Britain’s most successful Paralympian, Dame Sarah Storey, who balances training with her role as Greater Manchester’s Active Travel Commissioner, has defended a cycle lane project in the area, arguing concerns it has “killed” business are unfounded.
Business owners in the Rochdale village of Castleton have spoken out about the bike lane project, part of a wider £4.4 million road improvements scheme. Back in March, we reported that traders had claimed sales are down 50 per cent and the area had been “killed” by the cycle lane leaving “nowhere to park”, that despite the project seeing the creation of 80 new off-street spaces.
Now, phoning into a Radio Manchester show featuring Mayor Andy Burnham and the Active Travel Commissioner, a concerned resident said the cycle lane’s construction had “closed off the road for two years”, caused “chaos” and was “ruining business”.
“When it was being built it was just chaos. [And since it was completed] I’ve seen two people on that bike lane since it’s been there and you were one of them,” the caller called Gary said in an interview reported by the Manchester Evening News.
In reply, Dame Sarah Storey argued “a bike lane doesn’t close a village” and pointed to other economic factors that have hit people across the country in recent times.
She said: “It’s a coincidence, not an unexpected consequence. The timing in Castleton was really challenging, with the cost of living crisis and coming out of the pandemic. When you’ve two things like that colliding, they’ve had to take it to experts to discuss how they can sort the economic side out.
“A bike lane doesn’t close a village. It opens it up and enables more people to choose to move. Not everybody can drive, not everybody owns a car and they’re now connected to a train station and soon to the town centre through the extension.”
Burnham followed up by adding that while he appreciates it “may not be being used at the level that we would like, that will come over time”.
“If there is a detriment to the high street, this will more than bring it back. In time, [Castleton] will become a really attractive place — it already is, but it will become even better.”
In March, business owners blamed the cycle lane for their struggles, the owner of a local chippy saying customers used to “pull up, order the food, get back into the car, and away they go”.
“It’s supposed to get better but I can’t see it, to be honest,” Mark Foster of the New Bridge chip shop said, suggesting trade had decreased by a “drastic” 50 per cent. Likewise, the owner of the Mini Market vape shop, said half their business had “gone” as “if they can’t park outside, they can’t stop here”.
“If it keeps going like this all of us will have to close down,” Rahand Mahmud said. The BBC also heard from residents who called it a “total waste of money” and claimed that the project has “killed” the village.
31 thoughts on ““A bike lane doesn’t close a village”: Dame Sarah Storey defends cycle lane blamed for “ruining business” and “killing village”, calls shops closing “a coincidence, not an unexpected consequence””
Reminds me a bit of the
Reminds me a bit of the Weybridge locals moaning loudly that closing off a road to through traffic had killed local businesses due to a lack of passing trade, conveniently forgetting that there was no parking on it (double yellows) when it was open and there’s quite a big car park just a short distance away. Of course, the local rag/comic focused on the moaners. I guess some won’t be happy until we get drive through shopping.
It’s quite a pattern. Seen it
It’s quite a pattern. Seen it a few times. Local people raise questions about safety, there’s blood on the road, burglars escape through side alleys, etc. Public meetings with leaflets in every home and shop. Decision to close alley, stop through traffic, etc. Funding achieved. Scheme implemented. Then the squawking starts from those who didn’t get involved, even refused to join the ‘talking shop that never gets anything done’. Weirdly, at least one councillor, who maybe even agreed the scheme, has a friend or relative ‘negatively affected’ by the scheme, ignores councillor protocol, starts bullying staff to get scheme reversed
It’s such short-term thinking
It’s such short-term thinking. Rather than trying to tackle the actual root causes of crime, tinker around with things that give the pretence of safety, but make life worse for all of us.
There are parallel issues with the free bus passes for kids in Scotland. There have been some inevitable teething problems, but putting them aside, there is now a trend for local Facebook pages to blame any kind of minor disturbance, or gatherings involving young people who might possibly get up to no good, on the free bus passes. You see, free bus passes allow children from the poorer parts of the city go to nice places, where previously all teens from those areas had responsible parents and spent their free time helping old ladies cross the road.
The idea that making our public spaces nicer and more accessible isn’t just a nice thing to have, but will improve the lives of people who will be more likely to want to stay engaged in society is beyond a lot of keyboard warriers.
It makes me wonder how other
It makes me wonder how other countries manage to survive when they put in lots of cycle lanes? Or is this some peculiarly new phenomenon which only affects the UK?
I’m sure they’ve had issues
I’m sure they’ve had issues too, but timing is relevant. The UK is finally, albeit pathily, getting around to creating cycling infrastructure at a time when the print media is dying and has become reliant on getting their readership angry about stuff. And they aren’t allowed to use overt racism and homophobia any more, but cyclists remain fair game.
Even before this year’s election was called, everyone knew one was coming and the odds were that the Tories would lose, especially if fought on the usual battle grounds, and IMO getting at least some traditional Tories and older voters to get angry at cyclists, LTNs and LEZs was a ploy to deflect from the state of the NHS and the economy.
But it’s a genie that’s hard to put back into the bottle, especially with the ongoing campaign for the Conservative leadership.
The length of time it takes to get things done doesn’t help either.
Tbf, there are historic
Tbf, there are historic infrastructure complications in parts of UK, as well as planning and funding processes which makes what works elsewhere not always a good fit in UK. Ideally we’d have a single bike and environment great mind to look down from the clouds, consider, wave magic wand as uber-benevolent-dictator to make transformations to Netherlands zonal model instantly
E6toSE3 wrote:
The best time to start making transformations to Netherlands style zonal models is 50 years ago. The next best time is now.
E6toSE3 wrote:
Luckily cycling is “small” – inexpensive and “local” compared to e.g. rail or motor infra – so in fact is *is* possible to start locally (e.g. a small town, *part* of a city)!
But we have historic streets! But we have narrow streets!
This is almost always an excuse.
It’s true that every country has some oddities e.g. certain types of infra may predominate. OTOH somehow every country has found a way of making a giant network of smooth tarmac routes (usually 3m wide+, usually at least lane in either direction) which go almost everywhere, with things like street lights, signs and drainage, most of them pretty straight and suitable for speeds that very few cyclists would ever reach…
I would agree that the “processes and procedures of government” are more of a barrier (perhaps the barrier). This is quite a deep topic – there’s .some interesting info on how this works in NL in the latter parts of the video)
– Which bodies are responsible for what – and what feedback there is e.g. for them to be responsible for people’s safety or the environment.
– Funding – in the UK cycle funding has been a particular problem with councils competing for intermittent, unpredictable handouts with few “standards” and little if any feedback on what actually gets delivered.
– How we measure things – as Chris Boardman covered in some of his recent videos “success” has been judged until recently as “how does this facilitate motor journeys”. Ergo trying to rebalance the road system will be a failure by definition!
However… it’s not just NL!
In fact lots of places in Europe (in Finland, in parts of Denmark and Sweden, in Germany (patchily), mountainous Switzerland, Paris…) – each with its different government structures and historic infra – have managed to make changes. Again the classic “they build it (enough of it, in the right places, to sufficient basic standard) and they came” would be Seville – mass cycling from a standing start in a couple of decades.
Not cycling related, but
Not cycling related, but there was a small hardware shop in my outer London urban village that closed recently, and the owners blamed ULEZ. It made no sense to me, as there was no parking right outside the shop and there was a big B&Q a mile away (with a big car park). So if you were going to drive to get some hardware stuff, you’d go to the B&Q, not the local shop.
It’s always instructive when
It’s always instructive when faced with a “ULEZ/cycle lanes/LTNs forced me out of business” story to have a quick glance at two things: Google reviews and company tax returns. Very often – at least 75% of the time in my experience – one finds that the business had a poor reputation and/or was running at or close to a loss from long before the measures they are blaming for their business failing were even proposed.
And ULEZ on edge of town
And ULEZ on edge of town indicated how care workers and many others are underpaid to afford good transport. Many grafter tradespeople were under-charging and taking cash only to undercut tax paying, fully qualified, fully insured roofers, etc
Rendel Harris wrote:
I think it was probably the latter in this case. I miss the shop – it was convenient if you needed something quickly and it was a very short walk from my house. But it was more expensive than the bigger shops, and as soon as you’d get in a car (or even on a bike) you’d go to one of those instead – so it was really the competition from the big boys that killed it. (Having said that, the big B&Q has closed now, too!)
Steve K wrote:
Its done its job, now all the local hardware stores have closed down you have to go to the even bigger B&Q further away.
The media have to share some
The media have to share some responsibility by amplifying only the most negative and simplistic points of view, but the shop owners should realise that if they really believe their customers need somewhere to park that making claims about there being ‘no-where to park’ is going to put off customers, and it would be better if they took the opportunity to let them know of the existence and location of perfectly useful locations within convenience walking distance.
We really are done for as a nation if people refuse to carry a bag of chips for more than a few metres.
FionaJJ wrote:
Don’t you know that when someone on the reactionary side of an issue says something is bad, they’re just voicing the “common sense” view of the “silent majority”. It is only treacherously “talking down our great nation/region/county/town/village” when someone on the progressive side says something is bad.
It’s “growth” and “advanced
It’s “growth” and “advanced economy”! Shouldn’t we be proudly trumpeting that our citizens refuse to (and don’t have to) carry a bag of chips as far as those in Europe? Even if we’re still behind those of the US who wouldn’t transport their fries in anything less than 2 tons of metal and plastic?
chrisonabike wrote:
Pfffft – carry our own chips?
We get underpaid, overworked asylum seekers to ride round on semi-explosive, danger-to-life, ghetto e-motorbikes to Deliveroo our chips round here.
Everyone’s a winner.
Everyone’s a winner.
Desperate people (or just those needing casual work at odd hours) get money *, fast food folks get a marketplace and delivery service (also not sure how much this benefits or if it’s just “now you have to…”), customers get convenience of delivery and only dealing with one service, the companies get to (*checks legal backing*) avail themselves of the letter of the current regulations thus giving themselves space to create a business out of not very much and … er … politicians get … looked after? I’m sure I don’t know.
* Of sorts. Some people have written here in positive terms about using this system but I still wonder if at least some aren’t using this for other purposes. Either because opportunities for other jobs are not available or perhaps this gives opportunities for additional unofficial deliveries?
People will see what they
People will see what they want to. Got earwigged at lunch by a chap who saw me with my bike and wanted to take up the fact that he apparently had stood by some new cycle infra for some hours and seen but a handful of bikes. Well… I can’t speak to his data * but I’m pretty sure the M1 wasn’t exactly grid-locked immediately after it opened…
The notion of “this is for today’s drivers – who are tomorrow’s cyclists” is frankly unbelievable to most people (if not an unwelcome notion!).
There’s also the “waste of space” effect whereby motor traffic is so space-inefficient that a handful of cars is obvious “traffic” while a handful of cyclists is invisible.
* Aside from some doubts that someone would actually stand around for that time merely to confirm their feeling that cycle infra was a waste of money… I’ve ridden this way probably 20 times now, at various times, and have generally seen at least one other cyclist (in probably 500 metres of separate bi-directional cycle path). I’d certainly agree it’s hardly “cycling superhighway” busy and much less so than the road next to it. Also if you stood at the end furthest from town you’d probably only see the odd “recreational cyclist”. OTOH the old route which covered part of the new “corridor” is quite close and most existing cyclists may be continuing to use.
chrisonabike wrote:
I hope you explained to him some of the reasons that cyclists avoid using poorly designed infrastructure. It’s a common trope that non-cyclists believe they know better than cyclists about how and where to cycle.
Didn’t bother as he was on
Didn’t bother as this is actually not bad and he was on transmit about this issue. Plus I’d managed to get one point of “you don’t disagree with *this*, do you?” and he’d gone some minutes in conversation with a “cyclist” without this being violently disagreeable. (For all I know it was a case of “I’m an avid cyclist myself” and he just didn’t agree with cycle infra at all (like some here), or not where it was put, or not for that price, or expected to see it nose-to-tail full of bikers after millions were spent.)
Age 69, I’ve sometimes
Age 69, I’ve sometimes commented how many bike lanes are worse than not having one, especially as they get used by heavy and very wide ebikes doing the max 20 mph or even more. But joy to walk from Earls Court to Shooters Hill and see vast numbers of cyclists with almost all cars very aware of them – massive change from when I’d be one of just 2 or 3 on a bike.
On the urban bike or folder, I’d use the bike lanes on that route but, on race bike, I’d probably ride with the cars
No to “bike lanes”, yes to
No to “bike lanes“, yes to properly designed separate cycle paths.
The one under discussion the other day (the short section of Edinburgh’s CCWEL) – what’s not to like?
Well – it could certainly be a bit wider (it’s not wide enough for social side-by-side cycling in both directions and look at how much remaining motor vehicle space there is…). Plus the usual UK moan about “why can’t we just pick a single, national colour for cycle paths so everyone understands where these are?”
BUT it is separated from both motor traffic AND pedestrians. It continues across side roads without stopping e.g. has priority. In some places there are also spaces for motor vehicles to wait to cross, just as is done in NL. (We’re still doing this much more often than they would in NL but then again we’ve still got an awful lot of motor traffic with drivers used to pulling off or onto roads without heeding crossing pedestrians, never mind cyclists…). It continues past bus stops where there is space for people to wait AND board the bus.
It goes where people want to go (because it follows a major motor route into town and connects a couple of “places”). AND it does link to some other traffic free cycle routes.
Connectivity is a major issue. In the UK even where we’ve “done cycle infra” we have put it in “where we could” e.g. where it was easy. That is often not where it is most needed – because it’s exactly those places which are in demand for use by lots of motor traffic – especially junctions! Or even where it is likely to be particularly useful and well-used (ditto).
Contrast with places where this is “working”. In the case of Seville they made a *network* from the beginning. It was small at first and only covered the city centre. But having done that they could then grow that outwards. The UK’s approach to putting in “routes” ends up with tons of gaps, or “routes” that start or end “nowhere”. I think this limits takeup and we then struggle to connect them into a coherent network.
Sadly some of them get jobs
Sadly some of them get jobs and are paid to do it professionally
The newish cycle lane (green
The newish cycle lane (green paint) in the centre of Altrincham featured here in the past.
I rarely see a bike on it, why?
Well, there’s no safe route to get to it and few secure places to leave your bike anyway.
Similar in Wimborne. Long,
Similar in Wimborne. Long, wonderful bike path but I counted 600+ motor vehicles, 12 pedestrians, 5 bicycles, 1 bus on each of two mornings I walked along it this summer. Probably funded as planning gain by the many housing developments along the route (many with 2 car garages). But the Wimborne end stops short of the town with steep no-escape banks at the kerbs. Only confident riders were using it and very few of them
They’ve sort of got a point.
They’ve sort of got a point. I mean, if there isn’t somewhere to park my bike close to a shop I might not bother.
True. I skip shops and
True. I skip shops and shopping streets and malls that don’t have adequate, convenient, non-wheel bending bike parking. Often see lots of car parking, moped parking, a few toast racks at far end for pedal bikes.
Similarly where I live the
Similarly where I live the local councillors say that the traffic problems all started with the closure of a local river crossing in 2019, when in fact…
…congestion has always been a problem in the town centre and the roads leading to and from it, and it was terrible in the ’90s regardless of the bridge. It is surely no surprise that is utterly dire now 30 years later.
…the number of registered cars on UK roads continues to increase with no let up and is now over 33m. Total vehicles 41m+.
Like this story the real reasons lie elsewhere.
Pull up outside chippie,
Pull up outside chippie, order, wait for service, drive off, maybe looking down occasionally to pick up a chip… no physical activity, recipe for insulin resistance, diabetes, heart clogging. Quite likely to toss wrapping out of the window along with empty vape gear. Where did this assumption of driving door-to-door come from?
Nobody protests about a new
Nobody protests about a new motorway or bypass road because it will put some shops, pubs and petrol stations out of business.