Petition to save key Welsh cycling route attracts 20,000 signatures

You'll be waiting a long time for the train, 2 hours between trains in each direction, and an hour between a train arriving and the return journey back across the bridge.

How about rebuilding/refurbishing the toll booth set a reasonable charge (ie the 50p already quoted) and the bridge becomes self financing.

An iconic route, but why exagerate the facts?

It's 12.3 miles by road to get from one end of the 1.3mi causeway to the other, but quoted as an 18mi detour. My sums would make that an 11mi detour. (It's still 'only' an extra 3.2mi if avoiding the Penmaenpool toll bridge). The roads are busy by Welsh standards, so not good for families.

There's a train station at each end, so there is an alternative, though not much good for large groups of cyclists (without bike bags)!

So they're building fantastic new cycle bridges in the Netherlands and in Denmark. But here we're trying to close down genuinely useful and attractive routes, and in London they're building a Garden Bridge which you can't ride a bike on and will be closed for private functions.

It makes me want to weep. How have we gone so badly wrong?

If this was a road for cars the council wouldn't dare consider it.

a manned toll booth [...] was closed a couple of years ago as there were not sufficient funds to bring the building up to modern standards

I'm sorry, what? Austerity, I know, but what conceivable "standards" can it have been short of?

I guess that they are not really expecting walkers and cyclists to make an 18 mile detour. Either it's a process of bartering for a better price with Network Rail or there will be a private ferry service. There is actually already a ferry service across the estuary linked to the nearby miniature railway and presumably it could be extended to Mawddach. Still, going from a bridge to a ferry is clearly a backwards step so hopefully Network Rail will relent.

Oi, Cardiff bay assembly, cough up

Sorry, what exactly do the local council get for their £30,000 a year? It certainly doesn't cost that to 'inspect' the bridge. If the bridge is being inspected it's for Network Rails benefit. The profits the railway companies make, surely they should be made to maintain the footpath/cycle route as part of THEIR commitment to the local community. The BRIDGE is not going to close as long as the railways are making money out if it. So, come on Network Rail, stop lining your pockets.

I stayed at Fairbourne some years ago, and had to walk across this bridge to get to a cash machine, so it seems that closing the bridge could make an already fairly isolated community more isolated. (although I'm not sure how far it was to a cash machine in the other direction or whether there is now one in Fairbourne)

i've cycled this route and its wonderfull, must repeat must be maintained at all cost. Cyclists across the nation should start a nation campaign to maintain such routes for posterity. Why aren't Sustrans/CTC shouting louder??

Mawddach trail is a lovely route starting in Dolgellau running 10 miles down to Barmouth, my kids 6 and 8 did it all on BMXs last year. It post of SUSTRANS national route 8. Local government would be incredibly short sighted to close it off.

Good profile-raising for the area too: the more people know about it, the more people use it, the more difficult it is to close.