Frequently asked
questions
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Thirteen of
the commonest questions and assertions are set out below, in red italics. YDGLA’s responses follow, in black. Technical terms (eg ‘NERC’, ‘Winchester
Judgment’ are defined in this website’s ‘glossary’ page.
1. The number
of unsealed green lanes legally available to motor vehicles was always small,
and as a consequence of the NERC Act and the ‘
There are
two problems with this challenge.
First, the figure
of 2% or 3%, when applied to the Yorkshire Dales National Park (YDNP) is
probably wrong. Because of the contested
status of unsealed unclassified county roads (UUCRs), nobody knows exactly how
many unsealed routes are still, despite the NERC Act, legally open to motor
traffic. It will take some time for the
full impact of the NERC Act and the ‘Winchester Judgment’ to be measured, but
at present, recreational vehicle users continue to press their claims to be able
to ride and drive on some of the most beautiful, key green lanes that connect
dale with dale.
The second
problem is the assumption that the YDGLA is a walkers’ organisation, concerned
solely with walkers’ desires for traffic-free green lanes. This assumption is mistaken. If enquirers want the walker’s view, they can
get it from the Ramblers’ Association.
The YDGLA is an alliance of
all those in the Dales – residents and visitors alike – who have reasons for
wanting to see an end to recreational vehicular use of green lanes. Furthermore, many users of green lanes –
farmers, equestrians, mountain-bikers, non-motorised disabled people – simply
cannot leave the green lanes and go elsewhere: there are, for all practical
purposes, few other routes open to them.
Farmers,
for example, have powerful reasons for wanting to see an end to 4x4s and
motorbikes on the green lanes that cross their land. The damage to the surface to the lanes that
recreational vehicles cause can make it difficult for farmers to get to their
own pastures and to move stock. Sheep
tend to associate Land Rovers with the arrival of food, especially in winter:
Land Rovers driven for recreation, therefore, can draw sheep away from the
flocks that farmers have laboriously consolidated near farm buildings and lead
them out on to the moors. Motor-cycles,
especially when they go back and forth through wet and challenging troughs in
the moors can produce morasses in which sheep drown.
Archaeologists
have objections to vehicular use of green lanes, on the ground that ancient sites,
like the Roman marching camp on
Residents
of small, hitherto tranquil Dales hamlets, from which green lanes leave the
tarmac and head up across the moors, object to the noise and nuisance that convoys
of 4x4s and motorbikes regularly bring.
Naturalists
and gamekeepers are worried about the impact of motor vehicles on
ground-nesting birds, and on the flora of upland areas. Sites of Special Scientific Interest, like
the moor through which the Roman Road that crosses Blubberhouses Moor runs, or
the limestone area around Sulber Nick, through which Long Lane runs, were –
until traffic regulation orders were imposed on them - regularly damaged and
disturbed by recreational motor vehicles.
Gamekeepers report how difficult their jobs have become when
motorcyclists routinely ride across the moors that they manage.
Some green
lanes have become impassable to horse-riders and pedal-cyclists. Fast-moving motor traffic, especially
motorcycles, alarms horses and can make life dangerous for their riders,
particularly young riders. In other
parts of the country there have been accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists
and horseriders who have had encounters with motor vehicles. There has been at least one fatality – to a
horserider who was thrown when her horse was spooked by a motorbike.
Disabled
people, elderly people, and parents with children need traffic-free green
lanes. These groups cannot easily use
footpaths: stiles are often too difficult to surmount. Green lanes, because they are free of stiles
and often have comparatively easy gradients, are attractive to groups with
limited mobility. Encounters with motor
vehicles are unwelcome, and sometimes dangerous – eg for deaf, blind or
learning-disabled users, or young children.
Walkers
have their own objections. The green
lanes that are presently BOATs are the classic, ancient routes that cross from
dale to dale. If walkers, along with
cyclists and horse-riders, conceded these routes to vehicle users, and went
elsewhere for traffic-free recreation, some of the finest, most beautiful
routes in the Dales would be forfeited.
2. Many
footpaths are eroded. Why doesn’t YDGLA
campaign about them, instead of concentrating exclusively on the nuisance caused,
and the damage done, by 4x4s and motorbikes on the routes that bear vehicular
rights?
The YDGLA
takes no view on footpaths and their problems.
If vehicle users are concerned about footpath damage, they can take the
matter up with the National Park Authority, with North Yorkshire County Council
Highway Authority, and with the Access Officer of the Nidderdale Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
3. Wherever
a green lane has been damaged, the fault lies with the Highway Authority (for
failing to maintain them), with farmers (for taking heavy agricultural vehicles
onto them), with forestry operations, with the weather. Damage done by recreational vehicles is
negligible.
Following
the guidelines of the Department of the Environment’s Making the Best of Byways (1997), green lanes in the YDNP and the
Nidderdale AONB have customarily been maintained to a standard ‘commensurate
with the purpose for which byways are primarily used’ (p14). Up until a few
years ago, this primary purpose was use
by farmers who require access to their pastures, and pedestrians, cyclists and
horseriders. A light maintenance regime,
or, often, no management at all, was adequate.
The upsurge in 4x4 and motorbike use, however, has raised the question
of whether these routes should now be maintained to vehicular standards, for it
is clear that they cannot stand the passage of the motor traffic that they are
now having to bear. The cost of bringing
the many miles of green lanes up to vehicle-bearing standards would be prohibitive,
and the laying of vehicle-bearing surfaces would constitute such a change in
the character of the routes that the authorities have, (rightly, the YDGLA
thinks), decided not to undertake major re-engineering projects. Heavy agricultural vehicles have never been a
common feature of the upland pastures of the Dales. There is no arable land, and thus little need
for heavy machinery. If anything,
damage to green lanes by farmers is decreasing. Farmers now tend to use quad bikes rather
than the more damaging tractors and 4x4s when they go out to feed and gather
their stock. There is virtually no
forestry along the green lanes of the YDNP and the Nidderdale AONB. The weather hasn’t changed significantly over
the past ten years. Why then is the
fabric of the green lanes deteriorating so swiftly? There is only one plausible explanation,
namely, the increasing volume of recreational off-road vehicles. The evidence of the damage caused by
motorbikes and 4x4s is plain.
The
evidence produced by the traffic regulation orders that have been imposed by
the Dales Park Authority is incontrovertible.
The orders show what happens when recreational vehicles are prohibited
from a set of green lanes, leaving all other use of the lanes (eg agricultural
vehicular use) exactly the same. The
result is that the simple exclusion of recreational motors, results in the
spontaneous regeneration of the fabric of the lanes. (See ‘Latest News’ page,
4. Even if
vehicle users concede (and they do so very reluctantly) that recreational
vehicles do cause damage to green lanes, the damage is caused solely by irresponsible vehicle users. Responsible users follow strict codes devised
by 4x4 and motorbike clubs, and do no damage.
The
distinction between responsible and irresponsible vehicular use is hard to
discern. If, for example, a group of
half a dozen 4x4s, followed, an hour later, by a dozen motorbikes, make their way
along a once grassy lane, how is the observer to know if the drivers and riders
are responsible or irresponsible? They
are all taking heavy and noisy motor vehicles onto a grassy track that came
into existence to serve pedestrians, sheep and cattle, and a few horses and
carts. It’s pretty obvious that grass
cannot bear the passage of motor traffic.
If the definition of ‘responsibility’ includes some sort of recognition
of the historic and scenic character of the Dales green lanes, as well as their
fabric, it’s hard to see how the taking of a modern motor vehicle, for the
purposes of recreation, on to the lanes can ever be responsible. The magazines catering to vehicle users, and
vehicle users’ postings of their exploits on the internet are instructive. They regularly exhibit images of 4x4s and
motorbikes, on public rights of way, negotiating deep mud, steep gradients,
watercourse-crossings and rocky surfaces, all evidently to the pleasure and
satisfaction of the drivers and riders.
Plainly, vehicle users do not want green lanes to be surfaced to a
standard capable of being driven along in a Morris Minor. On the contrary, the challenge of piloting
motors across demanding terrain seems to be at the heart of the pastime. If recreational motor vehicle users
recognise that one of the chief special characteristics of the Yorkshire Dales
is their peace and tranquillity, they will hardly be acting responsibly if they
insist on taking motor vehicles, with the attendant noise, smell, emissions and
visual intrusiveness, along green lanes into remote countryside.
5. Even
if bans on recreational vehicular use of green lanes are introduced, the police
won’t enforce them. Illegal vehicles are
hard to catch, and, in any case, the offences they commit are, in police terms,
chiefly minor traffic offences that will not justify the police time that would
be necessary to catch and prosecute offenders.
Until
recently, this has been true. But the
police in the Dales are now receiving so many complaints from farmers and from
the public that they are beginning to take action. 4x4 drivers and
motorcyclists have been successfully prosecuted for taking their vehicles along
lanes that are closed to them. The
Police certainly do not turn a blind eye to illegal vehicular use. They recognise that is becoming a public
nuisance. And even where the route is a
legal, vehicular route, the manner in which many 4x4 and motorbike users drive
and ride is a danger to other users of the routes, and constitutes a more
serious breach of highway law. In
certain circumstances, the police have powers to confiscate vehicles, and even
to send them to the crusher. These
powers have been used in other parts of the country.
6. Vehicular
use of green lanes guarantees access for the disabled to the remoter parts of
the Dales. To ban recreational vehicles
would be to discriminate against the disabled.
There are
two aspects to this assertion. If it is
argued that only disabled drivers,
displaying official disabled badges,
should be allowed to use the green lanes, the argument would have some
force. The numbers of vehicles would
dramatically decrease, and motor-bikes would vanish altogether. This would certainly make a big
improvement. But the argument seems not
generally to be advanced in this way.
More commonly, the alleged needs of the disabled are used by able-bodied
vehicle users as a cover for their own activities. Further, it is by no means
clear that the amenity of disabled people is automatically enhanced by allowing
4x4s driven by disabled drivers, or carrying disabled passengers, to use green
lanes. Because green lanes do not have
stiles, often have fairly easy gradients, and have (or used to have) moderately
smooth surfaces, they are of great value to blind people, learning-disabled
people (who find stiles intimidating), and the elderly and infirm - as well as
adults with small children, often with push-chairs. To the many, diverse members of this large
group of green lane users, it is not at all clear that the passage of a 4x4
driven by, or carrying, a disabled person, is in their interest. Developments in the technology of small,
rugged versions of electric scooters that disabled people use around towns are
promising. With such ‘Tramper’-type
scooters, people who cannot walk at all can make journeys of many miles along
green lanes, quietly, accompanied by friends walking alongside, and make a far
smaller impact than is made by a 4x4 – or rather, they could make such journeys
if the surface of the lanes had not been so badly damaged by 4x4s and motorbikes.
7. To take
away vehicular rights on green lanes is an undemocratic infringement of human
rights.
Any
decisions about vehicular use of green lanes are taken by democratically or
legally accountable authorities - North Yorkshire County Council, the Yorkshire
Dales National Park Authority, or Parliament.
The human rights plea is a non-starter, as the TRF (the motorcyclists’
association) itself recognises.
Recreational vehicle users would have as much chance of bringing an
action under human rights legislation as they would if they complained about
not being allowed to drive their vehicles into a pedestrianised city
centre. It is not the right to go onto
green lanes that is in question: it is only the right to take vehicles that will be withdrawn.
Authorities throughout Britain and Europe are routinely, legally, imposing
traffic bans in all sorts of places – both urban and rural (prohibitions in
national parks are common): human rights are not in question.
8. Vehicle
users spend time and effort voluntarily repairing green lanes, for the benefit
of all users.
Vehicle
users undertake repairs to green lanes because they want to be able to ride and
drive along them. It is a wholly
self-interested enterprise. If they were concerned about the amenity of
farmers, cyclists, horseriders and pedestrians, the best thing to do would
simply be not to take vehicles on to the green lanes in the first place. And in areas where vehicle users have made
repairs, the results are not nearly as impressive as the repairers claim them
to be. If a section of a green lane that
is impassable to vehicles is made passable, vehicles will be attracted to it
and the pressure will come on further along the track. This has happened in the
much-publicised case of the volunteers’ repairs to Deadman’s Hill in
Nidderdale, where even the stretches repaired by the volunteers are swiftly
deteriorating. And in any case, at the
summit of this route, it is plain that many vehicle users prefer to leave the
repaired section in search of a more challenging route.
9. Why is
YDGLA opposed to schemes of voluntary restraint? Why is legislation needed when vehicle users
will voluntarily refrain from using what they consider to be unsustainable
routes?
First, we
have seen no evidence that voluntary restraint makes much difference to the use
of any particular lane. It is true that
some - though not all - members of 4x4 and motorbike organisations will observe
recommendations endorsed by their organisations, but there are plenty of
drivers and riders who simply ignore voluntary codes. Secondly, vehicle users’ notions of
‘sustainable’ do not correspond with ours.
Routes that they deem to be capable of sustaining motor-vehicular
traffic turn out often to be tracks that, in our view, cannot sustain such
use. Furthermore, we value peace and
tranquillity highly. The presence of any
and every off-road vehicle degrades it.
10. Why
does YDGLA always insist on all-year-round traffic regulation orders? Why not consider restrictions on vehicles for
just the wetter months of the year, leaving them free to use the lanes in the
summer, when vehicles will churn up less mud?
We, along
with the general public, are fundamentally opposed to recreational vehicles on
the green lanes of the Dales. Vehicles,
therefore, are no more welcome in July than they are in January. In any case, it is no longer clear that
summers are drier than winters. We have
seen, during the last couple of summers, rainfall that has saturated the moors.
11. Spending
by vehicle users, when they visit the Dales, pumps thousands of pounds into the
Dales economy.
The
assumptions that are made in such estimates are highly dubious. But even if the estimates were accurate, down
to the last penny, the argument still backfires. If the people who spend this money in the
Dales truly love the area, and really value the beautiful green lanes that are
such a feature of it, then when the law changes and they are obliged to leave
their vehicles where the tarmac stops, they will continue to visit the Dales,
and spend just as much money. If they
love the green lanes, they will continue to explore them in less damaging, more
sustainable ways. But if, on the other
hand, they come only to drive and ride their vehicles along the green lanes,
and would never go near the Dales if they were required to leave their motors
where the tarmac stops, then the loss of the income they allegedly generate
wouldn’t be much of a loss. Furthermore,
the drain on the public purse caused by the need for repairs to green lanes
that have been damaged by recreational vehicles more than cancels out any
financial input that the vehicle users contribute make to the Dales
economy. (It cost £218,000 to repair
just over 2,100 metres of Arten Gill – that’s nearly £104 per metre.)
12. If
recreational vehicles are prohibited from the green lanes of the Dales, where
else can they go?
This is not
a question for us. We are a single-issue
group. Our sole aim is to work for the
prohibition of recreational vehicles from green lanes in the Dales. Where else vehicle users can go in their 4x4s
and on their motorbikes is a question for motorised users themselves. But it is important to recognise that traffic
regulation orders prohibit nobody from enjoying green lanes: they prohibit only
vehicles, not their riders and
drivers. Those vehicle users who love
green lanes for their intrinsic charm and for the access they give to remote,
tranquil, unspoilt landscapes will continue to enjoy them. The only difference will be that they will
leave their vehicles where the tarmac stops and will continue on horseback, on
a mountain bike, or on foot. To say that traffic regulation orders prohibit
people is like saying that the now commonplace and popular schemes for the
pedestrianisation of city centres prohibit people. On the contrary, pedestrianised city centres
are now much more agreeable, well-used places than they were when motor traffic
was permitted. The removal of motor
traffic from green lanes will be just as popular, and will lead to an
equivalent improvement in general amenity.
13. Many
4x4 and motorbike users have no particular concern for the Dales heritage that
the green lanes embody, and set no especial value on the peace and tranquillity
that the Park and the AONB were set up to preserve. They enjoy riding motorbikes and driving 4x4s
across challenging terrain: it’s the essence of their pastime. If their activities produce more noise, ruts,
mud, erosion and pollution, then so be it.
They aren’t particularly bothered by the noise and mess they make. They will take their 4x4s and motorbikes on
to green lanes as long as they are legally entitled to do so – and some of them
will continue, even when the law prohibits them.
The only
counter to this point of view is to show that public opinion seems decisively
to have swung against vehicles away from the tarmac in the countryside – no
matter whether opinion is measured at the local level - by reference to the
views of parish councils, the views of farmers, of civic societies, of numbers
of amenity groups, and, increasingly, the views of local councillors – or at
the national level, by reference to Parliament.
All three of the MPs whose constituencies include parts of the Dales
National Park or the Nidderdale AONB are honorary members of YDGLA. They would hardly have given their support if
they believed that YDGLA is miles out of step with public opinion. The passage of the NERC Act demonstrated both
the extraordinary level of cross-party support for the bill, and the almost
complete lack of support for vehicular use of green lanes. In order to measure
public opinion on the matter, ICM Research Ltd was commissioned, in March 2004,
to carry out a ‘Countryside Survey’. One
of the propositions with which respondents were invited to agree or disagree
was this: ‘The use of recreational motor
vehicles on rights of way in national parks, and other areas of outstanding
natural beauty, should be banned so that people can go there for quiet
recreation, and so that the peace and tranquillity of the countryside can be
preserved for future generations.’ 87% of the respondents agreed with the
proposition, 8% disagreed, and 5% didn’t know.
4x4s and
motorcycles on green lanes is an issue that produces many complaints, from both
residents and visitors, to the Dales Park Authority, although since the
imposition of 7 traffic regulation orders on the most sensitive of the green
lanes, the number of complaints has dropped. When public opinion is given
democratic expression by the application of Traffic Regulation Orders by the
local highway authority (in the AONB), and by the Park Authority (in the Dales
National Park), and when Parliament, under pressure from citizens, completes
the job that it started with the recent NERC Act, and passes laws that will
preserve every ancient green lane from recreational motor traffic, it’s hard to
see how recreational vehicle use of green lanes will continue.