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New Forest ponies react to NFNPA's new proposals (CC BY-NC 2.0 licensed by duncan c:Flickr)New Forest plans to use 'rural Boris Bike' grant to repair roads damaged by cars instead
Local cyclists have slammed the New Forest National Park Authority's (NFNPA) proposals to redirect some of a £3.57 million grant for cycling facilities into road maintenance and funding facilities outside the park. The Department for Transport money was intended to support the first rural Boris Bike-style hire scheme and a family cycling centre, but NFNPA now plans to spend it on resurfacing roads and other projects with only the most tenuous connection to cycling in the New Forest.
The proposals, dubbed 'Plan B' by local riders, have been hastily drawn up by the NFNPA after it voted to axe the original scheme because of local opposition.
Resurfacing
The largest proposed expenditure will go on repairing the edges of a six-mile section of road in the forest, Rhinefield Drive. The NFNPA says it will spend £1,275,000 to "‘cycle proof’ an important on-road route through the centre of the National Park. Upgrade road edges on both sides (without road widening), creating a consistent, high quality surface for cyclists to access this key scenic route through the heart of the National Park."
Critics of the plan say this is using cycling funding to repair a road damaged by motor vehicles.
New Forest Cyclist, a local cyclist and prolific tweeter who founded a petition to save the hire bike scheme, says: "I cycle this road regularly, and this proposal is not needed or wanted by cyclists. It will only benefit drivers, who will be able drive faster on this road once it has been improved or widened, and it will not increase cycle trips, so it simply doesn't deliver the DfT's stipulated outcomes."
He points out that the DfT's grant is intended to be used for capital projects while this is road maintenance, and he casts doubt on the NFNPA's claim that the repairs will not widen Rhinefield Drive. "Road widening by stealth" is a big issue in the forest, he says. "The damage caused to this road has been done solely by motorists, why should cycling funding be used in this way?"
The NFNPA also plans to spend money on two other projects that are arguably resurfacing and maintenance work, rather than meeting the DfT requirement for ideas that demonstrate a "high quality of scheme design and innovation".
Replacing gravel with, er, gravel
The national park will spend £140,000 resurfacing 16 miles of Forestry Commission gravel roads, replacing the current loose gravel with "a more compacted path gravel surface".
"This will not lead to an increase in cycle trips, or an increase in number of cyclists," says New Forest Cyclist. "The gravel track network is currently very disjointed and of negligible benefit to cyclists."
Another maintenance project that has been rolled into the plan is the resurfacing of the A35 Lyndhurst to Ashurst cycleway. The £700,000 track was opened six years ago and the authority now plans to spend £130,000 "upgrading" its surface.
The NFNPA says DfT approval has already been granted for this expenditure, which is curious as it's hard to see how this amounts to capital expenditure and not maintenance. It's also not clear if the necessary permission has been obtained from Natural England and the often vociferously anti-cycling New Forest Verderers.
New Forest Cyclist describes using this path as "terrifying" as the narrow grass strip between the path and the A35 puts cyclists "inches away from HGV's travelling at 60mph in the opposite direction". It also appears to be substantially narrower than the DfT's recommendation of 2.7m for a bidirectional path.
Extra-park activities
Most bizarrely, the NFNPA proposes to spend £300,000 on a project outside the boundary of the national park.
A few miles west of the New Forest, Moors Valley Country Park and Forest is an adventure park with a narrow gauge railway, golf course and Go Ape activities including zip-wires and Segway rides. Moors Valley doesn't charge entry, but four hours' parking costs £7.80 in the summer peak.
NFNPA intends to give £300,000 of the DfT's money to Moors Valley to develop its Family Cycling Centre. The authority says this "would provide higher quality experiences for a wide range of cyclists. Moors Valley intend to upgrade and expand their on-site cycle centre; improve their range of specialised routes for mountain bikers of all abilities; expand their inclusive cycling offer; and increase cycling education/taster opportunities for children and novices.
"While this is not within the National Park it is immediately adjacent and has good cycling and public transport links."
New Forest Cyclist disagrees. He says: "Moors Valley plays a role in keeping cyclists out of the National Park, but the DfT guidance's for this grant was all about increasing cycling within the park."
He also questions whether Moors Valley even needs the money. "Moors Valley is a commercially viable visitor attraction, operated by East Dorset Council and the Forestry Commission, funded almost entirely through car parking charges," he says.
He also questions the NFNPA's mention of Moors Valley's "links". "Nearly 100% of visitors drive there," he says. "It has no cycling links to the New Forest whatsoever."
Unlike the original plan for a hire bike system and the Brockenhurst Family Cycling Centre, the NFNPA's 'Plan B' proposals have not been subjected to any public consultation, and even a cursory glance at the proposal for those schemes and NFNPA's Plan B shows the latter to be half-baked at best.
New Forest Cyclist tweeted this morning that he had just attended a NFNPA meeting to discuss Plan B. There were, he says "constant member referrals to their parish/district/county council roles."
This failure of NFNPA members to understand their role is to manage a national asset and not pander to the objections of a small number of vociferous locals seems to be at the heart of the New Forest National Park's issues with cyclists.
New Forest Cyclist says: "As a local cyclist I'm quite simply sick to my stomach that a clearly 'anti cycling' local authority is now seeking to spend valuable cycling funding on schemes that will either only benefit motorists via resurfacing or will actually remove cyclists from the New Forest."
Plan B now awaits approval from the Department for Transport.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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39 comments
So as part of the aftermath of the latest attempted Scottish revolt, the govt. are discussing handing over more power to local govt. (i.e. Councils). I think this is an excellent reason why we shouldn't.
Even when some of councillors want to do the right thing, the rest are so bent and corrupt that decent and moral behaviour doesn't get a look in. Sack the lot of them and force them to spend the money on cycle infrastructure or pay back the money WITH INTEREST.
There are many councils that would love to spend this money on installing new cycle infrastructure, let them have it.
Here's the info from @forestcyclist on the campaign:
======================================
Despite my best efforts @newforestnpa now openly back schemes that largely benefit only motorists, and with cycling funding!
The decision to authorise this spending now resides with @transportgovuk Patrick McLoughlin MP, Robert Goodwill MP, & Baroness Kramer
I NEED each & every one of you (& everyone you know) to email them with this link to the news article I did with Road.cc: road.cc/131278
Here are their emails:
patrick.mcloughlin [at] dft.gsi.gov.uk
robert.goodwill.mp [at] parliament.uk
kramers [at] parliament.uk
Please help me guys!
Sounds awful.
So what do we do about it ?
Who do we complain to ?
Is a petition a valid way forward ?
Is this Authority fit to manage a spend like this ? Could they be held personally liable if they spend money on items that it wasnt intended for ?
I've worked in areas related to this for a bit and there are a few things it might be useful for people to understand that are relevant:
1) Grants from central government to local authorities can either be ringfenced or unringfenced. The trend in recent years is increasingly for grants to be unringfenced as this gives local government flexibility to manage their budgets. It's not clear how this grant has been given to NFNPA. So they might have quite a lot of discretion on what they can do with it and DfT may be rather powerless to stop them. Or it could be a much more specific grants with more rigorous checks and balances.
2) The NFNPA isn't responsible for the road network. Essentially national park authorities are planning authorities with some duties to promote tourism but little else. All other duties remain with the district and county councils within the park boundaries. Roads in the New Forest therefore aren't their responsibility. Depending on their size they'd sit with the Highways agency, county or district council. If you were being cheeky you could ask the NFNPA whether they are legally allowed to spend money on this stuff.
3) The difference between capital and maintenance spending is down to accounting policy. Essentially if you're creating an asset it counts as capital spending. Repairing and upgrading a road can be considered to be creating an asset (a better road) hence is capital investment. But gain there are some oddities about NFNPA spending money on assets they don't own because the roads belong to others.
If the NFNPA spend the grant money intended for cycling projects or non cycling matters surely they open themselves to legal challenge as they are not acting within their powers, using their powers incorrectly or spending the money within the terms of the grant? Maybe a legal challenge can be brought against them?
I am sure the New Forest is nice but it comes across as a horrible place to cycle in. Lots of anger and aggression. Lots of other nicer and far more welcoming places to ride and spend my £££.
Some people still don't seem to have got the message. 'Cyclists are not wanted in the New Forest, go somewhere else'.
There are plenty of other beautiful parts of this country where they will happily take the money, health benefits and reduced traffic brought by cycling. I'd probably avoid the Cotswolds, as well, but from the Midlands up, people seem quite a bit nicer and drivers have less of a sense of entitlement.
It's not too bad where I am in the Chilterns, too. It's just bad luck if you happen to live in the New Forest and like riding your bike.
Yes dear
I have friends from the north (East Yorkshire) who won't come down by car to Bristol (where I live) because they say there are too many cars and the people drive like maniacs. They said it's too scary.
Funny, because the last time I went up north, my first thought was "Where are all the cars?"...
Absolutely shocking, total waste of money if they do spend it on repairing crumbling road edges.
How this encourages cycling beggars belief, as all official advice tells cyclists NOT to be gutter bunnies, but of course this is about the tiny parochial minds of tinpot politicians driving 4x4s the size of delivery vans.
Being perfectly honest, I'm not convinced by bike hire UNLESS there was a concerted effort to reduce cars off the forest roads, and to make cycling the default.
£3.5M could buy a lot of links and joining up of existing paths, trails and ways as well as closing down smaller roads to cars completely, and prioritising crossing points in favour of cyclists. All of which would go to making a coherent and subjectively safe cycling experience within the forest.
If that did happen then the existing bike hire and tourist companies could launch bike hire themselves, perhaps under a forest wide "brand".
Are those horses in the photo dead?
No it is John Terry and Rio Ferdinand, they saw a cyclist and took a dive.
Probably knocked over by a cyclist, if you listen to the locals!
This money could be spent sorting out the huge mess that is the 'missing mile' in the middle of the Burley-Brockenhurst rail trail. Currently families are dumped onto a mile of the worst-possible forest rat-run road, acknowledged by HCC as the most-sped-on in the forest. Sort that out first, as thousands use it every weekend in the summer.
**HAMMERS ON "LIKE" BUTTON UNTIL COMPUTER CATCHES FIRE**
The proposals of the NFNPA are disgusting!
Personally, however, I'm not convinced by the original "Boris Bike" scheme either. Surely the private sector can provide bike rental, if there's the demand for it.
My belief is that any money available to improve cycling in The Forest should in the first instance, go to improve it for the many, many of us who already live and cycle here. The first things I'd like to see would be proper improvements to the routes between settlements, and good secure bike parking in the hearts of these settlements. Those of us who are not only recreational cyclists, but wish to reduce the amount of car journeys we make, need to be able to ride between the towns and villages, legally and safely, without the sort of detours that this would currently entail. Sadly, many of the Forest tracks are reserved for walkers and horse riders - sorry, but how many of these are making journeys related to their work I wonder.
The very first thing I'd like to see would be a road bike usable link across the A31 at Stoney Cross. The existing underpass is only accessible by MTB. A good link here would open the Forest up to the North-West. Just one personal idea.
Secure bike stands, in good visible positions, at the heart of the towns and villages would also help to encourage all forms of cycling.
As a society, we need to reduce the dependence on "cars" to reduce vehicle congestion, and to increase general levels of exercise.
What a criminal shame that the NFNPA don't represent the huge number of local cyclists. At the next local elections, we must start asking the right questions.... Remember, in a Democracy the people get the rulers they deserve. Lets all try harder.http://road.cc/sites/all/modules/smileys/packs/Yahoo!/frustrated.gif
Cycling budget hijacked by authority. Sound familiar?
Bedford's Turbogate anyone?
We can't let them waste this money.
Serious Question:
Can anyone explain exactly WHY so many people who live in the New Forest seem so aggressively (and disproportionately) opposed to an idea as simple as encouraging people to get around by bike?
1) It's not most people but a very vocal small population of local officials in positions of responsibility and power who don't want the status quo changed. Unfortunately these peoples views are spilling over into the wider community of Daily Mail and Telegraph reading types how prefer to be told how to think rather than making up their own minds, creating a bigger problem. Oh and the local "Big news - cat gets stuck in tree" press likes to jump in and stir the situation also.
2) The current dislike of cyclists is primarily due to the increase in the frequency and size of sportives being held on New Forest roads and the anecdotal negative impact these events have on certain places in the Forest such as Brockenhurst.
Riding round the Forest you can pretty much guaranteed to be honked, shouted out, sworn at, or driven off the road at least once on a ride.
Time for a few mass rides then.
it would seem that the Dft's aims behind this funding;
''It is the intention that schemes should:
encourage and enable recreational visits to, from and around National Parks by cycle;
encourage and enable people living and/or working in and around National Parks to travel for day-to-day journeys by cycle''
are somewhat at odds with what by all accounts seems to be the aim of the new forest national park which is to do everything it can to discourage cycling in its area of jurisdiction
Dft maybe needs to ask some questions here around whether the park authority ever had any intention of using this funding for the purpose it was offered
Of course, the road resurfacing fits neither of those criteria. It will not attract any more recreational visits (it's a tarmac road, and will be a tarmac road - who inspects the local road surface before deciding where to go on holiday?); nor will it encourage more utility journeys - both for the above reason of it simply continuing to be a tarmac road (indeed, after resurfacing, a rather more heavily-trafficked one) but also because the Ornamental Drive simply doesn't go anywhere useful. Maybe there might be someone who lives in Brock and works at Bolderwood, I dunno. £1.2m seems a bit like pushing the boat out for that guy, though.
Clearly an abuse of the system to use money put aside for a Cycle Scheme to improve roads that they are trying to stop cyclists using. The words immoral & corrupt come to mind and a public enquiry should be held, the members of the NFNPA are not fit to hold office.
so they got the money under false pretences under the cycling banner then?,is that legal?.
so they got the money under false pretences under the cycling banner then?,is that legal?.
My local council is very keen to patronisingly point out the difference between 'capital' and 'revenue' expenditure when i moan about them wasting money on capital projects whilst cutting services and staff
In this case it seems NFNPA are as confused as i am about the difference - spending capital funding on what would seem revenue expenditure.
These people of flipping hypocrites as well as clearly being flipping idiots.
Good to see you used a picture of "Cycling ponies". Just look at them taking over the village green and that one standing looks like it's about to leave something nasty
Does this mean this sum will get added into the total the next time some minister wants to boast (or complain) about how much is being spent on cycling?
Surely, if cycling money is being used for the roads, we can boot the cars off our 'cycle lanes', that they haven't paid for!
As is says in the article, Moors Valley is a commercial venture, including the cycling centre - it shouldn't be subsidised by funds for the New Forest.
From the NFNPA website;
"What is the National Park Authority?
The National Park Authority is the body that makes key decisions about the delivery of National Park purposes. The decisions are made by 22 members, 12 of whom are elected to local authorities in the National Park, four elected by parish councils and appointed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and six appointed by the Secretary of State to represent national views. The Authority employs 70 staff."
16 of the 22 NPA members are elected to the membership by parish and local councils, is it any wonder that there bias is on supporting schemes that they're electorate would be in favour of, rather than considering the requirements and desires of the wider community.
Like the majority of politicians they will act in a way that get's them re-elected to the same gravy train.
Re-surfacing and widening of Ornamental Drive;
Firstly the surface isn't that bad compared to other roads in the area, and widening it will only make it more dangerous to cycle as it will encourage increased vehicle speed and poor overtaking behaviour - there are small stretches now where drivers have to wait behind single cyclists due to the width which is the safest policy.
The majority of traffic is using this road as a rat run between Brockenhurst and the west side of Lyndhurst, particularly in the summer months when, as Bez poetically explained above, Lyndhursts tentacles of traffic queue extend out in all directions from the town. When a road becomes a rat run all drivers are interested in is getting to the end of it as quickly as they can otherwise there's no point in using them, and this in turn has safety implications for more vulnerable road users.
The other main use of OD is to reach the 4 star Tudor age hotel, and this presents a lovely hazard in itself as vehicles entering the grounds from the A35 direction simply drive straight across the corner cutting across on coming traffic. So if these vehicles can travel quicker due to road improvements .....
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