Meaning of road closure signs?

[citoyen]

I recon they'll do one half of the roadway at a time.

Correct! I'm sure last time they did it they did the whole width of the road at once, but I'm probably misremembering.

They've already done the bit directly outside our house, so one way or another I will be able to negotiate my way round the works without needing to tread on wet tarmac when I'm back to commuting next week.

[Lightning Phil]

I rode through a road closed sign and came to a gap where a bridge should be. That was properly closed.

[Ham]

I rode through a road closed sign and came to a gap where a bridge should be. That was properly closed.

Surely that should be "Road properly open"?

[citoyen]

I rode through a road closed sign and came to a gap where a bridge should be. That was properly closed.

Try telling Evel Knievel that...

On a ride a couple of weeks ago, I came across a closure where the whole road had been wiped off the face of the earth - it had been dug up to make way for a hyperspace bypass new housing estate. Even if I could have got past the big metal fences, there was nothing but a big expanse of bare earth to ride on.

[Mr Larrington]

When riding across the Nether Regions once, we decided to divert into a handy village in search of coffee and sticky buns.  They'd dug up the whole main street, including the pavement, and left a Several of hundreds of yards of rather lovely, but hopeless for cycling, sand in its place.  I don't think there was a sign at all, but being staunch BRITONS we dragged our machines through anyway, and were duly rewarded with both coffee and sticky buns.

This was after we missed a sign and ended up having to lift our velos over the armco onto the fietspad before the road we found ourselves on turned into a motorway.  This sort of thing happens all the time when you let Mike Burrows navigate

[giropaul]

The Belgians and the Spanish, in my experience, often favour taking a road away to mend it.

[FifeingEejit]

I rode through a road closed sign and came to a gap where a bridge should be. That was properly closed.

Well, that beats climbing down from the road onto the exposed arch and then back up from it onto the other abutment.

I've been a cross a bridge that should have been closed to me, but the operators don't have a method of closing the walkway when there's someone threatening to jump.
That was um... interesting.

[Tim Hall]

I rode through a road closed sign and came to a gap where a bridge should be. That was properly closed.

Well, that beats climbing down from the road onto the exposed arch and then back up from it onto the other abutment.

I've been a cross a bridge that should have been closed to me, but the operators don't have a method of closing the walkway when there's someone threatening to jump.
That was um... interesting.

I was heading towards Godalming station once and chanced upon a road closure sign. Being on my bike I scoffed at it and roade past. A mile further down the road I encountered the reason - Orange Army working on the level crossing. No I wasn't allowed to walk across but it would have been pointless anyway as the line was closed so no trains.

[Cudzoziemiec]

A few years ago when there were redoubling the line between Kemble and Swindon, I wanted to use the crossing at Minety, a village just south of Kemble. During the redoubling, the crossing was being modernised from manual to remote (I think, though perhaps it's automatic) operation and in fact at the moment I arrived, the Orange Army were hauling some heavy cables or something across the track. I was expecting to have to wait and probably walk across but no, they were so keen to let me ride across that one of them ran ahead of me to open the wicket gate!

[drossall]

No entry "Except" is a newish concept, there is significant difference in meaning between a no entry sign and a no motor vehicles...

The whole problem seems to be sloppy thinking. To me, the two are entirely different.

No Entry has no bearing on whether vehicles are allowed or not in the road beyond the sign. It simply means that they (including bikes) are not allowed to go in by that way. The obvious examples are to prevent drivers from mistakenly going into car parks and one-way streets via the exits, but plainly vehicles are allowed in both of those.

Road closure signs suspend the right to go into the road at all. But whose rights? The right to use the road in the first place derives from being a citizen (or guest) in the country, and not from the vehicle that you are using at the time (there are restrictions of course on use of some vehicles, but that's not the point here). Roads are for pedestrians, horse traffic, cyclists, drivers and any other legitimate users that I may have missed. So what does a road closure mean? Almost never that pedestrians are excluded, excepting some examples above. Bikes? Not really clear. I agree that, in most cases, workmen tend to be accommodating if the cyclist is polite, but who knows what the legal position is because, prima facie, road closed ought to exclude pedestrians, so the order must have been made to do something more specific than close the road.

Flying motorbike signs reflect motor-vehicle exclusion orders, which are clearer. However, we are told, and in spite of driving tests and Highway Codes, not enough drivers understand them, so No Entry signs which, as above, mean something quite different, get used instead.

Our council got in a bit of a mess like this. They made a motor-vehicle exclusion order for the High Street, but it was talked about as "pedestrianisation", which it isn't of course. Seemingly, the council officers didn't understand their own order, and briefed their enforcement team and the police to enforce a non-existent ban on cycling. This is an issue when the place is full of coffee shops that attract a fair number of visiting cyclists, on top of a reasonable number of local utility riders.

[Cudzoziemiec]

No Entry has no bearing on whether vehicles are allowed or not in the road beyond the sign. It simply means that they (including bikes) are not allowed to go in by that way. The obvious examples are to prevent drivers from mistakenly going into car parks and one-way streets via the exits, but plainly vehicles are allowed in both of those.

A few years ago here they wanted to make several side streets off Whiteladies Road, a busy road on a bit of a hill, one way away from the main road. The intention was to stop people doing risky turns onto the busy, steep road. Residents of the affected streets pointed out this would force them to drive through a network of back streets in order to get anywhere by car, which wasn't really what anyone wanted. So a compromise was reached of installing No Entry signs at strategic points so that you could still drive in both directions from those streets but not into them. The point being literally a point (okay, a line) on which No Entry acted like a one-way valve with two-way traffic both sides of the line.

[drossall]

We have those too - they sometimes occur in conjunction with cycle exclusions of course. Which really just emphasises the point that they are quite different in meaning from road closure signs.

[cygnet]

Last weekend we rode past about 15 in a row from Winchelsea Beach towards Battery Hill. It was fine, but could have been chaos if all the beach drivers had decided to go that way.

[quixoticgeek]

The Belgians and the Spanish, in my experience, often favour taking a road away to mend it.

On my way to Hell, it was near dusk, and I cycled past a sign, in Norwegian, in the middle of the road.

As I'm riding along I come to a bit where they seem to have removed the top layer of tarmac for about 3-4m. I carefully step down, ride across, and lift by bike up.

A few hundred meters further on. Same again. This happens 3 more times.

Then after a few hundred meters I find they've taken the next layer as well, so it's a good 150-200mm missing. Fair enough, I get off, carry the bike down, across and back up. Get back on. Again, 2 more times, this happens.

Then a few hundred meters further on, i find they've removed even more, quite a lot more, several tons more. Oh, and parked a Cat in the hole...



So, turns out the sign I went past meant "road closed". The diversion to go round it was 88km... and involves a 700+m ascent...

I climbed over the armco, down the embankment  through the tracks the cat had made, and up the ramp they had made so the cat could get into the hole. Said hello (In my finest English accent), to the very confused builders, and got back on my bike. Several hundred meters further on, I found the same thing, but without the cat in it. After my little climbing adventure, I slowly made my way between the tarmacing vehicles, saying hello to the workmen (again playing the confused lost tourist), before getting into clear road. Repeat the several sections of 150mm deep, then just the top layer, then eventually getting beyond the road works, and onto clear road...

Was an interesting experience. I bivvi'd down for the night just beyond the works, thinking that there was a gas station in 4km, and I could get up and go there for breakfast. It was -4°C that night, and my 2°C sleeping bag wasn't quite upto it. Amazing view, full on million star job, but cold. Very cold. When the sun rose I rode up an empty road (turns out noone was coming down here cos of the road works), for 40km to the nearest gas station, as the one 4km away was closed down. 40km sub zero fasted rides are... interesting.

Amazing  scenery tho...

J

PS This is the diversion for those curious: https://goo.gl/maps/wHnPD3kQjrMUWFWa7

[Cudzoziemiec]

Was an interesting experience. I bivvi'd down for the night just beyond the works, thinking that there was a gas station in 4km, and I could get up and go there for breakfast. It was -4°C that night, and my 2°C sleeping bag wasn't quite upto it. Amazing view, full on million star job, but cold. Very cold. When the sun rose I rode up an empty road (turns out noone was coming down here cos of the road works), for 40km to the nearest gas station, as the one 4km away was closed down. 40km sub zero fasted rides are... interesting.

For a second I thought this was going to be a case of "kilometres" and "Norwegian kilometres". 

[Kim]

For a second I thought this was going to be a case of "kilometres" and "Norwegian kilometres". 

The difference, presumably, being whether or not you use the tunnel.

[Redlight]

The new gates in Lewisham have the "no cars" sign (black car in red circle) because they allow motorbikes and buses, as well as cycles through.

Aha.  That explains why white (and other coloured) vans seem to be driving through so many of them regardless 

[citoyen]

For a second I thought this was going to be a case of "kilometres" and "Norwegian kilometres". 

The difference, presumably, being whether or not you use the tunnel.

In an early issue of Cyclist, they did a Big Ride in Norway and found that the entrance to one of the tunnels on their route was blocked by a landslide. Instead of going the very, very long way round, they decided to climb over the landslide and use the tunnel anyway.

[quixoticgeek]

In an early issue of Cyclist, they did a Big Ride in Norway and found that the entrance to one of the tunnels on their route was blocked by a landslide. Instead of going the very, very long way round, they decided to climb over the landslide and use the tunnel anyway.

Norwegians have some crazy ideas about cyclists and tunnels. On one tour I've been planning, there's a 2km tunnel that doesn't allow bikes. To go round is 600km.

I'm pondering if there's another option, maybe take a taxi through? maybe just ignore the sign... maybe a boat... maybe do it in winter when the fjord is frozen, and just ride round it that way...

J

[grams]

Is that very near the North Cape? I went to a talk by someone and their solution was to ride through at 3 am.

[quixoticgeek]

Is that very near the North Cape? I went to a talk by someone and their solution was to ride through at 3 am.

200km as the crow flies... so by Norwegian standards, right next door...

J

[salar55]

Tunnels in Norway that are closed to cyclists usually have a free bus. No problem with a loaded up tandem getting on. 😄

[quixoticgeek]

Tunnels in Norway that are closed to cyclists usually have a free bus. No problem with a loaded up tandem getting on. 😄

Not year round they don't...

J

[CrazyEnglishTriathlete]

The A76 was "closed" on the Border Raid 600 last year.  Although actually what this meant was you got to cycle on 10km of traffic free tarmac with a few cone-chicanes.  Any diversion would have been substantial as the nearest N-S road in the borders is the old A74 service road about 20km to the east.  They had a couple of construction vehicles parked at each end but the drivers were asleep.  I got to the far end, where I knew there was a side route and wasn't sure if the road would genuinely be closed, so tapped on the window of the construction vehicle to ask if it was OK to continue and nearly gave the occupant a heart attack. 

[Ben T]

Came across a road closure yesterday and did the usual thing of going up to it to see if there was a path round the roadworks to the side.
Once I got near it, an automatic speaker started playing, which was very reminiscent of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk9WcXbkjaI&feature=youtu.be&t=46

(I presume it was to deter against local neds nicking the diggers, but sounded just like that )