I apologise if I get anything wrong in this article but I can barely think these days and in a lot of pain. I’m writing to express my concerns over the Alexandra Park cycle route.
If you are one of the few who have ever read this blog, you will know I have been in contact with ESCC and Hastings Council/Town Centre Management who have been slightly unhelpful.
Mike Hepworth, assistant director of Environment and Place wrote a report about the Proposed Designated Cycle Route. It is dated 4th of January 2016. We had email communication after this date where he said that he was fairly new to the job. Given that he knows about the problems with people cycling on pavements and through the pedestrian zone, I am surprised that the Alexandra Park route is dumping cyclists onto the Queens Road roundabout. This will add to the volume of antisocial cycling and the issues should be tackled first, before allowing more people to cycle in to the town centre. In our emails I raised this very issue. It seems that Hastings Council are interested in promoting cycling in the town but not willing to sort out any of the issues, going back more than 10 years, of antisocial and illegal cycling.
The problem with Alexandra Park Cycle Route in pictures
Let’s have a look at what these berks are not just proposing but which looks likely to go ahead very soon.
Additional: After I had made a start on this piece, I took a break to visit my mum. On our return journey we were driving down the road below, in about the same position as the silver car, when a cyclist came from the pavement on the left and without stopping rode straight in front of a car turn off of the roundabout and passed in of us, on the other side of the road and headed into Alexandra Park. This is something I see frequently, though this was a new order of hazardous.
Above: A quiet day on the roundabout.
Above: Bypassing the pedestrian crossing AND on a bike. All too common.
Above: Another cyclist bypassing the crossing. The Alexandra Park Cycle Route will encourage this behaviour.
Above: Returning to the pavement.
Above: This is the other side of the path running under the bridge from Alexandra Park. Commonly in use by cyclists.
Above: Another cyclist fresh from Alexandra Park?
Above: This behaviour is increasing and the Alexandra Park cycle route will make it worse.
Above: Further down the pavement and an old couple have to step aside to let these girls through.
Above: I’ve personally witnessed an older couple being verbally abused by a cyclist for telling him he shouldn’t be on the pavement.
I’m fed up with bad arguments about Alexandra Park cycle route
I could continue down the pavement in pictures as I have enough pictures to stick together and make a video! As you can see though, there is a real problem here. The route dumps people onto those very same ‘unsafe’ roads that everyone is taking to the pavements to avoid. I’m afraid that I’m not very convinced by the rhetoric of the unsafe road argument nor of the appeals to childhood obesity that campaigners are pulling out their backsides.
Let’s have some real solutions to the problems of cycling on pavements. Talk of monitoring the park route on it’s opening is just pacifying rubbish, said to calm people’s worries. We all know that it won’t last and then the problem will remain of people cycling wherever they want or speeding as they already do. I’ve never seen any monitoring of the cyclists who speed on the seafront route and that route is itself problematic, dumping volumes of bikes into the pedestrian zone and onto the pavements.
A picture is worth a thousand words. 9 pictures is even better.
by 
