A Greater Manchester council’s road improvement project caught the eye after the entire road was resurfaced… except for the cycle lanes, which “badly need improving”.
One Trafford, the body linking the council to contractor Amey on road maintenance projects, proudly took to social media last week to share photos of the “completed” works, prompting local riders to fill the replies with questions along the lines of ‘when will the cycle lanes be resurfaced too?’
And there’s the answer. @OneTrafford seem to think this is finished, despite not touching the cycleways.https://t.co/DI05wm8lhs
— Dom (@domcycling) March 31, 2023
We contacted Trafford Council to ask if the cycle lane will be resurfaced too, but have not received a reply, instead hearing only from one of the cyclists displeased by the job who told us the cycle lane “badly” needed work too.
“It’s disappointing that after the recent good work the council has done installing protected cycleways on a section of Chester Road, they’ve carried out this resurfacing work, without addressing the cycleway that badly need improving,” Dom told road.cc.
“There have been issues with poor surface and standing water on the Stretford Cycleway since it was installed. These have been repeatedly raised with the council, who have failed to do anything about it. While Trafford Council’s recently approved strategy to get more people walking, wheeling and cycling looks promising, we need to see this backed up with actions, including ensuring that maintenance money is spent fairly.
Dom explained how the cycleway is part of the Stretford Cycleway scheme, that was installed in 2018. At the time the work was carried out, many people told the council that the surface needed improving and the drainage issues sorting before installing the wands.
“The council patched up some of the surface, but left much of it as it was, and didn’t address the drainage issues. It’s now a popular route and is well used, but it’s really quite bumpy and awful after it has been raining,” he said.
Dom details his thoughts on the area’s active travel infrastructure projects on his blog and, from the response to the resurfacing works, was far from the only person hoping to see improvements for all road users.
They did a bit ?
Cycling back from Tesco this afternoon and south bound cycle lane is abysmal. It was that bumpy, I thought my fillings were going to come out. pic.twitter.com/vDTHblC7WB
— SiBt65 (@FentonRedbush) April 2, 2023
Another asked: “Why have the vast majority of the cycle lanes been carefully missed out on this resurface when they had just as many, if not more, surfacing issues as the carriageway?”
This is not a good look. pic.twitter.com/qVB125WjEe
— Tom Jeffs (@tom_a_jeffs) April 1, 2023
18 thoughts on “Council criticised after resurfacing entire road… except cycle lanes”
It does feel like councils
It does feel like councils use cycle lanes as a way of reducing the amount of road maintenance they need to do.
Which would be true if they actually put the work in to make a comprehensive cycle network that could draw people out of their cars and onto bikes which cause a fraction of a percentage of the wear that cars do.
I’m continually reporting a
I’m continually reporting a cycle lane I use along a dual carriageway. It’s basically treated as an excuse to delay and/or not bother sending a sweeper down it, it’s treated like a big gutter. Add to that some bright spark decided pine trees were a good idea along the route, so it’s regularly full of pine cones.
They’re looking for the
They’re looking for the Norwegian Blue.
I’m not an engineer but would
I’m not an engineer but would have thought having an open edge would just lead to faster degredation. That would be a massive false economy.
IanMK wrote:
Contractors don’t care about longevity though as the sooner it fails, the sooner they can get paid again.
100%. I’ve said this before,
100%. I’ve said this before, but ever since repairs of this nature started to be done in a way to save up-front cost, the long-term, cumulative cost must have sky-rocketed simply due to how often repairs have to be re-done. In my old village, there are road repairs that are older than I am that are still rock-solid. They’re done to a high standard, flat and level, sealed around the edges, etc. Anything done post 2000-ish usually has a lifetime of weeks instead of years, and they’re often more of a hazard to cyclists than the potholes they replace.
We run both our government
Absolutely. However we run both our government (local and national) and our whole society on debt though, so this kind of “false economy” is as standard as driving everywhere…
I would very much like to see
I would very much like to see the contract between the council and the contractor. If it says something like “resurface the carriageway” then they haven’t completed the task. If it says something like “resurface it apart from the cycle lane” my councillor would be getting hell, 24/7.
So is the main carriageway
So is the main carriageway now an inch or so higher than the cycle lane?
(edit) My point being that’s enough to catch your wheel if you went up against… Not terribly safe.
They scraped the old surface
They scraped the old surface off so it’s pretty level.
Yea, well, cyclists don’t pay
Yea, well, cyclists don’t pay road tax , blah, blah etc.
They did that on the Warwick
They did that on the Warwick Road near me a few years ago. They did a cheap and cheerful slurry topping where they use a wet mix that flows into crevices, but they stopped at the cycle lane line (no “other” infrastructure then).
The trouble was that vehicles regularly ran in the cycle lane, and at junctions, accelerating vehicles ripped up the surface into potholes, so they missed the biggest defects.
As others have mentioned, it then left a lip onto the main carriageway- somehow highways don’t consider that cyclists may want to exit the cycle lane rather than follow it until it vanishes for some random reason. If cycle lane designers built the M40, they’d go from Birmingham to London with no junctions, stopping in a field a mile away from the M42 and the M25 because the junctions would be a bit tricky, and they’d wonder why people didn’t like using it.
IanMSpencer wrote:
Naturally the route would also manage to get nearer to Aberdeen than London or Birmingham as well (as clearly the most important metric is number of miles built)
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A Lay Bah council. A LAAAAAY Bah council.
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Cycling brings YOU to life.
Cycling brings YOU to life.
I’ll leave this here:
Transport
Motorways and tramlines
Starting and then stopping
Taking off and landing
The emptiest of feelings
Disappointed people
Clinging onto bottles
And when it comes it’s so so disappointing…