mjr wrote: ↑14 Oct 2021, 9:16amSustrans's basic aim in this is good: a cycle route network without riding among heavy levels of fast motor traffic. They do not require protected space but it is one way to deliver it.
Yep, fully agree.
I think their method sucks: abruptly deleting large chunks of the network without warning the highway authorities affected what's needed to fix them. As a result, Sustrans no longer has a route network. What's left seems even less complete than the National Byway or National Trails.
This bit of NCN 74 is quite an interesting case. The original route isn't, as far as I can tell, very NCN-like - fast traffic and quite a lot of it, even despite the motorway running alongside. It seems an odd candidate ever to have been designated as an NCN route.
But there is a parallel route, the Caledonian Cycleway aka Regional Route 10. It goes south from Moffat to join NCN 7 at Dumfries, and is expressly signposted as a 7-74 link. I'm not quite sure why it doesn't appear on the online NCN map, or indeed why it hasn't been redesignated NCN 74.
Giving all off road sections a pass just makes it ridiculous. A mile of back road deleted because it leads to an A road, but a mile of unrideable wet sand proudly displays NCN signs and mileposts still? Absurd.
It's a pass
for now, I think - generally the unrideable off-road sections are being treated as "we can and should fix this", rather than "we're accepting this as fine in perpetuity". I would expect to see many of them either fixed or removed in the next few years. One or two have already gone, though I agree there are a couple that haven't and should have!