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Christ's Pieces (CC BY-SA 2.0 by Gareth Jones:Flickr)Cambridge residents call for better signage after park cycling crackdown
Cambridge residents have called for clearer signs on the paths across Christ's Pieces, a large park in the centre of the city, after a police crackdown on cycling at the weekend.
A local bye-law bans cycling on the paths across the park, and on Saturday police mounted an operation to fine people riding there.
Raymond Brown of Cambridge News reports that one of the riders caught in the operation, Dr Guy Roberts, spoke to others riding through the park and found none of them knew cycling there was illegal.
Dr Roberts said: "Along with several others, I received a traffic offence ticket when cycling across the park around 1pm on Saturday. Apparently riding is not allowed anywhere in the park. However, within the five minutes that I was there, around a dozen cyclists were crossing the park and all that I spoke to seemed to be unaware of the law.
"Given that all the other green spaces in Cambridge, Jesus Green, Parker's Piece, Midsummer Common, Sheep's Green, Coe Fen and so on all allow bicycles, this lack of sign posting is unfortunate."
Christ's Pieces is owned by the city of Cambridge, but signage for some of its rights of way is the responsibility of Cambridgeshire County Council, while the smaller paths are owned by the city.
At some entrances to the park, there's little or no indication that cycling's not allowed.
Better signage is on its way, according to the city council.
In the meantime though, Dr Roberts plans to appeal the fine because of the lack of clear signs.
He said: "There are no signs on the north-west entrance to the park 'advising users how to behave'.
"In my opinion as the landowner – in this case the city council – has not chosen to erect appropriate 'no cycling' signs, they can not claim trespass."
Cllr Carina O'Rielly, head of parks at the city council, said: "There's a bylaw preventing cycling anywhere on Christ's Pieces and I know local residents are keen to see it enforced. There is a lack of signage at the moment, but there's a project in hand to put in new signs and bollards at the entrances to Christ's Pieces and that should start in the new year.
"In the meantime, it's a very crowded open space at this time of year, so while I have every sympathy for cyclists who didn't realise that cycling wasn't allowed, I'm glad that police are enforcing the rules, which should keep everyone a bit safer."
Dr Roberts said: "I'd be very pleased if this was clearly signed. I spoke to several people who were given tickets and they were mostly middle-aged and there was an elderly women. Not the sort of people to ignore the law but they were also unaware of the restriction on cycling through the park."
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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24 comments
That's about right FlufflyKittenofT, although I think it actually makes some sense to allow inadequate signage as a defence to a speeding charge, since (at least until everyone has sat-nav) there isn't any other realistic way to learn the local speed limit if it's lower than you might expect for the type of road.
On the other hand I think byelaws are generally pretty unjust, since we can't learn all the byelaws that might affect us everywhere we visit. It's almost like being prosecuted for something that was criminalized after we did it, which would be a breach of the human rights convention article 7.
The defence to a speeding charge isn't ignorance of the law - I think it would be inadequate signage, based on the wording of the Road Traffict Regulation Act 1984, which says things like "a person shall not be convicted of driving a motor vehicle on the road at a speed exceeding the limit unless the limit is indicated by means of such traffic signs as are mentioned in...".
Based on that wording apparently a mortorist would have a defence that the signs were missing or inadequte even if they admitted to knowing about the speed limit on that road.
So for motorists the law itself specifically allows ignorance as an excuse, while not allowing it for others? Fairly normal double-standard I guess.
That's the same place where pro tek thought they unveiled the first glow in the dark cycle path http://road.cc/content/news/96953-video-cambridge-gets-worlds-first-glow... (article updated with correction later). The Cambridge councils need to sort out this running joke.
So often we hear of Police Forces and Local Authorities that are under resourced.
It is great to find ones that have were so well funded before the cuts that they can still deliver this level of attention to such trivia.
We should treat this report discretely, otherwise some bright spark might spot it and decide to trim budgets by a quick15% .
I'm sure the police jumped at the chance to make some money and fine a few pesky cyclists? How about words of advice instead? No, I see, it doesn't raise cash. It's money they want by enforcing some opaque totally unknown and unpublicised bye law. Surely breaking a bye law is a civil matter not a criminal matter involving the plod? Some might call it heavy handed extortion.
The authorities have no problem with people killing cyclists
https://civillondon.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/road-niggers/
But ride in a park and you get 'done'
Are we really road-niggers?
You beat me to it Fluffy... the fact that all this time later the signs are still not correctly sited
Have the Police really got nothing better to do?
Out of interest, is it still illegal to cycle through the town centre (Sidney St, Trinity St, etc) 9am - 5pm? It used to be, so you had to ride a very long way around the inner ring road in heavy traffic to get anywhere. I ended up walking everywhere when I lived there, which wasn't what I'd expected..
No. That ban was pretty much the reason for the founding of Cambridge Cycling Campaign, and has been removed.
It's still banned from the Grafton area 10am to 4pm.
Awesome!
Okay I was bang to rights, but I had an old woman walk right up to me in Market St and try to push me off my bike. Feisty!
There is still a one-way system in operation! Lots of one-way streets in Cambridge now have contraflow cycling, but not all of them.
"... they were mostly middle-aged and there was an elderly women."
Excellent work there chaps. Another cycling menace off our streets.
The alternative route, by the way, has you sharing with buses and taxis just outside the bus station, and two contraflows, one with a lane and one without, taxis and buses ignore both. It's not terribly nice to cycle there.
Just like Amsterdam!
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.2049849,0.1246696,3a,75y,303.49h,70.36t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sVMRWB7313e6bTH5aDuPYCQ!2e0!5m1!1e3?hl=en
Well, everyone except cyclists, and who cares about them...
This is quite tricky. I see the point about other parks but these are busy footpaths in another park, and there are no signs saying you ARE allowed to cycle on them, so wouldn't you either check the position with the council, or assume that it's banned like other footpaths with no shared-use signs? Clearer signs would be a good idea, though, whether it's to make them shared-use or make it clearer that they're not.
Having lived in or near Cambridge from birth, I would say it is completely fair to assume that you can cycle on any given path through a park, unless there is clear signage stating otherwise. There is a lack of signage elsewhere in the city denoting what is a cycle path and what isn't.
Ultimately the people who maintain our pathways and signage need to have a clear and competent strategy so that people know where they can and can't cycle. Fining people for doing what they are (fairly reasonably) assuming is legal and have not been clearly warned about is simply punishing the cyclist for what they have totally failed to do.
Is it necessarily banned on footpaths with no shared-use signs? That's not clear to me. All I know is that its banned by default on footways with no shared use signs (i.e. pavements next to roads) but I'm not at all certain that its banned by default on _footpaths_ without such signs. Footpaths are not the same thing as footways. Sometimes they are also bridleways, for one thing.
I should probably look this up before I get caught out myself.
Unfortunately I think it's probably true legally that 'ignorance of the law is no defense', even in the case of by-laws. But I agree that it's unreasonable to enforce it in this case.
This isn't the process that has been applied to speeding tickets, motorists have had their tickets cancelled if there has not been adequate signage.
So Ignorance of the law is a defence in these cases, so surely it should be for obscure inconsistent by-laws
If "ignorance of the law is no defense" how does one explain this one:
http://road.cc/content/news/120670-no-speed-limit-sign-means-no-prosecut...
Shouldnt the locals be calling for better infrastructure to enable cycling
After all isnt this the UK's "cycling" city...FFS
We do call for it. All the damn time. Yet, even in a city where so many journeys are made by bike, we only get half-measures when proper investment is sorely needed. People often assume that Cambridge has good infrastructure, since there are so many cyclists - but in fact, Cambridge is a "cycling city" in spite of the infrastructure, not because of it.
I can only imagine how cyclists in other cities must feel - at least we have relative safety in numbers.
I can't comment on exactly what signage there is, but the above seems to be a pretty clear admission that whatever is there is inadequate. If that is the case, then they should not be enforcing it by way of fine until it is adequate.
Even as cavalier attitudes of local government can sometimes be, this seems pretty remarkable.