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Peterborough ignores consultation responses as shopping street cycling ban extended to Sundays

Vast majority of responses were against the proposals - only one in ten in favour

Peterborough City Council has extended a ban on cyclists riding on Bridge Street at certain times of the day from Monday to Saturday to include Sundays too. The move, described by a council cabinet member as “one of the most difficult decisions we have had to make,” followed a consultation in which five in six respondents opposed the proposal.

The existing ban on cycling from 0900 to 1800 Monday to Saturday on the busy shopping street has been in force for two decades. In July the council launched its consultation to put it in force seven days a week.

The council says it received 200 replies, with 167 respondents saying they were against its plans, including the sustainable transport charity, Sustrans.

Its eastern regional director, Nigel Brigham, said that people on bikes and on foot should be allowed to share space on the pedestrianised street, reports Peterborough Today.

“The problem with Peterborough is there are no alternative routes through the city north to south,” he said.

“There are irresponsible cyclists, but they are in the minority.

“We want to see a positive campaign that welcomes cyclists and pedestrians who behave responsibly in the city centre.”

The council however says that it is pressing ahead with a week-round ban, likely to come into the force in the new year, in recognition of now being a main shopping day.

That’s despite only 22 parties responding to the consultation, including the police, Peterborough Age UK and Peterborough Association for the Blind, supporting the proposals, with another 11 making comments that were general in nature.

Councillor Lucia Serluca, the city council’s cabinet member for city centre management, said: "This has been one of the most difficult decisions we have had to make.

“On the one hand objectors have pointed out that restricting cycling on Bridge Street conflicts with our environment capital aspiration, but on the other supporters have highlighted the danger that some irresponsible cyclists cause to pedestrians, and particularly children and the elderly, in this vibrant shopping street.

"Following significant investment, Bridge Street is one of the busiest in the city with pavement cafes, children's rides and entertainment.

“We have taken our time to very carefully consider all of the responses from residents and organisations on this important issue and have decided that public safety must ultimately outweigh what is a relatively small inconvenience to cyclists.”

Peterborough was previously one of Cycling England’s cycling demonstration towns, but the council came under criticism from Sustrans last year when it emerged that the planned remodelling of Long Causeway made no provision for replacing award winning cycle racks there.

But, Councillor Serluca insisted the council is in favour of cycling, saying: “I would stress that we remain fully committed to supporting cycling in Peterborough and we will continue to work with organisations like Sustrans to improve facilities for cyclists in the city.

“The restrictions are the most responsible action to take to keep our residents safe.

"As well as extending the restrictions to Sundays, we will also ensure that it is properly enforced throughout the week,” she added.

“Many people have reported or witnessed near misses between shoppers and irresponsible cyclists, and as well as enforcement we will be displaying better signage to highlight the restrictions."

Nick Sandford, Liberal Democrat leader on the city council, which has no overall controlling party, was critical of the decision to extend the ban to Sundays.

“I am not sure what the point in carrying out a consultation and ignoring what people have told them,” he said.

“The ban is not enforceable. I get people saying they have seen irresponsible cycling on Bridge Street, and it is always when the ban is in place,” he added.

Last month, Peterborough’s Conservative MP, Stewart Jackson, said that there should be a “three strikes and out” rule for people caught cycling on the pavement or in pedestrian zones.

He wrote in a newspaper column that on the third offence, their bike should be confiscated and only returned if they paid a fine equivalent to its value.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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16 comments

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James Warrener | 9 years ago
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They will ban pushchairs next...

Seriously, this is a pretty dangerous little stretch as a pedestrian and not having bikes down there at peak shopping times is reasonable to me.

As my chum Watlinga says, there are alternatives to that piece of road adding little journey time.

Regarding not riding on Bridge Street adding danger to your journey, its my opinion that the worst of Peterborough's roads would have been covered before hitting that stretch.

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kie7077 | 9 years ago
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highlighted the danger that some irresponsible cyclists cause to pedestrians

So, decent cyclists are banned but irresponsible cyclists will cycle past the shops regardless. Stupid law.

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brooksby | 9 years ago
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So the actual consultation was a box that must be ticked, to confirm that a consultation had been held. There was no intention of allowing the result of that consultation to affect already-decided policy.  39

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horizontal dropout | 9 years ago
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watlina said "You can get off and walk or just divert down Wentworth St which probably only adds 50m extra"

personfrompeter... said "The problem is that there's no other safe way through the city "

So who's right? It makes a big difference.

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personfrompeter... replied to horizontal dropout | 9 years ago
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Wentworth St is only a small part of the route. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Wentworth+St,+Peterborough+PE1+1DH/

You can get to it via Priestgate & Cross St travelling south to north, but the one way system stops you going north to south. And at the south end of it, it dumps you abruptly out onto the dual carriageway. Theoretically you could cycle against the traffic flow for the first bit and hop up on to the pavement instead of the dual carriageway at the end (as they're all quiet roads) but that's against the law and just gives people a reason to complain about cyclists, so I'd rather not. And walking a short distance isn't a disaster, it's just infuriating to have to do so in a city that's supposed to pride itself on its cycle provision and environmental status!

I do think that Wentworth St would be part of the logical route through the city centre though, it just needs a bit of work to join it all up and allow cyclists to use it. Hopefully we can start campaigning for something like that now.

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personfrompeter... | 9 years ago
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It's worth noting Nigel Brigham's point that there really isn't any other route to cycle through the city centre, caused by a mixture of one way systems and the fact that Peterborough uses a lot of very fast roads to filter fast traffic out of the centre (to good effect). I don't particularly want to cycle down Bridge Street during the day – it's full of very unpredictable pedestrians and it was very much the best of a lot of not very good options.

The problem is that there's no other safe way through the city – you have to take your chances on a dual carriageway or take a huge diversion around by the cycle paths. In a so-called Environment Capital that prides itself on its cycle paths, this isn't good enough. Hopefully this setback can lead us to campaign for a proper route through the city centre, as it would only take a couple of well-placed contraflow lanes and short pavement cycle lanes to achieve this. The cycle provision in Peterborough is very, very good over a lot of the city and surrounding countryside, it just needs the missing link in the city centre to be filled.

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gazza_d | 9 years ago
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Is it purely pedestrian then?

Or is it like most of these streets where vehicle access is permitted for "loading" which usually seems to include loading one's wallet from the cashpoint, or popping to Greggs?

If the latter is the case then the cycle ban is completely wrong and unjust

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FluffyKittenofT... | 9 years ago
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Never been there, but, looking at streetview, they could surely provide a fine parallel cycle route, if they just demolished that huge churchy-looking-thing just to the east of the shopping area.

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oozaveared | 9 years ago
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Look this is what councils do. This ban has been in place for decades during busy shopping periods. The council now find that Sunday is increasingly a busy shopping day. So fair enough.

The interesting part for me is that their logic makes sense. Cycling is banned all the other days when the shops are busy and now Sunday is just as busy. So, it's a reasonable extension of the ban.

So why they bothered doing a consultation is odd. And then having spent out for the consultation which is usually the predicatble points of view of the usual suspects they then ignore the result. Because lo and behold the extension of the ban makes sense.

This is the sort of council moneywasting nonsense that people complain about. But if they are ever asked if they could save money they can't think how.

Well by doing what you need to do and what makes sense and not wasting money asking people what they think and then ignoring them and doing what you wanted to do in the first place anyway, That's how!

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Initialised | 9 years ago
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Pavement cycling should be legalised on the provision that in a cyclist vs pedestrian collision the cyclist has presumed liability. Making riders dismount to cross pedestrianised areas is pretty stupid considering that a cyclist takes up less space than a person walking with a bicycle. Alternatively leave the roads in place but prevent cars being able to use them.

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Tiffin15 | 9 years ago
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If "This has been one of the most difficult decisions we have had to make." then what are they actually trusted to do? Idiots like this are trusted with budgets funded by our taxes have to wonder how many consultants were employed to help them make this decision.

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Paul_C | 9 years ago
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sounds like a "nonsultation" to me, they'd already made their minds up...

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MuddyGoose | 9 years ago
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All seems reasonable to me. I wouldn't ride up there during shop opening hours.

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watlina | 9 years ago
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I work 100m from Bridge Street and as much as I love cycling it's not safe to do so down there during the day. It's been spoiled by the many complete idiots that tear through with no regard for anyone but themselves.

It's not a big section probably only about 200m just the bit where the trees are down the middle in the photo below.
//i732.photobucket.com/albums/ww327/watlina/bridgest.jpg)

You can get off and walk or just divert down Wentworth St which probably only adds 50m extra

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finbar | 9 years ago
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I think this is a bit of a storm in a teacup too. I can think of several pedestrian shopping streets that don't to my knowledge have a ban on cycling (Sheffield, Nottingham), but I wouldn't want to - or probably be able to - cycle up and down them at busy times for fear of hitting a pedestrian.

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EarsoftheWolf | 9 years ago
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There's an awful lot of fuss being made about this, considering it's only extending an existing ban to Sunday, which is now as busy a shopping day as any other in this country. If we assume that the ban is appropriate for any other day of the week (which is obviously up for debate too) then it probably should be applied to Sunday also.

I broadly agree with banning cycling from areas where there is a very high volume of pedestrian traffic, as long as alternative and separate cycling infrastructure is in place. In this case it doesn't appear to be - which is disappointing, but not entirely surprising.

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