Sandwell Valley Fantastic Mountain Bike Trail

Well you’ve got to hand it to Sandwell, haven’t you?

Buoyed up, no doubt, by its recent stunning achievement of opening a new college, and, within a year declaring its capacity to be the wrong size (ie 6 times too small !!!!!!!!) Sandwell, ever mindful of the needs of others, has, only last week, completed its latest flagship disaster.

Well, I say ‘completed,’ but with Sandwell, you can’t be quite sure whether it’s finished something or not. In fact, a good proportion of the time, I’ve no doubt that Sandwell itself doesn’t know whether it has finished something. Things just seem to shudder to a halt, and sometimes start again after a few weeks, and sometimes don’t.

But, on the face of it, a new ‘fantastic’ (Sandwell’s word, not mine) mountain bike trail was finished last week.

Of course, disciples of Sandwell will be asking themselves, ‘Can this new; unnecessary; expensive; environmentally damaging folly, even remotely vie for the much contested Sandwell Outstanding Stupidity Award’ which is presently held by Sandwell’s The Public art gallery.

Well, maybe – maybe not.

On the plus side for The Public art gallery, (famous for having almost no art and almost no public) it can boast having doubled its 2001 approved construction budget of £38.3 million, by coming in at a reported £72 million.

That, itself, would be insufficient to hold down the Sandwell Outstanding Stupidity Award for any length of time, but the saving grace for The Public is, that after only 5 years, Sandwell is looking to throw in the towel, draw a veil over the whole sorry project; give the thing away to the brand new undersized college, and try to forget it ever happened.

So I think the Councillors behind The Public are probably feeling fairly confident of hanging on to their SOS Award for a good while yet.

But hang on a minute.

This fantastic mountain bike trail may yet pull a rabbit out of somewhere.

Now, OK, it didn’t cost £72 million, and it hasn’t been shut down yet.

But  potential for killing, or, at least, maiming people is just tremendous.

Have you ever seen anything so crazy in your life? Now I’m the first to admit I know nothing whatever about mountain bike riding. But I do have a degree of common sense!

With cycle paths in some places less than 2 feet wide; hair pin bends; steep cambers; massive rocks along the route and especially on corners, this has to be a recipe for terrible disaster. 

And, yes, Sandwell has put up pygmy sized signs saying that pedestrians and ‘leisure’ cyclists should not go on the new trail. But how many weekenders, or teenagers, are going to take any notice of those, even if they see them?

I take no pleasure in saying that I was dumbfounded and aghast when I saw (part only of) the trail and realised the awful, and inevitable, consequences of its use by the unaware.

Of course, it’s difficult to equate squandered money with human lives or suffering. But in insurance terms, a reasonably young, employed person who is severely disabled through accident, must be easily worth in excess of £6 million – a straightforward death, very much less. But you only need a couple of each of these a year and the fantastic mountain bike trail could top The Public in less than 5 years. And, unlike The Public, which cost an arm and a leg to keep going, the fantastic mountain bike trail will cost almost nothing to maintain. It could go on killing and maiming people for donkey’s years - at no extra cost. 

Well done Sandwell.

This fantastic mountain bike trail isn’t just stupid, it’s absolutely wicked, and if any of Sandwell’s Councillors actually know where the trail is, and what it looks like (which I doubt) they should call for it to be either destroyed, or completely fenced in, allowing only experienced mountain bike riders access, before someone is seriously/terminally injured.

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Just as a matter of interest, and as evidence of the quality of thought of whoever it is at Sandwell, compare the notice above, telling 'leisure' cyclists to go and cycle somewhere else, with the one put up by Sandwell in March, 2013, saying that the fantastic mountain bike trail '... will be designed to offer something for all abilities.'

I wonder why Sandwell changed its mind. Could it be that someone, somewhere, deep in the bowels of Sandwell, spotted that it might just have created a Black Country Dignitas?

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And as a matter of further interest, harking back to the new £77 million undersized Sandwell College, where has all the demand for places come from - and why? One web site which I was looking at reported that there were 6 applicants for each place. 

If there had have been enough places available, would that have resulted in other Sandwell 6th form colleges being left half empty?

And what was so attractive about the new college? Was it the great thirst for knowledge and personal development which Sandwell, by its own actions, had inspired in its youth? 

Or was it something to do with the free Samsung Notebooks which were advertised on the Metro for anyone signing up?

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http://www.expressandstar.com/education/2013/06/08/college-plan-for-the-public-to-cost-millions/ makes for interesting reading, especially some of the readers comments!

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