Survey: Seven in 10 back moves to encourage cycling and walking

Of course.  They're not mutually exclusive at all, as demonstrated by, among many other things, the 80% or whatever of cyclists who have a driving licence.  Nor are they necessarily indicative of a desire for measures to affect other people only.  People may still perceive (rightly or wrongly) that they need a car for certain tasks and yet wish to substitute the bicycle for other journeys.

I used to cycle to work. Ten miles each way. If I wanted to get public transport it required three miles of walking each way or getting two buses. It took longer, and the buses were infrequent so if I was held up at work I could be waiting more than an hour for the next (last) bus home. Unfortunately, they've put a series of enormous warehouses, the associated infrasturcture (basically a new dual carriageway) and a massive three-lane roundabout on my most direct route, so cycling is a much less viable option these days. On the rare occasions I'm in the office I tend to drive, which upsets me but not enough to make me face rush-hour armageddon on the A5

Sounds very similar to here. 

My other half works 15 miles away into Kent. They tried public transport and it just doesn't work, the trains are too infrequent and at the other end the buses don't go anywhere near where needed. By car the journey is about 40 minutes, that doubles and then some if you use public transport. There's also no decent cycle infrastructure that way, just busy roads.

We have also similarly had a lot of industrial development locally, including an Amazon warehouse along the route I would need to cycle if tried cycling from home rather than catch the train the first part. It's annoying as the dual carriageway could easily have a proper cycle lane added, but instead if you are brave/stupid enough to try it you're cycling in the gutter with HGVs doing 60mph.

nordog wrote:

we in the UK have an excellent rail system for fast short and long-distance travel these days

We really don't, see my comment it is expensive and unreliable for many. If I use the train to go to my local town it is a journey of 5 miles, 3 stops and 10 minutes. The cost is £4.90 return, assuming it is working (far too often it is a bus replacement at weekends)

nordog wrote:

we in the UK have an excellent rail system for fast short and long-distance travel these days,

Which fantasy UK is that then?

I tried the Elizabeth line last week. On the second attempt, after boarding the train at Abbey Wood there was an announcement. Train had a fault, please wait for the next one.

I agree - the UK could be much better.  I've had plenty of poor (or woeful) public transport experiences.  And it's very patchy.  Some of this really is in the psychology though.  We always see things from where we are: I have x things which I have to do in my life and none can fail or it's a disaster.  True right now - but not an eternal truth.

I had a boss once who said that he'd organised his life so he was never further than 30 minutes (mostly by car in his case) from work.  He claimed to have even shifted jobs / moved / taken a pay cut.  In his view it just wasn't worth the waste of life on travel.

It's always a compromise.  I did take on a 2 hour commute for a while - I knew I wasn't doing that forever, it wasn't every day, part was on the train (not too busy) and part was by bike.  Over a period of about 2 years I think trains were cancelled half a dozen times.  Irritating but the boss could cope with that (and sometimes I just missed something in the evening).  If they hadn't - well, I'd have had to find another job, closer maybe...

Expense?  Often that too and I''m sure far too much of my current wage would be swallowed if it had to cover a London travel card. (My choice - I don't live or work there).  However you're describing under 50p a mile for a shortish journey, fairly quick.  That doesn't sound so bad - especially compared with a taxi.

I do a lot of work with our Oslo team and have been out there a number of times. Their transport is far better than ours. Consider too that in general Norway is far more expensive than the UK, however an annual ticket for all Zones in Oslo is the equivalent of £1,678.95. An annual ticket from my station is now £4280. OK, so I am outside of London, so lets take that back and do a season ticket that covers just London zones 1-6 and we still have a cost of £2812.00.

Yes it is always a compromise, but take those costs and add it to an area where there is no reliable local public transport and a car is pretty much a necissity, unless you want to spend all day going out of the way changing between buses that are liable to not turn up to get to where you need to go. I can't get to my parents in the evening if I want to by bus, the last one home is before 7:30PM and not direct from here.

So yes, you might say that £4.90 isn't much, but when the service is unreliable and you end up having to own a car anyway you might as well drive. A couple of weekends back I wanted to cycle out further afield, on Sundays the trains are one every half an hour to where I was going. I checked before I left home and the train was on time. I left home and cycled 10 mins to the station and bought a ticket, train is still showing good. I got to the platform and a couple of minutes later.... cancelled and I am stood around for 30 minutes.

Compromise is one thing, but if you are finding you need to factor in rubbish like this and travel way ahead of when you should to make sure you get to something important, is it anyone wonder people drive? As I say, I cycle a lot these days, but there is not a chance I will give up the car. 

Agree about Norway - times back I had a job were we worked with folks over there (in several locations) and even up north, in the country (Norway has a lot of north) the public transport sounded better than where I was in the UK - in a biggish city.

The compromise for them?  Norway saved and invested their oil / gas money.  We spent ours.  Their tax rate used to be pretty stiff and many things were "expensive" there (haven't looked for time).  There may be more "community" to places - but that cuts both ways of course!

Beg to differ.

85 mile round trip to London for two £54.90.

Cambridge to Fort William, 5 adults. £1,400! I only checked for a giggle. I do realise that if you can plan ahead you can get cheaper, but if you are the spontaneous type and travel more than 1 up then public transport is generally prohibitively expensive. Plus whatever train I do use / intend to use, at least 50% suffer some sort of delay or cancellation.

nordog wrote:

we in the UK have an excellent rail system for fast short and long-distance travel these days

lol

I cycled from London to Dunwich a few weeks ago, camped overnight, then headed up to the north Norfolk coast. I then tried to take the train home. The 130-mile journey should have taken 4.5 hours (already woeful), however all trains from Cambridge into London were cancelled.

Reading has some terrible roads at rush hour and out. The Wokingham road "cycle lane" up to three tuns is terrible - door zone and fast passed by traffic, or get aggressively beeped. 

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Reading has some terrible roads at rush hour and out. The Wokingham road "cycle lane" up to three tuns is terrible - door zone and fast passed by traffic, or get aggressively beeped. 

There needs to be criminal charges brought against Reading Borough Council (RBC) for the section of Wokingham Road from St. Peter's Road to the Three Tuns.

RBC originally painted an advisory cycle lane right in the door zone (presumably with 0 consultation), Reading Cycle Campaign (RCC) contacted them and told them how dangerous it was, so they painted over the white lines with black (because removing the white lines would require resurfacing) - to give them their due, they did this very quickly (after a few weeks, IIRC). After a few years the black paint started to fade and the white started to show again - leaving cyclists with the choice of riding in the murder strip or getting abuse from motorists. Then the road was resurfaced... and the murder strip was painted back on. The only difference being, they left gap between of about 12 inches between the edge of the parking bays and the start of the cycle lane - so if you ride right on the far edge of the cycle lane you are perhaps just about out of the door zone (if people park fully within the bay) but then most passing cars would* pass within about 3 inches of your handlebars so they can remain in their lane.

* I say "would" because I've never actually tested it. The few times that I've ridden this way, I've  always taken the cycle lane as a guide as to exactly where not to ride.

Secret_squirrel wrote:

I had cause to ruminate on this today.  Offspring Unit 1 left their PE kit at home this morning so my planned quick gravel bash turned into a kit delivery.   

Its 5 miles across Reading.  Even taking bike friendly routes the last 2 miles to the school I had to aggressively mix with traffic, and those 2 miles have at least 3 schools and a university campus in them. 

I was kitted up on best bike in full kit with lights and camera's a-gogo.  Pottering around on a step-through I would have struggled.

Needs some really good traffic modelling and understanding of beginning and destination to link up the existing paths.

Gave the school bus a good 15 min headstart and still beat it tho

Cycle infrastructure only works if it is:
 A. High quality (i.e. at the least minumum required to make it not completely pointless), and
 B. A comprehensive network.

I can't think of anywhere in Reading that meets point A - areas of Wokingham that have been built in the past 50 or so years might fit the bill (more by accident than by design).

For point B, that's not going to happen without creating LTN and reworking lots of roads and junctions.

However, we already have a comprehensive network that is mostly high quality - it is called roads.  Are they 8-80? I can drive safely sharing the road with an 8/80 year cyclist, there is no reason any other driver could not.

jh2727 wrote:

However, we already have a comprehensive network that is mostly high quality - it is called roads.  Are they 8-80? I can drive safely sharing the road with an 8/80 year cyclist, there is no reason any other driver could not.

You're quite right of course - and as always we should point out statistically UK roads are (globally) very safe, but:
a) it just isn't pleasant for most people to share roads with cars - unless you've really really tamed the cars (also here).   Plus the cars take up lots of space (parked or moving)
b) Most people are good drivers - until they aren't.  That's also why people don't enjoy cycling with cars.  Although overall it's probably mostly their "gut feeling".  It's a bit like bears - mostly they avoid humans but just occasionally they kill you - and there may be little you can do about that.  Most people accordingly are most comfortable when bears are at a distance, or when separated from them by a barrier.

A systems-view of transport safety [1] [2]?  Maybe with all agencies involved in the design, construction, operation, maintenance, operator training and policing all working together?

Not invented here.  Here in the UK we have freedom!  Rights and responsibilities!  Not the nanny state and pettifogging bureaucracy.