Cycling Cities UK | Episode 3 | Newport

I’m in Wales for the third episode of cycling cities UK. How exciting!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go back and watch episode 0 ‘prologue’, where I give an explanation of the scoring system and what on earth I’m up to.

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As promised, I’m in a mysterious and far far away land. That’s right, Wales. Okay, not that far far away, but I’m still thrilled to be here in Newport. It’s a medium-sized city in the south of Wales and was once a regional industrial powerhouse. These days, it’s more famous for the awesome Kalleon Roman ruins. As usual, I’ll be having a good mooch around to test its cycle infrastructure to the ragged edge and ranking it based on my six blessed criteria: cycle lane coverage, cycle lane quality, flatness, road friendliness, amenities, and local opinion. Stick around to see where Newport is placed on the tier list. The first thing I did upon arriving in Newport was do a couple of loops in and around the central shopping area. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, rather just seeing where the road took me. And I do mean road, unfortunately, as a couple of hundred meters from the train station, there were no cycle paths to be seen. These central main roads are a mixed bag. At times they are safely navigable by bike, although obviously a dedicated bike lane would be preferable, but at other times they can be very off-putting indeed. One example is this junction here where I chose to retreat to the safety of the pavement rather than tackle the perceived peril. I rejoined the road once I realized it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But still, multi-lane traffic with no option for cyclists is frankly shameful. Other than some brief respite in the form of bus lanes, you’re on your own. This was a 20 here. Slightly scary. From here, I headed northwest to check out some of the residential areas of Newport. The first thing that struck me was just how quiet the roads tended to be. This was filmed on a Saturday afternoon at a time which every other city I visited would be surely rammed to the gills. But in the suburbs of Newport, there was more breathing room. Speaking of breathing, you’re going to be doing a bloody lot of it around here thanks to the numerous ferocious hills. Just look at how relentless they are. Heat. Heat. Many of the residential areas here are perched on an unforgiving slope, meaning a trip into the center is unavoidable graft. While it’s true that ebikes do make it easier, the price tag means many people don’t even consider one. Therefore, the hills of Newport are an unfortunate burden for its cycle infrastructure to bear. So, it’s off to a bad start. But as we crest this hill and gently descend the other side, we come to the first bit of calf recycling infrastructure that’s praiseworthy. It’s a simple shared space path through a park, so it doesn’t butter many past snips, but it seems like a nice park and there’s plenty of space to ride. up. This is a shared space, but uh got to say it’s quite a nice one. A wide path, not too busy, and uh quite a nice little route. It’s only a kilometer long, but does connect nicely to the start of the Sahi Valley Walk, which gives it a boost for sure. Once you get to the Sahi Valley Walk, it’s wider and smoother and the view over the valley is great with the sunshine and yellow gor flowers offering some valuable rest bite from the bustle of Newport city center. Together, these two paths form a 2.5 km very nearly car-free route, but its boomerang-like shape and unusual location give me doubt that it offers a huge amount of utility for the city’s cyclists other than a short leisurely ride. Exploring the southwestern reaches of the city, I came across a few scraps of cycle infrastructure. Some possible, some straight bad, but sadly nothing that was intuitive or well connected. Thank you. This underpass is the highlight, allowing you to avoid a busy roundabout. But it soon gives way to a B-road which after a while sprouts a shared space pavement. Most of it looked wide enough to have a proper bike lane. A possible upgrade perhaps. At the end of this pavement section, I spotted something that piqued my interest. Like much of Wales now, Newport has a 20 mph speed limit for many of its residential roads. This is excellent for cyclists, of course, and road safety more generally. However, as you can see from the ceaseless rage of this little flashy sign, seemingly no one obeys it. Cycling around the city, it was frustrating to see how few people respect this. So, there’s nothing me or the sign can do other than glare from the side of the road. A relatively inoffensive patchwork of shared space paths takes us to the next big talking point, the A48 path. This is a well over 5k stretch of cycle path. It’s more shed space, yes, granted, but it’s more than wide enough for most of its length. Great on paper, but here’s the problem. It’s bloody horrible. It’s subjective, I know, but having cars rocket past at 50 mph with no barrier is something I reckon puts off a lot of cyclists. Any separation at all would go a long way here. Even if it doesn’t prevent pulverization, the added confidence would surely encourage usage. In spite of its impressive length, the A48 path skirts around the edge of the city and favors industrial areas. It also doesn’t have many places to join on or turn off, and the ones that are there are mostly roundabouts, so you have to dart out between bouts of traffic. Oh god, having to dart across those roundabout entrances and exits are so not fun. They can surely do better. Just a crossing would be nice. So this path has lots going against it, but I’d say by the sheer length it does still retain some utility. Along the banks of the river ask lives something rather intriguing. Not Hobbits, sadly. No, it’s another bike path, but one of the better ones in Newport, I reckon. It’s more shed space, I’m afraid. But it’s almost entirely hidden away from traffic and has a nice view along the river, too. There’s not much else to say about it other than it provides a nice option to cycle right through the center. It goes along both sides of the river and has two crossings, making a loop. Slowing down for pedestrians is common place, but it’s not so busy to be unusable. Good stuff. Heading northwards from the center, you can stay away from traffic for a while. Albeit on some remarkably odd bits of infrastructure. Much of it forces you to navigate tight, winding shared space paths. You have to go very slow. The jewel in this bizarre crown is this 20 m stretch of beautiful two-way bike path that did nothing other than slightly lengthen my journey. This might be the only fully segregated bit of bike path in the city. I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry. On the bright side, it does take us towards the Malpass Canal, which offers even more shared space path. This is possibly the best option in Newport for a leisurely cycle. With a relatively wide toe path that meanders under trees and birds, it’s a genuinely nice ride. useful too as it provides a carfree connection to the center for the cyclists of the suburb of Malpass. Along the way here, I got chatting to a friendly local cyclist and as usual asked him his opinion on cycling in Newport. Hey. Okay. So, I’m here in today in Newport with Mika. He lives here. Do you cycle a lot around Newport Mik? Yeah, I know a bit around Newport is nice. This this track is nice. This track and we’re on the canal up to where does it go to? I don’t know exactly, but it’s running very close to my house, so every day I drink your Oh, so you use this every day? Yeah. So, that’s a nice bit of No, no, it’s it’s nice. You have to be attention to the squirrel and the ducks or something and this, but it’s fine. Is there a a piece of infrastructure in the city that you would say is like really good or is there anything which is which I think I think uh I spent last 12 year in London. So considering London is is much better London and the culture about the bike is not really strong like in London. Yeah. But I think now the people they starting to considerate the bike because it’s a good uh uh system to relax yourself, improve your So you’ve seen some so you’ve seen some improvements in infrastructure, new paths being put in. Yeah. Yeah. So there any bits of infrastructure in Newport which you would say or any bits of the the city which are the worst for cycling like is there a particular bit which is really horrible? Yeah. Yeah. It’s a problem. There are a lot of problem when you cycle in the in the middle of the town because you have a piece of glass or something like this. So it’s easy that you flat your tire or something like this. Yeah. The people they don’t respect a lot this kind of things. So usually every week I have to change my tire. Yeah. We say flat with the glass is normal. Also, there are a few people, you know, teenage or something like this with this electric bike that are illegal electric motor bike without any I’ve seen. I’ve had a couple of them. Yeah. But it’s dangerous because they run here and they don’t have any authorization. There is no any authority that check about this. Okay. Okay. One one last question then. If you had to rank Newport’s cycling infrastructure on a score from 0 to five, okay, what would what would you give it from from 0 to five? From zero to five, three and a half. Three and a half. Oh, that’s not that bad. Okay. Yeah. But you know, three and a half. Three maybe. But the question is the the park you have a problem with to park the bike. I mean there is no culture about the the you know not very good at there are there are three space for to park your bike in the the mid town how so this is a problem for sure okay thank you very much thank you for saying to me see you have a good one so it’s time to add together all the parts of this peculiar equation take a look at the result and have a good think about what I’m doing with my spare time at the very least We’ll have the pleasure of seeing where Newport ends up on the tier list. Cycle end coverage is up first. Sadly, much of Newport is a bit of a desert in terms of cycling infrastructure, including large swaves of the larger residential areas. The only exceptions to this do kind of link up with each other to form this upside down T-shape. And this does include the city center, which is good, but most of the rest of it skirts the edge of the city. All things considered, I’ll give Newport a 3 out of 10 for coverage. The quality of these lanes leaves a lot to be desired, too. The highlight is probably the Sahi Valley Walk with its nice views and wide shared space path. Apart from this, the shared space paths are narrow, horrible to use, or both. So, I’ll have to give an unfortunate 2 and 1/2 out of 10. There’s not too much to say about the flatness of Newport, and that’s because it’s not very flat. If you stay close to the river, you’ll be fine. But venturing away from it results in not but sweat and tears, and I’m sure it does put off a lot of locals from getting on the saddle. This means that Newport has to get only one point out of five for its topographical crimes. The residential roads here seem to be nice and quiet and has a good coverage of 20 mph zones, which hopefully more people abide by with time. However, there’s a chunk of multi-lane traffic to deal with, as well as a few nasty junctions. On balance, I think it’s pretty typical for the UK. Two and a half out of five for road friendliness. The amenities are lacking, too. There are six bike shops here, which is all right, and it gives us around 27,000 people per bike shop, but elsewhere, it’s disappointing with sparse bike parking outside of the center and no public hire scheme or service stations to speak of. So, I’ll give Newport one and a half points for its amenities. Finally, Michel gave Newport a fair three points out of five. Clearly, he’s having a fairly decent time cycling here, although he is concerned about the lack of cycling culture resulting in some annoyances. Thanks for stopping by and sharing your experience with me. So, the results are in and with 13 and 12 points, Newport is our first entry into Dtier. To be honest, I’m not really surprised that I saw barely any of the cyclists here. On the whole, it’s a bit of a rubbish city for cycling, but I’ve got to add that I think it could be improved very easily. Adding some parking and segregated bike paths to connect the residential areas would go a really long way. While it’s always going to be really hilly, I reckon se is definitely achievable. Hopefully, I’ll return to see some improvements sometime, but not before the next episode of Cycling Cities UK in 2 weeks time. I’ll be back in England in a place where you might spot a dodo. Let’s hope cycling isn’t completely extinct