Gosport – the forgotten bicycling borough

Which local authority enjoys a higher bicycle use – according at least to the recent DfT analysis of travel trends by borough – than Bristol or Hackney, but you have never heard of it?

See here:

Local Authority		5 x per week	Rank	3 x per week	Rank
Cambridge		37	1	43	1
City of London		18	2	29	2
Isles of Scilly		17	3	21	3
Oxford		12	4	17	4
York		10	5	15	5
Norwich		9	6=	11	7=
Bristol, City of		9	6=	10	12
Gosport		8	8=	15	6
Hackney		8	8=	11	7=
Lambeth		7	10	10	13

On the DfT’s highest-frequency statistic of percentage of sample cycling 5+  times per week Gosport, near Portsmouth on the Hampshire coast, ranks 8^th equal with Hackney and just behind Bristol.  If you broaden the sample out and include 3+ per week – I wouldn’t pretend the lower frequencies in the analysis mean anything – Gosport ranks above both.

I’m not sure this celebrated status is widely recognised,  in fact I doubt that even the burghers of Gosport have noticed yet.   Certainly we hear plenty about Cambridge, and not a little about Bristol and York, but I have never seen an article or blog post in the cycling media about Gosport.  All I have found in my researches are these articles in the Portsmouth Evening News from 2004 and 2007.

So, what does Gosport have which makes it a bicycling borough on this scale?

Unlike Cambridge, Oxford or York, Gosport does not have a large student population, in fact beyond school age it has no student population at all.

Unlike Bristol, Gosport has never enjoyed the kind of ring-fenced funding that comes with Cycling Town status.

It does however share one particular characteristic with Oxford, Cambridge, York and Norwich:  it is flat.

Other geographic al factors are that the borough is fairly compact, about three miles from side to side and  it has a typical south-coast climate – mild and dry.

There is a key historical factor in the development of a cycling culture here too.  Gosport is in essence a Naval town.  A short foot-ferry-ride across the harbour mouth from Portsmouth, it has long had connections with the Royal Navy, largely now defunct, including the principal submarine base at HMS Dolphin, the engineering schools at HMS Daedalus and HMS Sultan, the (nuclear) ammunitions stores at HMS Frater, the helicopter repair facility at Fleetlands, dock facilities at Priddy’s Hard, small-arms practice ranges at Browndown, the naval hospital at Haslar, and a huge housing estate at Rowner for families of Jack Tars away at sea on Her Majesty’s ships.  Many of these establishments are conservation sites or listed buildings, so cannot be adapted to accommodate the car.  Back in the day, they employed large workforces which initially would not have known what a car was, then couldn’t afford one, and finally couldn’t have found anywhere to park one.  So, they  relied on the bicycle, and to some extent still do to this day.  The old establishments are long gone due to forces reductions, but at one time you could be treated to the awesome sight of the end of  the shift, when hordes of dockers would perform what resembled a Le Mans Start through the turnstiles to the bike sheds and then take off, in a peloton resembling Tour de France squared, in the direction of home.

Many others worked in the dockyards in Portsmouth.  A quick look at the map will show you that Portsmouth is little more than walking distance away if you take the harbour ferry, up to 15 miles if you drive around the harbour.

Finally, there are man-made factors.  Another look at the map will show you that Gosport is surrounded on three sides by water – the Solent and Portsmouth Harbour.  Access to the rest of the UK is constricted to a single quadrant, to the north-west, and all traffic has to enter or leave through that bottleneck.  In practical terms, there are just three roads out, one towards Southampton and the other two towards Fareham, which has its own constricting features.  Gosport is apparently the largest town in the country not to have its own railway station.

The traditional industries associated with the Royal Navy have been in decline for decades now, and the employment they once provided has gone too.  Practically no new industry has – until recently at least - been attracted to the area to replace what was lost.  Meanwhile some of the sites were handed over to house builders.  Local residents have long complained about this.  In the 80s, when Hampshire was under pressure to accept more housing and “Solent City” was being conceived, local residents complained loudly about how the infrastructure (mainly the sewers, for some reason) would not be able to cope with the increased population, and where were the jobs for these new residents to work at?  But, the local authorities’ planners were evidently unable, or unwilling, to attack the issue.

The result is that there is about 0.46 jobs for every working-age resident of the borough.  The choice is don’t work, or travel out of area to work.  Those local access routes are among the most congested suburban routes in the country.

On the positive side, the council has invested a great deal more in cycle infrastructure than most other local authorities.  Curiously, they don’t bang the drum about it, perhaps because they feel embarrassed about the conditions which incentivised them to do so. 

A look at their own cycle routes map will show that they have a fairly extensive network of road-side separated cycle paths – shared use in the main, but also mainly a decent width and in low pedestrian footfall areas.   I don’t know Bristol, or York, but my recollection of Oxford and Cambridge is that they are less well served.  (Before anyone is tempted to compare Gosport with Assen however, please don’t –this is England, after all.)

How useful they actually are, is something I plan to cover in future posts.