to Cambridge.


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## mjr (10 Dec 2015)

classic33 said:


> Until you can understand the first one, trying to explain it will be hard.


That's rather circular, but putting a subject in - to make it a sentence - might be enough!



shouldbeinbed said:


> both what TfGM spend money on and then conversations had at my council bike forum ... don't inspire by confidence at all.


Indeed. Most officers at most councils don't seem to understand cycling at all. I feel this is part of the reason why it's so important that we don't just sit back and let them build whatever follies they like - of course, ultimately, they can still build follies, but at worst, we can make that much less fun for them!



shouldbeinbed said:


> As for Ely to Cambridge: both centres that people go to in their own right more than shuttling one to the other in appreciable numbers???


I can't tell for sure. Despite Ely being a city, it's not that big (population 20,000, compared to 42,000 in King's Lynn or 128,000 in Cambridge) and Ely-Cambridge commuter flows are very significant on http://commute.datashine.org.uk/#mo...msoa=E02003734&zoom=10&lon=0.2417&lat=52.3034 and my perception (as someone who travels from West Norfolk to/from Cambridge fairly often, usually by rail, sometimes by car, once or twice a year by bike) is that that's also true of non-work purposes because Cambridge is a subregional capital with more leisure and retail things, but I don't have the data for not-to-work travel.


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## classic33 (10 Dec 2015)

mjray said:


> That's rather circular, but putting a subject in - to make it a sentence - might be enough!


See your own answer, which was the subject.


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## mjr (10 Dec 2015)

classic33 said:


> See your own answer, which was the subject.


I mean subject as in "the word or word group (usually a noun phrase) that is dealt with. In active clauses with verbs denoting an action, the subject and the actor are usually the same" rather than "The main topic of a paper, work of art, discussion, field of study, etc" (from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/subject#Noun ) but I suspect trolling.


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## shouldbeinbed (10 Dec 2015)

ABikeCam said:


> An awful lot of people commute from Ely to Cambridge.


Faiir do's, long time since I lived down there when it was always more either/or, cars were less comfy and accommodating places for longer commutes back then.


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## Glow worm (10 Dec 2015)

I'm relatively lucky where I live to have a reasonable network of off-road cycle paths. This picture is a part of my commute (to Cambridge) and I use the path here (taken at Quy by that ghastly looking pub). 






It's a bit narrow (about 4.5 foot?) but it's a reasonable surface and there are very few side roads so progress is always swift and smooth. It certainly beats riding on the adjacent A1303 (for me anyway). It's also very well used indeed.

The existence of these paths even played some role in deciding to live where I do. I, and a lot of people I know here only ride to work because we can do so on these paths and I'd love to see more of these linking rural towns and villages, especially as the A and often even B roads are so thoroughly unpleasant. Along the A10 corridor form Ely to Cambridge they would be great and I've no doubt would be immensely popular.

By the B1102 another potential route to Cambridge is a vital gap in the network (between Lode and Quy)






The community has been raising funds towards this link.The landowners along the route are less than keen . I'm not hopeful it will be completed any time soon which just seems crazy to me, as this is gridlocked with traffic at rush hour.


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## StuartG (23 Dec 2015)

I'm scratching my head over the gridlocked traffic issue between Ely & Cambridge. 20 miles each way on a bike may be a bit rich for many commuters but (according to Mr GoogleMap) 44 minutes in a car with associated parking issues compared to 15 minutes on the train (plus a folder if the stations are not convenient) would make it no-brainer for me. So is it because the train is already overloaded?


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## mjr (23 Dec 2015)

StuartG said:


> So is it because the train is already overloaded?


Partly. There is currently a power supply limit north of Cambridge, plus a bottleneck at the Ely North junction, plus some limited platform lengths, plus a mixing of Cambridge commuters with London ones. AFAIK, the power supply is being upgraded with the Chesterton Parkway works, fixing Ely North has just been punted into the long grass by Network Rail, platform lengths are unlikely to change now Thameslink will end at Cambridge (instead of using the whole line as originally announced) and the mixing is insoluble... so now by the time each constraint is eased, places down the line will have grown to overload the trains again pretty quickly.

And it'd be 15 miles each way on a bike if one of the most direct routes was used. An hour if it's a good design, plus it would connect all the places in between to their nearest city


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## mjr (6 Jan 2016)

Well, in case we didn't believe the results of St Ives-Cambridge or Bath-Bristol, it looks like Germany is going to give us another case study, building an interurban fast cycleway (radschnellweg) linking eight cities over 100km: http://www.boredpanda.com/bicycle-highway-autobahn-germany/


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## youngoldbloke (7 Jan 2016)

If only the Bath-Bristol was like that! Whenever I've used it it has been clogged with walkers, joggers, pootlers, pushchairs, dogs, etc etc etc - all of whom have a perfect right to be there, of course.


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## Mark1978 (14 Jan 2016)

ABikeCam said:


> For what it's worth, I'd cycle between Ely and Cambridge if it was like the guided busway path all the way and I could (for the majority of the route) avoid the A10. If they had a well-maintained path along the side of the rail track it would be great.


Me too... And then if they could extend the cycle path up to Downham, that would be spiffing.


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## mjr (14 Jan 2016)

Mark1978 said:


> Me too... And then if they could extend the cycle path up to Downham, that would be spiffing.


Oh it's far more annoying than that south of Downham: the railway has been single-tracked but I think all the river bridges still have unused space on their west sides where a cycle track could be put. Even just connecting the former Denver and Ouse Bridge stations would cut about a mile off National Cycle Route 11. About 500m of new track and some improvements could connect Middle Drove and St Johns Way along the eastern bank of the Relief Channel and make it easier to follow roughly the route of the railway, although that's not strictly necessary. Make some minor junction improvements at the south end of Ten Mile Bank and you could cycle from Downham Market to Littleport without mixing it with much heavy traffic and without the current zig-zag between Denver and the sluices.

Really, there are tons of possible improvements and if government (at various levels) was serious about cycling as part of its transport strategy to improve air quality and reduce congestion, something should be happening around towns like Downham Market. I feel I'm too far away (yet it's only 8 miles!) so can only get tiny improvements, like the very short cycleable link that we won between the Trafalgar Industrial Estate and the new housing to its north - which also means people in the new houses will be able to cycle to the existing link towards Richmond Road. If there are going to be substantial improvements around Downham, its residents need to start pushing too... could you help?


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## Mark1978 (14 Jan 2016)

mjray said:


> .... If there are going to be substantial improvements around Downham, its residents need to start pushing too... could you help?



I'd certainly be interested in doing all i can to improve routes between the major towns around this area. I'm not experienced in that sort of thing, so any assistance would be well received.

I live just outside Downham on Barroway Drove, so my preferred route when I'm commuting (assuming that Welney wash is passable which it generally is in the summer when i tend to do a couple of commutes a week), is out to Welney, through Pymoor and Wentworth/20 pence road, all of which is fine and dandy apart from 20pence, which can be a bit hairy in rush hour. A more protected cycle route from central Downham which basically follows the train would be perfect IMHO.

I have considered moving to St Ives in order to take advantage of the pretty excellent busway route into to the science park.

If you have any ideas of what I could do to help, drop me a PM


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