Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham under fire after calling for Highway Code changes to be paused

Just listened to Chris Boardman on the podcast. Excellent - I can only recommend everyone does. There's also a very simple short at Cycling UK to explain the main points which is good too. So Andy B should check that - but then keep on rolling out the infra!

I agree that Burnham's comments show a lack of understanding rather than any kind of anti-cycling sentiment (assuming I've understood you correctly). I also think Manchester has some great intentions, but (as a resident)...

You link to TfGM, and Andy Burnham is the mayor of GM - Greater Manchester (pop. 3000000) - which is a very different thing to Manchester (pop 500000). My point being the boroughs, and their councils, have control of their roads (as in London), so in my experience all GM's (and TfGM's) reassuring talk has mostly just been talk. The city of Manchester has just one major urban cycle route being built. It was proposed long before Boardman came to Manchester, and it's still a work in progress now he's left. Most of the other GM councils aren't doing much better. It looks to me like (Greater) London has a lot more existing cycleways. But then it is a bigger place.

Like Burnham, I'd rather see fully seperated cycleways on major routes, but it's going to be a long time before that happens (maybe not even in my kids' lifetimes), so the HC updates are welcome in the meantime.

And smaller roads don't have segregated lanes even in the Netherlands, so moving towards giving more vulnerable road users more respect there is very welcome.

I'm a resident of the far outer reaches of GM; unfortunately, I can confirm there is no joined up strategy that makes GM a cycling mecca.

It's essentially one (apparently excellent) corridor from the leafy southern suburbs into the city centre... which strikes me as a bit of 'preaching to the converted'. When I come into the city, I get the odd murder strip...https://goo.gl/maps/vKcuQVs1JUVVQgDj6...(full of glass/parked cars) here and there, but it's mostly a case of taking my life in my hands to get in through Salford.

but its still concerning that Burnham who has spent the past 5 years working with Chris Boardman, even if they havent quite achieved the cycling nirvana across GM into Manchester to turn it in to a Greater Holland, on the situation facing cyclists on the roads has seemingly picked nothing up about it.

even by osmosis youd think just discussing the topic for 5 years youd learn something of just what the issues are for cyclists on the road, and why the HC updates (I dont like calling them changes now as it implies something that wasnt there before, when all this stuff was there just not specifically stated)  were made.

its like why do you think you were building these segregated lanes, or tackling issues for pedestrians crossing the road in the first place ?

Awavey wrote:

even if they havent quite achieved the cycling nirvana across GM into Manchester to turn it in to a Greater Holland

Erm, I think Holland, with more than four times the land area and over twice the population, might be a little offended at being considered 'lesser'.

I chose Greater, as a play on words with Greater Manchester, and because we normally call such areas that copy the Dutch approach Mini Hollands, calling Manchester a Mini Holland didnt seem right to me...ymmv.

A Midi Holland maybe?

Im just disappointed you didnt go for the Maxi

Thanks for the local info.  I hadn't realised that Manchester was more akin to the London situation!

I see they're claiming to have 55 miles done by 2021 (that's both B's).

...so that should be apparent.  Their plans are here and on the map you can switch between completed (not much in central Manchester - actually not much in general), under construction, consultation, planned etc. I totally agree that their "future" (which does look like a zoom in of some city in The Netherlands) is a giant leap from the present.

As for long time - probably.  It may be decades.  Something worthwhile could however be done in far less time than our average UK rate.  We can look to Denmark (Copenhagen), Seville and possibly Paris to see a hopeful vision of changes in a shorter time.

> And smaller roads don't have segregated lanes even in the Netherlands,

Well, yes - but what does that mean?  Not everywhere is segregated.  Some of those are fietsstrat (cycle streets) - so this is allowed in the expectation of very few cars and they shouldn't overtake cyclists.  (Yes - just plonking that in the UK now would be problematic without a lot of sympathetic police and courts...) There's plenty of "permeable" routes that are only destinations for cars but through-routes for bikes - so you're not going to have much traffic (no rat-running possible).  The design rules mean that there are generally lower speeds where cars and bikes mix - and if there are too many cars or the speed limit "needs" to be higher then there should be segregation.  That's not a principle we seem to deploy much here...

There is lots of not so good legacy stuff (including some rather familiar cycle lanes) but the "good juice" is the design philosophy / principles as much as the "rules" - which genuinely appear to guide new / re-development.

You said it.

Good luck with that for me the last two days its felt like being public enemy number 1 on the road, maybe it's just the peak of randomness and it will quieten down again ,but when you are getting into double figures of close passes & near misses per ride and it's not even that you are encountering that many drivers, you do begin to wonder

So actually quite a high percentage of good passes. Unfortunately, the dickheads were even more aggressive. Illegal use of the horn, swearing and of course close passes into oncoming traffic all on view. Northants police will be hearing from me.

Curiously he was once part of a Government whose mantra was 'education, education, education'. This episode demonstrates that ignorance has no political affiliations.

jaymack wrote:

Curiously he was once part of a Government whose mantra was 'education, education, education'. This episode demonstrates that ignorance has no political affiliations.

Seems he didn't get a very good Education Education Education then.