Superhighway

[ArMoRothair]

This reminds of these images, showing Dutch cyclists being overlaid on British roads.

Totally brilliant - thanks.

Bez sums it up too, better than I ever could http://singletrackworld.com/columns/201 ... -some-guy/

[honesty]

segregated infrastructure in urban environments is an absolute must if you want to increase and diversify the people cycling.

These 2 announced corridors you can only hope is the tip of an iceberg and further spending will happen in the future to add other routes. Seville has just gone through something like this (Adding around 70 miles of fully segregated paths) and the changes there as supposedly transformational. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jan/28/seville-cycling-capital-southern-europe-bike-lanes

[ArMoRothair]

And this will do nothing to help your six year old unless they like getting off and pushing as soon as they leave the super-highway or even on the bits up around KX.

Yes of course it's not a perfect proposal, and there is a looooooong way to go before we have Dutch style provision, but it is a vital first step.

The status quo can't remain. I took my six-year-old for a 35 km ride on Sunday and the only way we managed London's anti-cycling roads was to go in a group where we were marshalled across the busier junctions. This is madness. We can't summon up an escort group every time we need to ride our bikes. What alternative are you advocating? Are you saying my child should stay at home, watching videos perhaps, until she is fifteen, sixteen, eighteen? You must see how mad that is.

[TonyR]

I think this debate is a couple of days late for Groundhog Day.

DKUATB Bill Murray had to relive Groundhog Day 12,395 times (yes someone actually worked it out) before he got to live happily ever after.

[TonyR]

I'm fairly sure not being around HGVs not fitted with guards is safer than being around HGVs fitted with guards.

Not necessarily as all segregated networks have to unsegregate around junctions and side roads. The segregated cycle lanes in Bloomsbury and on Royal College St both had high accident rates for cyclists at the side roads in particular and putting stop lines across the cycle lane was seen as the only solution to cyclists being hit by turning motorists at Byng Place. See for example https://consultations.wearecamden.org/c ... provements

Where is the evidence that 'safety in numbers' is a real phenomenon?

Jacobsen P. Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling. Injury Prevention vol. 9 pp 205-209, 2003 ( http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/9/3/205).
http://www.ctc.org.uk/sites/default/fil ... _rpt_0.pdf

The fact is cycling in the Netherlands was marginalised post war up to the 1970s until a turning away from car-centric policies, something we never had in Britain. Could it be feasible that the increase in cycling was due to the safer cycling conditions, not the other way round?

No because what increase there was happened before the construction of the cycle facilities and during and since their construction cycling hasn't increased.

Clearly cycling infrastructure has to start somewhere, or else you could use that excuse to stop anything being built.

This reminds of these images, showing Dutch cyclists being overlaid on British roads.

[/quote]

But what you have missed with those pictures is that in Dutch city centres the cyclists are on the road and the motorists are controlled so you should not only edit in the cyclists on the road but edit out the trucks and most of the cars. Also urban planning is such that in the suburbs schools and shops and housing are in close proximity within a community not miles away at the end of a main road. So kids can cycle to school because its both nearby and connected with "woonerf" roads.

[honesty]

It's small steps. We need to radically shift how we design living spaces so that they accommodate people rather than cars, which does mean changing where planning permission is granted for schools for example. This is not going to happen over night. Approving 2 huge segregated cycleways in the capital is a step towards how we think about what is designed and hopefully will signal a shift in how this is done in the future. Now that's not to say there aren't going to hiccups along the way (as well as shoddy shared use paths) but that shouldn't mean we don't do it. Part of this change is we need to affect how people drive around and with people on bikes, for example turning across cycle lanes without checking - it'll take many many years for this to percolate into society.

[Postboxer]

[quote=But what you have missed with those pictures is that in Dutch city centres the cyclists are on the road and the motorists are controlled so you should not only edit in the cyclists on the road but edit out the trucks and most of the cars.

I think that's the point isn't it?

[TonyR]

Part of this change is we need to affect how people drive around and with people on bikes, for example turning across cycle lanes without checking - it'll take many many years for this to percolate into society.

And do you think that will happen faster if cyclists are segregated away in their ghettos where motorists don't have to think about them or where cyclists are mixed in with other traffic so motorists are constantly reminded of their presence and required to learn to interact with them?

[TonyR]

[quote=But what you have missed with those pictures is that in Dutch city centres the cyclists are on the road and the motorists are controlled so you should not only edit in the cyclists on the road but edit out the trucks and most of the cars.

I think that's the point isn't it?

As I understood it the point was that Dutch cyclists would be hidden away in their own segregated facilities, not mixing it on the road with other traffic. Which misrepresents the reality which is much of the Dutch city centre cycling is done on the roads with traffic restricted.

[mjr]

Part of this change is we need to affect how people drive around and with people on bikes, for example turning across cycle lanes without checking - it'll take many many years for this to percolate into society.

In parts of East Anglia, that happens already, but you still can't rely upon it because the one you assume stops could be the one that doesn't

I'm fairly sure not being around HGVs not fitted with guards is safer than being around HGVs fitted with guards.

Not necessarily as all segregated networks have to unsegregate around junctions and side roads.

Not necessarily. They're not good examples (because it's most often the cyclists that get the extra distance and gradients and there were many other design mistakes), but the networks in the 1960s-90s new towns/cities did not merge at all junctions.

Most retrofit cycleways will probably merge for cost reasons, though. The obvious solutions are Protected Intersections (physical separation but turning traffic has to wait - both motor and human) or Barnes Dances (time separation, adding bikes to the pedestrian crossing phase).

The segregated cycle lanes in Bloomsbury and on Royal College St both had high accident rates for cyclists at the side roads in particular and putting stop lines across the cycle lane was seen as the only solution to cyclists being hit by turning motorists at Byng Place. See for example https://consultations.wearecamden.org/c ... provements

Which is about RCS not Byng Place. Probably give way lines were seen as the only solution because they're blooming short-sighted and motor-centric if they're anything like some other safety auditors.

Where is the evidence that 'safety in numbers' is a real phenomenon?

Jacobsen P. Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling. Injury Prevention vol. 9 pp 205-209, 2003 ( http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/9/3/205).
http://www.ctc.org.uk/sites/default/fil ... _rpt_0.pdf

The 2003 paper has been accused of confounding correlation and causality in Forester J, "Does Increasing the Number of Cyclists Reduce the Accident Rate?" 2006 http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/So ... Safety.htm amongst others.

That is a CTC briefing which turned me away for years. The poor-looking fit of the curve shown (and the failure to show its construction) should be a suggestion that this does not adequately explain the effect and at best, there are other significant factors... and if you plot the other dataset, the UK local authority one that CTC didn't graph in its briefing, it's a fairly lousy fit with R²=0.466 roughly:

CTC Safety in Numbers Local Authority stats, plotted

In layman's terms, there's more unexplained than explained by the "safety in numbers" effect...

Other criticisms have been that there may not be "safety in numbers" but there is risk in rarity and cycling is still rare enough in the UK that we're experiencing that (I think that one was from NZ, where helmet laws, sparse population and large distances don't help); or that there's a relatively small subset of killer motorists and a sort of "predator satiation" occurs; or that a large number of cyclists results in designers delivering safer cycling infrastructure in the area (which is also basically arguing that infrastructure-first may be backwards... but if that were true, wouldn't the incessant "promotion" efforts have worked better?)

The fact is cycling in the Netherlands was marginalised post war up to the 1970s until a turning away from car-centric policies, something we never had in Britain. Could it be feasible that the increase in cycling was due to the safer cycling conditions, not the other way round?

No because what increase there was happened before the construction of the cycle facilities and during and since their construction cycling hasn't increased.

So do you feel that the key change in the Netherlands was restricting urban motor traffic in the 1970s (including "woonerf" roads) in response to high level of deaths (especially children) or what other measures?

If there is not the political will somewhere to introduce similar restrictions, is creating restricted/protected space for cycling on the busiest roads a useful alternative measure?

[aspiringcyclist]

You are assuming that all cycling infrastructure is uniform. But we know that there are vastly different types of cycle paths possible, some better than others. There are plenty of good solutions to the problems of side roads and junctions, but Royal College Street and Tavistock Pl does not have them.

As I said, is the 'safety in numbers' a causal relationship? Cycling was in decline in the Netherlands in the 1970s, the rate has gone up since then. Clearly it is much safer, so rather than focusing on nebulous ideas such as culture or driving standards, we should be looking at the one major thing that sets it apart from most of the world: infrastructure.

[honesty]

Part of this change is we need to affect how people drive around and with people on bikes, for example turning across cycle lanes without checking - it'll take many many years for this to percolate into society.

And do you think that will happen faster if cyclists are segregated away in their ghettos where motorists don't have to think about them or where cyclists are mixed in with other traffic so motorists are constantly reminded of their presence and required to learn to interact with them?

Since we've been mixed in with other traffic for almost 150 years and currently cycling is grumbling along at 2% share and drivers still try to kill you regularly, no.

[Mark1978]

I do despair when people trot out the same old things about cycling with heavy traffic being fine etc. Well it isn't. Not for the majority of people.

In fact being against proper provision is rather selfish; it's great that you like city cycling most don't and will never do when they have to cycle with cars and lorries. So opposing it is a good way to keep cycling your exclusive little hobby.

The only time cycling modal share has had any big impact is when there is the infrastructure to support it.

I do feel ashamed on occasion that fellow cyclists are so anti mass cycling.

[TonyR]

The only time cycling modal share has had any big impact is when there is the infrastructure to support it.

Really?

Cambridge has a higher modal share than anywhere - up at Dutch levels at about 30% - and yet has very little infrastructure.

London now has very high levels of cycling with very little infrastructure to help - in Hackney its 14% and in Central London now cycling is the dominant commuting mode.

Oxford has very little infrastructure but modal share of around 17%

Bristol has spent a lot of money on cycling infrastructure but doesn't make the top list

Milton Keynes, East Kilbride, Stevenage have lots of good infrastructure and very little cycling - about 2% modal share.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/20 ... g-to-work-

[TonyR]

I do despair when people trot out the same old things about cycling with heavy traffic being fine etc.

No it isn't but the answer is not to confine the cyclists to small ghettos and make everywhere else off limits, its to deal with the traffic, as the Dutch have done, to make it fine to cycle everywhere. If we're talking about the same old things being trotted out, segregated facilities have been trotted out as the answer and built for over 70 years now and it hasn't worked. Royal College St in London was the pinnacle of the local activists' achievement until it was found it was causing more accidents than before and then the tired old excuse "but they didn't build it properly" was trotted out yet again and they had another go. Its time to admit if you can't get it right in 70 years you probably won't do any better in the next seventy years and try a different approach. One of controlling the motorised traffic, not the cyclists.