I would sooner contribute to a Jeremy Clarkson benevolent fund than vote for Connect2. Sustrans will kill road cycling in Britain as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. We will all have to use these crap and often dangerous cycle paths, and only them before long.

An excellent porject that will benefit so many people and improve cycling and cycling opportunities for all people not just those confident enough to cycle on roads.

Of course roads are for cycists but we need more cyclists of all types out there on their bikes.

I will be voting for one of the other projects.

Connect2 will not improve things for all types of cyclists. The cycle paths loved by Sustrans provide ammunition for the growing number of motorists who are calling for cyclists to be banned from all roads. When that happens I will give up cycling.

It is not just that cycle paths are tediously slow and inconvenient to use but also that they are dangerous. The belief that cycling is safer on them is an illusion. Recent research in Denmark has shown that cyclists using cycle paths have a higher accident rate than those using roads. Cycle paths in Britain tend to run parallel to a road but at roundabouts or any junction with a road a cyclist has no rights of way and is expected to get off, wait for a gap in the traffic and push their bike across both lanes of the road completely against the flow of traffic. This is a dangerous thing to do at any time but at rush hour periods or on busy roads it is ludicrously dangerous and more than cancels out any extra safety the cyclist has while riding between junctions. Most paths only go up one side of the road. If a cyclist is riding on the other side then in order to use the path they would have cross the road to get on it and cross again when the path comes to an end. No-one will ever convince me that in this situation it is safer to cross and use the path than to continue riding on the other side of the road. There a a design gem of a cycle path near where I live. This path runs at one side of a road for a while and then for no good reason switches to the other side, at a point where cars are usually doing 60+mph. So far three people in three separate incidents have been killed using this path. The path was constructed by Northumberland County and approved by Sustrans. Northumberland are now building another path a couple of miles away that has the same stupid design.

Cycle paths are not the way forward for cycling and Sustrans does not speak for or represent all cyclists.