Route 74 has gone

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mjr
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by mjr »

mattheus wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 1:07pm I have to thank you for posting that. After reading earlier posts, I decided that would be a nice route to incorporate into my impending trip; I'd looked at a couple of bits on Streetview and it looked like a very rideable hard surface, and utterly scenic!

I shall stick with my standard strategy - proper tarmac, plus previously reccéd "cycle routes".
It depends what mood you're in. If you're willing to gamble, sometimes such a track will be in a far better condition than any photos or Streetview suggest and you will be rewarded with spectacular scenery rarely seen on any tarmac route anywhere...

...but it is a gamble, because sometimes it'll be a completely unrideable mess and so I think one has to allow for something like maybe 10kph average in case you're walking a lot of it, instead of my usual 16kph planning.

This year, I entered Grantham on the tarmac National Byway and left on the gravel canal towpath NCN. The towpath was much more enjoyable and actually less rough than some of the Byway inwards!

There are few certainties in cycle touring.

But if such a route was to be made part of a primary cycle route, there really should be a commitment to keep to pretty rideable IMO. No worse than rolled limestone smoothness. So that may also be why it remains as a second-level route, as well as the indirectness and climbing.
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Bmblbzzz
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Something in the NCN must be working: this is just a few hundred metres futher on route 74 / B7078 from where Pete Owens linked to
https://goo.gl/maps/BcDDRYZJiXYuNjdx5
If you look through 360 degrees, you can see two pedestrians, three cyclists but only one car. This seems to me like one little vindication of protected cycling and walking facilities (or whatever you want to call them).
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Pete Owens wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 12:24pm And this sort of attitude to route recommendation really encapsulates why Sustrans are completely unsuitable to be put in charge of cycle signage. (while you may not be a spokesman for Sustrans it is entirely typical of their thinking).
I'm not remotely a spokesman and I would hope no-one thinks I am! I volunteer in a small way to keep our local routes round here in good order, but that no more qualifies me to speak for Sustrans than being the volunteer organist at St Mary's Charlbury qualifies me to speak on behalf of God.[1]

[1] insert preferred deity here
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Pete Owens
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Pete Owens »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 4:21pm Something in the NCN must be working: this is just a few hundred metres futher on route 74 / B7078 from where Pete Owens linked to
https://goo.gl/maps/BcDDRYZJiXYuNjdx5
If you look through 360 degrees, you can see two pedestrians, three cyclists but only one car. This seems to me like one little vindication of protected cycling and walking facilities (or whatever you want to call them).
No it just shows if you replace a long distance road through sparcely inhabited countryside by a motorway then you will remove most of the motor traffic and the original road will become ideal for cycling. The existence or not of a seperate path is irrelevant (it is there because there was a carriageway left over, not because that was deemed nescessary). Just as the narrow cycle lanes on other stretches just represent the bits of tarmac surplus to requirement when they only had one carriageway to play with.

Of course if you are going to claim that a picture of a cyclist riding on a cyclepath as evidence that they are only there due to the existence of route 74 then presumably this is a scene we won't be seeing in the future:
https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1341267 ... 384!8i8192
Maybe Sustrans is keen to expunge the route to stamp out such deviant behaviour.
Jamesh
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Jamesh »

Route 66 is from Bradford to Shipley.

A miss named route if ever there was one!!

Cheers James
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Paulatic
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Paulatic »

I’m finding this a very interesting thread as I’m familiar with every inch of everything mentioned so far.
Thinking back to the year 2000
The big ride
The big ride
When route74 was launched I led the ride from Lockerbie to Abington rendezvousing there with a colourful contingent from Coalburn. At the start our Tory MP prominently featured in all press picture complete with his new bike. He made it to the first roundabout, half a mile, before making his excuse of pressing business to attend to. My numbers dwindled in the first 18 mls and the llast 18 mls was a solo ride by me.
Back then the whole of the route was a pleasure with virtually no traffic and a very smooth cycle lane. It had been flooded with a very fine top which was excellent.
Feelings then we were delighted as a cyclist in Moffat we now had a way out north and a new way south. The A74 was a real no no back then. I’d used it a couple of times but the worry took years off your life.
The last 20 years I’ve seen traffic on it increase. The opening of power station , timber businesses, haulage firms and lorry parks. The fine surface eroded quickly helped by tractors and frost. A small example of it hung on south of Fechen but I think even that has gone now.
Sustrans route south from Gretna well that’s been there before the Cumberland gap was made a motorway. It really was the only safe option. I rode the A74 Cumberland gap once and never again. Nowadays the road beside the Mway is a sensible option. The Sustrans route includes an old railway line which 20 years ago was OK. I last did it three years ago and what a mud bath it is now.
Route 10 alternative? Never can be it’s 12,mls of forestry. When it launched we had a club ride over it. Even hybrid bike tyres got punctures. I once had to rescue two cyclists who attempted it in winter. They got off a train in Dumfries and thought they would follow the route to Moffat. Getting lost and darkness falling they eventually found a cottage who kindly sheltered them until the morning. Next morning was deep snow and how I got asked to rescue them with a Land Rover.
I use some of that route with 40mm + tyres purely as a fun way to get to Ae cafe. Never a serious way to get to Dumfries.
So 74 has now lost its numbers I’ll still keep using it as a realistic way to get places.
What has Sustrans achieved here? Well it now looks like absolutely nothing. The building of the motorway was the catalyst. For a few years I tried really hard bending my councillors ear and arming him with pages of negative experiences of cycling through Dumfries & Galloway. Surfaces, traffic etc and it’s resulted in nothing so far. The section linked by Bmblbzz is a pleasure when you reach it and an example of how it all could have been.
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Bmblbzzz
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Bmblbzzz »

Pete Owens wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 5:33pm
Bmblbzzz wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 4:21pm Something in the NCN must be working: this is just a few hundred metres futher on route 74 / B7078 from where Pete Owens linked to
https://goo.gl/maps/BcDDRYZJiXYuNjdx5
If you look through 360 degrees, you can see two pedestrians, three cyclists but only one car. This seems to me like one little vindication of protected cycling and walking facilities (or whatever you want to call them).
No it just shows if you replace a long distance road through sparcely inhabited countryside by a motorway then you will remove most of the motor traffic and the original road will become ideal for cycling. The existence or not of a seperate path is irrelevant (it is there because there was a carriageway left over, not because that was deemed nescessary). Just as the narrow cycle lanes on other stretches just represent the bits of tarmac surplus to requirement when they only had one carriageway to play with.

Of course if you are going to claim that a picture of a cyclist riding on a cyclepath as evidence that they are only there due to the existence of route 74 then presumably this is a scene we won't be seeing in the future:
https://www.google.com/maps/@55.1341267 ... 384!8i8192
Maybe Sustrans is keen to expunge the route to stamp out such deviant behaviour.
The two examples are hardly comparable. The first is a reasonably wide cycle lane, built or rather rebuilt with cycling in mind. It's not ideal – has too many silly give ways and could probably do with being a bit wider – but is good for slower or less bold cyclists as well as great for walking. The second is a narrow, roughly surfaced pavement which has been deemed cycleable by the addition of blue signs. It's the cycling equivalent of putting motorway signs on a twisty country lane and deeming it good for heavy traffic at 70mph.
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Paulatic
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Paulatic »

@Bmblbzz
The second is a narrow, roughly surfaced pavement which has been deemed cycleable by the addition of blue signs.
That was the north bound carriageway and for some reason they made it a pavement a lot narrower than further north.
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Pete Owens
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Pete Owens »

Paulatic wrote: 15 Oct 2021, 7:35pm Sustrans route south from Gretna well that’s been there before the Cumberland gap was made a motorway. It really was the only safe option. I rode the A74 Cumberland gap once and never again
Yes, certainly before the M74 was built the old A74 was horrible and made steadily worse as it was progressively upgraded to a motorway in all but name. Even someone as opposed to segregation in urban streets as myself recognises this was an unsuitable route for cyclists to which a segregated cycleway crossing the border would have been entirely appropriate. And in the absence of such, the very long diversion between Gretna and Carlisle was justified. However, the M6 was extended to the border over a decade ago - plenty of time to sort the signs in Gretna to point to the direct route on what is now (horror of horrors) a quiet road.

This is especially absurd in this case since part of that long diversion is itself being purged from the network

Curiously, looking at streetview, there was a sign at the English end back in 2009:
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.9676177 ... 312!8i6656
but that had disappeared by March 2010, reappeared in November 2010 and gone again by 2021.
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Paulatic
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Paulatic »

I see that sign at Floristonrigg suffers the same fate as one where the B7076 meets the A701 :D
I wonder if the disappearance of the bike sign is related to the five cyclists getting injured in 2010? https://road.cc/content/news/21015-five ... em-cumbria
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Spen
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Spen »

LollyKat wrote: 11 Oct 2021, 9:26pm Sustrans are reclassifying some of their routes because they are not up to their newest standards. The blue cycle signs will stay but the numbers are being removed. More details on the Sustrans website - sorry I can’t post a link on my phone.
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Spen
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Spen »

mjr wrote: 12 Oct 2021, 12:39pm Yes, it's the case. Sustrans base their maps on Ordnance Survey, which of course shows legal status more reliably than most OSM renders but does not show more practical matters like surface, status or route name. I do not know of any recent editing of OSM by Sustrans.
Ordnance Survey maps do not show the legal status of a path, they give an indication of the status but only the definitive map and statement held by the highway authority shows legal status, OS maps have a disclaimer on them for this reason
thirdcrank
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by thirdcrank »

Unless something has changed, the OS only shows cycle routes recognised by Sustrans. (That's not a matter of legal status, just whether or not a cycle route makes it onto the maps.)
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by MikeF »

Spen wrote: 16 Oct 2021, 12:04pm
mjr wrote: 12 Oct 2021, 12:39pm Yes, it's the case. Sustrans base their maps on Ordnance Survey, which of course shows legal status more reliably than most OSM renders but does not show more practical matters like surface, status or route name. I do not know of any recent editing of OSM by Sustrans.
Ordnance Survey maps do not show the legal status of a path, they give an indication of the status but only the definitive map and statement held by the highway authority shows legal status, OS maps have a disclaimer on them for this reason
Indeed, but MJR didn't state that. OS use the definitive map, but as you note with a disclaimer. OSM use??????
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Psamathe
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Re: Route 74 has gone

Post by Psamathe »

With so many using mapping apps that use/based on OSM mapping and with OS generally requiring a subscription I find it quite amazing that Sustrans are not embracing (or even updating) OSM. Particularly as it's free so far more accessible! (and Sustrans should be about accessibility).

Ian
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