Cyclepath London to Paris

[Klaus]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00v115q/Excess_Baggage_Alaska_Zambia_Cycle_path_to_Paris/
Interesting item in this programme. Cycle path to be ready for 2012 .... Listen on iPlayer (from minute 21).
What amazes me is that these symbolic projects are feasible but developing proper cycle paths within this country seems to be an impossible task.

 

[Chutzpah]

More on it from the Beeb - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11447348
What saddened me is that the French are going at it with aplomb - updating and improving existing infrastructure and producing glossy brochures to help local businesses benefit from the route.

Us Brits? We're not even sure if we will be able to put some signs up in the next two years.

Says it all really.

 

[sheddy]

Not a chance in Kent - http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/sevenoa...ouncillor/article-2619588-detail/article.html

 

[Alembicbassman]

Was on BBC Radio 4 today, interesting if a little impractical.

 

[andym]

An interesting article and a bit depressing. It's a shame the author, and the comments, get diverted onto the red herring of tarmac versus aggregate. A decent aggregate surface is accessiblw to 95 percent of cyclists. And it simply isn't the case that in other countriws they are always tarmac - in my ecperience, in France, Spain and Italy you'll find a mix of surfaces, just as you will here.

It seems to me that one of the problems is that in England we don't have regional governments. unfortunately a councillor in Kent and Sussex isn't going to see a project like this as a priority at a time when they are having to cut things like services for old people. The only place where we do have a regional government is London but responibility for cycle lanes etc is with the Boroughs - and the result is a lack of a good cross-London cycle network.

Was on BBC Radio 4 today, interesting if a little impractical.

Why impractical?

 

[Arch]

Was on BBC Radio 4 today, interesting if a little impractical.

Yes, why 'impractical'?

I've ridden the Dieppe to Forges section twice now, and it's lovely - just what an off road cyclepath should be.

If you mean that shortsighted bigots will stop it working on this side of the channel, you might be right. I'm looking forward to it being finished all the way to Paris.

It reminds me of a Not the Nine O'clock News sketch about the Eurostar. At the half way point, the train slowed to a crawl, and the sauve waiter serving champagne and haute cuisine was replaced by a grumpy sod slopping tea and curly sandwiches about....

 

[Brains]

Yes, why 'impractical'?

I've ridden the Dieppe to Forges section twice now, and it's lovely - just what an off road cyclepath should be.

If you mean that shortsighted bigots will stop it working on this side of the channel, you might be right. I'm looking forward to it being finished all the way to Paris.

It reminds me of a Not the Nine O'clock News sketch about the Eurostar. At the half way point, the train slowed to a crawl, and the sauve waiter serving champagne and haute cuisine was replaced by a grumpy sod slopping tea and curly sandwiches about....

There is actually some truth in this story.

When Maggie and the French President signed the agreement to build the Channel Tunnel the first part of the signing cermony took place in Paris. The French then put the President, Maggie and the entire party on one of their new 250mph TGV trains and then took them all to Calais, where they all decamped to a cross channel ferry. At the other end they all got onto an old slam door train in Dover and pootled at 50mph up to London.

The French party though it was brilliant that the English had laid on a 'period' train in contrast to the TGV. Maggie then had to explain that it was the normal train and the English side had given no thought, discussion or budget to upgrading the UK rail system.
Hence the reason why the 70 miles of the Eurostar was completed 15 years after the tunnel opened.

The only way the English side of the route will be started is after the French have finished their side and the UK government or the local councils are shamed into completion.

 

[andym]

Well yes, no perhaps and maybe.

The old slam door trains were long past their retirement date, but no worse than the trains that ran on most of the non-TGV bits of the French rail network at the time.

And, no disrepect to northern France, but running a high-speed rail line through agricultural land in the middle of nowhere was always going to be easy in comparison with running one through Kent and greater London.

As.it is we now have an excellent train link and, in St Pancras, probably the finest station in Europe. A shame it took so long, and a shame we now have a ghost station at Waterloo, but we probably got a better result than if they'd steamrollered a line thtough the most obvious route.