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Reading's Broad Street WON'T be open to cyclists - despite those in favour winning two polls

Cyclists in town could threaten 'growing cafe culture', local politicians fear...

A move to allow cycling in a pedestrian street in Reading that had seemed almost inevitable after its first consultation is now to be blocked after a ‘dead heat’ vote.

An initial consultation online showed strong support for bikes in the pedestrian area of Broad Street.

Although Broad Street’s western area has a cycling ban in place, bike hire racks have already been added to the street.

The council found that 796 respondents were in favour of lifting the ban, out of 1,283 responses.

448 were in favour of not allowing cycling in Broad Street at all and 39 selected no change to the current arrangements.

We reported back in January how Reading Borough Council transport head Tony Page said: "I don't believe the current situation where cycling is allowed in one half of Broad Street and banned in the other is sensible."

But another and 2,544 public votes later, Reading Borough Council has decided to retain the status quo.

Although the first public consultation online was in favour by about three to one, a second poll came back with total of 1,261 people voting.

A total of 653 said Yes to cycling but 608 said No.

Councillor Tony Page told Get Reading the majority of the emails and letters were “hostile”.

He said the consultation had not given the council sufficient mandate for change and proposed taking no further action.

“That doesn’t mean we will be simply leaving matters. It will be important to revisit issues of signage along Broad Street West and revisit signage in other town centre areas.”

He went on: “The public has spoken on this and we will make the best of it.”

He added that the non-online responses may have been from the elderly “who would have worries and concerns”.

He added: “In our growing café society and with people wandering from one side of Broad Street to another - from one shopping interest to another - I think that clash would have been too much.”

But, he said,“In the hierarchy of police priorities, enforcing a cycling ban on Broad Street West is not going to be a high one.”

Cllr Ed Hopper said the benefits to cyclists “didn’t outweigh the downside to pedestrians who would feel fearful of cyclists using the street.”

Earlier this year we reported how despite a former Mayor of Reading saying he was against the plan to allow cycling along Broad Street, and a fellow councillor arguing that such a move would put people off visiting Reading town centre on foot, Reading Council has revealed that just one person has complained about cyclists there in the past year.

road.cc reader Gareth Luscombe asked the council under the Freedom of Information Act for the number of complaints received about cyclists by location.

The council answered:

    The Council received a total of six written complaints regarding cyclists between 1st January 2015 and 21st January 2016. Four of the six complaints gave a specific location and two relate to no fixed location in Tilehurst and Reading in general. The specific locations are as follows:

        Broad Street
        Thames Path, between Reading and Caversham Bridge
        Church Street, Caversham
        Milestone Way, Caversham Park Village.

 

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4 comments

Avatar
kil0ran | 8 years ago
1 like

And yet its perfectly OK for cyclists to use the path through the Oracle? What's the difference? Still got the same issues with "cafe society" and lots of people. Not lived in Reading for many years but as both a pedestrian and cyclist when I did there was always plenty of potential for conflict on that route.

Avatar
wycombewheeler | 8 years ago
2 likes

Seems that Reading council only consider numbers to be the same when the difference is 7.5%. I wonder if they take the same view if you only pay 92.5% of your council tax. Or on the local election.

Avatar
Fifth Gear | 8 years ago
2 likes

Cyclists have been sharing the other end of Broad St for many years without any problem so it is obviously ridiculous that they can't use the western end as well. Meanwhile the council refuse to provide appropriate investment in segregated infrastructure for cyclists who are regularly injured by motorists on the streets of Reading. No doubt the intention of the council was to close the whole of Broad St to cyclists and Councillor Jones did his best to scaremonger people into voting against. However it didn't work and those in favour of cycling won both polls....nightmare!.....what to do?.......brainwave.....  the council called it a "dead heat" and left things as they are. You really couldn't make it up.

Avatar
brooksby | 8 years ago
2 likes

Dontcha love democracy as practiced in council halls? If you get a result you don't like, well then just keep having polls until you get the "right" response.

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