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news
A68 proposal New cycle lane blamed as family home to be demolished for roundabout redevelopment
A Darlington family was shocked to see its house of 50 years missing from council plans to redevelop a roundabout near the A68 in Cockerton.
The artist's impression instead showed a newly widened four lanes approaching the roundabout flanked by a pavement and cycle path, the latter in the exact place where the Austin's council-owned home currently sits.
Under the plans the single lane on the left of the picture (below) would be widened to make room for a second, and a new shared-use-style path would be added to the right-hand side.
Lesley Austin told the Northern Echo they only realised their house was to be demolished when a friend sent a screenshot of the artist's impression.
In their interview with the local news outlet the family promised to "fight tooth and nail" to keep their home, but did not blame the new cycle path for the planned demolition.
This has not stopped the Metro running the story under the headline 'Family home could be demolished to make way for cycle path'.
Instead, Mrs Austin questioned the need to restructure the roundabout and road network, saying: "We never have a backlog of traffic at all unless there’s an accident. We purposely stand in the garden now to watch it and it flows.
"There isn’t a need for this and people are all of the same opinion: it’s not going to make any difference."
Mrs Austin is a private healthcare assistant and said the house's ideal location allows her to walk to work, something she would be unable to do if the council succeeds in moving the family to a property "at the other end of town".
"I’m not moving at my own free will here. It’s a big, quirky old house and I’m going to have to get rid of things that mean a lot to me," she continued.
"I don’t want to lose it and I will fight tooth and nail to keep it but I think it’s a case of it already being passed and they’re just waiting for funding."
The roundabout redevelopment is part of a wider proposal to redesign existing mini roundabouts around the A68.
Darlington Council insists multiple alternative properties have been offered to the family and that meetings and discussions are ongoing.
"The decision to demolish a residential building is never taken lightly," Councillor Andy Keir said.
"The constraints on space available in this area mean that if the proposed designs do go ahead, it will be necessary on this occasion.
"We are mindful that the tenant is being asked to vacate their long-term home, however a number of suitable alternatives have been offered – discussions which were initially progressing positively."
However, Mrs Austin said the news had taken a "huge toll" on the family.
"We could have left this property years ago but we choose to live in this area. It’s close to work for me, close to the roads. I don’t want to move out of the area. The kids struggle with not knowing about the future.
"It has and it is taking a huge toll on all four of us in different ways. I am part boxed up and ready to move. I have had to de-home my home. It’s not a home anymore it’s a house."
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
After only three days, Metro has rejected my comment for not following community guidelines; it was honest and true, they just didn't like it. Not sure what guideline I've crossed, but I'll add this to my collection of badges of honour.
"Your comment on Family home could be demolished to make way for cycle path has been rejected as it contains content that is in breach of our community guidelines.
Posted 1/17/2022, 12:02
I think that the Metro tells porkies when it says the house is being demolished for the cycle lane, because it isn't. This is what the family said "...the family promised to "fight tooth and nail" to keep their home, but did not blame the new cycle path for the planned demolition." Just another cycle-hating rag."
Well Metro is owned by the Daily Heil, so it's not surprising.
Yes, of course the cycle lane is to blame, when once again 80% of the space goes to cars...
the more I look at the worse it gets. All roads currently have two lanes entering the roundabout, and the roundabout allows space for two vehicles going round. So they are not increasing capacity, they are only increasing speed (by smoothing out the lines) increasing speed does not increase capacity as a two second gap i still 30 cars per lane per minute maximum entering the roundabout. If anything it can reduce capacity as stopping distance increase. Also much harder for a car to pull out in the gap between two cars coming round, as more time taken to accelerate up to match their speed.
As a Dutch road designer, it is always hilarious to see how cycle paths are designed in other countries. Not that we in the Netherlands have a monopoly on wisdom, but why don't foreign road designers just come over to see how high-quality bicycle infrastructure can be integrated? So much thinking has already been done here; there are detailed guidelines, safety studies, psychological tests among road users and so on and so forth. If necessary, they can take a look with Google Streetview to get inspiration. (I'm not talking about Amsterdam, that's a mess, but any other city or village has it perfectly organized). In my opion, if the designers of this monstrosity had studied the craft, they would never have come up with this design.
But I'm going to continue working, I'm currently designing 15 km road with 7 roundabouts (of course including decent bicycle infrastructure) 😁
They don't even have to put up with Google StreetView - Bicycle Dutch on YouTube has fabulous "infrastructure-porn" content.
You're probably bored of all the cries of "why can't we have that" and occasional "what? That's nothing like it showed on the internet!" from UK citizens, "there is no such thing" followed by "we've come up with a ground-breaking new design" (which has the label "Dutch" on it but that's in name only and is generally fairly woeful for cycling) from designers here. Yes - it's truly not invented here, until it is but without understanding the design we copied.
There are obviously some fundamental human / societal factors at work as to why - despite the fact that the UK has a "Holland" too and it is also flat - we can't just import these things.
Being positive - there is some good UK design stuff going on. Just not organised nationally.
I tried to convince the RB Kingston council to get some Dutch consultants on the roll when they got their "mini Holland" (they even called it that -- mini Holland!) funding to put in some segregated bike lanes. I asked them repeatedly in the consultation, both written an in person, to get experts to help design them, but no... they were convinced they didn't need outside help and what could any non-British expert tell them, anyway, that they didn't already know? The finished lanes are a disaster of course. And constantly being refitted/redesigned/redone to fix all the mistakes any Dutch road designer could have prevented them from making in the first place. Pathetic. And monstrous. Every time I rode on or past those lanes it gave me the rage.
It already needs a redesign. The so called cycle paths have give way markings for all driveways but the new highway code rules supercede this from 29/01/2022. Will also apply to cyclists going around the roundabouts as drivers will be required to give them priority.
I don't think they are driveways, I think they are crossing points, for the excitement of crossing a 4 lane high speed road (which used to be two lanes and low speed)
This junction design is appalling, taking a juntion which would be appropriate for Dual carriageways meeting and applying it to an urban area.
drivers will be required to give them priority
Except they won't. Now what does the cyclist do? Martyr himself for the cause by expecting priority, while the entire justice system employs maximum resources to find an excuse for the driver and rejects any video evidence because the cyclist's widow is unable to prove that the cyclist was displaying a large sign admitting that he is 'packing a camera', as Lancashire (and reportedly Essex) police require him to do.
I don't think it will be cancelled due to the house. Suspect more people will protest the three trees being cut down for the "cycle lane" myself.
That new infrastructure looks awful. As I cyclist I have two options for traversing these roundabouts:
1) As I approach the first roundabout, I leave my position in the road to dip into the cycle lane. I then follow the outside of the roundabouts, and need to cross the road twice to get to my exit. Finally, I rejoin the (presumably busy) carriageway from the cycle path
or
2) I maintain my position on the road and follow with the traffic, ignoring the cycle lane. Presumably I get shouted at for not using cycle lanes, and Daily Mail run an article about this £2.7 quadrillion cycle lane that is empty
Wow. Add an extra car lane and a crap cycle lane on the pavement and it's the cycle lane that gets the blame?
A crap cycle lane that looks like it would fit just fine on the existing pavement / grassed area (if they hadn't gobbled up a load of extra space for the road) at that.
But yeah, cycle paths. They do say that this is only flagged up by the meeja, not the home owner etc...
If they can get active travel funding for that then that is very depressing. Cyclist remains 3rd class citizen. Nothing has really changed. you're still crossing roads giving up priority. So now you'd be in the traffic as before but with more irate drivists.
Quite. I'm not sure how anyone could consider having to cross several lanes of traffic emerging from a roundabout an improvement.
It's an improvement, but not for cyclists, for drivers. Fewer pesky cyclists getting in their way.
But maybe only by accident (by making it crap). I'm sure the council's happy to steal the cycle budget money for motoring / other purposes. I think the "design" is more cock up than conspiracy. Bet they're just hopelessly unaware about what useful cycling infra actually looks like.
Although I stand to be corrected. I know there are plenty of "rip out the cycle lane, never mind the costs" councillors out there.
Im not entirely sure why they feel the need to put in massive full roundabouts complete with token "green space" if the existing mini's are doing their job.
I wondered the same.
Perhaps the only clue is:
"She argued the area never has a ‘backlog of traffic’ unless there is an accident."
Perhaps if we had a media that were actually interested in doing anything other than producing click bait articles they might have found some statistics to tell us whether or not this is a regular occurrence.
Increases the speed of vehicles using the junction, thereby making the roads more dangerous to cycle on, pushing cyclists onto this substandard cycle lane.
The one going left to right looks better as it bypasses both roundabouts, but it needs safer means of emerging, rather than coming to a dead stop and giving way to the traffic with incresed speed due to large radii on the roundabouts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9BUyWVg1xI
Gives a good overview of the dsconnect between transport planning and the wishes of locals.
That layout is designed with one thing in mind and one thing only: for motor traffic to be able to use it without slowing down.
...and with decorative cycle lanes, the active travel budget can be used to fund it!
It looks like a bloody awful piece of infrastructure for cyclists, to be honest. If you are going to knock down a house, you might at least put in something decent.
And then the drivers will moan that cyclists aren't using it