ReCycle

In 2008 Blackpool was officially named a Cycling Town. Apparently "The Cycling Towns programme aims to help Blackpool meet the challenge of the modern leisure market’s needs, by making cycling an essential part of its tourism offer."

It seems quite a tenuous link between tourism and cycling and I have yet to see a hen night cycling down the promenade, but I'll go with them since it's still a £6million work in progress to turn the town into this utopia of cycling.

The impression I gained from the name Cycling Town was that the town would be awash with people on two wheeled transport. It isn't: there aren't many cyclists at all in Blackpool at the moment. As a driver and motoring enthusiast I'm obviously happy about that given the general lack of respect for road rules that cyclists have, such as failure to signal properly, jumping red lights and riding on the pavement when it suits them, but as a taxpayer I'm questioning the allocation of funds. Where on earth has the money been spent?

Lets say for some bizarre reason I decided to get on my bike and cycle to the town centre to buy something. Once I got there, where could I put my bike? Off the top of my head I can't think of any bike shelters and bike parking areas like places such as Oxford have. The ridiculous thing is Oxford is not a Cycling City despite being flooded with students on bikes. This whole Cycling Town thing is starting to sound a bit gimmicky...

Cycling to work? For a kick off you would need somewhere to leave your bike at work and in addition to everything else carrying a suit in a bag to work isn't and never will be practical: it'd look terribly crumpled unless they decide to set up ironing and changing rooms there. Unlikely I feel. I also wouldn't want to run the risk of cycling down roads without proper provisions for cyclists such as cycle lanes. As a result I don't even think it would be possible to cycle to work.

I would seriously question the criteria by which a town is branded a Cycling Town. For a start, I'd expect a large percentage of roads to have cycle lanes either marked or constructed parallel to the roads. In Blackpool this is not the case. I don't want to have to cycle 50 miles out of my way in order to stay on a cycle lane for the duration of my journey. I would prefer for my journey to be at least equidistant to that in a car but preferably shorter.

I would prefer that Police officers enforce the law upon cyclists that abuse the pavement. Offenders can be issued a £30 fixed penalty, but the maximum if taken to court is £500.

When I was 16 and cycling on the pavement down Waterloo Road I was stopped by the Police and lectured about it being a danger to the public. The Police car proceeded to follow me as I cycled on the road and then in typical Police fashion decided to floor it past me and into the sunset (must have been their tea break then). Jollity aside, I'm not aware that the law on this has changed. People complain - rightly - about cars parking on the pavement and I find cyclists that use the pavement as a road to be no different.

The Promenade may well end up being a cyclist's paradise after all the current works are completed but it always has been as far as I can remember. Fundamentally since you can't cycle to work on the promenade and you can't cycle home on the promenade its value to locals is pleasure only.

For me I find the Cycling Town brand to be somewhat pointless, somewhat gimmicky and just another channel the Government can use to force councils into spending money on certain things. In this case the link is very weak and the money was allocated based on the resurfacing and in some places redesign of the Promenade.