Another NWN non-story with a catchy headline grabber, "West Berkshire roads have most crashes in county" Options

[spartacus]

West Berkshire roads are bad for you

Last year 1,070 of collisions on Berkshire’s rural roads – 34 per cent – occurred on West Berkshire’s leafy lanes.

Just how many miles of rural roads does Reading Borough Council have? Or Slough for that matter..

Lies, damm lies and then there's the local newspaper reports....
Why not compare apples and some sort of citrus fruits.


Area sizes:
West Berkshire - 271.88 sq mi
Windsor & Maidenhead - 76.61 sq mi
Wokinghan Borough - 69.10 sq mi
Bracknell Forest - 42.23 sq mi
Slough - 12.56 sq mi
Reading - (no wiki figure available)

By area comparison alone it's clear that at well over three times the size of the next biggest Berkshire authority and over 20 times the size of Slough there's bound to be some swing toward more accidents in this area.

if you just look at the bare numbers on a spreadsheet, without seeing it in relative terms to number of miles of road then it's just garbage

[MontyPython]

You could have added it to the grammar thread too as roads don't have crashes only the cars upon them

[Andy Capp]

I'm not sure that the amount of available road is such an issue as much as how many miles are covered by how many.

[Exhausted]

The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. It appears that a couple of ladies thought the suspension on the bikes was good and an American couple rode bikes to Donnington castle. That in itself leads me to believe the story was a bit of poetic licence. Americans go everywhere by car.
Why would anybody in their right minds pay £14 a day to hire a bicycle to cycle around our dangerous roads, but Mrs Taylor has done a lot of research on the subject and considers the price is fair and the low take up is due to awareness rather than price.
Give me strength

[Andy Capp]

The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. ... Give me strength

If only more people lived life like you! Eh?

[user23]

The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. It appears that a couple of ladies thought the suspension on the bikes was good and an American couple rode bikes to Donnington castle. That in itself leads me to believe the story was a bit of poetic licence. Americans go everywhere by car.
Why would anybody in their right minds pay £14 a day to hire a bicycle to cycle around our dangerous roads, but Mrs Taylor has done a lot of research on the subject and considers the price is fair and the low take up is due to awareness rather than price.
Give me strength

How is offering a bike hire service impose their fads upon us?

[Exhausted]

How is offering a bike hire service impose their fads upon us?

Because it fits in well with the £90,000 well spent thread on Newbury News. I suspect from your reply that you will be hiring instead of driving your Golf.

[Simon Kirby]

The headline that caught my eye was the upbeat quote from Mrs Taylor from the Visitor Information centre on the "Low uptake of town's bike hire" since the scheme started. I get really fed up with the Bikes, Bees and Bats brigade that impose their fads upon us and get paid for doing it. It appears that a couple of ladies thought the suspension on the bikes was good and an American couple rode bikes to Donnington castle. That in itself leads me to believe the story was a bit of poetic licence. Americans go everywhere by car.
Why would anybody in their right minds pay £14 a day to hire a bicycle to cycle around our dangerous roads, but Mrs Taylor has done a lot of research on the subject and considers the price is fair and the low take up is due to awareness rather than price.
Give me strength

I'm just as frustrated by this, but I have a different take on it.

I'm especially pro-bat and -bee, so I'm disappointed to see you conflate the problems highlighted in this story with what for me is the essential effort to preserve biodiversity and respect life, but that's really for another thread.

The issue for me is that public money shouldn't be supporting this kind of hopeless commercial operation. Bike-hire is not an essential pubic service by any stretch of the imagination so there is no justification for public money being used to provide the service. If there is a need for bike-hire then the niche can easily be filled by a commercial operator, and if there is an argument to be made that a bike-hire service would benefit the town in some way then let the BID fill the niche.

[JeffG]

Who knew that Newbury had a bike-hire service?

[MontyPython]

....
The issue for me is that public money shouldn't be supporting this kind of hopeless commercial operation. Bike-hire is not an essential pubic service by any stretch of the imagination so there is no justification for public money being used to provide the service. If there is a need for bike-hire then the niche can easily be filled by a commercial operator, and if there is an argument to be made that a bike-hire service would benefit the town in some way then let the BID fill the niche.

I am sure they got a good deal on the bikes. Judging by our local authorities previous commercial acumen I am sure they didn't pay more than £20k per bike.

[Exhausted]

I'm just as frustrated by this, but I have a different take on it. I'm especially pro-bat and -bee, so I'm disappointed to see you conflate the problems highlighted in this story with what for me is the essential effort to preserve biodiversity and respect life, but that's really for another thread.

I agree that our natural wildlife needs to be sustained and my grouping wasn't aimed at their protection and perhaps bees, apart from the alliteration should not have been included. Bats are probably important but no more than any other insect gatherer. My frustration is around every planning application having some council jobsworth creating expensive requirements just in case a few bats or slow worms might be disturbed. They are not endangered and will find their own solution I'm sure. As you say, another thread perhaps.

[Exhausted]

Just to return to the original thread, Richard Owen is the Director of Road Safety Analysis Ltd and educated at Leicester University. He was Operations Manager of the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership which includes the six boroughs including West Berks. I am sure the partnership is still going although there seems to be not a lot of information about them other than they seem to report the actions of other bodies.
http://www.saferroads.org/

Local campaign group Safer Roads Berkshire is now backing a new Government campaign that calls for drivers to be aware of risks on rural roads.

Richard Owen, the operations director at Safer Roads, said: "Many of us use these roads as part of our commute or for social purposes and need to be skilful and careful in the way in which we drive.


I'm sure that with their £4.5m annual budget (as declared in 2011) they do a great job but a press release, telling us what we almost certainly know about our rural roads, will not make anybody drive any better. In a world with unlimited funds, we might cut back the verges , cut back the overhanging foliage and put crash barriers around all the trees and posts that come almost up to the road edge. Until then........

[Exhausted]

Who knew that Newbury had a bike-hire service?

The readers of the NWN

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/bike-hi...ched-in-newbury

and WBC

http://info.westberks.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=30392

Interesting that since 2009, it was probably the one thing that most people asked for. Not "where can I stay" or "what is there to do."

It appears that the scheme will tackle congestion and encourage cycling in the area. Cyclists cause more congestion on our roads than anything else other than overloaded farm tractors.

[Andy Capp]

I agree that our natural wildlife needs to be sustained and my grouping wasn't aimed at their protection and perhaps bees, apart from the alliteration should not have been included. Bats are probably important but no more than any other insect gatherer. My frustration is around every planning application having some council jobsworth creating expensive requirements just in case a few bats or slow worms might be disturbed. They are not endangered and will find their own solution I'm sure. As you say, another thread perhaps.

Your view is absurd; I don't think we should wait until a species is endangered before we impose planning restrictions.

[Exhausted]

Your view is absurd; I don't think we should wait until a species is endangered before we impose planning restrictions.

Tell that to the people waiting for a home.

[Andy Capp]

Tell that to the people waiting for a home.

Cobblers, there are other reason that is happening.

I understand that the bat population has been in big decline for the last half century.

[Exhausted]

Cobblers, there are other reason that is happening. I understand that the bat population has been in big decline for the last half century.

That maybe true but building in urban areas is a very small percentage of the reason for the overall decline. Could it have anything to do with insect decline due to pesticides along with changes to farming practices, major decrease in the cereals crops and the loss of our hedgerows. We could mention, and it's always a good one, climate change, which may also have had a detrimental effect on insect population. Perhaps a better solution might be to turn over fields to the production of buddleia, that would be good for all our natural resources, bees, butterflies, bats but not bikes. Have you noticed that the swift and swallow visitation has also been in decline, they are insect eaters too.

I'm sure that as we are a bit short of caves in the UK, we might need to control the change of use of barns and the like out in the countryside but developments like Parkway were never bat habitats and if they were, the occupants would surely move on.

[motormad]

I'm sure the speed camera van in Woolhampton has something to do with it all.

[x2lls]

Tell that to the people waiting for a home.

Your attitude is truly astonishing.

[Exhausted]

Your attitude is truly astonishing.

attitude to what ?