Should HS2 carry adjacent cycle track?

I'm sure it would be prohibitively expensive to stick 10 ft of tarmac next to a ridiculously expensive railway.

The goverment are paying for the hs2 with public money right? It is extremely expensive but the goal of providing mobility boosting extra transport links is seen as worth it. But existing trainfares are way above any sensible range of pricing, god knows what it will cost to travel on this and even then, just like all trains there will be a maximum capacity.

A bike path is accessible to more people, it will serve the purpose of providing convenient transport links that stimulate activity between cities, economic, educational & culture/leisure - being on a bike does not provide any lesser degree of all these benefits. The capacity too, is for all intents.. unlimited. Make it a few metres wide and it will never get overfilled.

Public health is also a massive and costly concern for government, it would get a lot of people being a lot more physically active. And environmentally, every person who takes a bike journey on it is one less person who is burning fuels via using the train or a bus/car.

Personally I think regular motorways should be adapted for bikes too, plenty of space on them and it should be made a lot safer to ride on major A roads too.

Yeah bike path yay.. but how many people are going to commute London-Brum on a bike? Exactly.

Not keen on a 200m traffic free training loop then?

there are other towns villages in between you know
some people may want to go from arseendofnowhere to seldomlyvisited
the cheese in the latter hamlet is divine i hear

not that you'd want to visit any of them
full of yokels they are

Do this, it would be super-awesome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain

Yeah bike path yay.. but how many people are going to commute London-Brum on a bike? Exactly.

Id do it, at least once. This distance of 120 miles is not nearly as off putting as trying to figure out a route.

But obviously it has more utility for stop offs in between. I can imagine bike riding people who live outside major cities, by about 20 miles or so commuting in. Ive known a couple people who have ridden from Birmingham to Warwick University daily. You have occasional journeys too.

Not keen on a 200m traffic free training loop then?

I'd love it but I'm being realistic.

there are other towns villages in between you know

Lies!

if you had your head up off your chest when whizzing through the countryside you might have seen them

or

they are where your painful 600 miles rides start and finish from

Have we sought Tester's opinion on HS2 yet?

Incidentally I keep misreading the the thread title as "adjacent cycle rack"

Can see this being implimented as a shared use path and so full of dog walkers and kids running everywhere and rendering it useless.

The tunnels would need to be so wide. You could have a train passing within 10ft of you in a tunnel at 150mph.

Never going to happen. Stupid idea.

I thought the plan was mainly to allow local community greater access to stations where the HS2 go through.

Bit like this;

Cyclists' Special - part one - YouTube

why not just put paths beside all train tracks what's so special about the HS2 when it comes to cycling?

sounds like a boring unpleasant ride tbh

godington / quainton / brackley / finmere ... are you joking

not to mention culworth

are you spying on where I live?

And me... I would relish the opportunity to visit your reprobates more if I knew I could have 60 miles of traffic free path to TT along. Might just make it home after SE's in time for work the next day.

Fuck the actual trains though.

why not just put paths beside all train tracks what's so special about the HS2 when it comes to cycling?

sounds like a boring unpleasant ride tbh

Well yes, it would be great. But the point is that HS2 is yet to be constructed, they can therefore design the cycle path provision and it would cost very little extra.

Modifying existing infrastructure would be really complicated, not to say it shouldnt be done!

I can imagine such a bike motorway, to end up as a really pleasant hive of activity. Little cafes etc.. could pop up along route. It would be fairly boring, but that doesn't stop people driving on motorways for several hours at a time.

Number of signatures:
133

i'm guessing it's a no

they can therefore design the cycle path provision and it would cost very little extra.

You've never worked with 'consultants' before then I take it?

Not to mention the already touchy issue with people anywhere near the train line being told another 100 houses have to be knocked down to fit in a bike path. That'll go down well.

yes.

or they could make every village, town and city into 20 mph zones.

then everybody would get a safety uplift.

and the govn could save a fortune by not having to build silly cycle lanes.

Rode for a bit on the Vennbahn last summer on my cycle tour. Not quite the same, I know - but it was bloody lovely. Nice towns to stop off at for a drink, nice scenery and a nice relaxing bit of riding.

Looks like it's a no
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/feb/01/scrapped-hs2-bike-path-could-have-reaped-five-times-more-than-hs2-itself

A scrapped “emerald necklace” cycleway up the spine of the country alongside HS2 would have delivered a return on investment of up to five times greater than the rail project itself, an FoI request has revealed – but neither the government nor HS2 Ltd will fund it.

A 50-page report outlining the business case for the national cycleway, obtained by the Guardian, reveals health, congestion and economic benefits of between £3 and £8 per £1 spent. The return on investment of HS2 itself, meanwhile, is just £1.5-£1.7 per £1, according to the National Audit Office.

sigh

this makes me so sad.