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Signs letting cyclists use pavement, not roadway - and not preventing illegal parking in pedestrianised area

Reported anonymously at 11:14, Wed 16 June 2021

When a cycle-path was constructed through the pedestrianised junction of Hertford Road with Stamford Road, by making ramps up onto the pedestrianised area and off again via a build-out into Stamford Road, inappropriate signs were put onto the pavements at the four corners of the pedestrianised area. The signs are marked as allowing shared use, by cyclists as well as pedestrians, and are double-sided - inviting cycling both into and out beyond the pedestrianised ie down the pavements. The signs at the Stamford Road end were removed but those on Hertford Road are still there, despite a number of protests by residents. Cyclists therefore charge up and down the pavements, right outside people's garden gates and on down the entire block (or further), rather than just riding through the centre of the pedestrianised area and onto the road again. It's extremely dangerous and badly needs to be stopped - but even the council's highways engineer who agreed to get the signs removed, some YEARS ago, has never implemented that promise. Riding on footpaths is a crime. Cycling along the pavements of quiet roads, rather than using the almost empty roadway, is clearly not only dangerous to other people, especially residents (some old, some with very young children and/or pets) but entirely unnecessary for the safety of the cyclists. Those signs were wrongly sited in the first place and it's insanely dangerous to leave them there. Please remove them immediately. What is badly needed, however, is enough bollards in both the pavements (at all four corners of the pedestrianised space) and the Hertford Road carriageway to stop lorries climbing half onto the pavement in order to drive into the pedestrianised area and park illegally, rather than pay for street parking. I have seen drivers doing exactly that - with the wheels on one side of a lorry mounting the pavement and the other wheels between the kerb and the nearest roadway bollard. Others have driven into the pedestrianised space from the north-west corner of it, using a ramp on the pavement of Stamford Road. Contractors allegedly working for the council (eg tree surgeons) and building materials delivery lorries, skip lorries etc serving houses being renovated, are particularly prone to do this; the former have even been known to allege that they have council permission to do so. The physical barriers to illegal parking have been inadequate, since the original bollards were removed when the pedestrianised area and cyclepath were remodelled (in about 2013, I think). More bollards are needed, set more closely together and in the right places. So please do NOT remove the bollards in the pavement bearing the shared-use signs; just take off those inappropriate signs. Then install further bollards in the roadway near the kerb on both sides and also in the north-west corner of the pedestrianised area, to stop lorries driving into it from Stamford Road.

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