pwa wrote:Streetview doesn't take you onto the lengthy shared use traffic free bits which are attractive and wide.
Acknowledged, but there's nothing on
http://www.cyclestreets.net/photomap/ yet and
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2711411 shows a substandard-width boardwalk, which is also not a good smooth cycling surface.
pwa wrote:The Bridgend side is a bit patched together, as you say, but the "industrial estate" is basically one quiet road with a string of businesses on it, none generating much traffic. Nine times out of ten you would cycle down that without meeting a moving car. It is quieter than the alternatives.
Industrial estates are still not as nice as residential areas to cycle through, plus it screams "HGV" to most people, festooned with anti-cycling driver-excusing signs.
When Google's car drove through, it was a narrowed to a single car-door-chicken alley where you'd be facing off against any moving car you did meet.
pwa wrote:And though the blue signs are too small (as usual) you would get to know the route after one use.
But why would any non-cyclist ever think of trying one use? Edit: Wanlock Dod made the "self-advertising cycle routes" point more eloquently while I had this draft saved over dinner.
pwa wrote:The push button crossing of the dual carriageway at the Sarn end works very quickly if nobody else has just used it before you. After crossing that (heading away from Bridgend) the route doesn't go up the hill under the rail bridge. Instead it turns left down a lane that is now a dead end for motor traffic. So that is quiet too.
It's quiet because almost no-one lives down there. The route doing that way looks like a detour, doing two sides of a square to get to most places in Sarn, so that the local council can avoid the work of a road diet on Sarn Hill. So if you want to go up Sarn Hill, you're emerging dodgily at the corner of a T-junction, and coming the other way means you have to turn across traffic leaving the dual carriageway. Personally, I'd stay on road through the traffic lights and filter off left at the southern crossing, but that's not a move many do - they're more likely to try waiting for the pushbutton lights a few times and then decide they got through the junction more easily in a car and go back to doing that.
There seem to be no signs to Bridgend at the Sarn end, not at Sarn Hill, not at Lower Llansantffraid and not at Heol Cwrdy. How would people in Sarn guess this is a way to cycle to Bridgend?
This is something I've seen Cornwall get right recently.
Here's the route to Falmouth signposted at Devoran - not huge, but enough for motorists to notice IMO.
In Norfolk, they've been getting a bit silly lately...pwa wrote:The main point is, it looks safe and it is safe. But not busy with people popping to Tesco. The flaws in the route don't explain that.
It doesn't look safe. It looks like an obstacle course to me. It looks like more of the worst parts of my local cycleways with fewer of the good bits. Plus I don't see how people are going to guess it's there.
pwa wrote:Just for your interest, the bridge was put in at enormous expense as an alternative to taking the route down Quarella Road, which feels a bit narrow and sometimes busy. There was a lot of agonising over that choice. That bridge didn't come cheap. But locals on the Wildmill estate beside the bridge wanted a bridge there and were delighted when the got it, so I think it was a good call.
I think there are things that could be done but I'll take your word on Quarella Road. Even so, I think the route should have been taken up alongside the dual carriageway where there's plenty of room, it would be more visible and less at risk of turning traffic, instead of through the industrial estate.
I have to admit that if they had done some maintenance/infrastructure work to make the entrance more obvious, that would have helped. I mgiht even have found the path. But erecting a sign post must be cheaper.