Tool to cut a 2" pipe close to a surface?

[Ferdinand]

What is the best way to cut off a pipe sticking out of a surface cleanly?

(Actually these are is 30 or 50 year old 2" hollow railing sticking out of the asphalt).

This is what I may want to cut - a pipe constructed anti-wheelchair barrier on a local footpath. These are illegal under several areas of law, but if I put in a complaint most Councils in the country would say "yeh, we'll get onto it", then take 6 months or 5 years to schedule in the 60 minutes of work it would take.




So if a competent volunteer offered to do it, what would be the best tool - clearly it needs to be cut off within a few mm of the ground - perhaps 5mm max, based on the official specifications for maximum accessible height for a drop kerb before it becomes a hazard.

What is the appropriate tool and can anybody point me to one? I'm thinking either a pipe cutter, or a battery powered multitool.

Cheers

Ferdinand

[joe90]

Battery angle grinder with a cutting disc (metal) and grinding disk to make flush with the ground.

[joe90]

18 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

then take 6 months or 5 years to schedule in the 60 minutes of work it would take.

And cost the tax payers a few thousand £ 🙄 (go for it).

[FuerteStu]

22 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Side note, I've always thought these should be fitted outside McDonald's, would save the NHS a fortune. 

Edited 17 hours ago by FuerteStu

[Ferdinand]

9 minutes ago, joe90 said:

And cost the tax payers a few thousand £ 🙄 (go for it).

I know people who have occasionally removed particularly awkward ones for their regular walks / rides by just turning up in Hi Viz with a pipe cutter and a wheelbarrow, and there is activism on this all over - but plenty of Councils that still install them and Councillors that still defend them, despite the law. One of the excuses used for putting one on the Thames Path in Greenwich last year was "everybody does it so they must be legal".

 

In and around my town I have something like 400 of these, some going back to 1970, everywhere.

So ultimately it's about changing the culture of councils who spend money on these things. I'm hopeful since the new Gov will care about equality and law, and seem thoughtful around transport.

[Ferdinand]

35 minutes ago, joe90 said:

Battery angle grinder with a cutting disc (metal) and grinding disk to make flush with the ground.

I'm not sure how close an angle grinder will cut to the ground; I can't risk leaving a trip hazard.

I'm quite drawn to the drill bit cutting wheel type thing, like this:

[SteamyTea]

28 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Councils that still install them and Councillors that still defend them, despite the law.

I keep saying that for every law we have that makes something illegal, we have another law that makes it compulsory.

 

Just bend it out the way.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

not sure how close an angle grinder will cut to the ground; I can't risk leaving a trip hazard

It can cut it off at below ground level if you want.

Can always take a sanding disk with you to grind it flush.

[joe90]

A 4inch angle grinder(at an angle) will cut it off within 10mm, then grinding disk to remove till flush.

i sm not sure the above drill attachment will have the grunt, angle grinders spin far faster and are made for cutting hard stuff.

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, joe90 said:

cutting hard stuff

Only with the correct disk.

Make sure it is a metal cutting one, a stone one will just make a lot of noise.

 

It is illegal to damage others properly, and I doubt that any council would give permission for this to happen.

Letter to local MP and get the local TV involved. They are desperate for local news, they even filmed us at work recently.

Edited 16 hours ago by SteamyTea

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

get the local TV involved.

And any disabled groups near you, challenge quoting the law (or just sneak round with a high viz on 🤣)

[Mr Punter]

Without consent from the Council you risk prosecution for criminal damage.

 

The top photo looks like a wheelchair could get through.  With the bottom one it may be better to just remove the timber rail from the left side.

[Super_Paulie]

while i dont condone criminal damage, a battery reciprocator with a new long metal bit would cut that flush as the blades are supper bendy. Just sayin.

[Ferdinand]

Thanks for the responses. Please forgive me a substantive reply.
 

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I keep saying that for every law we have that makes something illegal, we have another law that makes it compulsory.

 

Just bend it out the way.

It's a huge issue everywhere. My numbers say that there are perhaps 200k-400k of such illegal barriers across the country. Technically it's every field style on a public footpath, but that is mentioned normally as a rhetorical distraction ("do you want a wheelchair path up Striding Edge?", and the rubber hits the road far more around eg Rail Trails, or Greenways, which are advertised as "accessible", yet exclude some lawful users. These or similar also exist, weirdly, keeping disabled and elderly people out of large numbers of Green Flag parks, making the core published message "these are for everyone" into a self-satisfied lie.

So "bend it out of the way" or "go round it" may work in one place, but it won't fix the core problem, which is legal, cultural and political. Guidelines are clear (LTN 1/20 and Inclusive Mobility) that the acceptable option is a 1.5m air gap, with 5-10m flat approaches and usually a sealed surface. 

It will require a national policy that these are not acceptable and they must all be removed. In the meantime all kinds of things are removed, but one by one won't clear them all out. Every Council I have ever asked do not even have records of what they have installed, plus many are installed freelance.

Councils are quite happy to discriminate against disabled / elderly / parents etc, do nothing, and rely on bullying / intimidation rather than meet their most basic legal responsibilities, it being difficult to hold them to account under Equality Law or Highway Law, and normal complaints processes taking 10s of hours, perhaps 2 years and delivering nothing.

I have a friend who is a wheelchair user, who cannot walk more than a few steps around the house, who was prevented from taking a particular route because of a chicane barrier on a gennel. The Council's legal department wrote her a letter saying they would require her to turn up at the barrier, and physically prove she was incapable of lifting her mobility aid over the top. The attitude is mind-boggling.

Writing the letter would cost less than removing the barrier.

Underlying causes are around false folk beliefs in the local populations that these achieve something wrt ASB, which often came originally from police advice when estates were built 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I have several here which are pre-1970.
 

3 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

Without consent from the Council you risk prosecution for criminal damage.

 

The top photo looks like a wheelchair could get through.  With the bottom one it may be better to just remove the timber rail from the left side.

That's another issue - this is not aimed at you personally, of course.  People who don't know decide that they will impose *their* opinions and *their* assumptions on the disabled or elderly person, without knowing what their needs are, and not respecting their rights or the law.

It's the standard pavement parking excuse, or for blocking a pedestrian drop kerb. "It looks like a wheelchair would fit" or "I could walk through there or "I'll only be five minutes" or "but I need to" or "can't you wait" or "go in the road" or "I had to", without knowing about wheelchairs or tricycles or that a Guide Dog walks next to a blind person, not in front. Then when their precious car gets scratched because they parked it on the pavement because they are lazy, selfish or stupid, they resort to abuse or threats of violence. I had that when someone had blocked the entire pedestrian entrance at my local hospital (he forced all the wheelchair users to do 200m on the main drive carriageway with 6000 vehicles per day), rather than park in a free space 20m further away, The only bit missing was the threat of violence.

Removing the bit at the side is addressing a symptom, not the problem, imo. The full width of a PROW is required to be useable, and if we leave it there with a bypass that panders to the idea that it can be tolerated. As an interim, maybe, but that is a sticky plaster.
 

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Only with the correct disk.

Make sure it is a metal cutting one, a stone one will just make a lot of noise.

 

It is illegal to damage others properly, and I doubt that any council would give permission for this to happen.

Letter to local MP and get the local TV involved. They are desperate for local news, they even filmed us at work recently.

All of those are being done, and there are various places where some groups do things by agreement.

The real heroes in this are Sustrans, who go by the book and are removing about 400 per annum from the National Cycling / Walking Network.

I'll leave it there 🙃.Thanks for reading.

F

[joe90]

Well done @Ferdinand, what about local papers getting involved in councils breaking the law, very news worthy I would have thought. Gangs (🤣) of wheelchairs users turning up at blocked paths etc and getting photographed ?

[Mr Punter]

3 hours ago, Super_Paulie said:

while i dont condone criminal damage, a battery reciprocator with a new long metal bit would cut that flush as the blades are supper bendy. Just sayin.

 

I use one for "adjusting" scaffold.

[SteamyTea]

50 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

All of those are being done, and there are various places where some groups do things by agreement.

Our maintenance boys had to go on a safety course before they could use an angle grinder on site. Was more to do with hot working and fire risk than personal safety.

So even if one council department says yes, another will be along that says no.

[torre]

Your first example looks like it's to protect anyone, esp children, coming from that path against running/riding straight into what is probably a road where the picture is taken from.

 

I've plenty of sympathy for the issue of accessibility but please don't cut down something that's intended to prevent a serious accident.

[Mr Punter]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Underlying causes are around false folk beliefs in the local populations that these achieve something wrt ASB

 

Sometimes they have the opposite effect as miscreants on electric motorbikes can evade police cars by zigzagging through the barriers.

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Our maintenance boys had to go on a safety course before they could use an angle grinder on site. Was more to do with hot working and fire risk than personal safety.

So even if one council department says yes, another will be along that says no.

If a Council Department said "yes" to me, it would be gone before the other one had a chance to read the memo 🙂 .

[SteamyTea]

4 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

it would be gone before the other one had a chance to read the memo

That sycamore tree 'up north', know anything about it.

[Ferdinand]

2 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

 

Sometimes they have the opposite effect as miscreants on electric motorbikes can evade police cars by zigzagging through the barriers.

 

Yes.

However we are dealing with emotions, and things like evidence tend not to register.

From the point of view of the Council, putting a big stonking barrier "blocking off" a path is a cheap intervention that looks like something is being done. So it counts as a virtue signal. People shut in their own homes for want of nowhere to go don't count in that set of scales compared to a shouty voter.

Videos don't make a difference. This is from when I first tumbled to these issues in a way, and then I got radicalised when I couldn't wheel my mum to the Doctor a few years later.

One of the lessons I've learnt is to talk from the viewpoint of a disabled pedestrian.
 

 

[Ferdinand]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

That sycamore tree 'up north', know anything about it.

No, but actually the NT are moving on some of these accessibility questions.

Every time I've been to my local property for the last year, I've been explaining how many of their potential visitors don't have driving licenses, and how 200k people live within walking distance, and 400k within cycling or scootering distance.

Different story though.

[Super_Paulie]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Our maintenance boys had to go on a safety course before they could use an angle grinder on site. Was more to do with hot working and fire risk than personal safety.

So even if one council department says yes, another will be along that says no.

Been on "abrasive wheels" training a few times with work. Strangely enough, it's exactly the same each time.