Cheltenham installs cameras to monitor pavement cycling

A typical case of a local paper getting the story wrong – not deliberately I hope. The County and Borough councils have realised for several years that pedestrianisation can clash with other strategies by leaving no way for cycling across towns apart from undue detours and/or mixing it on the inner race tracks / ring roads. We can often cope - but not so for the less skilled, including those the councils want help get on their bikes. Like other campaigners across the country we want a permeability for cycling catering, in different ways if necessary, for a range of cycling competence, whilst not constraining cycling to dubious routes and 'facilities'. Whether cycling can be re-introduced (and let’s not forget that only a few years ago most pedestrian areas were motor mayhem) in a town centre depends as much on culture as on laws and infrastructure. This has been recognised by various public forums in which we participate, although the disabled lobby is usually averse to cycling full stop. But others, including the police, are keen on a trial period of making the pedestrianised sections, as some already are, ‘de-motorised’. We offered to do before and during surveys: instead the Councils decided on video, but not, as the newspaper indicated in its headline, as a ‘clamp down on rogue cyclists’. We are not resolutely for cycling if the trial reveals serious snags, in which case something else will need to be done. Interestingly the police now recognise the problem, if there is one, as being about anti social yobs, who flout a cycling ban regardless, rather than cycling per se. Better to have considerate cycling as a moderating factor, hopefully helping to bring about the continental culture where this pedestrianisation conflict just isn’t a big issue. Note I’ve been referring to ‘cycling’, rather than ‘cyclists’: group labels can cloud the debate, as in the serious injury incident at Holborn Viaduct elswhere on the forum.
John Mallows, chair, cyclecheltenham, policy director cyclenation.

Do the cyclists in Cheltenham ride with jousting spears? Otherwise, I don't understand the big fuss.

Bearing in mind the safety issues mentioned regarding traffic on the ring road, it sounds like that is where the cameras should be!

I guess we just have to bang on and on about it being a war on the hard pressed British cyclist, and they'll remove them, right?

and just noticed the polite question i placed on cbc's web page questioning priorities has been deleted. Oh well, nice to see democracy alive and well.

As a local i want to know a couple of things, if the council has all this money, what are they doing about the boy racers on the race track on Sunday nights? what are they doing to solve the bottle neck at boots corner, what action do they intend to take regarding the former Odeon site, Tripura House, Baylis motors, What are there plans for regenerating the lower high street and the derelict buildings there, which i believe they compulsory purchased. When will there be a safe route for cycling from Cleeve to the town centre. What is the council doing about ensuring the police take bicycle theft seriously? When are the council intending to repair the roads and fill in the thousands of pot holes?

Then again it did take 40years to redevelop the St James Railway station site, and they have been talking about boots corner/ lower high street for decades.

So nothing new to see CBC wasting money.

As a local I find it pretty daft that cyclists can't use the prom. It's the safest cut through from the centre.

Here's hoping.

I'd be rather more bothered by all those ugly vehicles cluttering up the view of the council offices and preventing pedestrian access.