Landowners Blocking Cycleways?

[screenman]

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.

 

[Smurfy]

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'.

 

[classic33]

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.

 

[mjr]

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.

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?

 

[classic33]

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.

 

[mjr]

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.

 

[classic33]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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???

 

[LCpl Boiled Egg]

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.

 

[mjr]

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!

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!

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.

 

[classic33]

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.

 

[mjr]

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.

 

[shouldbeinbed]

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.

 

[Glow worm]

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.

 

[StuartG]

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?