Yours cynically

“Well of course I have! What did you expect?”

That’s the answer to the question some of you have already asked me – “Have you begun planning your next walk yet?”  More details will follow in the coming weeks and months. Remember – as always – that you’re invited too!

I always learn a lot when I’m planning these walks, sometimes about the strangest little things. For instance I’ve just learned this time what ‘severance’ means. No, I’m not talking about termination of employment; nor am I talking about the Hollywood actress best known for her role as a scantily costumed crime fighter. No, I’m talking instead about the use of the word in sentences such as ‘NMUs would continue to experience cumulatively severe severance.”

No doubt some of you are now frantically trying to figure out who or what NMUs are. That’s simple. NMU (Non-Motorised User) is the de-personalising abbreviation used by government for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders together. Severance is government-speak for what NMUs experience when their transport paths are cut, in particular when these are public rights of way. Severe severance means that people “…are likely to be deterred from making pedestrian journeys to an extent sufficient to induce a reorganisation of their activities. Those who do make journeys on foot will experience considerable hindrance.” (In case you’re wondering, the quotations I’m using here are all taken from reports published by the Highways Agency, the government agency charged with operating, maintaining and improving England’s motorways and major A roads.)

Let’s look at an example of severe severance. It’s from one of the areas through which this NMU is hoping to walk next year.

Severe severance

R is an ancient cathedral city; T is one of its neighbouring market towns. The journey between R and T – about 16 kilometres as the crow flies – would in the past have been a comfortable day’s walk. Generations of people certainly did it. The choice of which route you took would depend on which of the two river bridges you wanted to use – these are shown circled on the diagram. The route via the northern bridge was generally the more convenient, therefore there developed over the centuries a whole network of footpaths and bridleways and minor roads connecting R to that bridge. This network existed until less than ten years ago. It was then that the motorway was built, bringing with it all the usual bans on junctions and crossings. This motorway replaced what had previously been a trunk road.

Look at the result! Every single one of those footpaths and bridleways and minor roads has now been cut between the motorway exit at A and the motorway bridge at B, a distance of more than five kilometres. This certainly is severe severance. To get from R to T on foot you now have three choices. You can walk via minor roads to the motorway bridge at B, then to the northern river bridge; this adds about six or seven kilometres to your journey. Or you can walk along the trunk road from R all the way to the northern river bridge; there’s no footpath or cyclepath of course and you’ll have the added pleasure of walking through the motorway exit at A. Or you can use the southern river bridge instead; the segments of trunk road that you’ll have to walk along are seriously busy and of course have no footpaths or cyclepaths, and again there’s a motorway exit to walk through.

Did I say three choices? Sorry, I meant four. The fourth choice involves making use of the LAR that the Highways Agency has thoughtfully provided – this is marked on the diagram. LAR? That’s the government abbreviation for Local Access Road. It refers in this case to the trunk road (again without any footpath or cyclepath) that the Highways Agency has had specially built on the west side of the motorway to couple together all those severed footpaths and bridleways and minor roads. I’ve checked this LAR out on Street View; it looks to me suspiciously like a dead-straight five-kilometre-long race track. Of all the four choices, this last one is by far the worst. This LAR is clearly dangerous for walkers or cyclists; it would be sheer lunacy for anyone on horseback to think of using it.

I see someone at the back of the room is wanting to interject.Yes, dear reader, I do realise that the Highways Agency must have had some rationale for opting to spend all that money on five kilometres of extra trunk road instead of, for instance, putting in underpasses as they’ve done many times elsewhere. Here’s an example from that very same motorway about 150 kilometres further north.

Photo credit: Highways Agency

So what was that rationale? Physical fitness and cycling opportunities! “It is anticipated that the LAR will improve physical fitness through the linking of existing Public Rights of Way and local roads and will offer improvements in opportunities for cyclists.” Wow, I’m impressed!

I don’t know about you, but I’d appreciate a little more honesty from the Highways Agency. Why don’t they simply admit that pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders are the life forms at the bottom of their priority list? If a particular road development results in these people having to walk or ride further, or to walk or ride along roads that are fundamentally unsafe, so be it. Alternatively these people could simply go by car, just like everybody else.

Yours cynically,

An NMU