Long distance bike paths

Let’s waste a few million on very long distance bike paths

I no longer seem to be strong enough to ride a bicycle, but I used to cycle often, and occasionally I rode long distances. I went 100 miles from Edinburgh to Newcastle upon Tyne in about 16 hours on one occasion and I rode the organised double marathon from Edinburgh to St Andrews on two others. But for the purposes of this article, one hundred miles is a mere bagatelle. I am writing about bicycle paths that go all the way across Europe.

So, when I learned that the Channel Tunnel has not just the two bores for trains, one in each direction, but also a ‘service tunnel’ which runs the full length of the tunnel and allows access for repair, maintenance and emergency exit, I thought it unfair that cyclists were not allowed to ride through the service tunnel. I still think it is unfair that cyclists are not allowed to ride through the service tunnel — even on days when nobody else is using it — but as the service tunnel is 31½ miles long, riding through it would take your average cyclist two or three hours without rest stops, and there are no toilets or seats along the way, so the ride is an unattractive prospect. Even the 2007 Tour de France, which started in London, did not ride through the tunnel.

Click on the pictures to view the full size versions.

The Channel Tunnel is made up of two railway tunnels and a service tunnel which runs between them and doesn’t take bicycles

Therefore I am not about to found a campaign to have cyclists allowed through the Channel Tunnel, although the addition of lighting and art to the 90 yard Colinton tunnel in south west Edinburgh shows that tunnels can be made into attractive cycle routes. I leave the important duty of opening the Channel Tunnel to cyclists to anyone who wants to take it on.

Colinton Tunnel in Edinburgh has been fitted with lighting and decorated with a mural, and has become a joy to ride through

Instead, I will allow the cyclists to choose between taking their bikes on Eurotunnel (bizarrely, cyclists are banned from the Shuttle unless they have their cars with them) and riding one of the many attractive ferry services which still operate across the English Channel.

The interesting question — to me, anyway — is, if you are going to take a cycling holiday, what dedicated, peaceful, scenic routes are available to you. I found it interesting that since the Middle Ages there has been a network of scenic low speed paths all over Europe. Those are the pilgrimage paths.

Here is a map of the European pilgrimage paths, which for some reason leaves out all the pilgrimage routes in Great Britain and Ireland. I copied this map from Traildino’s web site.

Scenic low speed routes across Europe: the Pilgrimage Paths

Of course, many of these routes are not suitable for cyclists, or at least not suitable for cyclists of average ability riding average bicycles. My point is that there exists a network of low speed, traffic free scenic routes all across Europe, and those paths have existed for centuries. For centuries, therefore, there have been travellers who wanted to go slowly and enjoy the journey, rather than to arrive at the end of the path as quickly as possible. There is actually a need for slow roads as well as fast ones.

All over the world for the last hundred years or so, Ministers of Transport have encouraged faster and faster cars by building faster and faster roads, yet we have ended up with cars which spend nearly all their time (96·4% according to Reinventing Parking) standing outside their owners’ houses impressing the neighbours. Do things have to be this way? Can’t we look again at the possibility of making travel a pleasure?

Of course, making travel a pleasure does not just mean building cycle paths, as hikers, ramblers, passengers on many steam railways and those drivers who rattle around the streets in vintage cars will probably agree. It means that over the next hundred years those same Ministers could gradually, incrementally, construct a bike path network of long distance paths. I mention the hundred years because that is how long it has taken the Netherlands to construct the spectacular cycle provision which it has today. Whatever the people who installed cycle routes in completely unsuitable places in Edinburgh may think, it takes years for an attractive, usable network of bicycle paths to develop.

What can we expect of a long distance bike path

A long distance bicycle path needs to be:

1. Continuous. The design of a path needs to allow for very young cyclists. Any interruption to the path, for example expecting the rider to dismount and walk across a busy road, or operate a traffic light, or cycle along a busy road for half a mile, renders the path useless or even worse to small cyclists.

2. Level or gently graded. Fortunately, this too has been done before. The flight of locks at Caen Hill on the Kennet and Avon canal rises 237 feet over two miles, which is a gradient of 1 in 44½. It is the steepest gradient of any canal in Britain. The railways regard 1 in 50 as a steep gradient. Hills are one of the most effective deterrents to cycling, and bike paths should avoid them by taking paths along flat (ish) landscape features like rivers, canals, coasts and railway lines.

What is noticeable here is the similarity of a gradient regarded as steep by two completely different means of transport. It gives me confidence that the steepest acceptable gradient on a long distance bicycle path will turn out to be 1 in 50.

3. Away from big roads. The bike lanes recently built in Edinburgh, like the one on Crewe Road North, in the picture, miss the point of cycling. The paths are built along the edges of busy roads, instead of supporting the use of old railway lines, canal towpaths, footpaths and back streets, all of which Edinburgh has in large numbers. Cycle lanes are never swept or gritted in winter, are often blocked by parked cars and leave the riders inches away from cars which almost always defy the speed limit. The idea of imposing a low speed limit in order to protect cyclists doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody, and wouldn’t work even if it had. Motorists regard obeying a 20 mph speed limit as a ridiculous thing to expect them to do.

4. Close to services. Long distance bike paths are too long to cycle end to end, out and back in a day, carrying everything you need. You need bicycle parks, border posts, cafés, cash dispensers, chip shops, drinking fountains, fizzy drink dispensers, hostels, hotels, picnic tables, postcard vendors, police posts, pubs, restaurants, schools (you don’t really need those along the bike path but it’s a good place to build them, because they offer safe access on foot as well as by bicycle,) shelters, sweet shops, telephone boxes and shops offering bicycle hire, repairs and spares.

Those would make the paths interesting, useful and lively places near cities.

5. Lit at night, swept regularly, gritted in winter and free from parked cars. (The picture shows the Pescara Path, in eastern Italy, at night.)

6. Free to use.

 

Where will the long distance paths go?

I found myself eager to draw at least one map. I drew it because I like drawing maps. This map is only conceptual: it is not supposed to form part of any project. The paths shown on it are the V1 (2800 miles,) V2 (1400 miles) and V3 (2600 miles.) I chose the letter ‘V’ to stand for ‘Velocipede,’ a word which exists in pretty much every European language except, I think, Basque, Hungarian and Welsh. Numbering the bicycle paths systematically is the least of the problems. They could instead be named after men and women who have performed some meritorious service, like ‘Kenneth Johnson Way.’

While I’m on the subject

Building a level (or almost) path across open countryside may be easier and require less earth moving if the path shares the route of some utility which is level anyway. But you have to share it in a way which does not expose cyclists to the risk of being struck by a car or a train. This is how to lay a cycle path beside a canal or a river, beside a railway, or beside a main road.

If there is no alternative to taking the cycle path along a road that passes through a built-up area, here are a bad way to do it and two good ways.

Do not do this. Sooner or later it will kill someone.	Cyclists ride on extended pavements, one on each side of the road	Cyclists ride in both directions on an extended pavement

It is better to route cyclists away from the main road. If there is no convenient railway, river, canal or other route which can be used for traffic free cycling, then maybe you can create a cycle route along back streets where there is little traffic and it doesn't go very fast. As an example, in the old council housing estate at Craigmillar there is a back street route which avoids the main road. In the more recently built Niddrie Mains estate, because the designer felt the need to avoid creating ‘rat runs,’ there is apparently no back street route along which to continue it.