Shared danger on the prom

A NUMBER of "inconvenient" facts are being ignored in order to manage the forceful realisation of this ill-considered shared space on the prom project '“ with several showing the underlying lack of consideration for pedestrians by cyclists, and by their "hobby-cycling/ motorist" backers.
By The Newsroom
Published 19th Mar 2009, 15:25 BST
Updated 8th Jun 2018, 00:50 BST

This is a poor and objectionable use of public money.

In the real world, this "sharing" of space by pedestrians and cyclists is selfish, unsafe, anti-social and bad in principle.

It constitutes a demonstration of intent, by both inference and example, which reveals contempt for the concept of "pedestrian refuge on the footway", where cyclists constitute a threat and for whom this is simply a convenient route.

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There are obvious reasons as to why there have been bylaws prohibiting such cycling (and note Monty Street's reference to the Gazette of 1925).

When I looked on Sunday, the promenade was so busy with people walking that there was not sensible room for even responsible cyclists.

Two features are of particular relevance in Worthing:

1) If ever there were sufficiently large numbers of cyclists using the promenade to reflect all the time, the effort, the expenditure of "public funds" and the changing of the law that will have been employed here '“ pedestrians i.e., "promenaders" would have formally to be banned on safety grounds.

2) Visitors to Worthing, who have been exposed to several years of prominently visible "no cycling" signs, would reasonably expect not to encounter cyclists on the promenade '“ and would be justified in their distress, alarm, objection, heart attacks, falling, etc., even if there were to be a series of new, and huge, "beware of cyclists" signs to replace the (burnt off and removed) present painted markings.

Kevin J O'Malley

Liverpool Gardens

Worthing

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