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Crow Lane Chesterfield (Google Maps)Locals approve permanent closure of "vitally important" road... to make way for cycling route
Plans to permanently close a road described as "vitally important for local people" so it can be turned into a walking and cycling route have been approved by residents following a public consultation.
Crow Lane in Chesterfield, a single track road with passing places, will be closed permanently to make way for a dedicated active travel route to Chesterfield Royal Hospital avoiding the busy A632.
The Derby Telegraph reports residents also gave the green light to a cycle lane to be built on Chatsworth Road (A6190) and to extend the 30mph speed limit on the A-road.
Despite objections from some members of the Chesterfield Civic Society who said Crow Lane is a "vitally important route for local people" the public consultation saw 752 people expressing support versus 416 objections.
Similarly the Chatsworth Road cycle lane saw 741 people express support versus 430 objections, while the extended 30mph speed limit received even stronger backing — just under a thousand people supporting versus just 178 objections.
Work on sections of the Crow Lane cycle route will begin this autumn and the road will be permanently closed to motor traffic in the new year. Once completed Chesterfield will have a cycling route from the A619 junction with Holymoor Road on Chatsworth Road into town past the train station and up the hill to the hospital via Crow Lane.
"We have listened carefully to what people told us in the consultation and looked at all the alternatives given," Councillor Kewal Singh Athwal said. "Creating this route across Chesterfield will give many more people the opportunity to get out of their cars, and either walk or cycle to get into town, or up to the hospital.
"We know that many hospital staff walked or cycled on Crow Lane at the height of the pandemic, and we would expect numbers to increase when the lane closes to vehicles again for good."
Derbyshire County Council was awarded £1.68 million to create the new route, including the Chatsworth Road section, and defended its "appropriate" three-week consultation which saw information leaflets put through 4,000 letterboxes, regular awareness posts on social media and in the local press, and yellow signs placed on Crow Lane to "bring it to as many people's attention as possible".
The Derby Telegraph noted that there were also two petitions submitted to the council, one supporting the Crow Lane closure that received 522 signatures and one against the closure that received 744.
The Chesterfield Civic Society reportedly complained that a number of streets were not properly notified of the consultation.
"We believe that the consultation that we carried out was appropriate," the council responded at the time. "During a three-week period we did all we could to promote the consultation, we dropped information through the letterboxes of 4,000 homes on or close to the route, used our social media accounts and the local media to bring it to as many people's attention as possible."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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19 comments
Good on the council for doing this. We in Trafford had a very similar road, Oldfield Lane near Altrincham. Much narrower (barely car width) and again, with a more appropriate parallel route. The council closed it off at one end and now it's a much safer, nicer walking and cycling route.
https://goo.gl/maps/JReMt3vyQKBssGo28
"Vitally Important Road" it's nothing of the sort, A virtually empty single lane that runs parallel to the main road, people were just put out that they could no longer use it to bypass the traffic lights and the excuses for not extended the route at the other end were ridiculous, apparently reducing the speed limit would make it more dangerous and it would reduce the house prices in the area 🤷♂️so I'm glad it's finally going ahead
Quite. People were claiming it would add twenty minutes to their journeys. This is nonsense; alternatives (either via the other side of the golf course or via the main A road) are two or three minutes longer.
Great idea - I just hope they block it off properly with substantial bollards and don't rely on the 'access only' 'no motor vehicles' signs that regularly get ignored. Oh, and I think 20mph and no-overtaking signs would be better than 30mph.
They did during the temporary closure. Massive concrete lego bricks.
I went onto the Civic Societies website to look up their concerns. It mainly seems to be the changes to the A619 Chatsworth Road. This is currently a wide single carriageway with a central, paint marked median and occasional refuge point. From the complaints from the CCS, the removal of the centre median so the (segregated?) cycle lane can be added on the right is bad thing. One of their considerations is:-
Now I would agree with them if this is just paint on the road so would be nice to know. However they don't seem to be worried about people walking west being less then 2m from HGV's who are doing more then 30 at the moment. And easy enough to enforce the 30mph speed and stop the HGV's carrying their speed through. A couple of average speed cameras should do the trick.
Initially however they didn't seem to have any specific view on Crow Lane. It seems to be just the hill and the single track after it would still be open to traffic, albeit just to the farm on the top. The hill could put off non-leisure cyclists, although if they know they won't need to worry about "holding up traffic", they might attempt it.
This is local to me. I took quite a bit of vitriol on FB for supporting it.
The hill on Crow Lane is, to be fair, a bit of a beast. It was also extremely hostile; when descending or climbing oncoming vehicles would ignore cyclists and for that matter pedestrians, forcing them into the steep soil banks. With it being motor traffic free it will at least be possible to do it unmolested, able to take as long as necessary, and even use the good old 12" gear if all else fails. I suspect our local bike shops will do well out of electric bikes.
The section to be closed, for anyone with a map, is from entrance to golf course to the North up to the minor road junction just East of the Hospital.
I drive and cycle around here and frankly it really is very little inconvenience for motorists (alternatives to the North and South) and a major gain for pedestrians, horse riders and cyclists, especially after dark.
Reading the article on DerbyshireLive, DaveNotts says "Never mind the grammar, this is another case of a local Council stealing roadspace from those who have paid for it and use it, and giving it to those who haven't and won't.".
To say that I didn't expect this sort of comment from a reader would be a lie.
I loved the bit in the article where the local NIMBY representative argued that the council stating that of those consulted 51% voted in favor (44% against 5% abstain) was "a facile misuse of simple statistics". Must remember that next time there is an election or referendum result I disagree with!!!
Well I dont think adding together the numbers of a petition and those who submitted feedback in a consultation, is particularly a valid use of statistics.
Or that the resullt reinforces the idea the councils decision on the road closure should be decided purely on numbers opposed vs numbers in favour.
Councils have to make unpopular decisions sometimes for the greater good.
Whilst I think people ought to be able to feed into the decision making process for decisions that affect them, I also think that some "consultations" do more harm than good, especially those that are treated de facto referenda.
The number of respondents is typically a small, self-selecting group, and responses are often heavily skewed by social media campaigns by organisations with a particular viewpoint pushing their members to respond.
In this case, the official consultation appears to have received ~1,200 responses. They claim to have leafleted 4,000 letterboxes, or about 9,000 - 10,000 people (based on average household size). The population of the Borough of Chesterfield is ~105,000 and the Chesterfield Royal Hospital claims to service "more than 400,000 people across Derbyshire." So whichever way you look at it, only a small fraction of the people likely to be impacted have replied.
And of course there have been problems in the past with consultations being hijacked by bots and people who don't live in the local area (or even in the same country). (e.g https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-56126566 and https://brixtonblog.com/2022/01/concerted-attempts-to-manipulate-brixton... )
I absolutely support local people feeding into the decision process of things that affect them, thats the heart of any functioning local democracy.
what I dont want to see is a council using some very dodgy maths to try to justify a decision theyve made and giving weight to the idea if just 101 more people had raised an objection in the consultation or signed the petition, the against numbers would have held the majority, and the council wouldnt have pushed ahead with any of these changes, thats a route to be a hostage to fortune to any decision the council makes in the future.
as weve definitely seen increasingly with the use of social media pressure, groups attempting to get anyone and everyone to sign petitions to bolster their numbers to claim theres majority support for something for their pet project, when there isnt the real support there at all.
Agree. Consultations are not referendums. Most cases it should be "how we do some details of this" not "shall we do this". Or even worse "we've spend x years getting to this point, we're ready to go, we're assuming we can just get a nod from everyone last thing...oh".
It isn't easy because "change" and "don't trust the clowncil" and "don't have time to read this guff". The convincing, explaining and "what do people feel about this" should have been done first though. Especially for active travel - we all know that a mid to large cycling project's lead time is measured in decades. Well, that's how it is here in Edinburgh.
Jeez guys, I may not have been making an entirely serious and direct comparison!
Can anyone think of a consultative nonbinding exercise where those who should've known better went along with the public vote and it turned out to be a disaster? I'm sure there must be some examples somewhere…
Can't recall any. Something like that sounds like it would be a big deal and advertised on the side of buses.
I don't think we've had any of those for
monthser... years, I'm sure stuff like that makes the news.well a democratically held vote is an entirely different kettle of fish.
It's the Road Tax Myth isn't it?