owen b wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 21:52
solocle wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 21:33
owen b wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 21:09
How many pedestrians and cyclists used that stretch of A1 before it was upgraded to motorway? I'd venture it's as close to zero as not to justify building a parallel cycleway / path.
For pedestrians the distance saved would be negligible as from the A168 at the J49 dumbbell by Dishforth there's a minor road to Rainton and then public footpaths to J50. For cyclists there's the minor road to Rainton, then across the motorway to the A61, then to J50, which is an additional distance of 1.2 miles according to Google Maps.
I'm all for supporting legal rights of way and investing in them. Quite apart from anything else I'm a keen hill walker and sometime leisure cyclist myself. However I favour a pragmatic approach. I don't think we should be investing lots of money (ie. hundreds of thousands plus) to provide a facility which trivial numbers of people will use, and for which those who would use it have a reasonably convenient existing alternative, which in this case they do in my opinion.
Cyclists AADF from the data I saw (2009 I think) was 3. Which is actually quite a lot.
Seriously? 3 cyclists AADF is quite a lot?
So I was right, less than 0.1% of the traffic volume is bikes (in fact it's more like 0.005%). So why should 0.1% of the project cost be spent on less than 0.1% of the traffic (your numbers, not mine).
Or to put it another, why spend £200k for that volume of cyclists when there is already a a reasonable alternative. Even if you spread that investment over 20 years, that's £200,000 / (3*365*20) = £200k / 21,900 = £9.13 for every bicycle movement. Why should the taxpayer pay that amount of money per cyclist to save them a 1.2 mile detour?
It is quite a lot for the A1. Big, knarly dual carriageway.
If the detour is decent, then ffs sign the damn thing. How much does that cost? A couple of grand?
3 cyclists in the AADF count were using the A1 over the detour. For whatever reason they had, they judged that the A1 better suited their needs. Quite possibly they didn't know the detour. If that's the case, then those 3 cyclists may well decide to use your shiny new A1(M).
Quality cycleways should be considered an integral part of any roads project, especially one that even
resembles a motorway. Instead, there was once a lovely trackway called Dere Street. It got tarmaced. Then it got classified as the A1. Then, as traffic increased, it got a shiny new carriageway, and at this point it resembled a motorway. As traffic further increased, cyclists effectively removed themselves from the route, finding alternatives rather than dealing with the hellish traffic.
Those 3 represent those who could not, or would not, do that.
Building a cycle route may not look "value for money" on that metric, but those cyclists scared off the route would come back. Many more cyclists would use such a route, were it of high quality, than would use the literal A1.
And, if nothing else, it's the principle of the thing, maintaining rights of way. Because, otherwise, you'll end up with me opposing new motorway schemes, or "expressways" like the A14.
And when you have legal challenges about rights of way, and the road doesn't get built for another decade, perhaps think on't...
If you're so keen on cost/benefit analysis then the A1(M) Dishforth to Leeming scheme scored 0.9 and shouldn't even have been built.