"Not everyone has the option to drive": Council addresses backlash over controversial cycle lane projects, including row over 'driveway-blocking wands' and 'Britain's biggest bike lane'

reminds me .....

It depends on how big an impact it makes on that 971 people. I see a lot of cars and not a single cyclist. In my experience cycling in London I find most cycle lanes are so poorly considered that they are dangerous to cyclists particularly at interchanges. Additionally they tend a poor use of road space with many cyclists just opting to cycle in the road especially since the speed limit has been reduced to 20mph in most urban settings. I have a suspicion these projects are usually a greenwashed money laundering effort of councils. A better use of money would be active speed bumps and tax bands of vehicles should be based on the vehicles power, wheelbase and track.

Cra5hed wrote:

A better use of money would be active speed bumps and tax bands of vehicles should be based on the vehicles power, wheelbase and track.

Active speed bumps?  That sounds fun!  More than 5mph over the speed limit and you're launched into the air or sideways like pinball?

"Never see any cyclists" sounds a klaxon for me - especially having heard it from "keen cyclist myself" types while simultaneously watching cyclists passing!  Aside from more "looking but not seeing" there's also the "cycle lanes are almost empty" effect (see here).  And I'm pretty sure the M1 wasn't gridlocked from when it opened...

Of course if cycle infra isn't well-used the first question should be "why not?".  Which to be fair you've noted ("poorly considered") - which is often more or less valid for UK infra.

As others have noted - it's one thing to grow cycling where mass cycling exists already.  It's another thing entirely to restore it (and genuine alternatives to driving) where authorities have systematically ditched them in favour of driving.  (London kept public transport viable - in the centre - but edged out cycling).

However ... speed bumps won't get more cycling.  Indeed - they're often another hazard to cyclists.  Nor will any likely tax changes for motorists.  Not that these are bad things but I don't think that the Netherlands - or more comparably Seville - made the changes they did by either of those means.

Speed bumps reward the drivers of wide air suspension vehicles and punish the drivers of narrow conventional suspension vehicles. So I'd suggest are also against the interest of vulnerable road users who prefer not to meet wankpanzers on the public highway. Choke points with single priority are much better to limit all motor vehicles equally. Usually out of the built up area having priority...

Indeed - although it's a bit chicken and egg with any of the "traffic calming" measures where a road is shared with cyclists. We've all no doubt experienced a few motorists behaving even more dangerously around cyclists where there are such measures eg. squeezing past at choke points, overtaking on speed bumps, passing the wrong side of pedestrian refuges...

So the current generation of cyclists - the "quick and the brave" are in a sense "taking one for the team". We're carrying the burden of educating drivers that "people cycle here" for the (hopefully) eventual benefit of the cyclists of tomorrow (drivers of today). Who will almost certainly be riding on better infra and amongst less traffic and lower speed limits.

Freedom of navigation exercises to uphold the general right to cycle. Similar to Royal Navy actions to assure global trade and the international rule of law.

Choke points often have a curbside straight on channel for cyclists, though how much you want to risk glass punctures and leaf detritus is a personal decision.

#FONOPS #RN #CSG

'' I have a suspicion these projects are usually a greenwashed money laundering effort of councils'

Money laundered? Whose money is the council laundering? You do understand want money laundering is, right? 

Cra5hed wrote:

In my experience cycling in London I find most cycle lanes are so poorly considered that they are dangerous to cyclists particularly at interchanges. Additionally they tend a poor use of road space with many cyclists just opting to cycle in the road especially since the speed limit has been reduced to 20mph in most urban settings

I'm not sure which cycle lanes you're referring to but in my decade of daily commuting around inner London, this wasn't my experience. The segregated infrastructure was well-used at peak times (less so outside those - just as for public transport) and the junctions were mostly fine.

I'm afraid you've rather missed my point, I wasn't questioning whether or not the concerns of genuine residents are valid but how many of those objecting are actually affected by the scheme and live in the area. It's no coincidence that the number of signatories almost doubled once the story was featured in the Daily Mail; it takes ten seconds to go and sign an online petition and there's no telling where the signatories are based. Plenty of people are more than happy to register objections to things that don't affect them in the slightest, indeed during the pandemic installation of LTNs many anti campaigners were positively encouraging people from other parts of the UK and abroad to sign their petitions.

As for your comments about cycle lanes, I can only speak from my experience of London and Paris, which is that if decent segregated cycling provision is provided not only do cycling numbers increase massively but virtually all cyclists use it. I simply don't recognise the "they built a new cycle lane and cyclists still ride in the road" trope so beloved of antis. The only people I see in London eschewing the cycle lanes are sports cyclists quite correctly following the DoT guidance and using the main carriageway when they want to ride fast. 

I don't know where you ride in London but from my experience the statement that " most cycle lanes are so poorly considered that they are dangerous to cyclists particularly at interchanges" is just nonsense. From where I live in Peckham I can now cycle right across town to Camden and beyond without ever having to share the road with motor vehicles on cycleways so well-designed and safe (and extremely well used)  that I would have no hesitation taking a child or a novice cyclist with me on them.

Not in London, but here in Southampton most legacy cycle infrastructure is unusable or has issues that make it more difficult to use than just riding on the road. Newly built infra is better, but still a bit hit and miss.

I agree - I did specify "decent segregated cycling provision". There's plenty of poor legacy infrastucture in London, a lot of it remaining from the 1930s when for a brief and miraculous period it was seen as a good thing to build segregated cycle lanes alongside new roads; the pity is that quite a lot of it could be very workable if it was resurfaced, tweaked a bit at junctions and regularly swept; unfortunately most councils seem to take a "there's a cycle lane there, job's a gooden" attitude.

Rendel Harris wrote:

... There's plenty of poor legacy infrastucture in London, a lot of it remaining from the 1930s when for a brief and miraculous period it was seen as a good thing to build segregated cycle lanes alongside new roads; the pity is that quite a lot of it could be very workable if it was resurfaced, tweaked a bit at junctions and regularly swept;

Good point, is that a reference to what Carlton Reid is on about ("Let's rescue Britain's forgotten 1930s protected cycleways")?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/carltonreid/lets-rescue-britains-fo...

Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?hl=en&ll=53.66044454350361%2C-2.465...

Of course the irony is that much of the intent behind those *was* to "get cyclists off the roads to make space for cars". But by and large those paths were far better than anything since until very recently...

I find it fascinating (and frustrating) looking at the various generations of cycle infra dating back almost a century - as every couple of decades a local authority or government says "what about this 'cycling' idea - could that work as transport, do you think? We've no idea, nor how best to make that happen - so let's run some trials..."

Of course all of them miss the real point which is nothing will work well where we have embedded driving as the default mode - because of the space-inefficiency of that, the suppressive effect it had on other modes *especially* those which involve people outside metal boxes, and the incredible resources and power of the motoring and related industries.

It's no coincidence that the number of signatories almost doubled once the story was featured in the Daily Mail

Come back, Aneurin Bevan, we need you! One thing of which there is no shortage in England is Tory Vermin and pantomine villains with no appreciation of their self-parodying statements, and this Moody dimwit is one of them. He has even included the Accessibility for the less mobile and elderly dodge, although he has failed on the 'I'm a cyclist myself'.

Same as the anti-London comments in the Daily Mail  ( yes, I do look at the DM website to send my anti-DM cycling comments) - many of them come from all over the world and many from this country do not live in London.

Aah, the irrelevance of the interweb...

Think that's come up in that story and others before.

"Because we expect to, we can.  Because we can we'll fight anyone who says we shouldn't"?