Nottingham59
Established Member
I would say that an ebike would a make a 10-mile commute feasible for most people. So the prime candidates would be routes to industrial and city centres with jobs from suburbs or nearby towns, where the road network is congested and public transport is inadequate.In recent years its looking like the motor car is becoming less and less welcome. Electric cars (Ev's) are looking less like a feasible replacement and the current railway infrastructure isn't looking like a feasible replacement either, well not if you live in a rural village!
So the government put some money aside for councils to look at options to reinstate disused railways that died because of the car, that might just be vital to serve communities that rely heavily on cars and have tripled in size in recent years.
The Department for Transport launched a £500 million Restoring Your Railway Fund in January 2020, to deliver on the government’s manifesto commitment and start reopening lines and stations. We invited MPs, local councils and community groups across England and Wales to propose how they could use this funding to reconnect their local communities.
Restoring Your Railway Fund
Supporting the restoration of rail lines and the reopening of stations.www.gov.uk
A lot of these disused railways are now being looked at to turn into walking cycling routes?
Some have layed abandoned for decades with no thought of converting it into a cycling route, yet now we are looking at options to convert them back into railways people suddenly decide it would be better suited as a cycling route. Doesn't this seem just a bit mad?
I'm not against more cycle or walking trails at all and I'm well aware of the many ex rail routes that have been converted with much success. But it just seems like people don't want a railway for whatever reason.
It makes sense to convert disused lines that are short and will have no purpose at all. But I really can't see a load of commuters cycling 20 miles or more to work and back every day.
Bus routes are going out of fashion like there's no tomorrow and the ones that remain are pretty useless.
Then there's highways England infilling that further reduces the feasibility of reinstatement, due to the added costs of now having to rebuild perfectly good bridges. But I guess that subject warrants another topic.
I know the deadline for the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles has been pushed back once again and will probably be pushed further back as time goes on, but I think that's more owning to pressure from motor corporations than how people might travel around in the not too distant future.
Are people even looking toward the future these days or just here and now?
One example that springs to mind it Stoke on Trent to Leek. It will never be economic to reinstate the line, or convert it to tram / LRT, but it would make a fantanstic ebike express route from deprived suburbs like Stockton Brook and Milton to Stoke centre (though there are no jobs there).
Is there space alongside the formerly double-track East Lancs Railway to allow a cycletrack for people in Rawtenstall and Ramsbottom to railhead to Bury Metrolink to access the booming jobs market in Manchester?