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Drop Your Pace (copyright Simon MacMichael)Canal and River Trust to hold live Twitter Q&A in wake of survey about speeding towpath cyclists
The Canal and River Trust is to hold a live Twitter Q&A following a recent survey of runners and cyclists who use canal towpaths. The organisation believes that questions about cycling speed measures led to people misinterpreting its attitude to cyclists and is keen to get across that it is seeking to weigh competing needs and views.
Those on foot have priority on canal towpaths, use of towpaths by cyclists has long been a source of complaints from some quarters, and some believe this has recently been exacerbated by timed Strava segments.
The Canal and River Trust last month sought the views of runners and cyclists and some felt that the survey was anti-cycling. One question was about whether speed bumps, rumble strips and chicanes should be installed to slow anti-social riders down.
Canal and River Trust ranger Dirk Vincent told road.cc: "Having read some of the comments on the article it’s clear that many people have got the wrong impression about this survey and the Trust’s attitude towards cycling in general too. The fact is, we love cycling and we’re doing all we can to make our towpaths better for everyone across 2000 miles, as our policy says.
"We do have obvious concerns about the behaviour of some visitors, however, especially when it comes to the speed that some people travel. As such, as I’m sure you can imagine, we’re regularly asked to put in speed measures, such as chicanes and speed bumps in many places. This is why we are asking questions about them in the survey."
“We’ve no big plan to install more speed measures at this stage, we just want to find out more about people’s attitudes towards them.
"As you can imagine, with such a large open network and limited space, limited resources or legal powers, our options for encouraging folk to use their common sense are few, so we’re always exploring ways – new and old – to do this.”
To address accusations of bias – and other concerns – the Trust will be holding a live Twitter Q&A on January 17 and it is keen for road.cc cyclists to take part. A (presumably edited) transcript will also be published at a later date, alongside the results of the survey.
The Canal and River Trust Twitter account can be found @canalrivertrust
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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36 comments
I'm sure the Canal and River Trust will direct their attention towards road safety immediately, thanks to this timely reminder.
Indeed. No problems are real unless someone is dead or seriously injured, after all.
Well, yes. That is indeed the logic that is applied when dealing with motor vehicles. Authorities won't consider the design of junctions until a minimum number of people are killed there. Councils justify new shared-space schemes or other road layouts by referring to the KSI figures.
Are you suggesting a different standard should apply only if its danger from bikes that is the issue, then? Why is that?
[Of course, my heart isn't entirely in this line of argument as I'd rather the attitude to car-danger was changed...but its strange you speak as if it's the norm not to just go by KSI data, when that is actually the way it's usually done]
Well, no? I'm suggesting that KSI is a weird standard for measuring whether towpaths are pleasant for all forms of recreational use. It's got sod all to do with roads and the norms used for planning them, because the Canal and River Trust have sod all to do with roads.
Dunno why I'm so grumpy about this tbqh, it just seems like the sort of nonsensical whataboutery that we'd (rightly) be up in arms about coming from the car lobby. Of course standards for planning roads should be better, but are we really going to get that by implying that it's fine to cycle like dicks on the towpath as long as we're not killing anyone?
We probably don't disagree all that much really. As a pedestrian I don't like sharing with fast cyclists either.
But I do think there's a general problem with using KSI figures as a measure of 'success' for transport schemes, and I don't think canal paths are radically different things from, say, some shared-space scheme in a town centre...
Hence I think the original post made a valid point. If one applied the same (poor) logic that gets used for cars, one could claim there's no problem here to begin with.
If speeding cyclists are a 'real problem on canal towpaths', the Canal and River Trust must have some quite compelling KSI data...
well as a boater on the canals, can I suggest you check out any of the Canal Facebook Groups. You will find that cyclists are generally hated by all the other towpath users e.g. Boaters, anglers, walkers, joggers and tourists. This is a shame as it's a minority of cyclists that stir up this hatred but it's all cyclists that get the blame. It's ironic that cyclists are victims of speeding cars drivers on roads, but are perseved as the baddies on the canals. The canals nowadays are a place of leisure, where people stroll slowly along the towpaths, dogs walk off the lead, children enjoy themselves, anglers often partly block the towpaths, boaters step off their boats without looking or expecting cyclists. So even a commuting cyclist being considerate, going at 10mph, can be a problem for other users as this is not your usual cycle path, but is often a towpath that is too narrow to pass a pedestrian without one of you stepping into the bushes. In the 10 years I've been cruising the canals, I've had a cyclist give way to me on only one accasion (a very nice Asian gentleman in Newbury). I like many others, don't hear cyclists or even their bells coming up behind me as my hearing is poor now I'm in my 60s. I've been shouted at, threatened, pushed into bushes and accidentally run down by a cyclist who expected me to be aware of them and jump out of their way. I pay almost £900 to the Canal and River Trust to use my boat on the canals, but they ignore boaters concerns about speeding, selfish cyclists as they're more interested in making money from cycling groups. So please, please, all you decent cyclists, work with the Canal and River Trust to sort this issue out
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