Explore the Lake District without a gas-guzzler, visitors told

12:36pm Wednesday 19th September 2012 in News Photograph of the Author By Rachel Ryan

VISITORS to England’s largest national park are being enouraged to help protect its famous fells and lakes by using green forms of transport.

The GOLakes Travel programme is a four-year £6.9 million scheme which aims to improve travel infrastructure such as cycelways and more bus services and a low emission car hire network.

And on World Car Free Day on September 22, it is asking people to leave their gass guzzlers at the accomodation they are staying at and hop on a bus or a bike instead.

Councillor Tim Knowles, Transport and Environment portfolio holder for Cumbria County Council, said: “The Lake District is a very special place for very many people and we want to make sure it stays that way in the future.”

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Comments(13)

life cycle too says...
2:00pm Wed 19 Sep 12

Somebody needs to stand behind one of those buses and breathe in the fumes and say whether they are "Low Emission" or not!

And WHERE does their electric come from for the electric cars?

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KendalLad says...
5:28pm Wed 19 Sep 12

I'm sure £6.9m would be better spent improving the existing road network and parking facilities. These organisations need to be careful to encourage people into the lakes without discouraging existing tourists who don't buy into this green way of thinking. One should be careful not to bite the hand that feeds it. Tourism is a vital part of our economy in this area and all.schemes should be carefully considered prior to implementation.

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Milkbutnosugarplease says...
11:52am Thu 20 Sep 12

I go camping in the Lakes and cart my gear to the campsite by car. If it rains constantly, I could sleep in it as a last resort. Yes, the roads are too busy but if you look at rail fares, taxi costs and bus timetables, you will see why people use cars. Having paid the annual fixed costs such as insurance, tax etc, it seems mad to leave the car at home and pay new expenses for alternative transport.

If you look where visitors come from and what they bring with them, this cosy local scheme begins to seem out of touch.

PS. Could the railway routes be re-opened? Coniston Station was a beautiful place, as I see in old photos.

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life cycle too says...
12:15pm Thu 20 Sep 12

Coniston Station is now a housing estate, and the stone from the platform is in a wall at the boating centre - much of the track course has been built on or over too.

Even on the roads, too much is over hung with trees and bushes that don't get cut back - and forces cyclists further out into the road!

I'm all for electric cars... IF they are charged up from a wind turbine!

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Moonbase says...
6:13pm Thu 20 Sep 12

£6.9 million......Worlds gone mad.
Fat cats licking their lips again.
Is this an April Fool?

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Ladyxxmacbeth says...
8:19am Fri 21 Sep 12

I get annoyed with these sorts of schemes. I wanted to hire some bikes about a months ago for me, husband and kids, and it was going to cost £72. That is ridiculous! In the end we hired a rowing boat for £15. If they want people to cycle and ride on buses and trains they need to make it cheaper than driving.

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life cycle too says...
9:16am Fri 21 Sep 12

Ladyxxmacbeth, you have inadvertently highlighted a flaw in all these public transport and green schemes.

The more people have to travel together, the dearer it gets - and the car becomes cheaper with a fixed cost A to B.

My family and a friend with her children walked to Staveley - and the children were too tired to walk back, so we caught a bus (train wasn't running!).
In 2002 it cost us £13 - we could have taken two taxis for less - but only found out the cost once all the children were on!
I presently cycle to and from Staveley - but if I was going with the family I would drive - it would be cheaper than buying bikes for all, and drying out the clothes!

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lakesailor says...
10:53am Fri 21 Sep 12

The Green Agenda has taken a few serious knocks in the past couple of years. There is no justification in over-spending on specious schemes that line the pockets of the conglomerates who have decided that Green is their business model.

Local Authorities need to realise that the average visitor to the Lake District arrives by car and wants to use that vehicle to explore, not to be bused around to chosen specific visitor sites. They seem hell-bent on changing the habits of visitors instead of moulding their access and activity to a manageable plan.

I suspect that the only way to gain access to grants is to follow the unsubstantiated credo that is the Green Agenda. The aim seems to be to achieve targets set by the Low Carbon Junkies. We need look instead at what really matters to the free-running of the area and to question the blind acceptance that new and "green" is good.

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Moonbase says...
4:00pm Sun 23 Sep 12

Ladyxxmacbeth wrote:
I get annoyed with these sorts of schemes. I wanted to hire some bikes about a months ago for me, husband and kids, and it was going to cost £72. That is ridiculous! In the end we hired a rowing boat for £15. If they want people to cycle and ride on buses and trains they need to make it cheaper than driving.
Can you ride a Tandem???

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WilliamT says...
11:26am Mon 24 Sep 12

Green is indeed good, but not the present pseudo-Green with mega subsided rubbishy wind turbines and solar panels on people's roofs. There is man made global warming. People just need to use less energy, and they won't do it unless you force them, and we need fewer people and that's not going to happen either.
This scheme will fail because people will not get out of their cars until they're forced out, and any government that tries to do that rapidly becomes unelected. Multiply this across all countries of the world and you see that nothing will happen until the increased sea level is lapping around the wheels of all the gas guzzlers which are left abandoned because fuel is too expensive or unobtainable. Doesn't sound too good.

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life cycle too says...
12:49pm Mon 24 Sep 12

My bike is made from anodised aluminium. I'm fully aware of how much energy goes into smelting and anodising aluminium, and that is not the only energy intensive "green" solution!

I don't believe in man made global warming being the sole cause - but I do believe we have to stop throwing away so much technology, and stop the ridiculous subsidies.
We would do well to study the French model, with a mix of wind, barrage and nuclear sources of energy, and a dechetterie in every town!

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Ladyxxmacbeth says...
1:07pm Mon 24 Sep 12

ohhh my bike's made of Carbon fibre which is better? there's only one way to find out ...... FIGHT!

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WilliamT says...
3:57pm Mon 24 Sep 12

You don't have to worry about the energy involved in bike manufacture, because they last so long and you get a lot of bikes for every one of those guzzlers that is behind you trying to force you into the ditch because you're preventing them getting to the pub 2 minutes quicker than last time.
"I don't believe in man made global warming being the sole cause.."- the cause of what?, unless you mean that you don't believe that man is the sole cause of the undoubtable global warming. Man is the only cause that can have acted so quickly, but is now reinforced by the positive feedback, as the arctic sea ice disappears and the methane is driven out of the permafrost etc. It's going to be a hot one, and it's going to be here in 50 years. The problem is that most people don't care about 50, or even 10 years ahead.

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