| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Richmond Park for cyclists | |
| Posted by: | Adam Beamish | |
| Date/Time: | 24/09/14 10:18:00 |
| It's a problem whichever way you look at it. I don't necessarily agree with banning cars from the whole park because the sheer quantity of road cyclists do represent something of a menace to walkers, animals etc, and if you took the 'danger' of vehicles away then firstly the amount of cyclists using the park would probably increase further, and secondly the cyclists who already exceed 20mph would use the road as a race-track and become even more reckless. Equally the current situation isn't in my view an acceptable compromise, and I don't personally think the 20mph limit is necessary or beneficial to anyone or anything. I've only ever cycled around the park on a road bike once, and I hated it due to the volume of other cyclists and the conflict between cars and cyclists. As someone who used to (admittedly 20 years ago) compete in road races and train every day, the idea of training for competitions by using Richmond Park is alien to me - I'd put the bike in the car and go out into the proper countryside outside London, or simply cycle out from London and then back again (when I previously lived in Morden I used to regularly do a road circuit which took me out into the Surrey countryside). However I do still regularly cycle on my mountain bike around the off-road trail within the park, which unlike the road circuit I find very enjoyable as the environment is completely different. Saying that, parts of that trail are subject to a 10mph limit, which if a regular cyclist rigidly adheres to they aren't riding as they normally would, but the difference is that the potential/actual conflict between users of the park using different modes of movement is far less on the trail than on the road. |