Updated: Wales unveils Active Travel Bill - law compels councils to provide routes for cycling and walking

Problem will be Local Authorities do not have the resources to put this legislation into effect unless specific funds are made available by WG, but that would be millions across Wales. Also usually these things are designed by over weight Highway Engineers who have not experienced riding a bike since they were a child. Carl Sergeant the Minister is hardly an advert for fitness and good health #PracticeWhatyouPreach

My concern is that drivers will believe all cyclists should not be on the roads. There is no way I am riding 20mph + on a shared path.

Quick, buy shares in road paint before the road planners rush out to paint more death zones beside parked cars and declare it a cycle network.

Good news - hopefully this will catch on elsewhere as well.

My inner cycnic has two questions about this:
Does "identifying and mapping the enhancements that would be required to create a fully integrated network for walking and cycling" include a review of cleaning and maintenance regimes? Snow clearing, gritting, sweeping up the grit again, removing glass, filling potholes...
Litter can be an issue as well - a quiet route that avoids main road and allows pedestrians and cyclists to take advantage of sneaky shortcuts is less likely to be perceived as safe (in terms social safety, not traffic safety) if litter is allowed to accumulate.

The other problem with these networks is always going to be the signage. Bike signage has come on by leaps and bounds recently where I am based (Bavaria) but often still isn't up to the task of distinguishing between routes that are fine for any bike and ones that are really only suitable for more robust bikes. There is also no real attempt made to distinguish routes that are usable throughout the year from routes that are only usable in dry conditions, or routes that are easily usable at night from those that are not. Sometimes a cycling signpost has tempted me to follow a route with tarmacadam and street lighting only for both to disappear at the next junction, where the route turns into a steep, mucky track through a dark forest. Signage is hard to do well - it has to be instantly legible and yet provide enough information to be useful. Directional information (using actual placenames), but hopefully also some indication of what type of link the route represents.

Hmm,

I'm all for high quality segregated infrastructure - and I believe that's the only way we'll get significantly more bums on bikes - but this bit (from wales.gov.uk) has me worried:

"The legislation will require local authorities in Wales to identify and map the network of routes within their areas that are safe and appropriate for walking and cycling"

My concern here is, if you are riding from A to B on the only realistic route - eg rural A roads such as the A4165 from Oxford to Banbury - and the local authority has not identified that road as "safe and appropriate for walking and cycling", then if you are injured (or worse) by a "careless" or dangerous driver, are they and their insurer going to argue that you shouldn't have been there in the first place?

These concerns are probably ill founded, as they do then state further duties to:

"identify and map the enhancements that would be required to create a fully integrated network for walking and cycling and develop a prioritised list of schemes to deliver the network;"
"deliver an enhanced network subject to budget availability and following due process;"
"consider the potential for enhancing walking and cycling provision in the development of new road schemes."

Therefore it's unlikely that an insurer could argue that you shouldn't have been on a particular road, when there is no realistic alternative.

Yeah baby. Preferential treatment is going to improve motorist antipathy loads

This is excellent!

While still at university i wrote a dissertation on active travel, but must admit that i did focus on England to an extent. So it's a pleasant surprise to see Wales coming out with legislation.

The medical community, particularly the Royal Colleges which represent the different specialties, need to support this loudly, and not let governments water it down.

don't some of the flat countries have this already ?
When they build a new road they must provision cycle
paths alongside .....

nice step forward though

“People are used to the routes they drive" "showed that you can treble cycling levels simply by making people aware of the routes that exist already.”
This hits the nail on the head, whilst working as a cycle sales person I found it very difficult to convince potential customers that there existed many miles of quiet safe roads to cycle upon, they were nearly always fixated on using "off road leisure routes" of often limited "journey potential"