- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
news
Strava heatmapDevon will use Strava to prioritise popular cycling roads for repairs
Devon County Council (DCC) will use Strava when deciding where to direct a large proportion of the £58m it will spend on road repairs this year. The authority is looking to prioritise roads used by cyclists and will use data from the popular cycling and running app to determine which routes are most popular for active travel.
Devon Live reports that DCC has an extra £27m to spend on the county's roads this year from the Government’s pothole fund with the majority of that to be allocated to smaller and unclassified roads.
Stuart Hughes, DCC Cabinet Member for Highway Management, said that Devon’s Covid-19 recovery had introduced different challenges and considerations for the improvement of Devon’s highways.
He said, “the funding will be invaluable in enabling high-usage routes to be safe, properly maintained, and appropriate for active travel, like walking or cycling. We need to ensure the shift in active travel is underpinned in well maintained services and routes.”
Only £2m of the money is to be spent on maintaining dedicated cycleways, but Meg Booth, chief officer for highways, infrastructure, development and waste, said that the county doesn’t currently have a great many, meaning active travel more commonly takes place on rural roads.
“We are making a huge investment in the non-classified roads and that is where the majority of cycling at the moment happens,” she said.
“There is some money for cycle tracks but there aren’t that many of them. The focus is on the rural network that is used by cyclists.”
She said the council was working with Strava to get data on roads that are popular with cyclists.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- Freddy56 1 hour 59 min ago
The reflective nature of the fabric structure, in in a 2 layer sealed fabric-means moisture cannot pass thru, The breathability claim is lies.......
- HoarseMann 3 hours 11 min ago
Driver injured after car flips onto its roof https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0g9rpp8x9o
- mark1a 3 hours 29 min ago
I don't think he wants to talk about it...
- Rendel Harris 3 hours 59 min ago
Ach, dinnae fret...
- Matt Page 4 hours 7 min ago
The Prevelo Alpha Three on the main feature image is 20".
- eburtthebike 4 hours 18 min ago
£100 bonus.
- chrisonabike 4 hours 26 min ago
To be fair if this is our usual revenant they've got form in rewriting history...
- chrisonabike 4 hours 28 min ago
"At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them ... we have to because some numpty destroyed the roll of names"....
- hawkinspeter 6 hours 33 min ago
Looks like some Barton Hill residents don't want the Liverpool Neighbourhood or at least not Marsh Lane to be a no-through-road:...
Add new comment
14 comments
The pothole problem has been ignored for so long that I can't see how councils are ever going to sort it out properly.
When I lived in Devon a number of years ago, I remember a small lane on the edge of Exeter that got downgraded to" Unsuitable for motor vehicles" because the surface got so bad, even though there were houses on it.
You really needed a mountain bike to go down there!
Things are just the same here in Somerset. Gravel all over the middle of the road and potholes everywhere.
Even where the main road surface is OK, you can't pull over into the passing places safely as a cyclist because of the huge pits and rocks etc.
I have encountered the Oxfordshire Dragon Patcher, and it's repairs, (fresh, turns your tyres into rice crispies, at least sound wise) and they seem like a good fix, seen similar repairs on some formerly heavily potholed tracks in Surrey too. They must have one.
Devon County Council is Conservative led.
Considering they described the pothole I reported a few weeks ago, on a blind corner, on a 20% gradient, and with gravel covering the middle of the road as a "serviceability issue", please forgive my scepticism that anything will actually be accomplished here.
Ugh. This is bad news. Strava is a platform for self-described "athletes". The notion that its activity data is representative of general cycling has been repeatedly disproven. Using Strava to direct spending will prioritise roads favoured by roadies over those used by families and commuter cyclists.
Perhaps if they limit the data to rides tagged as commutes, the results will be better geared towards action in the right direction. But then the problem becomes some more reasonable routes to want to cycle, are being avoided because of their poor condition, so they need to look at the roads surrounding the most popular routes and not just the routes themselves. Strava data has multiple levels that they can filter.
Only time will tell if this investment in their roads will pan out.
It's the other way round, Strava calls its member athletes. Never thought of myself as an athelete, and still don't.
I suspect what Doctor Fegg meant was that it's targetted at the more enthusiastic cyclist - particularly those who like to chase fast times, long rides, heavy mileage - so not necessarily representative of the cycling patterns of the average commuter.
Source?
I raised the same query with my local council's transport officer, a cyclist himself, as they were doing the same as Devon. They'd done their own surveys to test the data and their conclusion was it wasn't just 'athletes' but their presence on the heat map was indicative of demand from all cyclists. Also, where enthusiasts lead, others will follow.
So it makes a big difference where you are.
There's been some research done in and around Glasgow, for example, where the Strava Metro data lines up reasonably well with other measures of cycling activity. This is not surprising - Glasgow has a desperately low modal share for cycling (<2%) so, by and large, the only people cycling are the Strava audience.
But if you look at somewhere where everyday cycling is normalised - Oxford or Cambridge, for example - it's really clear that the heatmap doesn't match up with trivially observable cycling patterns. In Oxford, for example, one of the main shopping streets (Cornmarket) glows brightly on the heatmap, which makes sense until you realise that the street is actually closed to cyclists throughout the day - i.e. activities like weekend club runs are skewing the stats. Similarly, head a short way out into the countryside and the roads/NCN routes that are popular with families don't show as prominently as the busy, direct roads which Stravaites are happy to use.
An interesting approach, but have they considered that cyclists might be avoiding the most potholed roads? There are some roads which are so bad that riding on them is difficult, and so most people find another route.
This is what I logged in to say.
I ride roads that are ok, that there than the ones I'd ride if they were all the same condition.
Sounds like a step in the right direction! It's something Welsh councils seem to have been doing in the last year or two (I'm not sure if it's deliberate or not). Recently a lot of small roads have been properly resurfaced with new smooth tarmac instead of the awful grit/tar mix and it makes an amazing difference to how nice cycling is.
Great news - there's some absolute canyons of potholes on some routes such as the NCR28. It's refreshing to hear the DCC is starting to reconise that country lanes form an important part of rural active travel routes.
However, they perhaps need to consider that rural lanes are popular because most people don't fancy thier chances on windy 60mph country roads.