We’re on the road to somewhere – getting things fixed

One of our members, Chris Elliott, writes …

Everyone who cycles comes across things they want fixed on the road. Often, they are bits of road surface that wouldn’t bother motorists, either because they don’t feel them because of their suspension, or because they are on a part of the road where they tend to affect cyclists more. So, what can you do about it? (Other than waiting for the whole stretch of road to be resurfaced.) The simple answer is that you report it to the Council. There are two ways. You can either use the council’s own web site, or do it via an app.

To report it via the web site, go to: https://www.redbridge.gov.uk/

Click on the ‘Report It’ button: https://www.redbridge.gov.uk/report-it/

From the options menu, click on ‘Streets and Highways’. (You will also see a button for reporting it via the Love Clean Streets app, but we’ll come back to that.)

The page you get to has three boxes, each with a menu of choices. The one you want will probably be ‘Problem on the road’. You can only choose from the given options, and in most cases that will probably be ‘Pothole’. But that isn’t ideal if what you want to report doesn’t really fit that category – for example, a badly filled trench acting like an unofficial and really harsh speed hump.

If you select ‘Pothole’, you’ll then go to a page where you can locate the problem by putting in an address, letting the site automatically detect your location, or marking the location on a map. Once you’ve done this, you can provide additional information on the issue, for example the size and depth of the pothole. You can also upload pictures. Then you fill in your details and submit the report. I’ve used this system to get a road surface problem fixed and it worked, although it did feel like I was having to take something designed to report specific issues, and make it do something it wasn’t designed to do. So, let’s look at the alternative.

If you go back to the ‘Report It’ page, at the bottom right of the options you’ll see a box with ‘Report it on the Love Clean Streets app’. Redbridge are one of only a handful of London councils that don’t use the app FixMyStreet (https://www.fixmystreet.com/). Why? No idea. But it seems that recently Redbridge has adopted lovecleanstreets: https://lovecleanstreets.info/.

If you select this option, you’ll go to a screen where you can download the app, set Redbridge as the home authority, then take a photo, pick the category it comes under, and submit the report. There’s more about how it works on https://lovecleanstreets.info/how-it-works. I haven’t tried it myself yet, and it is designed for on-the-spot reporting, so isn’t ideal for cycling issues unless you’re prepared to stop and snap or go back later.

Whichever option you choose, my advice would be to use any opportunity to emphasise why what you are reporting is a particular problem for cyclists. A pothole may seem insignificant to a motorist, but the line you need to take as a cyclist may mean you hit it every time you ride that stretch of road.

Now, pick your biggest problem and give Redbridge the opportunity to fix it for you!

London Cycle Routes

A little while ago we came across this YouTube channel. It’s informative and entertaining.

If you look at an A to B journey you are familiar with, we bet you will end up thinking I wouldn’t have gone that way, I would have gone down Smith Street instead of Jones Road, or that’s a way I hadn’t thought about – or both.

If you want to go from A to B, are wondering how to do it and Mr. London Cycle Routes has done it, then his route is a good place to start.

Claybury Park

A perfect 0: Accessibility Inclusion

Here’s a picture of the restored barriers at the entrances to Claybury Park. The chance to get to the Sheffield stands on the far side would be a fine thing …

And here’s the list of the types of bicycle that, now, can and cannot get through the park gates. Note that, in a quest for full exclusivity, whilst pretending otherwise, only standard bikes without panniers can pass through – if you’ve got panniers on your road bike, you’re going to need to take them off..

As exclusive as it gets.

In a recent email we have seen, a member of staff from Vision, the lot who run the park on behalf of Redbridge Culture and Leisure, wrote that part of the gates accept a RADAR key. If only that solved the problem: many of the riders now prevented from entering the Park – my wife and I on our tandem, parents with tag-alongs, hipsters with their dogs in a buggy, don’t qualify for a RADAR key.

We think its time for Redbridge Council to remove the track through the Park from its map of cycle routes.

We are waiting for the Council’s response to our Freedom of Information Request and we’ll see where we go from there.

Tidy work though …