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Extent of proposed Coventry PSPO banning cycling (image courtesy of Coventry Cyclist)Proposed Coventry cycling ban "latest abuse of public space ASBOs" says Cycling UK
A ban on cycling is being proposed in Coventry city centre, with the threat of a £100 fine, in a move Cycling UK says amounts to the latest abuse of new “public space ASBO” powers by councils.
Coventry City Council is proposing a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) – a geographically-based ASBO which restricts certain behaviours within a given area – banning cycling, along with begging, skateboarding and charity “chugging” within the city’s ring road. A consultation on the proposals runs until 15 January, after which a decision will be made.
The proposed ban, which follows complaints of anti-social behaviour, has raised concerns normal activities are being outlawed, as well as questions over the potential effect the ban could have on those who use cycles as a mobility aid.
Cycling UK backs High Court challenge to Mansfield’s ‘cycling ASBOs’
Coventry City Council says the PSPO is a "less bureaucratic" way to “tackle cycling and skateboarding in pedestrianised areas” along with “problematic buskers”.
Deputy Cabinet Member for Policing and Equalities, Councillor Pervez Akhtar, said: “A Public Space Protection Order could reduce some of the issues that potentially put people off coming into the city centre and so we’ll be considering whether it should be introduced in Coventry. If we think it could help, we’ll be asking residents and businesses for their views.”
However, national cycling charity, Cycling UK, says PSPOs are not fit for purpose and are being abused by councils.
Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s Senior Road Safety and Legal Campaigns Officer, said: “Cycling UK is currently speaking to local campaigners about the implications of the Coventry PSPO and we will respond to the consultation in due course.”
The Home Office is currently revising its guidance on PSPOs, and Cycling UK says it will add, in its response to the Coventry consultation, that PSPOs should not be used to restrict cycling as happened recently in Mansfield.
Newport cycling ban row rumbles on
“It’s clear PSPOs are not fit for purpose as we see some councils abusing their new powers by seeking to ban cycling amongst other normal activities. Cycling UK is pleased the Home Office has realised this, and is currently looking to revise their guidance, which we believe should make clear that PSPOs should not be used to ban cycling,” says Dollimore.
A statement on Coventry City Council’s website says if the public and businesses are behind the idea a £100 fixed penalty notice will be issued to those caught engaged in one of the banned activities, reduced to £60 if paid within 14 days.
The statement said this would be an alternative to “lengthy and costly criminal proceedings”, and notices could be issued by the Police and Council officers.
However, local representative for Cycling UK, George Riches, told road.cc the PSPO threatens those who cycle considerately, as well as tackling those who don't.
“There is a problem with cyclists closely passing pedestrians in these areas where there’s a lot of pedestrians," said Riches, "but I’m worried that people will face a fine just because they are cycling, not because they are going fast past pedestrians, and it’s not only in the most highly pedestrianised shopping areas but also various subways that go under the ring road."
“They were built for pedestrians in mind, so they are narrow with poor sight lines, but I don’t see why cyclists who ride carefully should face prosecution."
He added PSPOs will make life difficult for people with mobility issues who use their bikes as mobility aids.
If approved, cycling and skateboarding would be completely banned in Cathedral Square at all times, and would only be allowed in other paved areas before 9.30am and after 3.30pm.
Riches points out the council can change a surface from paved to tarmac, or vice versa, without public consultation.
Cycling UK is currently supporting six cyclists in an appeal against Mansfield District Council’s imposition of a PSPO that makes riding a bike through parts of the centre of the Nottinghamshire town a criminal act.
Acting through the Cyclists’ Defence Fund, which it co-ordinates, the charity says it is the first time that a PSPO has been challenged at the High Court since the legislation’s introduction in 2014.
The charity contends that the council has gone beyond its powers in using legislation aimed at curbing anti-social behaviour to criminalise what is otherwise a legal activity.
The consultation on the PSPO, which ends on 15 January 2017, is available here.
In the 1890s Coventry was the global centre of bicycle manufacturing. Its cycling business roll call, as listed on the Coventry Transport Museum's website, extends to 21 pages. Starley, whose eponymous founder, John Kemp Starley, invented the safety bicycle, built its bikes in the city, while Dunlop, whose founder developed the pneumatic tyre for cycling, still has a factory in Coventry.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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23 comments
Coventry is an awful place for a cyclist. The city centre is essentially one big bus station. Trinity st, the burges and hales street are a constant swarm of busses and taxis (not to mention one way). Other routes have you mixing with traffic coming off the ring road.
If you make it past the busses, taxis and ring road then there's the bloody shared space junctions where most drivers assume right of way over cycles regardless of direction of approach or if you've already started to cross it.
The options when cycling through the centre are a mostly sparse pedestrianised area, through which a responsible cyclist can pass without confrontation, or take a longer route and mix with the busses and the ring road traffic.
Not only that but they are removing bus lanes from some main routes into the city and cycle lanes are at best laughable but mostly non existent. There's some wonderful cycling to be had just a few miles away but good luck getting there!
They are using this as an opportunity to ban any activity they find annoying. I have more problems with people smoking as they walk in front of me than I do with cyclists, buskers or even chuggers. Let's ban smoking outside in the centre. No? Too many people would be upset by that.
liked for Judge Dredd reference.
(Edit: Refers to Brooksby's comment, which is now shown above +1, due to road.cc oddness)
If the police cannot stop a toe-rag on a bmx knocking old dears over, how the hell is a council jobsworth in high vis and a clipboard? I cannot see the little scrotes stopping for mr jobsworth and handing over their details.
The problem within Coventry is that the area with the black line (aside from the lump at the bottom), is the ring road which surrounds the city. Its not particularly cycle friendly, and I wouldn't really advise anybody at all to ride on it, as its essentially a collection of dual carriage way/slip roads, where motorists are going at 40mph.
And if you look at the red lines on the map, where they're proposing banning cycling on, it severely restricts the ability of cyclists to get to some places within the City centre safely. It doesn't stop it entirely, but it is a retrograde step, not a forwards one for cyclists.
For instance, the long red line at the bottom of the map is one of the few easy ways to get to the train station. That particular part has a wide bridge which goes over the ring road. If you can't cycle over there, then if you're coming from the Coventry city centre, how do you get across? Its not just a "road" you can cross, its a 10m drop onto dual carriageway.
Coventry isn't isn't your typical city centre, as some quite major roads intersect it and the ring road cuts off entire sections which are then only accessible by walk ways which were poorly designed. Some are okay for shared use, but others not.
Why on earth would anyone want to cycle on the pavements in Coventry?
Perhaps because the roads are some of the most poorly designed and heavily trafficked city centre spaces, I would say. I've only ever driven inside the Coevntry ring road (hmm - not true - I did cycle there once; but it's a fair way from my home) and can say with some certainty that it's a horrid place to drive, and can scarcely be any better on a bike with all those horrid motorists around.
But the situation would be much, much better if it was CARS that they banned from going within the concrete collar they call the ring road.
As it would in most town centres.
But it doesn't automatically follow that that means it's pointless to remove cyclists from already pedestrianised streets, does it? Just because there's a better, longer-term solution, do all short-term ones get binned off?
[duplicate]
Mixed feeling there
The obvious: Road.cc is clickbaiting again and again. wondering if they are trying to emulate the dailymail
Annoying: Sharing the road is actually difficult:
Sad:
Even limiting cyclists from public spaces such as squares is nonsensical. If you go to European towns and cities, people slowly pootle along on a bicycle without any hassle.
The only cyclists I see that fly through pedestrianised areas without any care for others are kids, and they are presumably the target for this asbo idea. Adults would probably cycle on the road and just walk through the pedestrianised bits and encounter no problems.
Cycling on the pavement is against the law already isn't it?
There is, of course, a bit of a grey area, it all depends on what you mean by pavement.
We have shared use, we have footpaths and we have footways. All could come under the definition of pavement but....
'Coventry City Council says the PSPO is a "less bureaucratic" way to “tackle cycling and skateboarding in pedestrianised areas” along with “problematic buskers”.'
[...]
'The statement said this would be an alternative to “lengthy and costly criminal proceedings”, and notices could be issued by the Police and Council officers.'
this means that they are too lazy or insecure to do their job properly, and rather than deal with individual breaches of the law they will outlaw otherwise lawful behaviour.
Checks and balances built into due process are indeed bureaucratic. They're intended to prevent this kind of arrogant abuse of power.
There is existing legislation to tackle cycling on footways so why the new 'order'? Surely it is a matter of enforcement and discretion? Cycling is hazardous to all concerned in crowded pedestrianised areas where there are little children and the elderly but it is pretty safe when it is empty or lightly used as long as a responsible approach is taken. So tackle the anti social behaviours by enforcing existing laws but don't criminasie everyone who happens to cycle where it is safe, cyclists are normal people and too wide a group to be embraced by the label of 'anti-social'.
I believe that gangsters are using motor vehicles to transport drugs around Coventry. Surely they need to ban all motor vehicles too?
#OverreactionMuch
Yay, strawman time.
Surely they should just open pedestrianised streets to all vehicles? #BinaryMuch
I don't think you know what 'straw man' means. What false position is the poster attributing to his opponents?
They are just making an analogy about the general principle of banning something because of the bad behaviour of some of those who do it. Seems valid to me, what's your objection and where does the straw man come in?
That said, I'm confused about this whole story.
So cyclists can still cycle on the roads in this zone, the only change is
(a) they can't cycle on the few small pedestrianised areas
(b) the council is using a dodgy short-cut to the legal system when it comes to dealing with pavement cycling (which is already illegal, but presumably at the moment can only be addressed by the police and the courts rather than council officers?).
The whole business seems like a dubious short-circuiting of the proper workings of the law, but maybe that's actually a bigger issue than just a cycling one?
What does the council do about pavement parking in the zone, out of curiosity?
I don't think you've read the article or consultation properly. You're not the only one on here.
It's a misrepresentation of the council's position on this, via misconstruing the aim of the initiative, which is to make already pedestrianised streets nicer for pedestrians to do pedestrianny stuff - in a certain timeframe. The 'they're taking away biking space/ASBO' headline and rabble-rousing leads many on here to knee-jerk themselves to an irrelevant conclusion - in this case, ignoring the areas and timeframe involved.
The reason your 'analogy' doesn't work is because exactly the detail which sets this apart from a typical council knee-jerk is left out. It'd be more accurate if it was followed up by 'in certain streets where there's restricted access anyway, and between these times' - but that wouldn't have the same weight, would it? That looks like a humanoid made of dry grass to me.
'Some cyclists do not nice stuff so let's ban them' is a facile conclusion to jump to. Exactly what is the problem with pedestrianised areas?
I don't get your point. For starters you deleted the very part of my comment that already said what you say here about what the zone is.
Secondly you didn't address the point that pavement cycling is already illegal. As I said, it seems, as far as I can make out, as if the difference is that this will give council officers the powers to deal with it, rather than the police. If so, I'm not _entirely_ sure I like that idea, though more out of general principle than because of the cycling issue.
Thirdly, you still haven't explained where the 'straw man' comes in. The OP's analogy remains a valid one. They are banning cyclists from the pedestrianised areas because some of them behave badly when in them.
[That the ban depends on the time of day doesn't in any way change the validity of the analogy]
Please explain where the straw man comes in, and why the analogy is invalid.
Finally, I have mixed feelings about (bike-free) pedestrianisation, it depends on the context. It's fine unless it removes important routes for cyclist traffic and no car-free alternative is provided for those journeys. Then its likely to have as many bad effects as good (making the pedestrianised area nicer while encouraging more cars instead of bikes everywhere else).
This is harder work than it should be, isn't it?
I have dealt with the straw man thing - assert it as long as you like; repeating that won't make it right.
But on the actual 'ban', I don't think we're miles apart. It is probably a lazyish shortcut to policing - more black and white than the current, presumably more expensive, grey. I've got some sympathy for councils here (or at least the situation they find themselves in, with police central funding cut and council tax rises capped). So while it is lazy, or perhaps more cynical than that, they have some excuses. I don't think it's paranoid to see austerity and excuses for austerity playing out in cases like this - and unpicking the genuine shortfalls in funding from the excuses and from the sensible transport/environment decisions is next to impossible with councils.
Also I see our towns and neighbourhoods pedestrianising before they Copenhagenize. No reason not to campaign on both fronts, but I also see no reason to just assume, like some are, that councils are always car-centric and that there's no merit in making pedestrianised areas a bit more, well, pedestrianised. If we're to chip away at all-pervading car culture, it'll need a lot of putting peds at the top of the pyramid, so this click-baity, knee-jerky reaction from the 'cycling camp' is probably counter-productive.
Plus it does nothing to dispel the whiney, entitled cyclist stereotype.
"Dubious shortcircuiting": yep. "Less bureaucratic" actually means "I really want to be judge jury executioner but they won't give me a Lawgiver".
What worries me most are the councils comments bundling together aggressive begging, chugging, er, cycling and skateboarding... Is that really how Coventry council sees cyclists?
I think this may be a case of inaccurate reporting.
My intial understanding was that cycling would be banned anywhere inside the black line shown in the photo. However I now believe it is to be banned only on certain paths / areas within that area.
The former is an absilute outrage, the latter, probably fair.
Sozza.
If I've read this correctly, this doesn't seem too draconian to me.
Cycling's only banned completely from Cathedral Square, and from other pedestrianised areas from 09.30-15.30. Roads inside the zone are unaffected.
If we're going to completely rethink towns and city centres we need to start with the pedestrian as king.
Sounds absurd and infuriating doesn't it. There's people going in to work and shop all the time, there are residents and tourists who want to cycle into the city centre. There are shops struggling to compete with large out of town shopping centers, that people can cycle to and they provide bike stands! Sounds to me like some council members, who like their big black cars need to wake up and smell the diesel fumes. If there's an issue with cyclists using pedestrianised areas without due care then signage can be improved just stenghthening a message of shared use.