I wished we would stop building special project bike lanes etc and first fix some of the roads. I do wonder where this is all going.
This. I live just off a major road into York and its coming to the end of what supposedly was a £6m+ project to increase/promote safe cycling in/out of town and speed up bus times. What they've actually done was resurface two bits, each about 100m long which desperately needed doing, put in a cycle lane that loops off the road, around a layby outside some shops and then back onto the road (that nobody uses due to its mental design), put in a few more sets of lights for pedestrian crossings (that nobody thought was needed) and actually shortened the only bus lane that was on the route.
£6m this work cost and it over ran so assume it was more + one of the main bits that safety campaigners asked for had to be dropped due to lack of funds.
At a national and local scale, money is just pissed up the wall for stuff like this but even at a smaller scale you see it. Saw something on the Beeb a few weeks back about uproar to replace/fix a wall or something that the council were paying tens, maybe hundreds of thousands to sort and an independent contractor had taken a look and stated it should cost something like a tenth of what the council were paying. Councils should be run by people who treat them as their own business and as such are a little more considerate with their budgets.
There's a local cycle lane going in near me in Chorlton in south Manchester, It connects an already existing bike lane either side of it, and runs for about a mile along a busy road through town. They've been digging it up and causing chaos for about a year now. random temporary lights, closing paths, traffic cones and fences littering up the place, changed a major junction to restrict turning and the looks you get from motorist if you venture out on a bike tells you all you need to know about what they think of it all. Thing is, a little bit down from all that the road surface is like what you imagine downtown Kabul must be like, and I think everyone must think (and I know I do) some of the money that you've spent on the cycle lane that every one now hates could have gone to make this section look a lot less like the surface of the moon...
Saw something on the Beeb a few weeks back about uproar to replace/fix a wall or something that the council were paying tens, maybe hundreds of thousands to sort and an independent contractor had taken a look and stated it should cost something like a tenth of what the council were paying. Councils should be run by people who treat them as their own business and as such are a little more considerate with their budgets.
Some of that is down to how (Government-mandated) procurement works in the public sector plus there may have been other issues that an independent contractor might not have known about - tree work or foundations or something that might have been a compounding factor in the costs.
Ironically, the hoops that councils have to jump through to prove they're getting "value for taxpayer money" are insane. Multiple quotes, if you go for anything other than the cheapest option it needs multiple justifications and there's usually some sort of background check to ensure that the person doing the procurement is not related in some way to the person / company who they want to get in (all of which costs extra money...).
It's way above and beyond what central Government get away with on a daily basis.
All that VIP lane, give your mates a load of cash stuff that the Tories have been doing for 10+ years would never have been allowed to happen at a council.
Councils do manage to be inept and clueless in many other ways but they're surprisingly free of corruption cos the checks on them are so rigorous (although that has dropped off dramatically now that the independent audit body that looked at council finances has been cut which, unsurprisingly has resulted in many councils books being un-audited for years now and financial shitstorms appearing out of the woodwork cos they weren't caught in time).
This could be the Daily Mail website comments section.
"Wasting money on cycling infrastructure AND stopping me driving down one short stretch of road."
"How can it cost so much?!?! My mate Barry could do that for £500 cash in hand."
“How can it cost so much?!?! My mate Barry could do that for £500 cash in hand.”
Yeah, well, it stands to reason, doesn't it, councils should be like businesses, unelected bureaucrats, health and safety gone mad, it wouldn't have happened in the old days, I blame diversity.
More than likely all those trans people who have infiltrated the councils
Cycling infrastructure can be infuriating. On the one hand Glasgow can do superb stuff like this in Garscube road. Fully seperated. Cycle phase at traffic lights. Cycle priority at side streets.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fXgyyS9j8V5eDmHfA
On the other hand there is Great Western Road. 6 lane 30mph road. Inside lane was a A 24/7 bus lane which was ideal for cycling. The surface was swept by the bus tyres. Buses were infrequent enough they were not an issue. Replaced with narrow cycle lane seperated by a few plastic bollards. Narrower than the bus lane. No longer swept by vehicle tyres hence full of puncture causing road crap life broken glass, wires, nails etc. Gone from a regular route to being avoided.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xH8JA3DGST8arPhS7
This could be the Daily Mail website comments section.
I asked our local councillor why it was taking so long to build it, and he admitted that lots of residents here, (and Chorlton is similar demographically to to Heb) have said that any good will that any drivers may have had about a cycle lanes have more or less vanished becasue of the delays (weather, what they've found under the road, and changes to the contractors ) and crack pot infrasture changes, and annoying folks on side streets as they've become rat runs for the last year, and so on. I think the end product will probably be useful, but holy ****; the cost and time its taken to get here has been wearisome - and I'm some-one who'll use it!
This could be the Daily Mail website comments section.
The problem is that councils have to engage in lengthy consultations. Transport is a nightmare for this because everyone travels so everyone has an opinion. However those opinions are based on almost zero actual knowledge so councils go in with maps and ask people to draw their ideal bike route or they have some fun interactive "how can we improve the area?" things and most of what comes out of that is utter bollocks.
The alternative is that you have (usually fairly knowledgeable) council officers draw up some actually workable costed plans, it goes out to consultation and a vocal minority immediately leap on them, shout them down, proclaim all sorts of disastrous outcomes, and the political heat gets too much for the councillors so they pass it back to the officers with instructions to make it less objectionable (which always means less useful), the plans are duly watered down, presented again, the same shouty minority say it's not good enough, their demands haven't been met and again the councillor gets cold feet, gets scared that it'll translate into lost votes at the next election, the plans are again watered down.
And what is eventually built has cost nearly the same as doing it properly but it's a pile of absolute shite. No-one uses it, the shouty minority accuse the council of squandering scarce funds and the cycling lobby accuse the council of building substandard nonsense and the council are put off ever doing even then slightest bit of active travel stuff ever again.
I'm sympathetic to the above. Part of the misunderstanding among ordinary people is the purpose of consultations. It's not because the council doesn't know what to do and needs a bunch of amateur nobbers (like me) to tell them. And when the amateurs don't get their way (because no Gerald we can't have a magic CCTV camera and barrier that only lets local yokels drive up and down this road), they get upset. Sometimes that misunderstanding is encouraged by wafty bollocks from the council or their engagement contractors. It's not easy.
Crazy legs. I have personal experience of councils appointing their mates and paying them far more than the project is worth. It happens.
I also regularly see totally inadequate cycle provision that is created because the riad designers have no idea. See Edinburgh s infamous cycleway between the tram tracks etc
Crap cycle provision.
Look at the latest incarnation on leith walk. Not a cheap option as the whole road was relaid so any design was possible. Its awful and does not meet government standards. Not because of anything but incompetence and hubris.
No one who rudes a bike would have gone with the design
The problem is that councils have to engage in lengthy consultations. Transport is a nightmare for this because everyone travels so everyone has an opinion. However those opinions are based on almost zero actual knowledge so councils go in with maps and ask people to draw their ideal bike route or they have some fun interactive “how can we improve the area?” things and most of what comes out of that is utter bollocks.
My mums partner retired early due to ill health from dealing with this sort of stuff.
Hi last project was a development of 600 ish houses, they laid it out to code, active travel, parking, road junctions, bus and cycle routes, pedestrian access, services, drainage etc.
By the time the builders/developers, banks, local councilors, landowner etc had finished it was pretty much an uninhabitable mess. An extra 70-80 houses, 2 spaces for *every* property, all the paths and cycle/pedestrian access across the development were gone. Virtually no footpaths at the roadside. Virtually no grass, no drainage either.
It had flooded twice before the first people moved in (those who had pre ordered a property) the rest of the plots are so devalued now that the developer is probably (hopefully?) going to go bankrupt. It's bumper to bumper traffic every morning with people queuing to get out onto the main road (neither of the two *proper* junctions were built, it's just a pair of T-Junctions, one on to a busy main road, one on to a narrow country lane) the bus company *can't* put a bus through as there isn't any proper through access.
Utter chaos. All signed off over the planners heads, and against their explicit and detailed complaints.
