Sustrans and that £50m...

bigjim

£50 million is nothing. I work in local government and see how much funding is wasted on admin and consultants. I wonder how much of this will filter down to actual building of cycleways. It is to be welcomed but is a teardrop in the ocean of funding that could be available. Plus I thought most cycle accidents happen in inner city situations and wonder how much of this money will be spent there. I think it will probably be targeted at leisure [not a bad thing] rather than commuting.

Jim

bigjim

£50 million is nothing. I work in local government and see how much funding is wasted on admin and consultants. I wonder how much of this will filter down to actual building of cycleways. It is to be welcomed but is a teardrop in the ocean of funding that could be available. Plus I thought most cycle accidents happen in inner city situations and wonder how much of this money will be spent there. I think it will probably be targeted at leisure [not a bad thing] rather than commuting.

Jim

geoff_ss

There are certainly pros and cons.

If they help cyclists use the old (proper) roads by providing easy ways to cross/avoid all the new very fast by-passes then I'm all for it. Cycling from Southwell to Newark is now extremely difficult because it means negotiating a very big roundabout where the A1 and A17 cross. It would have been simple to keep the old road accessible to cyclists and pedestrians if it had been done when the new road was built. We used to cycle from Ripley to York for the CTC Rally each year, via Doncaster and the A19. Unfortunately, over the years, 'improvements' to the A19 made the journey considerably less pleasurable (and less safe, too). The York end of the Selby/York cycle track is extremely useful as it means you don't have to ride all the way into York and then out again to cross the river.

OTOH There are already 100s of 1000s of cycle tracks already open to us. They're called roads and we have every right to use them despite what Clarkson and the Top Gear crowd believe. There's the danger that if there are more cycle paths we'll all have to ride ATBs because the surfaces will no doubt be loose crushed limestone. I occasionally (very!) ride on the High Peak Trail as it's near us, but I've rarely survived the full length through boredom - and that must be one of the most attractive cycle tracks in the country as regards scenery.

What's really needed is routes like the Suffolk or Cheshire cycle ways which are all on little used and mostly lightly trafficked lanes. They're both rideable in a day by reasonably fit cyclists

Geoff

btw how do you vote? Or is the voting ended?

FixUpLookSharp

How many velodromes would £50million build?