Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

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Bicycler
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by Bicycler »

Jon Lucas wrote: I cannot understand how what is effectively a public road (even if privately owned, managed and financed) can be allowed to stay open without planning permission.

Two very different perspectives here. You view a road as a physical entity which is constructed. When new ones are planned they go through a long consultation process. One cannot be built without permission. That is the modern experience of creating motor roads.

Most highways however were never planned as such. They merely evolved through long custom or landowners' acquiescence. At the most basic level a highway is just a right of passage and our legal system still largely views highways as rights rather than things. As each landowner can use his land as he wishes, he is free to allow or charge others to use it. If he can choose to allow or charge individuals he can choose to allow or charge the public at large. The state would need a good reason to interfere with an individual's rights over his own land.
reohn2
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by reohn2 »

I've been following this thread and TBH 'storm in a tea cup' doesn't begin to describe it.
As I see it the council need to work on a road and as such have put a lllooonnnggggg and unavoidable diversion in place.
I chap owns some land,he and his mate decide to put in a 'short cut' road across it,but they and any potential customers don't have time to wait for planning permission so build it anyway and and apply retrospectively.
The council realise the road is providing a service and heading off any potential flak heading their way for the delays/diversion so let thing slip a little,a slight bending of the rules to suit everyone involved if you will.
Everyone's happy.
What's the problem?
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Si
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by Si »

What's the problem?


It could be a combination of the new road not having been cleared on safety grounds, possibly not having the correct insurance in place, possible environmental impacts, possible impacts on the area's archaeology, even a back door way of getting around the change of use procedures for the land, etc etc Not to mention the possibility of it setting a precedent (legal or political) for similar schemes elsewhere, and making it easier for them to ignore planning permissions.

I'm not saying that this isn't a great benefit to all of those people who would have to make a much longer journey, or that there is anything wrong with a business man recognising an opportunity and trying to make a bit of money. However, after one has chopped away all of the red tape there are good underlying reasons why one has to go through various procedures in order to open a private toll road.....if he had gone through all of these and then opened it then fine.
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mjr
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by mjr »

As far as concerns cycling, the biggest problems are:
  • yet another new road that cyclists are not allowed upon - but in this case, the council's gravel track that motors aren't allowed on makes it less problematic as far as I can tell;
  • building this new road enables people who might otherwise have switched to cycling to keep on driving, plus building new roads enables more motor journeys http://journalistsresource.org/studies/ ... -s-cities/ - but at least this is a toll road, which is sort-of congestion charging.
So both the cycling-related problems have mitigating factors, for now.
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

It's only a 10 mile diversion - not *that* long.
At £2 a trip that's 20p per saved mile, so not that much of a benefit economically.

The issue is the bypassing of the provisions in place to protect our land, our history, our wildlife. I, quite rightly, can't just build a random structure on my land without permission.

This is a structure which needed proper work, approach the council and ask for an emergency planning meeting for the road - the planning could continue whilst the meeting went on (the council should be able to call an exceptional meeting fairly quickly) allowing minimal delay and a properly executed temporary bypass.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
reohn2
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by reohn2 »

Si wrote:
What's the problem?


It could be a combination of the new road not having been cleared on safety grounds, possibly not having the correct insurance in place, possible environmental impacts, possible impacts on the area's archaeology, even a back door way of getting around the change of use procedures for the land, etc etc Not to mention the possibility of it setting a precedent (legal or political) for similar schemes elsewhere, and making it easier for them to ignore planning permissions.

I'm not saying that this isn't a great benefit to all of those people who would have to make a much longer journey, or that there is anything wrong with a business man recognising an opportunity and trying to make a bit of money. However, after one has chopped away all of the red tape there are good underlying reasons why one has to go through various procedures in order to open a private toll road.....if he had gone through all of these and then opened it then fine.


If someone were to construct such a road with a view to it being permanent then I'd agree with all your points,but it's temporary,I think all parties recognise that fact.
When the planning committee sits it could put in force conditions to restore the land to previous state and the owners may find it wasn't such a good idea after all,that's if they do make any initial profit from sales.
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Si
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by Si »

If someone were to construct such a road with a view to it being permanent then I'd agree with all your points,but it's temporary,I think all parties recognise that fact.


the problem is that the road might be temporary, but the damage may be permanent. For instance, if construction of that road has destroyed archaeology then abandoning the road will not put that archaeology back.
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

Si wrote:
If someone were to construct such a road with a view to it being permanent then I'd agree with all your points,but it's temporary,I think all parties recognise that fact.


the problem is that the road might be temporary, but the damage may be permanent. For instance, if construction of that road has destroyed archaeology then abandoning the road will not put that archaeology back.

Exactly - that's why planning permission should be prohibitively expensive if applied for retrospectively.

There is no excuse for not applying for planning permission, it's not as if it's hard to work out when it is needed...

There maybe is a need for a mechanism to call "emergency" planning meetings - public attendance being the mechanism for complaints to be raised.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
reohn2
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by reohn2 »

[XAP]Bob wrote:It's only a 10 mile diversion - not *that* long.
At £2 a trip that's 20p per saved mile, so not that much of a benefit economically.

You forget this is a rich country where time is more precious(to most people)than money.

The issue is the bypassing of the provisions in place to protect our land, our history, our wildlife. I, quite rightly, can't just build a random structure on my land without permission.

If at the planning meeting the council decide that the land must be restored to original by next spring no one will know it ever existed.
BTW with regard to random structures and blots on the landscape etc,I find golf courses a complete blot,not to mention some farmyards I pass,industrial estates can be disgusting.But all within the law.


This is a structure which needed proper work, approach the council and ask for an emergency planning meeting for the road - the planning could continue whilst the meeting went on (the council should be able to call an exceptional meeting fairly quickly) allowing minimal delay and a properly executed temporary bypass.

Consider this,if they'd waited a month for the council to decide it wouldn't have been worth it financially,also IMHO if the site had been say a SSSI or as Si says archaeological,etc they'd have been stopped PDQ.
IMO we're a can't do society when things benefit everyone and a can do when things benefit no one.
As I said,it's a storm in a very small teacup and come Spring no one will ever know the was a 365m road there.
Last edited by reohn2 on 8 Aug 2014, 10:00am, edited 1 time in total.
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reohn2
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by reohn2 »

Si wrote:
If someone were to construct such a road with a view to it being permanent then I'd agree with all your points,but it's temporary,I think all parties recognise that fact.


the problem is that the road might be temporary, but the damage may be permanent. For instance, if construction of that road has destroyed archaeology then abandoning the road will not put that archaeology back.


I take your point but there are archaeological sites being destroyed without anyone ever knowing it,if there was evidence of such I'd agree but (and I sympathise with you) society can't check for archaeological evidence every time a spade is put in the ground.
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Edwards
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by Edwards »

I thought that the problem was about cyclists not being welcome, as in the title.

Why has it now moved to the fact that there may or may not be old relics in the field.

Do farmers need planning permission to put farm tracks across fields they own?
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reohn2
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by reohn2 »

Edwards wrote:I thought that the problem was about cyclists not being welcome, as in the title.

Which turned out that cyclists and pedestrians were well catered for by the council at the site of the original worksite.

Why has it now moved to the fact that there may or may not be old relics in the field.

It could be important if there were any.

:twisted: Do farmers need planning permission to put farm tracks across fields they own?

Exactly!
There's more ecological and archaeological damage done to the land by farming than almost anything else,but we need cheap food so we can throw a third of it away :wink:
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mjr
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by mjr »

[XAP]Bob wrote:There maybe is a need for a mechanism to call "emergency" planning meetings - public attendance being the mechanism for complaints to be raised.

One problem with that is that only one member of the public is allowed to speak against any application at most current planning authority planning committee meetings - but as a way around that, I've seen a parish council hold its planning committee meeting hearing the same application (which usually allows multiple public contributions) just before the planning authority one.

That should mean that the parish council response to the planning authority reflects the public will... and I think the planning authority has to explain its reasons more fully if it disagrees with the parish council. I feel this is actually a pretty useful function of parish councils.
reohn2 wrote:If at the planning meeting the council decide that the land must be restored to original by next spring no one will know it ever existed

Is such a condition possible? Is it feasible or will the operator just cease trading and leave the council to clean up and consider an expensive legal process to recover the costs?
Edwards wrote:Do farmers need planning permission to put farm tracks across fields they own?

No, but farmers can do all sorts of things without planning permission, as long as it's restricted to agricultural use, although some can be challenged afterwards if problematic. They can't open farm tracks as public roads without seeking permissions/agreements, can they?
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Bicycler
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by Bicycler »

mjr wrote:They can't open farm tracks as public roads without seeking permissions/agreements, can they?

As I said above, I think they can. The right to dedicate a highway across your land is ancient. What you can't do is make the council responsible for maintaining it. I suspect that the planning permission is required for the change to commercial land use (a toll road) and any physical works to facilitate the passage of motors rather than for allowing a private road to be used by the public.

if the main road is a trunk road, then I think they do require permission before adding any new access to or from it. They cannot rely on the general right of landowners to access a highway adjacent to their land
Last edited by Bicycler on 8 Aug 2014, 11:16am, edited 3 times in total.
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[XAP]Bob
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Re: Private 'toll road' - cyclists not welcome.

Post by [XAP]Bob »

mjr wrote:
[XAP]Bob wrote:There maybe is a need for a mechanism to call "emergency" planning meetings - public attendance being the mechanism for complaints to be raised.

One problem with that is that only one member of the public is allowed to speak against any application at most current planning authority planning committee meetings - but as a way around that, I've seen a parish council hold its planning committee meeting hearing the same application (which usually allows multiple public contributions) just before the planning authority one.

That should mean that the parish council response to the planning authority reflects the public will... and I think the planning authority has to explain its reasons more fully if it disagrees with the parish council. I feel this is actually a pretty useful function of parish councils.

Hence the concept of an emergency meeting - allowing for actual public engagement, only one plan being discussed. Not a "normal" process.
This would of course cost the applicant more money, but then again it's only needed once in a blue moon.
A shortcut has to be a challenge, otherwise it would just be the way. No situation is so dire that panic cannot make it worse.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those can extrapolate from incomplete data.
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