North Yorkshire Plans Fragment of Cycle Track on Pannal Ash Road
North Yorkshire Council (NYC) is planning a fragment of cycle track on Pannal Ash Road.
It is part of the West Harrogate Transport Strategy that accompanies an urban expansion to the west of the town. The plans can be found in Appendix 17, in the second document.
Gear Change and Cycle Infrastructure Design
In 2020, we were told that there was going to be a revolution in cycle infrastructure. The ideas were set out in Gear Change and LTN 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design.
Instead of getting token bits of useless cycle path that didn’t join up, councils were going to build high-quality cycle tracks which would form coherent networks.
The Foreword to LTN 1/20 warned of substandard cycle infrastructure which entices novice cyclists with the promise of protection then abandons them at the most important places.
The first Core Design Principle in LTN 1/20 is that routes and networks should be coherent. The guidance says:
‘Cycle networks should be planned and designed to allow people to reach their day to day destinations easily, along routes that connect, are simple to navigate and are of a consistently high quality’.
This point is reinforced by Summary Principle 8.
Isolated Fragment of Cycle Infrastructure
It’s now 4 years since Gear Change and LTN 1/20 and NYC is still proposing isolated fragments of cycle infrastructure. Why?
Their argument would be that their few metres of cycle track will link Richmond Avenue to the entrance to Rossett School and Sports Centre.
That might be of some use to a very few people making a very specific journey. Overall, though, such low-quality cycle infrastructure is probably doing more harm than good.
I suspect there may also be an element of NYC trying to justify cancelling Phase 2 of Otley Road Cycleway involved. Are they trying to create a massive round-the-houses detour route for people on bikes via Richmond Avenue, Pannal Ash Road and Harlow Avenue, to avoid Otley Road?
If so, they should note that the second Core Design Principle in LTN 1/20 is that routes should be direct – at least as direct as those for motor vehicles, and preferably more direct.
Cycle Track that Gives Up and Abandons You
If you were heading south on Pannal Ash Road, you would be asked to join the cycle track at Richmond Avenue, cross over to the ‘wrong’ side of the road at Rossett School, then the track would give up and abandon you a few metres further up, well before the roundabout.
You would only do that once, and you would lose all confidence in the competence of the highways authority.
If you were heading north on Pannal Ash Road, you would join the cycle track just before Rossett School, cross over the ‘wrong’ side of the road at the school, then the track would give up and abandon you a few metres further down, well before Otley Road.
Again, you would only do that once.
Jam Tomorrow
Para 3.8.3 of the Transport Strategy claims that NYC might extend the cycle track down to Otley Road “at some future point”.
I don’t believe a word of it.
Ten years ago I might have thought ‘ok, that sounds good’, but not after a decade of promises of ‘jam tomorrow’, promises that never materialise. Now I am 100% cynical about the council’s declarations.
Zebra Crossings of the Roundabout Arms
The Transport Strategy promises zebra crossings of the arms of the roundabout at the top of Pannal Ash Road.
This is a small positive for people on foot but does nothing for cycling. I guess a ‘compact roundabout’ might be the cycling solution.
A Better-Quality Alternative Scheme
The fundamental problem with NYC’s scheme is that there isn’t enough space at the south end of Pannal Ash Road to put in a cycle track, so their design can never produce a coherent route – not even “at some future point”.
What is the alternative?
What would you do if you genuinely wanted to put active travel first at the West Harrogate urban expansion? What would you do if you were sincere about reducing vehicle miles travelled and increasing cycling by 900% in accordance with the Routemap to Carbon Negative?
Create a one-way loop for motor vehicles from Otley Road up Pannal Ash Road and back along Beckwith Road to Otley Road. Put a modal filter on Harlow Avenue/Beckwith Avenue to stop drivers cutting the corner.
Reallocate the road space saved to continuous cycle tracks.
What do you think?
There is already a traffic free cycle route that takes you down off Arthurs Avenue and up the cycle path up to Green Lane. They’d be better off working with Rossett or Rossett Acre Primary school and building a cycle route through their grounds.
The zebra crossings at the top of the round about at the top of Pannal Ash road are a good idea. However, they all need to be raised. That roundabout is quite dangerous in terms of vehicle speed and the sighting at the junction.
I’m not a fan of speed cushions that take up the whole road. They end up not being maintained and awful to cycle across. Look at St. George’s Road that is terrible to cycle in because of the state of those speed humps. St James Drive is even worse to cycle on to get to Stray Rein and into the cycle path on the stray.
The one way system is a terrible idea. It would make it very difficult to access Arthur’s Avenue for residents. Cycle path instead of going up Otley Road would have been better being built up Arthurs Avenue (access to schools) and working into the other cycle paths down to St George’s Road.
If we want far more people to make their everyday trips by bike, we need a good quality network, not just one or two cycle paths.
We need routes that take people from where they are to where they are going, in as direct a way as possible. A route from Otley Road cycle path up Pannal Ash Road makes perfect sense from a network point of view.
The fact that the Rossett Nature Reserve path is nearby is irrelevant if it doesn’t take people from where they are to where they are going, reasonably directly.
I agree that the council do not maintain speed cushions. Where they are maintained, they can be helpful, for example on Claro Road. Drivers give you lots of space due to lining up to go over the speed cushions.
In fact, a little known Highway Code rule says that drivers should not overtake where there are traffic-calming measures.
The one-way loop is a very good idea.
We have any number of policies saying that walking and cycling should be the natural first choice for short local trips, including in the government’s Cycling & Walking Investment Strategy 2, but then we fail to put them into practice.
The one-way loop would serve a dual purpose. First, it would enable the creation of top-class cycle infrastructure. Second, it would make very short local trips by car slightly less convenient.
If you were going from, say, the top of Pannal Ash Road to Arthur’s Avenue, there would be a disincentive to drive, and an incentive to take the shorter route on foot or by bike. Win win.
For those who have to drive, they could still do so. Anyone with a mobility scooter could use the cycle tracks.
If you were driving to Scotland, the extra minute or so the one-way loop might mean would be insignificant when compared against the total journey time.
Unless we are prepared to take bold measures, we’ll continue with the car-dominated status quo, and people will be too afraid of traffic to cycle.
Together with agriculture, transport is the biggest source of emissions in North Yorkshire, most of them from private cars. We are already seeing climate breakdown around the world. Doing nothing and carrying on with high-carbon business as usual is not an option.
As for Otley Road, I’ve heard several people say ‘why don’t you do side roads instead’. The reason is that there are no side roads parallel to Otley Road, so there is no alternative to Otley Road to get people where they want to go, other than by sending people on a massive detour. People won’t do that.
The council’s ‘ribs but no spine’ strategy is plain daft.
Summary Principle 4 of LTN 1/20 says, ‘Side street routes, if closed to through traffic to avoid rat-running, can be an alternative to segregated facilities or closures on main roads – but only if they are truly direct. Routes that are not direct or that see significant volumes of rat-running traffic will not be used and should not be provided’.