Dear Fellow Cyclist,

If you are familiar with the roads around Otterspool and the nearby Marple Road I am sure you will agree that it is not safest area for cyclists and conditions like this go a long way to dissuading more people to cycle to work.

Infrastructure for cycling is a chicken and egg situation. UK cycle use is very low compared to the continent making provision for cyclists sound a poor investment and biasing it towards recreational schemes. But there is a new argument for cycle provision based simply on the energy savings from converting car commuters into cycle commuters. From 1st April this year the Government are subsidising small scale electricity production. As in Germany a large part of the subsidy will go to photovoltaic solar panels on house roofs but it also includes the hydroelectric scheme to be built next to the bridge at Otterspool. The amazing fact is that the subsidies are such that the equivalent for leaving the car at home and getting on your bike is 60p per mile! There are no subsidies for cycling but the argument for a 'modal shift' as the traffic engineers call it, is now very persuasive.

We are proposing to lobby for a 3 mile metalled cycle way from Marple to Stockport along the traffic free Goyt valley to carry between 112 and 925 cycling commuters. (112 equals the investment and energy equivalent to the Otterspool hydroelectric scheme and 925 is equivalent to industrial scale sustainable electricity generation that the Government proposes to meet the legally binding 34% reduction by 2020 ).

The local campaigner who secured the nature reserve at Otterspool will be putting the following question to the next full meeting of Stockport Council. We are not quite sure when this will be because of the election but please come down to the Council Chamber, Stockport Town Hall to show your solidarity. Usually questions are taken between 6:00 and 7:00pm.

Keep in touch via this blog or email A6bypass@googlemail.com.

Kind Regards,

Steve Houston
Poynton

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Question to the Stockport Council;

By 2020 each man woman and child in the UK will have to use 40kWh per day less energy to meet the government's much vaunted 'legally binding' target.

The 80 year old A6 bypass/A555 project that will complement the expansion of the airport as a regional hub now that Heathrow expansion looks unlikely, has dominated the future of the Goyt valley and usurped alternative schemes for furthering the amenity of this beautiful area for the people of Stockport.

If a modal shift occurred from car to bicycle to the extent enjoyed on the continent, on the Marple Stockport route, the energy savings would equate to 700 people meeting their 2020 target.

For comparison purposes the Otterspool hydro electric scheme costing £300,000 will equate to 10 people meeting their 2020 target.

Will the council give up facilitating unsustainable trends in energy usage and start planning for a low carbon future,; in this case a first class cycle track through the Goyt valley from Marple to Stockport?


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SEMMMS an out of date solution

I have been cycling this route for through Otterspool for 14 years. The congestion, narrow roads and poor road maintenance should be a matter of civic shame. In fact local government aspire to spending £860M on a new, near motorway standard road through the Goyt valley and on to the Airport. I am not criticising a transitory condition because unbelievably, the route has been protected since the 1930s. The aspiration and actuality are so far apart that the politics can only be described as dysfunctional.

Microgeneration, an inefficient investment in renewables

Now Stockport Council are promoting a micro hydroelectric scheme to supply electricity to the grid by an archimedian screw parallel to the weir. The power supplied is a modest 20kW and for the installation cost of £330,000 which is 14 times the equivalent cost of off shore wind power. Another comparison is the contribution it will make to meeting the government's undertaking to reduce green house gas emissions by 34% by 2020. The government estimates this will cost the UK £160B or £2,300 per person. This hydro scheme will allow ten people to achieve the 2020 target- 14 times more expensive than industrial scale sustainable energy. Amazingly this scheme is going ahead and the land by the Otterspool bridge has already been up for compulsory purchase.

Of course the fact is that 'micro generation' has been incentivised by government. This April generous 'feed in tariffs' were brought in for various types of small scale electricity generation of which hydro is one (the tariff for hydro is around 18p per kWh) They expect to spend £8B over the life of these schemes in subsidies on the basis that it kick starts a sustainable small scale electricity generation industry. Germany has done this for a decade to mixed reviews.

Cycleway provision as an alternative/complement to sustainable generation

For me this begged the question how these inefficient forms of investment compare to a modal shift from car to bicycle. Journeys by bicycle in the UK account for between 1 and 3% of all journeys. In Copenhagen it's 53% (and 40% of commuting journeys).

One litre of petrol contains 9.6kWh of energy. Let's say the car does 40mpg or round it to 10 miles per litre. So for a modest 6 mile commute between Marple and Stockport we use at least 6KWh. At 18p per KWh the government should really be subsidising the Marple cyclists £1-08 per day minimum. It might also be argued that it is better to save oil than replace fossil fuelled electricity generation.

Actually £4 a day is more realistic because the car probably averages 20mpg in heavy traffic and hydro only receives half the feed in tariff that photovoltaic solar panels do. PE or photoelectric generation is expected to be the main recipient of these tariffs.

Some people walk six miles a day to work and most cyclists I know commute far further than this. I cycle 22 miles per day so that's £15!


What this is really establishing in figures is the very high subsidies for sustainable energy and what a minor role cycling currently plays in energy saving. We need the political will to bridge that gap. Congestion, poor road maintenance and lack of provision suppresses cycle usage in the UK.

A metalled Cycleway Marple to Stockport

The Goyt valley has a designated cycle route which Sustrans intend to link to the Middlewood way via a new bridge off Vale Road. Last year their estimate was that work would start on the bridge this June. The new Toucan crossing at Otterspool is part of this route. I use this daily. Sustrans tend to be route designators rather than builders. They work very closely with local government . Their stall at the Chadkirk Fete last year was manned by to council employees. Am I being unfair? I expect left to the council and Sustrans the route will be no more than the existing rutted track that sprays our bikes with fine sand grind and reducing the service life of the components. That's ok for weekend recreational use but not for daily commuting.

Cycleway compared to micro generation

Using the Otterspool hydro as a yard stick how many Marple to Stockport weekday cyclists equate to the average power output of 20kW. Assuming 40mpg it is 112 cyclists.
If the surface was metalled I am sure 112 cyclists would be delighted to speed through this beautiful valley to and from work. I am going to hazard a guesstimate that 3 miles of metalling would cost £300,000. I will be shot down by the council over this- they are experts- after all the SEMMMS road estimate rose fourfold in four years!

Cycleway compared to the best sustainable generation

So an investment in a cycle way would certainly be no worse than 'micro generation'. The next hurdle is can it be justified against the best sustainable generation investment. I can estimate this from the government's £2,300 per person to achieve 34% reduction. It is fairly well established we each use 125kWh per day (the average American twice this) so 34% is 42.5kWh. The investment is therefore is £54 per kWh per day. and the equivalent number of cyclists is 925 -based on 40mpg. I reckon at a modest 12mph you can easily get a thousand cyclists through single file, in 30 minutes.

We are comparing our cycle way to an off shore wind farm to justify the investment but there are less tangible and quantifiable benefits that promote it way beyond some remote industrial installation. The investment is local, it involves communities, it is a meeting place, it is a green conduit through a diverse natural world, it is a civilised alternative to the race to the bottom of an oil barrel, it empowers the young, and works away the aches and pains of their grandparents, it simply works at every level.

A thousand cyclists sounds a lot but it probably is still considerably less than 40% of the commuters on this route. I am therefore proposing 'negative congestion charging'. That is paying cyclist to use the route. It has the same effect because at these levels of modal shift the Marple Road becomes less congested. A monitoring station at each end would identify a personal transponder, and credit a valid journey. The technology is potentially quite cheap and in fact many amateur running and cycling events now automatically monitor progress around the course even using disposable wireless transponders.