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news
Sidmouth Street cycle lane (Google Maps)Call to remove "senseless" cycle lane, according to local paper story using one resident's opinion
In a story based off the testimony of one resident, The Reading Chronicle has said there is a fresh call within the city to remove a "senseless" cycle lane.
Interviewing a resident, Raymond Tapken, the local newspaper heard the view that the two-way cycle lane which replaced a two-way street and was built after two cyclists were killed in Reading in one day, has become a "white elephant".
However, the view is seemingly not one held by the council who, in response to a February 2021 petition with 248 signatures calling for its removal, insisted it is "an appropriate choice" for boosting active travel.
At the time, the council also provided figures to support their statement that people are using cycle lanes.
Despite this, the local paper published a story titled "Call to remove 'senseless' cycle lane from Reading street" in which Mr Tapken says he is "very unhappy" to hear it could be extended and suggested the council must have an "ulterior motive" to make it permanent.
"The truth of the matter is that since Watlington Street/South Street rat run was closed Watlington Street is the street that all pedestrians and cyclists, school children, students, workers, hospital visitors use," he said.
"Nobody – not pedestrians nor cyclists use Sidmouth Street despite all the fancy markings and encouragement to do so. It is a white elephant that needs to be quietly removed and return the street to normal."
In June 2020, Reading announced plans for £1.5m of active travel routes, funded by the government's £250m emergency active travel fund, coming soon after two cyclist fatalities on the city's roads inside 24 hours.
> Reading announces pop-up cycle lanes after two cyclists are killed in one day
Sidmouth Street's two-lane route was reduced to one-way with a two-way segregated cycle lane added, one of seven temporary schemes announced.
Last February, a petition calling for the cycle lanes to be removed received 248 signatures.
In response, a council spokesperson said: "The council is continually reviewing the series of initial active travel cycle lanes introduced in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, which were delivered under emergency powers and in an extremely tight timescale. This includes Sidmouth Street.
"Video surveys carried out last year over a 12 hour period recorded 76 cyclists using the facility, which is a respectable level of use.
"We have additionally commissioned independent road safety audits for this and all the other schemes and the Council is in the process of reviewing the detail of these audits, which will of course play a big part on whether the schemes remain in place.
"It is also important to note, any move to make this cycle lane permanent would require further funding and a detailed public consultation process, providing local people with the opportunity to have their say on whether to continue with it."
Reading Council's transport boss Tony Page has not been entirely satisfied by the government's approach to managing the roll-out of new cycling infrastructure, branding the approach "supreme bollocks".
"This is a level of micro-managing which is farcical. It is supreme bollocks. They cannot micro-manage 700-800 schemes across the country," he said in November 2021.
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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27 comments
The crazy thing about this is that it trys to do the job of Readings ONLY piece of decent cycling infrastructure which is the light controlled crossing of Queens road at the junction with watlington st.
This was covered by the Reading Cycle Campaign this month.
https://readingcyclecampaign.org.uk/chairmans-letter-spring-2022/
Their conclusion - pretty but useless. Not quite sure how I would go about using it. However, making that road one way has stopped it being so much of a rat run and made the light phasing better on the major junctions at either end. It seems that car traffic flows better in that area now than it did before. Drivers really need to be careful what they wish for.
Reading Council has form for mis-spending active travel money. We had a grant used to install LED signs (which seem to just tell people which car parks have spaces) and some used to clean up a statue of Victoria and re-lay some paving. I've not seen one bike lane I would use.
Alas they're too normal in misspending "cycling" / active travel funds. Even using them as extra cash for motor vehicle infra is not unheard of. I think there are some "wins" to consider from simply reducing available space for cars but it's an open question if that helps long term. At the next campaign point lobbyists for the status quo may just say "but you got your infra already".
Spot on, RCC!
Though I would disagree with you about usable cycle lanes in Reading - Christchurch Bridge is really rather nice. As for getting on and off it, though...
I dont believe this is useless though its best described as partial.
It has the ability to be a major cycle thoroughfare as there are half a dozen schools in close proximity.
Just needs tidying up.
Great link. I had to double check that there really was a sign to tell cyclists to stop at a red light - you couldn't make it up!!
I thought that rectangular signs are for informational purposes only - that sign thinks it's a round one.
A red rectangular sign is warning information, so it's not telling cyclists to stop - it's warning people that, contrary to received opinion, cyclists do stop at red lights, so that they avoid running into the back of them.
As Clive James once remarked, it only takes (took now, I suppose) half-a-dozen complainants to jam the BBC switchboard, especially if their fingers were hovering over the speed dial ready to go at the first sniff of controversy. The Reading Chronicle seems to have refined this down to one malcontent is sufficient to make a news story. Disappointed they didn't have a snap of Mr Tapken in the middle of the street, arms folded and Daily Mail sad face on though.
This takes me back, long ago Sidmouth Street was part of my commuting ride (at least in one direction, in the other it didn't work with Reading's one-way system). I've sort of got some sympathy here, because the cycle lane shows a severe lack of joined-up thinking. Problem is that it runs between the IDR and London Road, both extremely busy and no easy way to cross at either end. So I can understand why there aren't many cyclists. It really only made sense if you worked on the London Road campus, coming from anywhere else either Watlington Road or London Street were more convenient and gave easier places to cross the busy roads.
However I can't see why Mr Tapken should want it back as it was: it was a horrible rat-run. Surely the answer would be to join the cycle route up to a wider network.
Hmm, not the most glowing endorsement of it on streetview.
From a cursory look on google, it does look like it's a bit out on a limb and perhaps the parallel Watlington Street would be a better place for a bi-directional segregated cycle lane. Perhaps there is some substance to his argument. It could be that Sidmouth St was chosen simply as it's the easy option, being wider than Waltlington.
The next step as I understood it was to improve access across London road, so if you're coming in from that part of town it's nicer than going down to Southampton street
I regularly use Watlington Street, it is usually full of pedestrians who choose to walk in the road rather than on either pavement which is somewhat baffling and frustrating, quite often cars will be driven at you head-on as you cycle down there... it is also not wide enough (because there are cars parked on both sides).
Watlington Street is now a cul-de-sac, it is a better option for cycling infrastructure, it basically runs from the front entrance of the hospital by the crossing (where there are shared use paths but you have to cross the 3-lane one-direction King's Road), it connects to a sensible entry point of other cycle lanes junction outside The Lyndhurst.
The new "traffic calming" street furniture on Redlands Road have made it more dangerous as drivers will just drive at you on your side of the road if you are cycling.
The cycle lane down Southampton Street seems to be on the wrong (left) side of the one-way road into town because all of the junctions (where drivers often put you in danger) are on the left.
Sounds like the sensible option is to convert the Sidmouth St. cycle lane to car parking, move the parked cars from Watlington St. to there, then make Watlington St. one-way single lane access only for vehicles, with a bi-directional cycle lane on the other side of the street.
Cycle lanes are the bus lanes of the 2020s. The same small minded individuals that complain about bus lanes also hate cycle infrastructure.
They just hate cycling and any provision for it. It's not rational in any way.
I don't think Sidmouth St is heavily used by cyclists, that is true, but as someone who both drives and cycles in Reading I'm perfectly happy to see a dedicated cycle route. Reading traffic can be awful but the council, ie Tony Page, is generally terrified of doing anything that would impact driving.
Sidmouth Street has been a rat-run for drivers heading in from the east for the best part of 30 years. It's used by drivers wanting to use the IDR anti-clockwise, hoping to cut journey time to Caversham Bridge.
Absolutely.
Very few drivers ever used the direction that is now not an option. I know, I was one of them. The one way system means there is virtually no traffic passing the junction at the bottom anyway.
I presume Raymond lives on that road or just off it, and now has to use a very slightly different route if he wants to head away from the town, such a cry baby.
This is one of precious few bits of Reading cycle infrastructure that is actually fit for purpose.
I've frequently heard Tony Page referred to as a "useful idiot" by someone who deals with him.
I don't think he is that useful.
The new(ish) bridge is pretty...
I lived in the flats in the centre of the Prudential roundabout for a few years and Sidmouth Street was only useful to me if the IDR was completely screwed and I'd taken an around the houses route home to avoid it. I get the protests because that area is densely populated and difficult to access by car at the best of times. It's part of a wider issue, and that issue is the decision to destroy the town with the IDR.
There is no-one cutting journey times over Caversham bridge at the moment.
Not in a motor vehicle anyway.
The carmeggedon has calmed down a bit from it's peak, but it can still get quite bad.
Had to cycle over yesterday pm to get to Aw cycles for my bikes mini service. The queues for cars were insane.
also had to love the bus driver driving in the cycle lane.
It's funny, traffic or middle of the night, I find it's always quicker to get across Reading by bike.
i can get to the station in ten minutes by bike, at rush hour. I'm not sure I could get there in ten min by car at 4am. Which is how it should be , but maybe by design as opposed to shitty roads..
And if you would like to take a little longer, go a little slower, have a little more nature and greenery and avoid some of the cloying pollution of the UK's largest town the there are always the Thames and Kennet.
Remove the bike lanes and, "....return the street to normal", says a local resident, conveniently forgetting that, for thousands of years, normal meant places to walk, stroll, meet and greet and watch your children play. Only in the last hundred years has normal come to mean humans dodging cars, at fear for their lives.