FEBRUARY | THE COMMENTATOR
Ride on
Martin Fullard
embraces
elastane
W
e know that
councillors love
nothing more than
promoting environmentally
friendly transport solutions.
It stands to reason that they
should. The planet needs our
help as temperatures world
over are increasing. However,
these poor souls are conflicted,
because the only thing they love
more than cycling and BMW i3s
is votes. Your votes.
The RideLondon cycle event,
which has run every year since
the London Olympic Games
2012, has proved very popular
with bicycle enthusiasts, which
each year sees some 25,000
hardy souls don their tightest
Lycra and set off into the vast
rolling green splendour of the
Surrey Hills.
An astonishing £66m has
been raised for charities since
the race first ran in 2013, with
2019’s event raising £13m.
Furthermore, more than 70
projects in Surrey have benefited
from charitable trust funding,
with grants totalling more than
£4.3m being awarded.
What’s not to like? Well, quite
a lot, it seems.
Surrey County Council has
opened a public consultation
on the future route of the
RideLondon in response to
rising criticism from local
residents living along the route.
The headline complaint is
that the road closures for one
weekend a year (usually in July)
causes unwelcome disruption.
The new breed of aggressive
cyclist (happily a stark minority)
will instantly take to the
Facebook comments section
and say: “It’s only one weekend a
year, deal with it!” The response
is usually along the lines of: “We
need to get to the care home and
can’t!”. And around in circles
we go.
The council is in the middle
here. On the one hand, local
businesses benefit greatly from
the year-long cascade of Lycra
enthusiasts. I used to live in a
tiny village in the Surrey Hills,
and there is no way the village
shop could survive by just
serving the local population. The
cyclists’ weekly pilgrimage to
the woods means that the shop
can employ several people and
sell better food. Everyone’s a
winner, and I feel the locals deep
down do appreciate this.
However, where the ire
is aimed is the conduct
of a minority of cyclists
which practice for the event
throughout the year. After
speaking to several unhappy
locals myself, the view is
that some do not follow the
Highway Code and, in some
cases, deliberately antagonise
motorists going about their
business on the country lanes.
Everything has to be in
extremes. Motorists scream
bloody murder at the Lycra-
clad bottoms wiggling about
before them, chasing their best
times on the Shere Road, while
a minority of “too-pro-to-say-
hello” cyclists think the world is
against them.
Here’s the rub: with the
council in charge, it is generally
the motorists who live in the
area and are their represented
electorate. Meanwhile, cyclists
(broadly) come from far and
wide, often from London, and
therefore are not represented by
the county council.
So, what does the council do?
Maybe they should enforce some
rules in the route that would see
cyclists pay a bit more respect
to residents. What they can’t,
and shouldn’t, do is cancel it…
because then my local shop will
close down.
“Surrey County
Council has
opened a public
consultation on the
future route of the
RideLondon”
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