Above were opponents to the shared
Pedestrian/Cycle Route grouping yesterday (
blog), I counted somewhere between 55 and 60 at most in total, the main concern is over safety issues, particularly for disadvantaged walkers, pushchairs, children, and anyone who likes a wee bit of serenity...
And above were some of the 30-ish pro-Pedestrian/Cycle route folk and the Hastings Greenway Group and Hastings Urban Bikes. As you can see some of them turned up by cycling through the park and crossing greens, indeed, at least 10 were guilty of this, which I do believe is still against bye-laws, and this is the more respectable face of cycling, it appears. 😒
Anyway, I have already voiced my opinion in my recent
blog, the afternoon was peaceful, a few raised voices, and to get heard only, I imagine. A couple of
pro-route folk moaned about "that lot" over the other side of the wee bridge (
anti-route folk), before, as you can see above, they crossed the bridge and joined from the left. But, after the first raised questions it settled down into a, mostly, amicable number of discussions, there wasn't really much disagreement.
Indeed, as you can see above, a few of the anti-route folk were pushing their own cycles, so not against cyclists per se. Also, many of the pro-route folk are not happy with the planned route either, I discovered! But then, what I saw was a very similar make-up of the 2 groups, mostly middle class and white, both groups environmentally aware, but the emphasis for the anti-route folk is safety, and the pro-route folk just want to get their cycle route whatever, apparently happy to make the lives of others miserable and unsafe; people have been walking through this park, and it's predecessor, for 200 years without having to jump out of the way of speeding cyclists!
I've seen, and heard, arguments that car use needs to be reduced because of climate change, but how does this reduce car use? It just ensures there's more room on roads for cars, which does nothing to deter the use of cars, rather than adding this cycle path to one of the adjoining roads. Another argument is that there is an 'obesity crisis' in Hastings, yet the cycle route would mean less room for people in Alexandra Park to walk safely, and for children to play safely, so it would very likely deter people from getting exercise! The final argument I'll mention is that plenty of research across the country supports the use of shared Pedestrian/Cycle Routes, and people get along all hunky dory, well that's not my experience when dodging cyclists bombing along footpaths and combined paths. Indeed, more often than not, it's the pedestrian who has to be the one on the lookout, or we get shouted or sworn at by cyclists!
Also, as I suggested before (blog), this won't be policed adequately, and once finally approved, cyclists will be riding on every path in Alexandra Park, experience along the seafront supports this, sadly. The police don't even prevent people riding bikes on footpaths now when cycle paths are provided close by!
It doesn't look good... 👎
