Would-be cyclists want more cycle lanes and better facilities, says Halfords survey

bikebot wrote:

It isn't sharing the road with cars that puts potential cyclists off. It's sharing the roads with buses, lorries, tipper trucks and all the other massive vehicles that fill our cities.

Do you have any evidence of this? I'm pretty sure most people would find cars just as threatening. They certainly should be equally wary of them.

joemmo wrote:

bikebot wrote:

It isn't sharing the road with cars that puts potential cyclists off. It's sharing the roads with buses, lorries, tipper trucks and all the other massive vehicles that fill our cities.

Do you have any evidence of this? I'm pretty sure most people would find cars just as threatening. They certainly should be equally wary of them.

Lots of empirical evidence from people I've worked with. I'm not suggesting people like cycling with cars, or that they wouldn't find them dangerous, but many people find the idea of sharing the roads with tipper trucks and other HGVs absolutely terrifying.

The news coverage in London, where they've been involved in the majority of fatal accidents even though they are only a small percentage of the traffic, suggests this fear is also partly justified as well as adding to it. Lot's of people were seeing pictures of crumpled bicycles lying under HGVs in the Metro and Evening Standard in that horrible few weeks last year. The HGV was very much cast as the problem, with proposals that they be banned from peak hour traffic.

Even that daft Top Gear episode caught onto the problem, with the pair of them petrified of the buses.

If only a significant number or all of the remaining 95 people would realise that if they were to cycle that would be a vast amount of motorised traffic off the roads. If this were to happen in every workplace just imagine how little traffic there would be.

ribena wrote:

Things are beginning to change with TFL too. I've emailed them about a horrendous junction on my commute, and early next year they are removing one of the two lanes of traffic, and replacing it with a dedicated cycle lane and separate cycle-only traffic lights.

This is good news.

What junction is that?

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

This.

I might be in a minority here, but it shouldn't be about having paint slapped on the road marking out some arbitrary cycle lane to encourage people onto bikes, it should be about improving driving standards such that "everyday" cyclists don't feel unsafe or intimidated on the roads.

If my experience is anything to go by, drivers tend to pass you more closely when you're in a 3ft wide cycle lane than they do if you were just cycling on the road anyway. I tend to stay out of these painted cycle lanes too as they just dump you by the kerb amongst all the drains and general road debris.

Besides, it shouldn't be about cyclists having to be confined only to travelling on marked cycle lanes. Ok, for utility cycling where there are obvious routes between popular destinations there is perhaps some sense in this, but when I'm out at the weekend I want to use the roads I want to use, and not feel threatened by drivers because there isn't a cycle lane on them.

The "improve driver behavior" solution will never work in the long term though, for two main reasons:

1)People are fundamentally fallible, and when they are driving, prone to inattentiveness/stupidity/prioritising the wrong things and not least bullying weaker road users. When would the training to improve driving take place? Who would pay for it? How would we ensure that the next populist government didn't just do away with it.

2) Just because drivers are better trained doesn't mean that people will feel any safer riding close to cars and the results of the survey bear that our.

There is a sustainable long term solution but it involves a government with the vision to fundamentally change the way that our streets and towns work instead of pandering to a public that don't even have any idea how much better streets could work and a motoring/road haulage lobby group with its own agenda.

It certainly doesn't involve driver training, it involves making cycling feel subjectively safer. Until its properly demonstrated in a town in the UK we can expect more deaths due to pollution and obesity and a woeful cycling rate.

P3t3 wrote:

The "improve driver behavior" solution will never work in the long term though, for two main reasons:

1)People are fundamentally fallible, and when they are driving, prone to inattentiveness/stupidity/prioritising the wrong things and not least bullying weaker road users. When would the training to improve driving take place? Who would pay for it? How would we ensure that the next populist government didn't just do away with it.

2) Just because drivers are better trained doesn't mean that people will feel any safer riding close to cars and the results of the survey bear that our.
.

I agree, but I'd say that the reason "improve driver behaviour" isn't going to work is that it would require a level of intense, constant, policing of the roads that is never going to be feasible in terms of cost.

"Training" won't do much unless its backed up with enforcement that means badly behaved drivers pay as high a cost for their errors as badly behaved cyclists do - but its not really practical to monitor roads that closely, that constantly.

The advantage of changing the physical reality is that once done it stays done, and makes following the rules the default option, and doesn't require paying large numbers of people to enforce those rules.

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

The advantage of changing the physical reality is that once done it stays done, and makes following the rules the default option, and doesn't require paying large numbers of people to enforce those rules.

Exactly. Paint a white line and put up a sign - nothing much will change.

But actually physically change things a bit, put in a proper kerb or a few bollards, and suddenly it's a much safer environment to cycle in.

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

Good point - if having proper cycle lanes everywhere actually worked then places like the Netherlands would have loads of cyclists of all ages and abilities cycling everywhere!

Instead they can only dream of the incredible cycling utopia we have in the UK.

parksey wrote:

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

.. it should be about improving driving standards such that "everyday" cyclists don't feel unsafe or intimidated on the roads.

...I tend to stay out of these painted cycle lanes too as they just dump you by the kerb amongst all the drains and general road debris.

Besides, it shouldn't be about cyclists having to be confined only to travelling on marked cycle lanes. Ok, for utility cycling where there are obvious routes between popular destinations there is perhaps some sense in this, but when I'm out at the weekend I want to use the roads I want to use, and not feel threatened by drivers because there isn't a cycle lane on them.

What you describe is BAD cycle infrastructure and what you reveal is that you are thinking only of you, and similar enthusiasts, not of kids, older people and those generally put off and intimidated by the current conditions. They make the vast majority that would form a modal shift to true mass transport cycling. It's got zero to do with weekend leisure rides.

Quote:

I might be in a minority here, but it shouldn't be about having paint slapped on the road marking out some arbitrary cycle lane to encourage people onto bikes, it should be about improving driving standards such that "everyday" cyclists don't feel unsafe or intimidated on the roads.

If my experience is anything to go by, drivers tend to pass you more closely when you're in a 3ft wide cycle lane than they do if you were just cycling on the road anyway. I tend to stay out of these painted cycle lanes too as they just dump you by the kerb amongst all the drains and general road debris.

Besides, it shouldn't be about cyclists having to be confined only to travelling on marked cycle lanes. Ok, for utility cycling where there are obvious routes between popular destinations there is perhaps some sense in this, but when I'm out at the weekend I want to use the roads I want to use, and not feel threatened by drivers because there isn't a cycle lane on them.

Most of these points have already been answered above, but:

1. I agree with you about bad cycle lanes, with just paint. Drivers do tend to pass you more closely. But it isn't bad cycle lanes we want.

2. My view is that training drivers will never work. It seems to be human nature that people give you lots of space if it's easy to do so, but if it isn't, impatience takes priority over considerate driving. You have to force them to allow space with the road infrastructure.

British Cycling found that 60+% of people are put off by having to share roads with traffic, so it has to change.

3. Weekend cycling on country lanes is a bit different to utility cycling in busy towns and cities.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

My view is that training drivers will never work. It seems to be human nature that people give you lots of space if it's easy to do so, but if it isn't, impatience takes priority over considerate driving. You have to force them to allow space with the road infrastructure.

I live in Germany - have done for years - and I cycle a fair bit and the vast majority of drivers do give me lots of space when overtaking. And wait behind me until it's safe to overtake. And slow down in fog, rain, and snowstorms. It's not all due to the enforcement regime, which isn't actually very strict at all, but the wider culture (all sorts of things - the driver training regimen, strict liability, the obligations drivers have towards cyclists and pedestrians, the fact that drivers are used to being confronted with unaccompanied children who don't yet have perfect road sense because it's still culturally acceptable to say "go out and play with the traffic, dearest.")

I had a close pass at the weekend - a tractor/high-sided trailer who gave me maybe 40 cm clearance - and I was shocked and appalled by it as I can often go for many months without one. When the driver swung off and parked just ahead of me I pulled in to get the number plate and have a chat with him about his driving. (The second time I've done that in the last five years.) It had been pretty bad driving, but also had some redeeming points: I believed the driver when he said he had been keeping an extremely close eye on me in his mirrors and had squeezed past me very, very slowly and carefully. (The overtake lasted a very, very long time. He was limited to 25 km/h, and I was riding uphill with heavy panniers; the whole thing was in slow motion and I probably wasn't really in mortal danger as I would have had time to bail into the ditch if he had come any closer.)

He absolutely shouldn't have overtaken me before the estate car had finished overtaking him; it would have cost him three seconds to wait rather than having the three of us side-by-side. But it was thoughtless rather than deliberately aggressive or anti-cyclist. The road is quiet but traffic had bunched up a bit behind his slow vehicle and put him pressure - the car had been waiting for a straight stretch of road to overtake, there was a bus behind waiting to overtake, he had been aware of them before he came round the bend, saw me and didn't process the situation fast enough. He was shocked to be thought of as an inconsiderate or incompetent driver. He stressed that he had never had an accident and (having helped out at accidents as a volunteer with the fire brigade) never wanted to, either. His tone was quite concilatory - he initially didn't understand my problem ("But nothing happened!") but he took my point on board that days with near-death experiences feel a bit different from days without near-death experiences and that I would like to feel safe on his local road. And he didn't ask why I had been on "his" road and not using the parallel greenway. (I had my reasons.)

I've reported him, but I suspect that my worst problems might be nice enough problems to have in an international comparison. I was angry because I'm used to drivers on rural roads giving me acres of space (not a poxy 1.5 metres, more like three to five - it shocks me to the core to see people asking for 1.5 metres without also stressing that such a small gap is only acceptable at low speeds). I don't mind urban car drivers (small vehicles, not high-sided vans or trucks) going down to around 1 m if they really slow to the point where the speed differential between us is barely more than walking pace before overtaking. I'd want - and generally get - more space if I had a child with me.

You're right, and my guess is that you're speaking from experience, rather than the respondent's of this survey who are probably hypothesizing....

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

unless you're in the majority who clearly find sharing roads with motor traffic unpleasant, intimidating and downright dangerous.

joemmo wrote:

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

unless you're in the majority who clearly find sharing roads with motor traffic unpleasant, intimidating and downright dangerous.

It won't get any better if we all cycle separately from traffic, more cyclists on the roads equals more awareness among other road users. The roads were not built for cars, they were built to get about the country more easily, by foot, horseback, bike, or car.

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

If only some idiot hadn't let cars onto them!

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

I must remember to shout that very loud in the faces of my wife and kids, ignore their tears and make them join me for happy family rides through Manchester sometime.

Cranky Acid wrote:

dreamlx10 wrote:

Cycle lanes are everywhere, they're called roads.

I must remember to shout that very loud in the faces of my wife and kids, ignore their tears and make them join me for happy family rides through Manchester sometime.

Not cycling on the roads won't make them any safer, less cars on the roads and more cyclists is the answer.