Rants!

Lordshill Cycleways

I am forwarding this to you as I seem to be getting nowhere! Has anyone else had problems in the Lordshill area, which has a good cycle path network in principle but which is unmaintained and unsigned by the Council?

I had a run-in today with a dog walker on the cycle path which runs down in between Boniface Crescent and Lower Brownhill Road. It suffers from the usual problem of not having any signs but is clearly marked on the City Bike Guide in a continuous purple line as a Shared Pedestrian and Cycle Route. There is a paved path (obviously the footpath) and a kerbed tarmac path (obviously the path/road for Council service vehicles and cycles). The dog walker refused to accept that it is a cycle path.

PLEASE can urgent consideration be given to repainting the cycle motifs on the Lordshill Cycleways, especially around Oaklands School and the stretch between the School and Lordshill Recreation Ground. I nearly hit several Oaklands pupils today, despite riding carefully on the central cycle path (there is a pedestrian footpath either side),who told me I shouldn't be riding on the footpath! This sort of thing happens quite frequently with pedestrians in general. I first raised this matter 11 years ago and still nothing has been done!

Chris

Road Works Haiku

Romsey Road road works
Alternative route for cars
Cycling is futile

Wanted: House for cyclists

I've recently started looking to buy a house. I've saved up some money (I don't own a car!) and have stepped out eagerly hoping to find something moderately suitable. My needs are simple, I'd like a garden, an reasonable kitchen and somewhere to store my bike. Well, I've visited quite a number of places, even some that I liked. Off-road parking (the cemented ex-front garden) has been eagerly presented to me. But bike storage has not.

We did find a house to suit, except for the cycle parking. With the only access to the garden being through the house, we looked into putting a porch on the front. Crazy fools! A porch? You'll have to get planning permission for that! (Its within 2 meters of a public footpath). There is no consideration of the purpose to which we'd put the porch. For years I've cycled for the benefit of the City (yes, I really did think like that), but the City owes me nothing.

Its quite loopy when you think about it. If you want to get people cycling, you need to catch them young before they get the habit of using their cars for work and family. Yet these young people are the ones who tend to live in flats and terraces, many of which have no provision for cycle storage. I realise that there are now regulations that new flat developments must have cycle storage, but what about the considerable volume of older housing stock?

It seems that everyone demands a space for their car, even if its on the road (look at Malmesbury Road, for instance). But can I demand a space for my bike? Like, duh! It seems that you have to have money to cycle. Yet cycling itself is so wonderfully cheap and available to everyone.

Speaking to friends I have heard several times "I would like to cycle, but there's nowhere to store a bike". Does anyone even know the proportion of housing in Southampton that does not have storage for bikes? Do City planners ever consider why there seems to be such a low upper limit to the number of cyclists? Perhaps housing is one of several factors that should be addressed in a joined-up policy on transport?

There have been moments, as I've wheezed up another hill into the darkest outreaches of the city in the vain hope of finding somewhere liveable that I've thought, "why don't I just get a car?".

;-) Izzy