Closed Roads

[thirdcrank]

I wish they would make it clear when a road is closed if pedestrians cyclist can still get through

Perhaps there's a difference between what the people at the scene will tolerate, and/or what you can get away with, as opposed to what those responsible for the closure would certify as safe.

[Ray]

Some years ago I spent a week with a friend cycling in the Vercors, after which my friend was intending to ride on into the Alps for a rendezvous with his wife.

During the week we explored the route he intended taking, and saw that it was definitely 'Fermé', with a 2 or 3m high fence to reinforce the point. Seeing that it would have been possible to squeeze past with a bike, my friend decided to try and find out whether he might be able to take that route the following weekend, when there would probably be no work going on (the alternative was a long detour). There was noone on site, so we went to the local tourist office. The woman on duty helpfully telephoned the local works department to enquire. During her phone conversation the woman glanced up at my friend, replying to a question from the works manager, "Non, il n'est pas un idiot".

It was clear that the authorities didn't want to take any risks! We'll never know the real state of the road . . . but my friend took the detour.

[mjr]

I wish they would make it clear when a road is closed if pedestrians cyclist can still get through

Perhaps there's a difference between what the people at the scene will tolerate, and/or what you can get away with, as opposed to what those responsible for the closure would certify as safe.

IIRC officially, "ROAD CLOSED" applies to cyclists but not walkers, so there is a £1000 max fine for riding through... but if you can ride through safely, the "ROAD CLOSED EXCEPT CYCLES" sign should have been used (by law!) and you may have a defence in court... but you'd have to go to court which is tedious and risky so I tend to walk past closures if anyone is around.

And roads closed to walkers are not signed as far away or as large as the vehicle closures - just a paper notice at the actual barrier - so you can still end up with a big backtrack and detour occasionally.

[andrew_s]

What annoys me, and is a large part of the reason I routinely ignore road closed signs, is that the signs are never taken down or turned round even when there's no work taking place (e.g. evenings or weekends).
One closure I passed earlier this week had been completed - trench fully reinstated, all the kit taken away, but the road closed signs still present.

Some years ago I spent a week with a friend cycling in the Vercors, after which my friend was intending to ride on into the Alps for a rendezvous with his wife.
During the week we explored the route he intended taking, and saw that it was definitely 'Fermé', with a 2 or 3m high fence to reinforce the point.

I came across one like that, also in the Vercors, in 2004 (iirc). Not only was the fence 3m high, it stretched from the rock wall on the left to a point about 50 cm past the wall between the edge of the road and the sheer drop on the right. Definitely no getting past, even given the incentive of the 400 m of climb to reach the blockage after passing the road closed ahead sign in the village.
It's still closed (the Grands Goulets)

[HarryD]

A friend got fined for ignoring a closed road sign in Spain whereas me & the missus came across one in Aragon and found there was no road but a construction site. When we showed up all work stopped to let us through

In North Yorks most closed roads have pedestrian and horse rider access so no problems. If there is serious work going on there is usually someone at each end to check with. Very rare that you are not allowed to get through. Personally I don't mind using a field to bypass nor wading a shallow river

As for relying on published road closures, I don't unless there could be something really serious going on. It seems that closures of less than a day don't need publicising (around here anyway) and longer term ones give periods that are far in excess of the time required

I've found the 'Traffic' function on Goole maps very useful for checking out congestion and blockages on new routes

[mattsccm]

Never found a closure i can't walk around. A long standing, months, closure nearby had security fencing verge to verge so passing on tarmac was impossible and the workers, quite possibly annoyed by people like me, were adamant that no one was going through, 24/7. Snag was, they had no control of the unfenced FC woodland either side so a nice little rat run developed inches from their tarmac. Nothing changed but their work was horribly interupted by walkers and riders pasing through. Shame it became part of a popular mtb loop .
A bit of give and take would have saved them so much agro

[gloomyandy]

It's interesting how different workers react. I'd say that 90% of the time the folks working are really helpful and either, just wave you through or offer advice on the safe way to pass. But sometimes there seems to be a determined effort to stop anyone going through. A recent local case here was the road works on the road over the tops between Oxenhope and Hebden Bridge. The road was closed for fixed periods during the day and at weekends and they had all sorts of signs saying this applied to walkers and cyclists. In fairness it was a long stretch of road being worked on and there was not really an easy way to get through away from the road.

[ChrisF]

In Tenerife a couple of years ago I came across a closed road on the SE side. There were officials there by the blockage, and I asked but there was no going through. I had to get to the airport for the next morning, and had accomodation arranged. Only two alternative routes: (a) up the road to the top of Tiede (a 2000m climb) and down again, (b) on the motorway, no cycling permitted.
I phoned for a taxi and took the motorway to the next exit.

[fastpedaller]

Here in Norfolk they seem to sign a road closed with a detour route which is aimed at HGV's, with no alternative info for smaller vehicles - there was a classic one a few years ago which diverted to a small market town 17 miles from Norwich and 17 miles back again because less than 1 mile of road was being worked on. There were several (indeed 10x several) detours which would have been a lot shorter, including at least 2 which would have worked for HGV (indeed, sending them anti-clockwise around the outer ring road would have saved at least 25 miles! Why the big diversion.... who knows? We experienced a 'road closed ahead' whilst out in the car one day, and I said to my Wife "I know plenty of small lanes we can get through, so we'll try it", and despite the 3 signs repeating 'road ahead closed' we got to the next market town 8 miles away until we saw the actual closure, which was easily bypassed within the town. A mystery, and one can only think the people placing the signs take some delight in sniggering at the inconvenience they have caused.
I did get caught out a couple of years ago (on the bike) when I 'pressed on regardless' to find a 7 ft high barrier with one end against a house, and the other against a tree with so many nettles etc the other side of the tree making it impossible to pass

[pwa]

Here in Norfolk they seem to sign a road closed with a detour route which is aimed at HGV's, with no alternative info for smaller vehicles - there was a classic one a few years ago which diverted to a small market town 17 miles from Norwich and 17 miles back again because less than 1 mile of road was being worked on. There were several (indeed 10x several) detours which would have been a lot shorter, including at least 2 which would have worked for HGV (indeed, sending them anti-clockwise around the outer ring road would have saved at least 25 miles! Why the big diversion.... who knows? We experienced a 'road closed ahead' whilst out in the car one day, and I said to my Wife "I know plenty of small lanes we can get through, so we'll try it", and despite the 3 signs repeating 'road ahead closed' we got to the next market town 8 miles away until we saw the actual closure, which was easily bypassed within the town. A mystery, and one can only think the people placing the signs take some delight in sniggering at the inconvenience they have caused.
I did get caught out a couple of years ago (on the bike) when I 'pressed on regardless' to find a 7 ft high barrier with one end against a house, and the other against a tree with so many nettles etc the other side of the tree making it impossible to pass

Part of the explanation may be that the official diversion must be expected to take all vehicles, and a high proportion of the traffic, so no low bridges and no villages that can't cope. I recently got round a closed road section myself (driving) using my own alternative in preference to the official diversion, but my route involved a couple of residential streets and sending all the traffic that way would have been intolerable for local people.

[thirdcrank]

I suspect some of this is caused by the levels of sub-contracting used by statutory undertakers. So, while it might have eg Yorkshire Water on the vehicles, the road signs including diversions will be the responsibility of a specialist road sign company with another doing the digging and yet another carrying out the work on the pipes or whatever. This division of responsibilities will involve passing the buck if anything does go wrong and caution to ensure it doesn't. Also, the sign company will be able to charge more the the greater the extent of the cones etc.

I had work done on a drain carrying rainwater from our nextdoor neighbours' across the corner of our garden: it was one to survey, then when it was done, one to lift the paving, another to replace a couple of sections of pipe, then the reverse to complete it. At each stage, photographs were taken. At one point I had a van parked on my drive and pics were taken before and after to record it was safely parked and it had gone without incident. If it needs that for a few feet of drains yer actual roadworks must be a real faff. What my dear olddad used to refer to as a stained-glass window job
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As an example of what I'm suggesting there's Kotulla v EDF(Energy Networks) which has been linked before.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2010/B11.html

In short, Mr Kotulla was cycling on a footway and sustained injuries when he fell into some unguarded roadworks. The statutory undertaker admitted liability but unsuccessfully alleged contributory negligence on the grounds that the rider was breaking the law. Anyway, the claim was against a part of EDF, Morrisons Utility Services Ltd and Birch Utilities Ltd.

[m-gineering]

Here in the Netherlands people by and large ignore such signs and road workers know this. This is just the anarchic country that we are

The road workers ignore cyclist (ok they love their cyclist dismount signs) and most cyclists have learned to ignore the detour signs. I once had a customer arrive two hours late after he had followed the directions and he ended up at the motorway.half way down a 20 km detour Not much good on a bicycle!

[drossall]

Was there not a similar situation on Mam Tor?

When I started cycling in the late 70s, we used to ride up there from Cheshire, and the road was falling off the hill then. They were shoring it up with railway sleepers and things. Didn't work. On one occasion, we rode down and a mate nearly took his chainset off on a step where the road had dropped.

Roll on 30 years and my kids were doing geography field trips up there, to see the remnants of the same road that I remembered riding on.

[pq]

I always ignore signs, becasue as others have said it's rare you can't get through on a bike. But I have come unstuck, the most recent being last week on Mont Ventoux. All the way up there were signs saying road closed, so of course I ignored them especially as there were other riders doing the same. When I came to the concrete blocks across the road 4km from the summit, a burly security guard told me in no uncertain terms I was going no further. The contractors obviously knew cyclists would ignore all their signs and barriers!

[Mike Sales]

With a couple of friends I rode the new bypass before it was opened to the public.
We rode through the cone barrier and had the pleasure of a few miles of perfect and motor free tarmac.