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news
Reading Town Hall (Andrew Smith, Wikimedia Commons).jpgCouncil recieved just ONE complaint last year about contested Reading cycle street
Despite a former Mayor of Reading saying he is against the plan to allow cycling along Broad Street, and a fellow councillor has argued that such a move would put people off visiting Reading town centre on foot, Reading Council has revealed that just one person has complained about cyclists there in the past year.
road.cc reader Gareth Luscombe asked the council under the Freedom of Information Act for the number of complaints received about cyclists by location.
The council answered:
The Council received a total of six written complaints regarding cyclists between 1st January 2015 and 21st January 2016. Four of the six complaints gave a specific location and two relate to no fixed location in Tilehurst and Reading in general. The specific locations are as follows:
- Broad Street
- Thames Path, between Reading and Caversham Bridge
- Church Street, Caversham
- Milestone Way, Caversham Park Village.
Currently, cycling is only allowed at the eastern end of Broad Street from Cross Street, but a formal consultation proposing that cycling is permitted along its full length is to be held soon.
Recently we reported how an informal on-line consultation at the end of last year saw 796 respondents in favour of lifting the ban, out of 1,283 responses. 448 were in favour of not allowing cycling in Broad Street at all and 39 selected no change to the current arrangements.
Jones told the Reading Borough Council traffic management committee at the beginning of this month: “Over the next three weeks or so, unless people say otherwise, the whole of Broad Street will be open to cycling.”
Another councillor, Ricky Duveen, said: “I would suggest that this is simply a bad scheme and will put people off visiting Reading town centre on foot.” Councillor Liz Terry added: “We call it pedestrianisation for a reason. It’s for people who are walking, not cyclists.”
But Reading Borough Council transport head Tony Page said: "I don't believe the current situation where cycling is allowed in one half of Broad Street and banned in the other is sensible."
Latest Comments
- belugabob 2 sec ago
Nicely done, sir - criticising bad behaviour in a non transport mode specific manner....
- mattw 5 hours 40 min ago
I take the greatest increase being in Inner not Central or Outer London as being because much infra was previously built in Central London and...
- mark1a 6 hours 11 min ago
Controversial I know but the problems would mostly go away if the whole lot was decriminalised or legalised, dependence and addiction were treated...
- BikeyDavey92 9 hours 48 min ago
As someone who works in Insurance completely agree with this. This is why you have the product and even if everyone is well intentioned, you can...
- ktache 10 hours 28 min ago
Don't know what it was about today, maybe the banks of mist, but I received several weeks of close passes in one day.
- Sriracha 10 hours 55 min ago
I've a feeling that yellow colour attracts flying insects - either that or they're just out to get me. So the bug mesh is a valuable addition
- Hirsute 11 hours 30 min ago
At a pinch point, where the road narrows, in a blind bend, to avoid a pothole, to avoid being doored, to deter a senseless or careless overtake,...
- Backladder 12 hours 2 min ago
No more ludicrous than the UCI sock height limits!
- grumpyoldcyclist 12 hours 5 min ago
They may be limited to 50 or 60 mph, but they don't observe it and speed cameras haven't been told about the different limits....
- CyclingGardener 12 hours 9 min ago
I agree. As I said, just trying to add some context.
Add new comment
8 comments
Reminds me of when I worked for BAe Filton, and we persuaded management to allow cycling on site for a trial period of a year. Cars were already permitted. After a year, they wanted to stop allowing cycling because of complaints, so we asked them how many complaints, and were told that there had been two.
After we had finished laughing they did carry on letting cyclists in.
Actually, thinking about it, the Rolls-Royce factory just down the road still has the "cyclists dismount" sign in the car park.
Never knew about the difference between the two halves of Broad street and have always cycled to the bike rack in the middle from either side, at a very slow pace as I am mixing with pedestrians. I have never had any issues or comments, so was blissfully unaware until now.
What worries me is that somebody like Ricky Duveen, Lib Dem spokesperson for transport in Reading has such out of touch views on cycle integration. Reading has just spent millions on a new shared cycle/pedestrian Thames crossing, so why the issue with Broad street?
Ah yes shared space...when a council doesn't take cycling seriously, it will deliver a bridge not qquite wide enough to have people sharing space.
The may not save time, but they will be safe from buses and vans on the parallel road.
We may be battle hardened veteran road cyclists, but others would cycle if they could have an experience more like Dutch cycling.
Whilst there's clearly a lot of council bungling on this, having grown up in Reading there's no way I can see that cycling should be permitted through Broad Street. It's always very busy more or less any day of the week and cyclists aren't going to save any time or gain any convenience cycling through Broad street at a safe speed.
What the council should be doing is ensuring that there is adequate provisions to allow cyclists to ride safely around Broad via Friar Street and Minster/Gun Street, both ways.
But clearly the council have no intention of providing adequate provision for cyclists. Cycling has been allowed on one end of the street for many years without any significant problems so it is plainly ridiculous not to allow it on the other end. The anti-cyclist scaremongering by these irresponsible councillors is shocking when you consider quite a few cyclists have been injured by motorists in the last 12 months on the roads of Reading and they have nothing to say about that.
'i' before 'e', except after 'c'.
Long live evidence based policy...