YOU’RE BARRED!

Trevor Ward asks if calls to ban riders from certain roads are short-changing cyclists or saving them... THE SPIN

Agovernment department wants to ban cyclists from a road in Yorkshire and riders aren’t very happy about it.

Even British Cycling has got involved, warning that Highways England’s plans to ban cyclists from the A63 dual carriageway between Hull and North Cave could be the thin end of the wedge and see riders banned from other roads.

Let’s look at the road involved: it’s a stretch of dual carriageway that, according to Highways England, sees “2500 vehicles per hour travelling at an average speed of 65mph”. These include HGVs using the road as a link between Hull docks and the M62 motorway. There have been six accidents – one fatal – involving cyclists in the last five years.

You might understandably wonder who in their right mind would want to ride their bike along this piece of road anyway, especially when a quick scan of a map shows there are alternative routes available, via the quieter Beverley and Riplingham roads, for example?

Three years ago, cyclists were banned from an eight-mile stretch of the A19 in Teeside, and hardly anyone kicked up a fuss then.

The difference this time, I believe, is that Bradley Wiggins has ridden very fast along the A63. In other words, it’s a popular time trial course, where Marcin Bialoblocki and Hayley Simmonds set their 10-mile time trial records. The time trial governing body, Cycling Time Trials, has responded to Highways England by saying the number of accidents involving cyclists on the road is tiny compared to the 297 involving vehicles over the same period.

Cyclists should indeed fight for their rights, but should we be more selective about the battles we choose? Admittedly, I don’t get my kicks from drafting behind an articulated lorry on a main road at 40mph, but is being banned from a busy stretch of dual carriageway really a bigger issue than the woeful lack of cycling infrastructure in the average city centre, or safer routes next to said dual carriageways?

It’s ironic that the sport’s governing body has waded in. It was only in 1959 that the National Cycling Union’s self-imposed ban on mass start road racing – introduced after pressure from police and the ruling classes half a century earlier – was reversed.

While in force, clandestine racing became the norm, with riders setting off at intervals against the clock early in the morning or late at night and advised to “dress in black and not look like they were racing”. Routes were given secret code names to evade discovery by the authorities. The peculiarly British discipline of time trialling was born. These days, regular exponents of the activity will know the A63 better as part of the “V718” course.

But if “testers” do lose this stretch of road from their regular calendar, surely it will be a small price to pay if helps save just one rider’s life?

Routes were given secret code names to evade discovery by the authorities