Segregated, none-broken, cycle lanes on all A roads by 2020

[GrumpyGregry]

People in Barhill are very well off for shopping, it's got a HUGE supermarket. The problem is if you're in villages like Dry Drayton, Madingley & Hardwick you've got a supermarket in relatively easy cycling distance but a pitiful cycle path to get to it. I my self went shopping for lunch bits one day & found I had to remove my panniers to get my bike through the barriers, despite the fact it's labelled as a cycle path. The alternative is riding over a completely unmade bridle path which hasn't even been beaten down to hard earth.

So get the barriers changed.

 

[Glow worm]

I'm also thinking the folk in Barhill have some element of choice over where they live and where/how they shop and that maybe it isn't for the rest of us to pay to make their choices easier given other spending priorities.

Less choice than you might imagine. I suspect that Bar Hill may be one of the few places in the Cambridge area where house prices are not astronomical, and so a lot of folk live there who may not be able to afford anywhere else locally whilst still being able to access jobs in Cambridge. It is a classic example of how not to build a new town/ village i.e. pretty much just one major road (A14) to link it with surrounding areas meaning it is about the most car dominated place I know. If I lived there, I'd throw my bike in a skip and be done with it.

There is a bridle path to the south, linking the place safely to the rest of the world, as you can just about see in the shot below, (the green curved line with the 3 blue photo squares on top) and the obvious answer would be to upgrade that properly for cycling, (it's currently bloody awful), but that would mean using Del's taxes, so best have the cyclists on the A14 instead

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Less choice than you might imagine. I suspect that Bar Hill may be one of the few places in the Cambridge area where house prices are not astronomical, and so a lot of folk live there who may not be able to afford anywhere else locally whilst still being able to access jobs in Cambridge. It is a classic example of how not to build a new town/ village i.e. pretty much just one major road (A14) to link it with surrounding areas meaning it is about the most car dominated place I know. If I lived there, I'd throw my bike in a skip and be done with it.

There is a bridle path to the south, linking the place safely to the rest of the world, as you can just about see in the shot below, (the green curved line with the 3 blue photo squares on top) and the obvious answer would be to upgrade that properly for cycling, (it's currently bloody awful), but that would mean using Del's taxes, so best have the cyclists on the A14 instead
View attachment 17873

So surely no cyclist would choose to live there? surely the answer is to consider other choices rather than expect CCC, via taxes paid by people who don't even know of Bar Hills existence to pave a bridleway for us, thus wrecking it for equestrians and spoiling it for pedestrians.

 

[srw]

So surely no cyclist would choose to live there? surely the answer is to consider other choices rather than expect CCC, via taxes paid by people who don't even know of Bar Hills existence to pave a bridleway for us, thus wrecking it for equestrians and spoiling it for pedestrians.

And therefore no-one living in Bar Hill can ever take up cycling? It's the logical consequence of your position.

Looking at the photo, I think equestrians are in the same position as cyclists - there's no way for them to get to Bar Hill other than that bridleway. I'd hazard a guess there are more potential utility cyclists among the couple of thousand people living in Bar Hill than there are potential utility equestrians. Putting tarmac on a couple of hundred yards of path and giving a few thousand people a direct route to Cambridge is quite possibly a good investment for the return in increased cycling potential.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

And therefore no-one living in Bar Hill can ever take up cycling? It's the logical consequence of your position.

They can choose to take up whatever they like but they may not find it suits them.

Looking at the photo, I think equestrians are in the same position as cyclists - there's no way for them to get to Bar Hill other than that bridleway. I'd hazard a guess there are more potential utility cyclists among the couple of thousand people living in Bar Hill than there are potential utility equestrians. Putting tarmac on a couple of hundred yards of path and giving a few thousand people a direct route to Cambridge is quite possibly a good investment for the return in increased cycling potential.

cost to implement per km travelled over, say, five years vs cost per km travelled over five years on another scheme elsewhere...

...finite resources. Difficult decisions.

 

[Glow worm]

So surely no cyclist would choose to live there? surely the answer is to consider other choices rather than expect CCC, via taxes paid by people who don't even know of Bar Hills existence to pave a bridleway for us, thus wrecking it for equestrians and spoiling it for pedestrians.

I wish there was a 'clutching at straws' smiley! And we have loads of tracks hereabouts shared happily by equestrians, peds and cyclists alike. But you lot would rather be on the A14- paid for by my taxes- weird, but each to their own and all that.

 

[dellzeqq]

I wish there was a 'clutching at straws' smiley! And we have loads of tracks hereabouts shared happily by equestrians, peds and cyclists alike. But you lot would rather be on the A14- paid for by my taxes- weird, but each to their own and all that.

of course not. I'd rather that half or more of the A14 junctions were closed to motor vehicles and a 50mph speed limit (40mph for artics) imposed. And that way we could save ourselves £1.4bn for the upgrade. Because........and this is where the solipsism of cyclists might do well to take a rest for a few minutes......there's far, far more at stake than the provision of cycle paths. The A14 is suburbanising a vast swathe of land from Suffolk to the East Midlands. That's the big problem.

 

[dellzeqq]

and Bar Hill is a bad idea. End of. It is exactly that kind of exurban excrescence that the A14 brought in to being in the first place.

 

[Richard Mann]

Bar Hill seems to have a bus to Cambridge every 20 mins during the day (last bus 2300 from Cambridge). It could be a lot worse.

But rather than just shout ever louder about whose cycle facility (or other road adaptation) is more important, perhaps we might agree some criteria? Additional number of people walking/cycling as a result? Or not driving? Or is it the mileage, or the congestion effect? All these things could potentially be measured and identified as public and user benefits to be set against cost. But that's not the real decision. The key question is whether delaying/discouraging motorists is seen as a cost or a benefit. If it's seen as a cost, then stuff in the countryside suddenly seems a better bet. If suppressing traffic is seen as a benefit, all the payback is in towns. You choose....

 

[GrasB]

Actually getting to Barhill from the north side of the A14 isn't so bad. From Oakington it's a bit of of a longer than it could be but Over, Willingham & Longstanton have fairly easy access. It's from the south of the A14 things get rather silly. Actually the trip from the Oakington/Dry Drayton junction to the Barhill junction isn't that bad on a bike as there's a lightly used local traffic lane. However there's no local traffic lane in the other direction. The other thing is that Barhill should be the logical major supermarket for people living on the university west site, being a 6 mile ride away & a straightforward ride without the issues of riding across Cambridge city as you do for the Newmarket Rd or Coldhams Ln supermarkets.

Greg, the provided cycle provision is fundamentally too narrow, hence the need for the narrow gates. The rights of way are already in place. It just needs the last piece of the puzzle to be put in place.

 

[Glow worm]

of course not. I'd rather that half or more of the A14 junctions were closed to motor vehicles and a 50mph speed limit (40mph for artics) imposed. And that way we could save ourselves £1.4bn for the upgrade. Because........and this is where the solipsism of cyclists might do well to take a rest for a few minutes......there's far, far more at stake than the provision of cycle paths. The A14 is suburbanising a vast swathe of land from Suffolk to the East Midlands. That's the big problem.

Those of us living near the A14 are painfully aware of its corrosive effects on the wider environment, but thanks for stating the bleedin' obvious. Until the changes you describe are implimented (which of course will be never), how can upgrading a couple of hundred yards of track (not even tarmac, just hoggin or rolled gravel), for a place virtually imprisoned by the dominance of the car, be such a terrible thing?

 

[Richard Mann]

Those of us living near the A14 are painfully aware of its corrosive effects on the wider environment, but thanks for stating the bleedin' obvious. Until the changes you describe are implimented (which of course will be never), how can upgrading a couple of hundred yards of track (not even tarmac, just hoggin or rolled gravel), for a place virtually imprisoned by the dominance of the car, be such a terrible thing?

It isn't a terrible thing, just maybe not a priority for public funds.

 

[GrasB]

The key question is whether delaying/discouraging motorists is seen as a cost or a benefit. If it's seen as a cost, then stuff in the countryside suddenly seems a better bet. If suppressing traffic is seen as a benefit, all the payback is in towns. You choose....

Failure to properly analyse the issue here.
Better inter-village links means that people will have a genuine option to ride to the next village rather than getting in their car. People in the Abingtons have 2 major population centres near them; Sawston & Linton.

For Sawston you have the option of the A505, on the NSL DC bit where almost all traffic will have come off the A11, which is effectively a motorway. There have been deaths of people turning right towards Babraham & Pampisford as people coming off the DC section have reacted to slowing vehicles by overtaking & ploughing through cyclists. They also have the option to go down the A1307... a road with notorious safety record. Getting cyclists to Babraham would help immensely as once you're in Babraham it's a quick jaunt into Sawston.

Towards Linton you've got the A1307 or what on the face of it is quite a nice back road. The problem is getting to that back road you've got to cross the A1307, worse than that the two logical places for a cyclists to cross requires the cyclist to do a right, then left hand turn, one of the worse manoeuvres you can do on a heavily used NSL single carriageway road. The knock on effect of putting a good crossing to that back road is that people in Hildersham can get to the Abingtons where there's a nice little village store & I don't think that there's a store in Hildersham at all.

Sure I can deal with those situations just fine but there are a lot of people who will bulk at the proposition. Of those routes, quite rightly, they're unpleasant & require a lot of confidence to deal with. It's not so much about making huge long cycle paths but strategic sections where it's needed to make movement easier.

 

[dellzeqq]

Those of us living near the A14 are painfully aware of its corrosive effects on the wider environment, but thanks for stating the bleedin' obvious. Until the changes you describe are implimented (which of course will be never), how can upgrading a couple of hundred yards of track (not even tarmac, just hoggin or rolled gravel), for a place virtually imprisoned by the dominance of the car, be such a terrible thing?

it wouldn't be a terrible thing, but where's the priority? £200 million was spent on LCN+ and nobody uses it. And as for never being implemented - next time you're passed by a truck owned by Tesco or Sainsbury, have a little read. There's a notice on the back about speed limits..........But, you may be right. Civilisation may never arrive in Cambridgeshire, which, if memory serves, has £180 million on some dopey guided busway, when they could have had a bus lane on the A14 for about two and six. That's tough, but you chose to live there.

.....and isn't it time you did some canvassing?

 

[Glow worm]

it wouldn't be a terrible thing, but where's the priority? £200 million was spent on LCN+ and nobody uses it. And as for never being implemented - next time you're passed by a truck owned by Tesco or Sainsbury, have a little read. There's a notice on the back about speed limits..........But, you may be right. Civilisation may never arrive in Cambridgeshire, which, if memory serves, has £180 million on some dopey guided busway, when they could have had a bus lane on the A14 for about two and six. That's tough, but you chose to live there.

.....and isn't it time you did some canvassing?

Cycling alongside a truck whether it's doing 40,50 or 60, is pretty immaterial to me. I'd rather be nowhere near it at all. And I'm not sure you'd like the answers you'd get from the motorists queuing day in day out on the A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge if you were to canvass them on the idea of turning one of the two lanes into a bus lane. Unless you build another lane, which would hardly cost two and six. GrasB (above) makes a valid point I think about improving strategic sections to link existing routes. The Bar Hill example is a good one on how this could be achieved relatively cheaply.

I'm not a big fan of the guided busway tbh and don't live over that way either, but it does seem to at least have also created a safe, direct cycle/ ped route linking St Ives and Cambridge and villages inbetween. On the rare weekends I have used it, it has been full of families walking or out on their bikes, I can't really see any problem with that.

I fully take your ponts, but simply don't agree.