Business owners claim Tour of Cambridgeshire will cost them £10,000

dare99 wrote:

When I last did it, I remember seeing one wheelie bin with a sign saying "We do not support our roads being closed". I'll tolerate one digruntled wheelie bin.

A royal wheelie bin?

If that was 2019, there was also sand on the one bend near there where I imagine oil had been poured on that morning. 

Duncann wrote:

The value of the profile they get for moaning in the press must be worth £10,000. Perhaps it's a conscious ploy...

Could it become a new publicity truism, "Nobody ever lost money moaning about cyclists..."

Exactly.

They've acknowledged the benefit of the event but politely pointed out that it causes their business a significant financial loss and asked the organisers to look at ways of reducing that loss.

I imagine all this on here criticising them would be apoplectic if their income was reduced by 10% for one month every year in order to run an event.

The owners don't own the roads which are a public good.  One weekend isn't unreasonable and roughly inline with a road closure for maintenance.

They also appear to run a coffee shop on the premises, if they had any nouse whatsoever they'd be coining it in with a takeaway service that weekend but they'd rather be moany c***s.

The private company running the event doesn't own the roads either.

You're assuming there'd be people outside their shop to sell coffee to.

Looking at the map their business is on a rural A road with no pavements, I doubt they'd sell a single cup.

They may well have a point.  However by and large our ideology is "public property - but private business often gets priority on the use of this resource".  In theory their gains eventually come back to everyone but I'm not convinced we've done our sums honestly on this. (Bit like the "we can't break even on our ferry service - but we will continue paying billions out to our owners".) More homework for me to do...

Not directly addressing their complaint but you're pointing out their cafe business is entirely predicated on cars?  Nothing unusual about this currently.  If we're bothered about these pollution / health / resilience / viability of the countryside / "beautiful places" (thanks Mr. Gove) / climate change issues we should be trying to set our business, transport and housing policies avoid this kind of development in the future however.  Or rather - if it's the norm that businesses are built around car-dependency we've not got something right.

It looks like it's a farm shop and cafe based on an actual farm so, unsurprisingly, it's not well served by public transport or even pavements.

I'd agree that we should be eliminating car dependency wherever possible but I'm not sure it is possible in this case.

Note that "No pavements" is a choice we've made of course.  I don't know about public transport but I do see this very shop is about 4 miles from the edge of Peterborough - not a small place.  It is in a generally sparsely settled place of course.  Plus the fens do tend to give you long, straight roads and lots of waterways.  So bad for speeding cars or alternative routes.  However it's nothing like places in the regions just outside where I stay (in the Scottish central belt).

In the UK it might seem "not possible"... but as is often the case a look across the North sea will give us a contrast. Consider Drenthe, one of the least densely populated regions of the Netherlands.  At one point strip-mined for peat, along with neighbouring Groningen and Friesland - so parts are formerly an "industrial landscape" too.  They have made themselves a cycling tourist region and there most definitely are rural attractions which people cycle to:

https://youtu.be/zN4gGCXcMG0?t=319

Of course this kind of tourism is even more common where population is denser:

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/cycling-through-the-heath/

Here's how to encourage it:

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/recreational-cycling-in-the-netherlands-2/

chrisonatrike wrote:

Note that "No pavements" is a choice we've made of course.

Back in Olden Times, all these rural roads didn't have Mr Toad racing along them so it wasn't a problem, and the funding and land was never made available to retrofit them once it did become a problem.

Can't find the quote but think I read it in one of Carlton Reid's excellent historical works - a UK minister from times past (1920s?) was moaning that people still didn't respect the car but would have to learn to get out of the roads the same as dogs, chickens and other livestock.  Very much "you will get used to it".  Can't remember if the "or else" was stated or not.

I think at the time occasional Mr. Toads running people over were accepted on the grounds that the drivers were a) of a higher social class than the victims or b) at least clearly much richer - a good proxy for good character as long as they weren't foreign.  After all they would hardly be deliberately damaging their own cars or otherwise inconveniencing themselves, would they?

The Netherlands countryside tourism model is of course based on the car, like in the UK.  The difference is that there are alternatives.  Key parts are:

A good rail transport system, where (with your standard transport card) you can also rent a bike under a popular national scheme at most stations (even small unmanned ones).
A network of protected cycle routes...
...even in the countryside (I believe if a route is needed between two places outside an urban area it's done as a cycle route by default - with pedestrians of course permitted - unless there will be lots of pedestrians) ...
...with a handy point-to-point navigation system (also here).
Like a proper version of the UK National Cycle Network there is also some attention given to ensuring long distance cycle routes between places are made not just possible but more convenient.

You inspired me to take a look (on the map) as I'm currently staying a bit north of Peterborough and have been a few miles from there (I drove, I'm afraid...)

So worst case:  Google says their farm is 6 miles to Peterborough station.  That's on the East Coast main line.  For a more regional alternative depending on route it's between 5.3 / 6.4 miles to Whittlesea station (two separate routes).

Now I'm not sure I'd specifically take the train then cycle there myself (some of the roads likely not so pleasant).  However that's just about within most people's abilities.  That's by the "time the general public will put up with travelling" criterion e.g. around 30 minutes at a moderate speed (it's flat...).

Rich_cb wrote:

I'd agree that we should be eliminating car dependency wherever possible but I'm not sure it is possible in this case.

That sounds a bit defeatist to me. "This is not Amsterdam".

Sometimes I wonder whether you aren't really keen to reduce car use or promote cycling and active travel, merely reinforce the (unsustainable and harmful) status quo. Shouldn't we be looking for ways to succeed rather than not even trying?

I guess you could argue given how we've done so far - and our future plans - this is still realistically impossible for any given likely future.  However like a teacher at an inner-city school I'd suggest we need to keep believing in much better even while being realistic about where we are.  This is because we're still dealing with humans and their beliefs and motivation, not with facts of physics.  Without aiming at the stars we will definitely fall in the gutter and achieve nothing. (Whether we do so anyway is for history to tell the future.)

Luckily this particular situation is almost an open-and-shut case of "how we are at the moment in the UK" combined with "but with fairly small interventions (compared to e.g. a few hundred metres of new motorway or HS2 line or money subsidising Cars 2.0) - already proven in several other countries - we could fix this exact objection".

With all those cyclists coming past? I doubt it!

Good point. Offer something new on the day - there will be loads of people in the area. Sell  'rip - off coffee' or something.  Everyone else does at these events. 

Owd Big 'Ead wrote:

Surely they could embrace some entrepreneurial spirit and find ways to make money off both the competitors and spectators

My thoughts too.

This is a planned event that brings a significant amount of money to the local economy. But farmers are always top of the class when it comes to moaning. I should know, I grew up in a small farming community and my colleages and I deal with them every day.

How would they cope if the shop was inaccessible for a day or two due to a burst water main or roadworks? And do they really think that people can't arrange to visit the farm shop on other days of the week?

It seems from the facebook post that they are only closed on the Sunday. I have written a revised version:

"This is a fantastic, nationally unique event which we support wholeheartedly. Our customers may have difficulty getting to our shop on Sunday 12 June due to the brief road closure. We have anticipated this and can get round the road closure by [insert creative solutions].

We have put up bunting and hope the riders, their families and friends will pop in to sample our range of delicious foods while they are in the area."

Given the cock up by the ToC organisers meaning they'd run out of snacks and water for the last quarter of the Gran Fondo riders, I'd have welcomed a farm shop open last time I rode it!

A square of flapjack at mile 80 didn't really fill me up!

David9694 wrote:

Tell me you're car-dependent without telling me...

This one on Twitter last week is a real classic...

George says he's a cyclist and also that he's a retired GP. He lost Penny a horse in December 2021.  Conor Roberts is in New Zealand. 

colic is indeed a nasty condition for horses, but I'd be impressed with any arrangement that alerted an owner to an onset in the dead of night.