Date published: 2010/02/14
The Cambridge County Council is proposing "improvements" to Gilbert Road (and elsewhere). The blurb says "The Cycle Cambridge team is consulting on some improvements to cycle facilities in Cambridge". The fact that it is the "Cycle Cambridge team" (whoever they are) already tells you that they are going to completely ignore everyone who is not a cyclist, in this case including possibly the residents of Gilbert Road.
Gilbert Road already has cycle paths on either side of the road from top to bottom. The Cambridge cycling fraternity has long complained about these because cars are currently allowed to park in them, which means cyclists often have to weave in and out. So one of the suggested "improvements" is to make it illegal for cars to park all the way along Gilbert Road. Well obviously the residents are not very happy about that. The bureaucrats point out that most of the houses on Gilbert Road have two car parking spaces, but in this day and age that is not saying very much, and if you have visitors then it is obviously convenient to have parking available on the street.
The other part of the proposal is far worse. So the bureaucrats want to put speed bumps in from the top to the bottom of Gilbert Road, turning it into the ugliest road in Cambridge. It seems that they want to use the same type of dreadful speed bumps that have already been used in Carlton Way. (Well, the older style ones on Stretten Avenue are no better.) In spite of what the bureaucrats like to claim, these speed bumps do damage cars. (But the bureaucrats hate cars, so they probably consider that to be a bonus.)
The proposed speed bumps do not affect buses. Already on Carlton Way, buses just sail through the speed bumps without even slowing down. Buses are far more dangerous to cyclists than cars.
One obvious consequence of the speed bumps will be that it will push more traffic onto side streets, for example, more people will go from Histon Road, down Roseford Road, down Perse Way, down Metcalfe Road to the bottom of Gilbert Road, in order to avoid most of the speed bumps. Well, the obvious response from the bureaucrats will be to put more and more speed bumps in until Cambridge looks like an obstacle course from one end to the other.
Another obvious consequence is that more drivers will avoid Cambridge completely and shop elsewhere. If the Cambridge ruling elite want to continually stick two fingers up to drivers, it is not too surprising if drivers stick two fingers up to Cambridge.
The bureaucrats posted questionnaires to each of the 240 homes on Gilbert Road and another 60 to homes on side streets near Gilbert Road. Well, it seems that most of the respondents were not surprisingly against the proposals. The questionnaire was also available online so in theory anyone could fill it in, not just the residents of Gilbert Road. But the bureaucrats didn't particularly publicise the existence of this consultation.
There is always a problem with these kinds of consultations. In this case the county seemed to think that only the residents of Gilbert Road should be notified. But they are not the only stakeholders here. So most of the people who use Gilbert Road are not residents of Gilbert Road, and it would not be surprising if (say) over 90% of them were not even aware that the county is proposing to massively change the road. These people have been completely disenfranchised.
But even if these people had not been completely disenfranchised, these consultations are still a bad idea, because they can be dominated by zealous middle class special interest pressure groups. And when it comes to cycling, there is no more zealous middle class special interest pressure group than the Cambridge Cycling Campaign (CCC). They obviously knew about the consultation and they were also alerted to the fact that most Gilbert Road residents opposed the proposals.
The consultation (as such) finished on 12 February. On 11 February the CCC sent out an email (presumably to all its members) asking people to respond en masse to the consultation, in effect as a counter-weight to the residents of Gilbert Road. It is hardly surprising that they chose to do this, and unfortunately the existence of these consultations allows, and indeed encourages, special interest pressure groups like the CCC to game the system. Probably half (or more) of the CCC members never (or rarely) even use Gilbert Road, and it is unfortunate that these people are even considered relevant to the discussion.
Who knows what effect, if any, the so-called consultation will have on what happens. It would be seriously sad if public policy is determined in any way by this kind of fatuous consultation, where most of the stakeholders have been disenfranchised and where the main factor in the outcome of the consultation is whether one side or the other is more proficient at stuffing the ballot box. Ideally politicians should be making these decisions themselves, guided by sensible advice from the bureaucrats.
The only point of consultations should be in case the bureaucrats are prejudiced to one side (as here) and so have missed obvious points (such as that the speed bumps will encourage rat runs down side streets). Unfortunately, consultations are used by the bureaucrats as allegedly being representative of public opinion, well at least when the result happens to concur with their pre-determined view (as will happen here if the CCC has successfully gamed the system in the end). Consultations allow the determined middle class to exert power far beyond what their numbers would otherwise dictate. They are anti-democratic.
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