Cycle Travel Question

Cycle-touring, Expeditions, Adventures, Major cycle routes NOT LeJoG (see other special board)
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

I believe that section has been removed from the NCN. So... a feature?
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mjr
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

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LittleGreyCat wrote: 15 Mar 2023, 5:55pm Quick question - Route 51 between Godmanchester and St Ives.

I was just looking for routes in the area and coming in from the West past Grapham Water with Route 12, Route 15 seems to stop at Godmanchester and then start again at St. Ives.

Is this a bug or a feature? :D
Former Route 51 was not the best SUStainable TRANSport route Huntingdon-St Ives IMO for ages, using an increasingly busy road through Godmanchester to go play with gates in sheep-filled meadows. It is easier and faster to go through Riverside Park, Hartford, Wyton, Houghton and the Thicket. I'm not sure why c.t still doesn't like it much.
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glucas
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by glucas »

I live in this area (Hartford) and agree with this. Although I would say that coming through Godmanchester and then going through the field to get to Hemingford Abbots is only a short hop with the gate. From there you go across the meadow to Houghton and Wyton and then to the Thicket up to St Ives.

It all depends on where you are coming from. I think if you are coming from the West - assuming you come down Ermine Street in Huntingdon then you might as well go through Riverside. I assume that makes sense for Route 51. Otherwise if you were coming up to Godmanchester from a southward direction - say coming up West Street, from St Neots through the Offords - then instead of coming through Huntingdon, you could go east and through the meadow.

Just a small afterthought - about 10 years ago a cycle path was put in stretching from the Hartford Main Street - initially alongside a bus lane (now not used by buses) up to the Dobbies garden centre. Unfortunately it stops short of Houghton and Wyton and you have to cross the road and use the pavement for another quarter of a mile (unless you want to cycle on the really busy road) to get there. Maybe that was in the thinking of Sustrans.
Last edited by glucas on 16 Mar 2023, 1:30pm, edited 2 times in total.
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 11:01am I'm not sure why c.t still doesn't like it much.
I don't think it likes the dismount section over Houghton Lock much. But on reflection it might be worth tweaking the weightings there. I'll have a look.
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mjr
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

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Richard Fairhurst wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 1:25pm
mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 11:01am I'm not sure why c.t still doesn't like it much.
I don't think it likes the dismount section over Houghton Lock much. But on reflection it might be worth tweaking the weightings there. I'll have a look.
The route I gave does not cross the lock.

Maybe the short bit of busy B1514 between The Hollow and The Grove with no protection (mentioned by glucas) is enough to deter it, but it's not significantly worse than the B1044 in Godmanchester IMO.
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Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Sorry, not really familiar with the placenames in the area (and I was looking for Godmanchester rather than Huntingdon, hence the route via the lock).

For St Ives to Huntingdon it comes up with https://cycle.travel/map?from=&to=&from ... ,-0.185118 . Part of the reason it doesn't go via the Thicket, I think, is because there's a stretch of highway=service without any access information. c.t doesn't like these in rural areas because they're very often private drives. I've added an access tag which will fix it in the future.

If Google StreetView is accurate I think there's a case for the path alongside Houghton Road to be downgraded from highway=cycleway to highway=footway, bicycle=yes - its construction standards don't really look like what I'd describe as a cycleway. That would slightly redress the weightings between the routes. But I'd leave that to a local to fix.

At the western end it indeed doesn't like the B1514. That will be based on traffic flow data.
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glucas
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by glucas »

mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 2:59pm
Richard Fairhurst wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 1:25pm
mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 11:01am I'm not sure why c.t still doesn't like it much.
I don't think it likes the dismount section over Houghton Lock much. But on reflection it might be worth tweaking the weightings there. I'll have a look.
The route I gave does not cross the lock.

Maybe the short bit of busy B1514 between The Hollow and The Grove with no protection (mentioned by glucas) is enough to deter it, but it's not significantly worse than the B1044 in Godmanchester IMO.
Regarding the B1514, if you had said this last week, I might have disagreed. However, following a recent car pile up outside the garden centre, which is a really dangerous turn, the local authorities have reduced this stretch from 50 m.p.h to 40 m.p.h. That and the cycle path that only just stops short of the entrance to Houghton and Wyton, perhaps makes this a reasonable route. Still - the B1044 is only 30 m.p.h and is not as busy as it used to be because of the new A14. The road that this leads to is now the A1307 ( for Cambridge bound traffic), but it doesn't suffer from the whole east west traffic flow in the days when the old A14 was there.

But I don't know what was in the minds of the Sustrans people. I can only say there is still too much traffic in our area! And is all best avoided by bikes!
glucas
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by glucas »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 3:13pm
If Google StreetView is accurate I think there's a case for the path alongside Houghton Road to be downgraded from highway=cycleway to highway=footway, bicycle=yes - its construction standards don't really look like what I'd describe as a cycleway. That would slightly redress the weightings between the routes. But I'd leave that to a local to fix.
Yes, I would probably agree with that if you mean the whole of the Houghton Road. The cycle path (shared with pedestrians) stops at the Garden Centre. Then there is a path only (no cycle path signs), but that then stops at the start of the turn off for the village (Houghton and Wyton). The cycle path (shared with pedestrians) then continues after about a quarter of a mile after the road curves, going up the Houghton Hill. I think it's just a gap in the middle where it needs linking - hence the safe option is going through the village (Houghton and Wyton) to get to the thicket alongside the Ouse to St Ives.
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Psamathe »

Richard Fairhurst wrote: 23 Dec 2022, 11:15am
Richard Fairhurst wrote: 31 Aug 2022, 9:58pmWhen I first added the Archies data, it was much better than that available in OpenStreetMap. My sense is that in the intervening years OSM has gone a long way to catching up in campsite locations, if not in metadata (phone numbers/opening times). Certainly all the campsites near me are on OSM now and I'm sure that'll be the case in the German-speaking countries too. Whether it's true further afield, who knows, but I'll spend some time looking into it.
I've now done a few calculations on this.

For 80% of the Archies campsites shown on cycle.travel, there's a campsite in OSM close by (i.e. marked within about half a kilometre, which given data accuracy and the potential size of campsites seems like a reasonable tolerance).

But, on the other hand, OSM now has many more campsites than Archies - about 60% more in Europe!

So it seems like a no-brainer to move over to OSM data in due course. I might keep the surplus campsites from Archies around for a while, but with the disclaimer that "this data isn't being maintained any more so use at your own risk".
Does the OSM data include e.g. phone numbers (or web site addresses)? The phone number on Archies is very useful given how some camp sites are e.g. campervan/caravan only or knowing campsite type (e.g. municipal or "holiday camp".

Also, Archies was maintained in that when a campsite closed down it tended to be removed (I've reported one closed down Municipal and it was removed). Are OSM maintained to the same extent. Not too bad if you have a phone number to call or website to browse to but just a mark on a map giving a location could be "difficult" in some places.

Ian
Richard Fairhurst
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

It does have phone numbers sometimes. I might look at mashing the two data sources together so that the phone numbers are retained.
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

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...just my tuppence, as a casual osm user & tentative editor, but there's likely to be an issue with data being up-to-date. Take this example: Ennywevvers is a local campsite, with a nice tidy & potentially useful set of info recorded in its fields, however it closed in autumn last year. This is a very common issue with any database, in that folk go to quite a lot of effort to front load the data and then the data gently drifts out of date.
(I'm aware of course that there's simple solution, which is that I edit the data myself - after-all that's the point of the 'open' bit of the title, however as a beginner, I'm still trying to come to terms with the best way to carry out the edit. Deleting the object is obviously a dumb idea, 'cos its very much till there. It's more a case of changing its status to closed. I will carry on trawling through the wiki 'till I find the right way...at the mo' the relevant tag / value combo is disused:yes)
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by mjr »

simonineaston wrote: 17 Mar 2023, 10:55am ([...] Deleting the object is obviously a dumb idea, 'cos its very much till there. It's more a case of changing its status to closed. I will carry on trawling through the wiki 'till I find the right way...at the mo' the relevant tag / value combo is disused:yes)Screenshot 2023-03-17 at 10.46.47.png
My current understanding is that disused=yes is discouraged for businesses and the tourism=camp_site should be changed to disused:tourism=camp_site while it looks possible that it could reopen with minimal work. If it falls prey to burglar-strippers, arsonists or whatever, then it becomes abandoned:tourism=camp_site and then it may become demolished, destroyed or simply removed and if it comes back as something else (even fields), it may keep was:tourism=camp_site as the final step.
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by mjr »

glucas wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 3:14pm
mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 2:59pm Maybe the short bit of busy B1514 between The Hollow and The Grove with no protection (mentioned by glucas) is enough to deter it, but it's not significantly worse than the B1044 in Godmanchester IMO.
Regarding the B1514, if you had said this last week, I might have disagreed. However, following a recent car pile up outside the garden centre, which is a really dangerous turn, the local authorities have reduced this stretch from 50 m.p.h to 40 m.p.h. That and the cycle path that only just stops short of the entrance to Houghton and Wyton, perhaps makes this a reasonable route. Still - the B1044 is only 30 m.p.h and is not as busy as it used to be because of the new A14. The road that this leads to is now the A1307 ( for Cambridge bound traffic), but it doesn't suffer from the whole east west traffic flow in the days when the old A14 was there.
Glad to hear Hartford Road has been reduced to 40mph. I guess it's easier to change a few orders and signs than to move the kerbs to create a missing-link cycleway from the space wasted by wide carriageway lanes and painted islands.

Has the 30mph limit on the B1044 been extended from the nasty "settlement boundary feature" pinch point to where Route 51 branches off up Cow Lane, then? 60mph close-passes while trying to stay out from the layby door zones was really unpleasant. Maybe the reduced traffic makes them less frequent (I've not ridden it since the A14 was diverted) but they'll still suck.
But I don't know what was in the minds of the Sustrans people. I can only say there is still too much traffic in our area! And is all best avoided by bikes!
Yes, Sustrans have never explained their reasoning for some of their frankly bizarre routing decisions in my local area either. I suspect they are often stretched so thin that maybe they believe half-fictional council maps or they only have time to check by car, based on a recent experience with them proudly announcing barrier removal when one of the restrictive barriers had not been removed, and that was the only one not normally visible from a car.

I think most of England has too much motor traffic, and that traffic is indeed best avoided by bikes.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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glucas
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by glucas »

mjr wrote: 17 Mar 2023, 1:18pm
glucas wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 3:14pm
mjr wrote: 16 Mar 2023, 2:59pm Maybe the short bit of busy B1514 between The Hollow and The Grove with no protection (mentioned by glucas) is enough to deter it, but it's not significantly worse than the B1044 in Godmanchester IMO.
Regarding the B1514, if you had said this last week, I might have disagreed. However, following a recent car pile up outside the garden centre, which is a really dangerous turn, the local authorities have reduced this stretch from 50 m.p.h to 40 m.p.h. That and the cycle path that only just stops short of the entrance to Houghton and Wyton, perhaps makes this a reasonable route. Still - the B1044 is only 30 m.p.h and is not as busy as it used to be because of the new A14. The road that this leads to is now the A1307 ( for Cambridge bound traffic), but it doesn't suffer from the whole east west traffic flow in the days when the old A14 was there.
Glad to hear Hartford Road has been reduced to 40mph. I guess it's easier to change a few orders and signs than to move the kerbs to create a missing-link cycleway from the space wasted by wide carriageway lanes and painted islands.

Has the 30mph limit on the B1044 been extended from the nasty "settlement boundary feature" pinch point to where Route 51 branches off up Cow Lane, then? 60mph close-passes while trying to stay out from the layby door zones was really unpleasant. Maybe the reduced traffic makes them less frequent (I've not ridden it since the A14 was diverted) but they'll still suck.
But I don't know what was in the minds of the Sustrans people. I can only say there is still too much traffic in our area! And is all best avoided by bikes!
Yes, Sustrans have never explained their reasoning for some of their frankly bizarre routing decisions in my local area either. I suspect they are often stretched so thin that maybe they believe half-fictional council maps or they only have time to check by car, based on a recent experience with them proudly announcing barrier removal when one of the restrictive barriers had not been removed, and that was the only one not normally visible from a car.

I think most of England has too much motor traffic, and that traffic is indeed best avoided by bikes.
Regarding the 30mph limit on the B1044 from the "settlement boundary feature" - just after one goes under the Bridge and up to Cow Lane, alas, no. It's still NSL - 60mph. I would point out though, as you may know, for the benefit of anybody reading, that this stretch is only about 100 to 200 metres to the Cow Lane turn off. Still - I agree - any 60mph stretch is best avoided.
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Re: Cycle Travel Question

Post by Bmblbzzz »

simonineaston wrote: 17 Mar 2023, 10:55am ...just my tuppence, as a casual osm user & tentative editor, but there's likely to be an issue with data being up-to-date. Take this example: Ennywevvers is a local campsite, with a nice tidy & potentially useful set of info recorded in its fields, however it closed in autumn last year. This is a very common issue with any database, in that folk go to quite a lot of effort to front load the data and then the data gently drifts out of date.
(I'm aware of course that there's simple solution, which is that I edit the data myself - after-all that's the point of the 'open' bit of the title, however as a beginner, I'm still trying to come to terms with the best way to carry out the edit. Deleting the object is obviously a dumb idea, 'cos its very much till there. It's more a case of changing its status to closed. I will carry on trawling through the wiki 'till I find the right way...at the mo' the relevant tag / value combo is disused:yes)Screenshot 2023-03-17 at 10.46.47.png
Is it permanently closed or is this a consequence of the construction works for Ashley Down station?
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