Chris Boardman dismisses Janet Street-Porter’s anti-cycle infrastructure article as shouting and stamping devoid of logic

If every car owning cyclist in London decided, all on the same day, to drive, would she still sing her same tune, while, without a cyclist in sight, she's stuck all day on Marylebone High Street?

She's obviously in the Speak before Think club.

Sad.....

 I do get frustrated with celebrities taking nonsense.  

For sanity and the NHS the case against a cycle revolution is already over but a few public mouths still can't see it. 

Her only discernible talent is the ability to eat an apple through a letter box.

Next!

Sorry.  Janet who?

Excellent analogy from Andrew Gilligan in the Standard (spotted via Mark Treasure & Bez at https://twitter.com/AsEasyAsRiding/status/714819661276323840)

Quote:

Some people think traffic is like rainwater and the roads are the drains for it. If you narrow the pipe, they say, it will flood. If you block one road, they say, the same amount of traffic will simply spill over to the nearest easiest routes.

That’s the sort of argument made against our cycle superhighways, or our current proposal to cut rat-running through Regent’s Park by closing some of its gates.  

But in real life, once the builders have finished, the spill never actually happens. The pipe doesn’t flood; some of the water goes away instead. Because traffic isn’t a force of nature. It’s a product of human choices. If you make it easier and nicer for people not to drive, more people will choose not to drive.

Full article is at http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/andrew-gilligan-the-only-way-t...

I rather like Boardman's tweet. He demonstrated her guff was groundless without having to resort to insults. This is excellent as insults just widen the divide (although some of the comments on here have made me laugh).

"You can rent a bike and potentially kill pedestrians or other road users..."

Yeah, I've been crashing my bicycle into cars for years trying to kill motorists, haven't succeeded yet though.

I wonder if it would be possible to get Ms. Street-Porter to a viewing of the "Bikes vs. Cars" movie to provide some enlightenment?  I had the opportunity earlier this week to watch it during a stop here in Denver, Colorado with viewing hosted by local bicycling advocacy organizations.   Some useful perspectives on how building more roadways has failed to provide any solution to increasing traffic, pollution, respiratory diseases, etc.  http://www.bikes-vs-cars.com/

She's always tried to be controversial to stir up publicity.

Sadly, nobody cares about her opinion on any subject.

Thankfully for her, she'll always have her looks to fall back on!

Failed to "save" the high street, blames cyclists for everything. She hasn't a clue about anything two wheeled.

frogg wrote:

“What about the young, the elderly and the disabled who may not want or be able to cycle and who cannot use public transport?”

Disabled enough not to take public transport but fit enough to drive a car ? hmmm

Too disabled to use a wheel-chair (or a hand-cycle) in a good-quality dedicated bike lane, but fit enough to get a chair around the cars parked on the narrow, broken, pavements?

I know this is entirely down to "selection effects" (and in no way at all, a representative sample) but most of the disabled people I know, cycle. The rest use public transport. I don't think any of them drive.

If only her article had as much teeth as she does

Shouting and stampingher feet, sounds like shes on a menstal cycle......

“What about the young, the elderly and the disabled who may not want or be able to cycle and who cannot use public transport?”

Disabled enough not to take public transport but fit enough to drive a car ? hmmm

We don't have powerful backers, just very stupid opposition.

'You can rent a bike and potentially kill pedestrians or other road users'

I can see it now: 'Car killed by deadly cyclist'

Never mind her comments about there not being enough space for traffic. Er, that's kind of the point isn't it? Discourage car use? Or would she prefer to breathe in all those pollutants while walking? (Let's face it, her gobs big enough to take in more than her fair share

If a "media face" wrote an article supporting the abolition of access to the countryside for none private land owners JSP would be up in arms. And for someone I've seen many times castigating folk who don't walk it's strange to see her supporting car ownership & use. "Do as I say, not what I do". As said we shouldn't really respond to these proffesional trolls, it just gives them the exposure they can't live without.

What's all the fuss about - we've got our powerful backers so why do we care what some noisy irrelevant old fool says?

to be fair she is an expert in toy boys and ex husbands; apart from that she knows not a lot

Guys, population, everybody - please think of the children!

Janet's thinking of the children.  

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Its early days yet, give it a year and the fuss over the first of the decent cycle superhighways will die down, people will shut up when they realise it makes thigs better at relatively little cost.  

Pure clickbait. Please don't give JSP or the Indie the clicks that they want to float under the noses of the online advertisers.

The sad thing is that I used to quite like JSP, then she switched to that terrible mockney accent and it all went down-hill, though presumably not her earnings.

Just a noisy gobshite always has been.