Council must tackle appalling state of minor roads to protect cyclists - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Richard Parker, Ryedale Community Charter Group, Gilling East, York.
Should North Yorkshire be doing more to encourage walking and cycling?Should North Yorkshire be doing more to encourage walking and cycling?
Should North Yorkshire be doing more to encourage walking and cycling?

HERE we are in another period of lockdown and the population are again being encouraged to stay fit by exercising each day.

During the last lockdown period, when this was also the case, many people took up cycling, walking or running along their local and nearby minor roads and lanes.

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Many people purchased bicycles to allow them to get out further afield during the time available. A good cyclist would cover 15 to 20 miles in an hour. A good walker four miles.

What more can be done to encourage cycling and walking?What more can be done to encourage cycling and walking?
What more can be done to encourage cycling and walking?

Knowing that a second wave of the virus has been predicted since the beginning, one would have expected North Yorkshire County Council to have made a lot more effort to improve the minor roads and lanes in the county to make them safe for walkers, runners and cyclists.

Most people do not want to walk, run or ride on the main roads for general exercise but wish to venture further into the more rural aspects of our marvellous county to take in the countryside, which we are all being told, frequently, is the best way of overcoming the depression and despondency of the virus restrictions.

Being thrown from one’s bicycle due to riding into a massive pothole filled with water, at the edge of the road, is no fun. Swerving to miss yet another hole or a piece of missing carriageway puts one’s life at risk of being struck by a car overtaking too closely.

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Twisting your ankle, breaking your leg or tripping and falling trying to run or walk along the edge of a poorly maintained 
road with broken edges or 
totally deformed surface is the 
outcome of council negligence. People should be able to enjoy the countryside without the added pleasure of being saturated as vehicles drive through large water-filled potholes and ruts, that should just not be there.

The decisions councils make on which roads are to be repaired or upgraded does not fit with the use by the local population in these troubled times or in truth at any time. Resurfacing already smooth and good condition main roads seems misguided and ignores the needs of the local people who are the ones paying the council tax.

It is time for North Yorkshire County Council to immediately redirect their Road Maintenance Fund towards improving the minor roads and lanes for the benefit of those who live here to reduce injury and accidents caused by the appalling state of the county’s minor roads.

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