Does helmet abuse vary where you live in the UK?

[Nearholmer]

No ……. That’s why we have very nice routes called bridleways, which are a seriously valuable, and historically important resource.

We could, if we had a will, also have a very nice routes called “modern high standard cycleways”, the two things are not mutually exclusive, or other than in the tiniest number of cases genuinely competing for space.

It’s not the existence of or support for bridleways that is the problem, it is the dearth of support for creating decent modern cycleways that is the problem. You wouldn’t, I assume, blame the people who love rural footpaths if the pavement along the high street was too narrow.

[Cugel]

Here is a bridleway, in fact it’s part of the South Downs Way I think. Now, it’s utterly unsuitable for anything but the determined and experienced cyclist, or horse and rider (it’s ruddy steep as well as rough), but people love it dearly, and if you started tarmaccing it over and measuring roughness, I wouldn’t want to be the guarantor of your physical safety.

And that's part of why we don't have nice routes. The Great British Fools would rather have more cars killing people than widen a potentially-useful bridleway and put an all-weather (not necessarily tarmac, but something that can be ridden or walked without getting filthy) surface alongside the grass for horses and masochists, as happens in Benelux. Ramblers and riders don't care about public health, just as long as they don't have to share much.

Yes, yes! Let us make all paths perfek for the inept so that no one ever has to learn any going-about skills but can be cossetted from A to B by any mode of transport going from any A to any B. Perhaps we could also have bikes contained in protection-bubbles, so that any topple or skid will catch the rider in a lovely cuddle rather than giving them a gravel-rash? A new phrase - "Safe as cyclepaths" - will enter the argot and they'll become the benchmark for fell-walking paths and perhaps the climbing routes up mountains. (Or perhaps such things can just be levelled instead to make them not just super-safe but easy).

Of course, the natural world (scruffy ole thing) will have to be paved over with nice smooth tarmac all over it, like what used to be known as "the front garden", preferably with cushioned borders along the ways made of a soft plasti-foam; and a ban of peds, children, dogs, hedgehogs or any other possible impediment or hazard, especially stuff that grows.

This general destruction of the untidy natural world may have unintended consequences, mind, such as death of endless bio organisms, including eventually the humans (we're all connected by Mamma Nature, see) but the cockroaches and perhaps some other tough survivors of perfekted-world will no doubt gasp with amazement at how nice and tidy we left everything.

Do cockroaches ride bikes? I've never seen one myself. They might dig up them nice paths!

[rareposter]

(Or perhaps such things can just be levelled instead to make them not just super-safe but easy).

Be careful what you joke about!

Near mine, a bridleway much like the pic that Nearholmer posted, one that was walked / ridden / cycled by thousands of people a year with no issues, was earmarked for "improvement" by the council.

In spite of protests that it was fine as it was, the council came along with the whacker-platers and gravel surfacing and created a much flatter smooth trail.

Within a week, someone had crashed on it because it made for much higher speeds, much more difficult to control on a dusty loose gravel surface; whereas before cyclists would be on the brakes, picking a line down it; the new surface effectively turned it into a motorway.

Which is another reason why this insane suggestion for some kind of sensor-equipped bike to measure surface roughness is one of the most stupid things I've ever read.

[853]

Which is another reason why this insane suggestion for some kind of sensor-equipped bike to measure surface roughness is one of the most stupid things I've ever read.

And me

[Steady rider]

https://www.sustrans.org.uk/for-profess ... anagement/
provides the outlook from Sustrans on paths.

Generally i expect people cycle 100 miles of more on roads/cyclepaths for each mile on bridleways. As pointed out, bridleways covers a wide range of situations, from flat farmland to steep gradients and cyclists adjust to the situation or avoid them if they wish. It is difficult to find a plan to suit everyone. One suggestion could be along the lines of,
Bridleways are to be maintained by the parish/town/city area covering the bridleway.
The category of bridleway is to determined in consultation with Active Travel England, based on several criteria.
The construction and maintenance to be guided by the category.

Roads to be constructed and maintained to suitable standards reflecting their use and to meet minimum standards for general use and for cycling so as to be user friendly, with even surfaces giving a relative smooth ride for cyclists in particular.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... n-1-20.pdf page 165 refers to surfacing, including,

15.2.14 Spray and chip surfacing offers a sealed
surface with a more natural appearance than black
bituminous surfacing, and provides more grip in icy and
wet conditions. A 6mm rounded profile stone should be
used, to avoid creating a puncture hazard. The loose
gravel surface takes several weeks to bed in on cycle
routes and may need some sweeping. The surfacing can
only be applied in dry and warmer conditions (usually
May to October). An increasing range of products based
on recycled rubber or plastic is also available to provide
a similar effect to tar spray and chip

TLN does not specify evenness of the processes, spray on chip surfaces are not rolled, and are less even and over time, with patching, the overall road becomes less of a smooth ride, more dummy. One LA area may do a lot of spray on finishes and other locations use the better process,

15.2.2 Good quality machine laid surfaces will appeal
to a wide range of users from people on lightweight
racing cycles through to child cyclists. Smooth surfaces
also offer greater accessibility and safety for other
potential users such as wheelchair users, mobility
scooters and blind and partially sighted people.

TLN leaves the door open to cheap poor quality road surfaces, where cyclists may move out to avoid the patching, mainly on the edges.

The best way to establish the quality or road surface is to measure it.

[Nearholmer]

Measuring is, of course, perfectly appropriate for most roads, and possibly for heavily-used paved cycleways, although I honestly think it is “overkill” in many cases for very low-use roads, except inasmuch that it might speed-up the job of surveys, and for many paved cycleways, where a Mark One Eyeball, a truly excellent sensor that god/nature gave us, is perfectly adequate for the job.

One suggestion could be along the lines of,
Bridleways are to be maintained by the parish/town/city area covering the bridleway

That option already exists, and is used in some places, with the HA transferring budget provision for it. There is provision in law for it (I think it’s in the Highways Act 1980, but I’m not totally sure without checking). It’s used not only for bridleways and footpaths, but for byways, and (down to district, not parish) minor roads too.

Historically of course, if you go back far enough, all highways were parish responsibility, which proved to be a right disaster in terms of inconsistency, which is why turnpike trusts and then highway authorities were created.

The category of bridleway is to determined in consultation with Active Travel England, based on several criteria.
The construction and maintenance to be guided by the category.

The alteady required assessment of expected traffic, together with the existing consultative panels does broadly that already. It’s patchy, in that some consultative panels are more lively than others, and Im not sure that ATE have (or would want) a place at every table, and of course the maintenance is way down the list of a zillion priorities for many cash-strapped councils, but certainly the framework exists.

[rareposter]

...but certainly the framework exists.

Although how whatever weird and wonderful sensor measurements are obtained of the various bridleways actually relates to the existing patchy framework of maintenance or the issue of wearing/not wearing helmets as per the actual thread title is a complete mystery!

[mjr]

No ……. That’s why we have very nice routes called bridleways, which are a seriously valuable, and historically important resource.

Ah, is it because they're historic that they must never be smoothed or cleaned? How are they an important resource if only the determined, or crazy, or those with no other choice, ride them? Make them more practical and they'd be even more important!

We could, if we had a will, also have a very nice routes called “modern high standard cycleways”, the two things are not mutually exclusive, or other than in the tiniest number of cases genuinely competing for space.

It’s not the existence of or support for bridleways that is the problem, it is the dearth of support for creating decent modern cycleways that is the problem. You wouldn’t, I assume, blame the people who love rural footpaths if the pavement along the high street was too narrow.

I do indeed blame them for the continued lack of pavements along rural major routes where the red sock brigade insist that the mudbath footpath between road and quarry must be preserved and is sufficient for all uses, with no need for anyone to be able to walk to town in ordinary clothes and arrive clean.

Of course, the bigger mistake was turning the drove road into a carriageway for motorists and not providing a footway then, but the footpath and bridleway zealots help keep the damage of the mistake.

[jgurney]

You wouldn’t, I assume, blame the people who love rural footpaths if the pavement along the high street was too narrow.

I do indeed blame them for the continued lack of pavements along rural major routes

I don't follow this argument. I have never heard of any cases of ramblers groups, etc, objecting to any plans to install footways along rural main roads, and I can't see any reason why they would.

Given how often it is necessary to walk along stretches of rural road to get between two non-continuous footpaths, I would think ramblers would be pleased to have footways along those roads. I have certainly found some useful for that purpose. For example a number of footpaths and bridleways feed into the A174 between Whitby and Saltburn, and using it to get between paths, etc, is a lot more pleasant on the sections which have a footway (e.g. Whitby to Lythe, Hinderwell to Staithes, Easington to Saltburn) than on the sections without any.

As far as I know, the main reason why many rural main roads don't include footways is the relevant authorities claiming there would be so little pedestrian traffic that installing footways would not be cost-effective. That was certainly the reason given when I and (an admittedly very small number of) others argued for including footways from the start when a new stretch of the A174 was planned and then built between Carlin How and Skelton.

[Nearholmer]

How are they an important resource if only the determined, or crazy, or those with no other choice, ride them?

Think about it in terms of costs and benefits.

The cost to the nation of the bridleway and footpath network is piddlingly small. Even if you added-up all the money that public bodies spend on it, and all the money landowners spend on it (which in most cases they then pass on to the public through tiny increases in the sale price of produce), and then made some complicated calculation to reflect lost agricultural production through the non-productive use of thousands of miles of narrow strips, it wouldn’t amount to any thing more than a piddling percentage of national expenditure. It is an invisibly small tax.

In exchange for that piddling sum, everyone who is capable (a huge % of the population) and inclined (a smaller, but still significant %) gets to use the footpath and bridleway network. They get some way marking, and gates, and stiles, and little bridges over ditches, and restoration after ploughing, etc.A lot of people get a lot of fresh air, exercise, information, education, and entertainment, and simple joy from it.

Costs: tiny. Benefits: large.

The historical part is that we got this lot for free, and all we have to do is pay that invisibly small tax to keep it usable.

The existence of the network deprives nobody of anything, save to the extent that the piddlingly small sum might otherwise be spent on something else.

It certainly deprives nobody of a decently modern paved-surface cycling network. What deprives us all of that is our collective unwillingness to pay to create it, to compromise the unimpeded flow of motor traffic to enable it, to reshape town centres to accommodate it etc. Motornormativity, not bridleways and footpaths, is depriving us of cycling infrastructure.

You are tilting at the wrong windmill. You could completely cease all expenditure on footpaths and bridleways tomortow, allow them to wither slowly away, and you wouldn’t release enough money to pay for more than an invisible fraction of a paved cycling network, and you would do absolutely nothing to generate the willingness to create one.

[Stevek76]

If they have potential as a useful transport route then the benefits from surfacing would also dramatically outweigh the costs of doing so. The costs we're talking about here are still equally piddling in the grand scheme of things and there's not a lack of pots of money for that sort of thing at the moment if a council is genuinely committed to doing LTN1/20 compliant provision.

Whether it is useful is another matter. Quite a lot of bridleways aren't very (one of the reasons they're still bridleways and not roads) but there seem to be some quite absolutist positions on this matter. Ultimately they're public rights if way and they do have use for transport then that is a priority over niche leisure interests in my view.

Of course, the natural world (scruffy ole thing) will have to be paved over with nice smooth tarmac all over it

There's absolutely nothing 'natural' about bridleways or the farmland they make their way through.

[Cugel]

If they have potential as a useful transport route then the benefits from surfacing would also dramatically outweigh the costs of doing so.

Whether it is useful is another matter.

Of course, the natural world (scruffy ole thing) will have to be paved over with nice smooth tarmac all over it

There's absolutely nothing 'natural' about bridleways or the farmland they make their way through.

Are paved or otherwise "improved" bridleways going to provide "dramatic benefits" or would it be a case of, "Whether it is useful is another matter"? You seem to have a degree of cognitive dissonance on the matter.

Farmland isn't too natural these days, compared to a true wilderness, although it can at least be said to be not the equivalent of tarmacked-over. Bridleway tracks of a roughish nature are very natural things, though, rather like the many tracks formed by the habitual routes of wild creatures.

But even if farmland and bridleways as-are are not wholly natural, surely this is an argument for not making them even more unnatural, especially given the vast, not trivial, costs of doing so?

It does amaze me how much damage we humans are prepared to inflict on the world and the biosphere just for some minor convenience, especially when the "convenience" turns out to be rather inconvenient - you know, like the damage done by roads and motorised traffic, which amounts to millions killed, tens of millions badly maimed, hundreds of millions thereby immiserated and immense pollutions with vast economic & health damages of many kinds, every year across the planet.

[Nearholmer]

There probably are a few places where bridleways and footpaths do still form ‘utility’ transport links (they all did once, that’s how they were established in the first place), where the ‘expected traffic’ might merit a surface other than what nature and agriculture have provided, but they must be few and far between, and where they do exist if the ‘expected traffic’ includes any number of horses I’d expect a strong argument to be put forward to retain a soft surfaced way in parallel with any hard surfaced one.

This subject often also brings up discussion of fencing too, because a high proportion of bridleways aren’t physically separated from the agricultural land that they traverse, they are RoW, not defined physical objects after all. Hard-surfaced bridleways and footpaths with no fencing do exist, there are lots where I live, but then users have to be prepared to negotiate their right of passage with permitted livestock (some of which can be impressively big and needs a bit of discretion), so the discussion can then spin-off into ideas of creating something altogether different.

To me, it seems like the sort of thing that has to be dealt with very locally in the light of particular circumstances, and even then not everyone will come out happy. One near where I live, which happens to already run between fences, has progressively been upgraded from naked soil, to fine grey “Sustrans gravel”, to tarmac over the past fifteen or so years, and that last move to tarmac was quite controversial.

But, none of that goes any way to supporting MJR’s apparent (correct me of I'm wrong) opposition to bridleways on the grounds that their existence is holding back the creation of a comprehensive network of hard-surfaced cycleways. If there was a will to create the latter, we could have both, but unfortunately there isn’t a great deal of such will.

[Nearholmer]

Maybe the mods could snip this whole bridleway discussion out of this thread, where it only arose as a side-issue, and create a new thread called “bridleways in relation to cycleways” or something.

[mattheus]

Yep.

One of the criticisms of helmet advocacy, let alone compulsion, is that it becomes the be-all-and-end-all of the discussion about safety for cyclists, blinding people to the obvious fact that separating vehicles of vastly differing characteristics would be a good start.

Well said!