Proposed West Yorkshire cycle tunnel would be longest in Europe

I agree that the goals of Sustrans should be questioned. Leisure routes are great and, with a young family, I'm sure that I will make a good deal of use of these myself in the coming years. They don't, however, always offer a viable or attractive aternative to the roads for utility cyclists and this is what is required in order to get more people using bikes for everyday travel (as I understand it Sustrans' key aim).

In order to be a good alternative to the road, cycle routes need to be:
1. Safe - although removing vehicular traffic, routes such as this do pose increased risks, the most notable being the risk of assult or mugging.
2. Quick - the route needs to be at least as fast as using the road
3. Direct - the route needs to be shorter than the on-road alternative
4. Maintained - in the same way as the road these routes need to be kept free of obstructions and treated appropriotly in winter

The traffic free routes backed by Sustrans often fail in one or more of these areas and become an unattractive option for everyday commuting or utility cycling.

The B2B route is a great example. This route could be brilliant if it met the above criteria. The B2B should be the cyclists equivilent to the M4 - delivering people between the two cities quickly, efficiently and safely. Unfortunatly cycling at night on this route brings fears of 'fishing line' attacks, maintaining a good pace can be difficult to do safely (and you're likely to get stick for it) and, although I've never used it in winter, I'd hazard a guess that its not a good option on a snowy or icy day (prepared to be corrected on this point).

I would like to see Sustrans either change its name and stated philosophy to reflect what is evidently its real position: to encourage walking and cycling accross the board (not just for transport) or to insist that a set of criteria is established for transport routes that needs to be met for all new infrastrucure.

Dave, don't get me wrong, I am not moaning, I am querying near term goals. Yes the paths get families on bikes (a good thing) but many are seasonal at best due to surfacing.
You mention that a CX bike could get along these surfaces (a challenge dare I say it in light of current conditions) and let's face it a CX bike is a fairly specialist non mainstream bike....
Anyway, my observation was based on riding the off road London Brighton route 2 weekends ago, where the track surface was very poor and covering 70 miles was just about doable in under 6 hours - not really a commutable average.
I appreciate sustrans are not responsible for a lot of it.

For the leisure cyclist Sustrans has some nice off road pottering with kids type trails.

While they do talk about commuters no trail of theirs looks terribly useful for that, it's more for the funding for the project I suspect, one local to my folks they kept repeating that kids could ride to school and so on, even when pointed out the trail doesn't connect the villages up and the road to it are steep, any where from 7% to 17% average so the idea a child would use it or a commuter would chose is laughable.

Presently the most common bikes are MTB connecting interesting bits together which for most part they could do before.

'An abandoned railway tunnel in West Yorkshire could soon be the longest *legal* underground cycleway in Europe'

Hashtag I am just saying this.

How long have the ctc been around? and "we" are still waiting for dutch style bike paths?

How many more times do "we" need to bang our heads against various brick walls that won't listen, that includes all "authorities".

The issue is not going to go away no matter how much they'd like it too ; )

Mrmo, go on many Sustrans routes and you'll see people who simply wouldn't be cycling if they didn't exist. Young children and their parents being a particularly obvious example. If you told these people that they were endorsing intolerant drivers, or surrendering their right to use the road, they wouldn't have a clue what you were on about.

Regardless of where you think you should come in some notional hierarchy, they're getting cycle routes built, which is more than can be said for any other UK cycling organisation at this point in time.

The compromises that come with this are unfortunate and Sustrans know this as well as anyone, but until more of the UK wakes up to the benefits of cycle-only infrastructure, shared use routes are all we're going to get.

"The attitude of some people towards what is arguably the UK's most effective pro-cycling charity beggars belief. It's a bit like loudly slagging off cancer charities because, after all that funding and campaigning, none of them have actually found a cure for cancer"
You are half way there here; how would you feel if you gave money to a 'cancer' charity and then found they had given huge sums to help cure 'asthma?' Great well done Sustrans, but why on their signage do they say "Cyclists make way to pedestrians" but not "Keep your dog under control" and "Clear up your dogs poo"? This makes me think that they are building footpaths that cyclists are just about tolerated on. What I am saying is call them what they actually are namely "Dog poo alleys"

When the NCN was put in around Sheffield it was mostly dirt track. Now, 14 years later most of it is tarmac. It is possible to get paths upgraded if you work with Sustrans and LA's rather than just carping at them.

To be clear, I have supported Sustrans in the past, but it's not clear (to me at least) what their near term goal is. Dirt track is fine if you are on a mountain bike but hopeless for everything else. I personally don't regard getting about on a heavy duty mountain bike as "sustainable transport" because it's too heavy

Well the NCN around the surrey hills is a complete mud bath / pot holed mess of dodgy signs, not even sure why it exists, what's wrong with the countless country lanes, oh yeah the mr and mrs toad want them for themselves too.

Sustrans are heavily reliant on local authority partners to deliver their schemes. When you get a cycle path that's been rendered more or less unusable by things like those stupid squeeze gates, you can bet it's the local authority's doing, not the people who actually ride bikes.

Yes, the surface of a lot of the NCN is poor. That's because it's a work in progress, with sections getting improved as scarce funding becomes available. The attitude of some people towards what is arguably the UK's most effective pro-cycling charity beggars belief. It's a bit like loudly slagging off cancer charities because, after all that funding and campaigning, none of them have actually found a cure for cancer.

It's especially interesting as Sustrans own website has a whole life cost comparison showing bitmac paths coming out substantially cheaper than the equivalent in unbound grit, once all the maintenance is included....

not in the UK but same problems with shared used paths and locally a budget approved scheme linking a school, shops and a sports centre have been abandoned following those in favour of "quiet parks" - that is dog walkers that drive to the park - complaining non stop about fast commuting cyclists in adjacent parks - one proposed solution is to not seal the trails - leave them as gravel - this slows down cyclists - doesn't rain so much here in Aus' so less impact on drivetrain but creating a surface only suitable for leisure use is not sustainable transport

Dick Kunz??

All these crappo 'bike routes' end up being are dog walking routes where they moan about cyclists 'terrorising' them before clambering back into 3 tonnes of range rover 'sport' and genuinely terrorise, kill and maim cyclists and pedestrians completely unchecked.

I just wish they'd stop paying lip service to cycling and actually use .5% of the annual road building budget, paid for by ALL OF US after all who pay income tax, and create a genuine cycling road just for cycling on that is actually useful.

Cars get the motorway exclusively, what do cyclists get exclusively? Squat. We just get gravel tracks littered with dogs and 'terrorised' walkers squeezed along useless sections of canals and grotty retail park loading areas that you can't train on. Use the road and you get massacred, use the path to escape the massacre for the briefest of moments and you get fined.

Why don't we campaign for a dedicated cycle roadway running alongside the HS2, which government will push through at some point, and at last be able to ride for miles in peace without having to worry about the constant threat of what's zooming up behind you.

It would add pennies on the grand scale of a project like that and some of it could be met by grants and lotto funding in each region it passes through. Little shops would open to cater for users and as a facility it would be amazing.

If just 10 miles of motorway budget were instead allocated to building a dedicated cycling roadway just how many miles would that be able to build?

I use the Monsal trail In the Peak District now and again and it has several tunnels.

it's well used by families as it allows kids to ride in a traffic free environment and is very busy at the weekends with cyclists of all ages, most going at a sensible speed and not segment hunting.

it always amazes me the number of groups of ramblers that insist on walking the full width of the track in the tunnels and have no concept of sharing it with other users. I've no grouse about them being there - I also walk and run down it occasionally. It's just their bloody mindedness that gets me.

And don't get me started about the pillocks that don't have their dogs on a lead.......

I stand corrected on the ndw !

I used the north downs way last weekend for the first time. It too is a disused railway line. It was a mud bath, narrow at points and negotiating dogs and horses needed extreme care. In no way was any of the route passable on anything other than a mountain bike. Basically it is in no shape or form anything other than a disjointed path which is no use for covering any distance on. I am seriously beginning to doubt the value of the work sustrans do which is a shame.

I won't even start on the UK end of the "avenue verte"

That's nice that they want us underground in a tunnel smelling of piss. I think someone has just made my Christmas card list

Looks safe to me...

Great to see the use of rundown infrastructure converted to bicycle

"SideBurn" wrote:

I love the way Sustrans talk about these old lines being used as an alternative to the car. However after using a cycle-path to commute for a while, I am fed up with it...

I gave up on cycle paths because the ones round here are constantly littered with mud, storm debris, glass etc. That's when they're not half flooded. The dog walkers etc. are a minor nuisance compared to having to deal with a bottom bracket and drive train that's always covered in crud and constantly needing attention. The local council and Sustrans both seem to think it's perfectly acceptable. It's almost as if they think that, by choosing to cycle, we are somehow willing to give up modern road surfaces and return to some sort of agrarian transport system with communities linked by muddy farm tracks.