There has been quite a bit in the news recently of interest to cyclists. The Cambridge News reports on "Who will win fight for Gilbert Road". I've written about this before; "Is the CGB Passable by Bike?", this is a road in Cambridge with some rather interesting advisory cycle lanes that vehicles frequently park in - legally. Consequently it puts of parents from allowing their children to cycle to the nearby schools and is dangerous for the cyclists who use this route as they are intimidated by motor vehicles as they cycle around the parked vehicles.
The County Council has proposed a scheme of changes to improve the situation - but apparently some of the inhabitants of the road are complaining about a loss of parking space. If you follow this Google Streetview Map link you can see this is quite an affluent street with many residents having parking in their garden. This link demonstrates the issue - a van, parked in the cycle lane opposite a bus stop. The News report discusses an invitation by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign for councillors see for themselves what the issue is about on Tuesday 18th May. Personally I would like to see made perceptibly safer to encourage more cycling to replace unnecessary polluting motor vehicle journeys - but I have a garden in which I can park my car - so it is easy for me to say.
The other cycling issue - no surprise really - the Cambridge (mis) Guided Busway (CGB). I use the term "mis" not to indicate whether the decision to build a Guided Busway versus re-opening the railway (or a road?) was right or wrong - but because this seems to have been dragging on for a long time. As is common - success has many father and failure but one mother - at the moment there seems to be finger pointing. The bottom line is that here is a project that has cost the tax-payer over £100M and it is still not in operation over a year late. Where is the accountability? Mind you to put the cost into context there are plans to widen the A14 between Fen Drayton and Fen Ditton and to create a new Dual Carriageway between Fen Drayton and the A1 - the cost is expected to be more than £1billion - yes 10 times the cost of the CGB. The Cambridge News reports that the Campaign for Better Transport has ".. urged to scrap A14 upgrade".
The trouble is that it is always easy to spend other people's money (tax payers) on projects like this - but given the deficit this country has I believe we really do need to starting to balance the books. You cannot continue to spend money you don't have and so difficult choices have to be made. Continually popping in new roads and upgrades is not a long-term solution nor a substitute for proper long-term planning - land is a scarce resource - let's use it wisely.
Back to the CGB that too is continuing "to make slow progress" (almost an oxymoron), a deadline was set to produce a plan to analyse and propose a solution for "six" faults. That seems to have come and gone. The message conciliatory. The next day positions seemed more adversarial: "Long wait for bus gets even longer as deadlines pass".
With that in the news - well it seemed I should perhaps have another ride along the CGB to see for myself what was happening. My news: "I cycled the CGB without using the concrete tracks at all!". That was the good news - the bad news is that I only just made it and took some risks to do so.
I took the Sustrans Route 11 up to St Ives - I prefer not to cycle there and back along the same route. This time around I detoured through Fen Drayton Lakes. After Swavesey you turn right into the Lakes and then rejoin the Sustrans 11 route in Fen Drayton. Interestingly the lakes on the Fen Drayton side look as if they are running low on water! This looked hopeful - with any luck the track would be clear of any flood water on the CGB cycle/maintenance path. The sign on the gate indicates it is a "Conservation Area" - conservation of water perhaps.
Once in St Ives I joined the CGB and had to take this picture of the lily pads on one of the lakes before the CGB crosses the River Great Ouse. Again this did not look too bad. The challenge is that where the paths have been flooded the cycle path tends to be uneven and in places new unpacked gravel has been laid down. This makes it tricky on a bicycle and you need to have your wits about you. You need momentum to get through the soft gravel, but not be going too fast that you can't avoid the odd rock sticking up in the path. This is ok in daylight - but not something I would be quite so happy doing at night with a cycle light to show me the way.
Just when I though it was going to be quite passable I came up to this bit of flooding - I did cycle though it. I kept to the edge where it was likely to be slightly more shallow and I could jump of onto the bank if necessary. The problem was that there were also deep wheel ruts under the surface and a very soft quick-mud (like quick-sand only mud) and at one point as my wheels sunk down I leapt onto the bank. I hauled my bike out and found some harder ground and carried on cycling. I also had to resort to half-pedalling - so neither pedal reached the bottom of the pedal stroke to avoid getting my feet wet. (You push on the pedals and then do a half back-pedal and then push forward again - tricky on a soft surface.)
You can see my wheel track on the right causing a small rut where I emerged from the flood water. Was this ok for fun - yes - would I do this as a regular commute - no way. Here we are months after the paths were flooded and they are still impassable really. I would be interested in knowing what the cock-up was. Is the path lower than planned or did the estimates for the expected flooding miscalculate the levels of water to be expected. Having seen how the lakes themselves seem to be low my suspicion is that the paths were either designed or built with no thought about drainage - in fact it seems that water drains and stays in the paths.
This is Hale Windmill, currently a Kennels and Cattery near Swavesey - it is quite a striking landmark in the area. I bet the views are good from the top.
One of the other things to be aware of as you cycle along the CGB at the moment is that, as you might expect, there are lots of flying insects at this time of year. I passed quite a few cyclists with buffs as face masks, I tried to keep my mouth shut - but did end up swallowing my first flying thing of the season.
Yellow seems to be in season at the moment for flowers though. Here is a field (Near Ditton Meadows) full of buttercups and dandelions.
Of course we have fields and fields full of Oilseed rape - at the moment it is bright yellow and has quite a pungent smell - I don't mind the smell, some people find it too much though.
On my journey there and back I did encounter some interesting driving (mainly going) - so see my next post - A Quiz for Cyclists helping to illuminate my feelings about the road features designed to manage traffic!
On the CGB - I was cycling from St Ives to Cambridge between 4pm and 5pm. In that time I passed 22 cyclists (in both directions) 13 (two female) using the concrete track and 9 (three female) not using the concrete track. I was expecting a higher proportion would be using the concrete track.
No comments:
Post a Comment