What is a pavement?

roundthebend

Just been thinking about some of my daily commute route and I realised that I might be riding on pavements some of the time. But I'm 99.9% certain that some of them are cycle paths as well, even though there is no explicit signage to that effect.

What's the definition of a pavement?

I'll have to dig out my local council cycle map soon to check my route.

downfader

roundthebend wrote:

Just been thinking about some of my daily commute route and I realised that I might be riding on pavements some of the time. But I'm 99.9% certain that some of them are cycle paths as well, even though there is no explicit signage to that effect.

What's the definition of a pavement?

I'll have to dig out my local council cycle map soon to check my route.

A word of warning, some of the various council cycle maps are out of date so you could well be. I just read a post on another forum where cyclists were being stopped for riding on what they thought was a "cycle path", yet were being fined for it.

If in doubt every council should have a cycling officer and he/she will be able to tell you which bits are legal.

the_hundredth_idiot

Agreed - even TfL's website gets it wrong sometimes. I looked up a route a few months ago and TfL's route planner directed me through a park. As I entered the park, I noted a sign stating that cycling was not allowed. And the parkie who was doing some gardening was certainly of the opinion that the sign on the gate trumped TfL's route planner.

nwallace

A pavement is something along the lines of any footpath provided along side a road for the purposes of separating pedestrians from vehicles.
This pre-dates both the motor car and bicycle.

A Pavement is only also a cyclepath if it is signed with the TRSG standard signs for segregated and non-segregated shared use paths.

The TRSG standard sign is the blue disc, not a painted bike on the ground, I keep meaning to question the one at Tay Bridge South Access which doesn't have signs between the car park and Newport/Tayport road junction.

Jay dubbleU

Footway - a paved area which runs parallel to a carriageway or highway - usually pedestrians only

Pavement - any paved area including pedestrianised areas where traffic may be totally excluded or have restricted access

Pross

Actually, a pavement is the surfacing of a carriageway.

A footway is the route that runs alongside a carriageway for pedestrians to use. If it can be used by cyclists there should be some form of sign either showing a cycle and person one above the other or seperated by a white line (unsegregated or segregated use respectively). Unless signed to show it is a cycleway then I would assume it is just a footway.

Eau Rouge

http://www.bikeforall.net/content/cycli ... he_law.php

That offers some definitions and tries to clarify what seems like a bit of a mess of laws,

Pross

Something else worth noting - if you see a 'you must not' sign (i.e. a circular sign with a red border) that has nothing inside it means no vehicles including pedal cycles beyond that point. You get these on approaches to pedestrianised areas but in a tedious dissertation I produced only 2 people out of 25 knew what it meant and half of those asked work in highway design!