Superhighway

[TonyR]

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.

No. If they are trying to kill you regularly they are remarkably unsuccessful at it. Their success rate is only about 1 in 20 million.

[profpointy]

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.

That's dishonest argument to malign the motives of those (like me) who disagree with you. All I see in towns is infrastructure which makes cycling more dangerous, slower, and less convenient. Apparently I should embrace this extra risk because somehow it will help a mythical six year old.

I am all for mass cycling - the more of us (by us I mean the general population) the better it will be for a whole host of reasons, but building more so called infrastructure which makes cycling worse, won't do it. I don't know where this "proper provision" existing - other than totally non-road routes on (say) disused railway lines - which by their nature go to and from places, bits and pieces of lanes don't help as essentially they make the junctions far more hazardous, and the constant stop start makes any journey longer than a pootle to the shops impractical on a bike.

I live in Bristol - quite good for cycling (mostly) even on seemingly cycle-unfriendly bits - but possibly because (again opinion) a fair few of us cycle. And by the way I'm talking practical cycle-to-work journey's here, not roadies out for a Sunday, nor pootling round the park as a leisure pursuit.

Now, the real risk is in my view (opinion only = can't back this up) is on roads outside towns, which ain't getting cycle lanes any time soon.

[mjr]

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.

That's not modal share and Cambridge has quite a lot of infrastructure, although more routes use modal filtering than protected space, but the commuter share has increased to 30% from about 25% since 2001 and during that time, Cambridge has been building more protected space as well as even more modal filtering

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.

London has 3.9% cycle-commuting; most people living in Hackney ride to or through Camden which does have some infrastructure; Central London numbers aren't published as such but Inner London is, which at 6.5% seems far from "dominant", doesn't it?

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

I think it's fair to say that Bristol hasn't been spending a lot of money for very long, much of what they spent was spent unwisely (converted paths with trees) until very recently, plus there's been quite a history of favouring motor vehicles to overcome (there was a dual carriageway diagonally through a fine Georgian city centre square 1937-2000). At 7.5% then no, it's not in the top few, but if London "has very high levels" with 3.9% then what is that?

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-

Ohhhh you can't write that mix of old falsehoods (MK doesn't have good infrastructure but also doesn't have little cycling) and then link to something that shows Milton Keynes a 2.8% national average level of cycle-commuting (not modal share) and doesn't include East Kilbride!

That is also a bit misleading because as well as poor motor-centric plans, both MK and Stevenage have fast trains and commuter services to London. When you look at maps like http://datashine.org.uk/#table=QS701EW& ... at=51.8917 you can see that effect all around London, with all the commuting towns being a bit darker than similar-size towns elsewhere in the country. If you look at the Active People Survey instead, which isn't only commuters, then many of those places show much higher levels of regular cycling.

In short, the statistics paint a rather more complex picture and it seems completely wrong to abuse them to suggest "infrastructure is useless".

What would be more interesting would be how people feel about cycling on routes with different measures. I do ride on the carriageway when I must (including when a cycleway is crap for some reason) but I prefer to ride routes with fewer or no motors. Isn't that true of most people, given the choice?

Bottom line: what really would get the masses out on the bikes again? The answer may vary from place to place, but reallocating some road space from carriageway to cycleway seems like a good idea for London.

[mjr]

That's dishonest argument to malign the motives of those (like me) who disagree with you. All I see in towns is infrastructure which makes cycling more dangerous, slower, and less convenient. Apparently I should embrace this extra risk because somehow it will help a mythical six year old.

It need not make cycling more dangerous, slower or less convenient. Do the cycleways alongside the harbour through Bristol's Castle Park and from Counterslip to Temple Quay do any of that? What about the cycleway by the road up the north side of Temple Meads station? Would you prefer to still be mixing it with taxis, buses and confused motorists in front of the station like we used to?

Now, many towns have built some crap, but not all cycleways need be crap. You need not have constant stop start at junctions if there's good intervisibility, but very few yet have been built that way in this country.

Conversely, good cycleways are essential for making cycle journeys practical. Ordinary people get fed up with having motorists tailgating them for large stretches. There are several ways to avoid that but do nothing and claim the current crap is "quite good" isn't one of them!

Now, the real risk is in my view (opinion only = can't back this up) is on roads outside towns, which ain't getting cycle lanes any time soon.

My current home borough is roughly two-thirds rural. If I'm remembering correctly, you're not as likely to be involved in a collision riding on rural roads, but collisions are more likely to be deadly.

Most of the worst A roads are avoidable by using a shorter route, so you don't need to be on them long (especially if care is taken when building bypasses, but that hasn't always happened) and the remaining minority usually have space where cycleways could be built to complete the links. The difficult (=expensive) bits will be widening things like bridges if needed - ideally to add a protected cycleway, but at least to make lanes or add mixed-use paths.

[TonyR]

That's not modal share and Cambridge has quite a lot of infrastructure, although more routes use modal filtering than protected space, but the commuter share has increased to 30% from about 25% since 2001 and during that time, Cambridge has been building more protected space as well as even more modal filtering

So where has this "more protected space" been built exactly?

London has 3.9% cycle-commuting; most people living in Hackney ride to or through Camden which does have some infrastructure; Central London numbers aren't published as such but Inner London is, which at 6.5% seems far from "dominant", doesn't it?

"Bikes now make up around 16% of traffic in Central London, rising to around a quarter or even half of all journeys on some routes during peak hours."
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/pr ... ords-began

"The biggest ever census of bike use in the city reveals one in four road users during the morning rush hour is a cyclist - and on key routes such as river crossings and roundabouts bikes even outnumber all other vehicles."
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/m ... 71069.html

You were saying?

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

I think it's fair to say that Bristol hasn't been spending a lot of money for very long, much of what they spent was spent unwisely (converted paths with trees) until very recently, plus there's been quite a history of favouring motor vehicles to overcome (there was a dual carriageway diagonally through a fine Georgian city centre square 1937-2000).

"Bristol has become England's first "cycling city" in a £100m government scheme aimed at encouraging cycling."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7462791.stm

Bottom line: what really would get the masses out on the bikes again? The answer may vary from place to place, but reallocating some road space from carriageway to cycleway seems like a good idea for London.

What would get the masses out cycling - try reading David Horton's Fear of Cycling.- http://www.copenhagenize.com/search?q=horton
What might get them cycling though is a ubiquitous network that goes wherever you need to go and is safe to cycle the whole way. Its called the road network with controls on motor vehicles.

[TonyR]

It need not make cycling more dangerous, slower or less convenient. Do the cycleways alongside the harbour through Bristol's Castle Park and from Counterslip to Temple Quay do any of that? What about the cycleway by the road up the north side of Temple Meads station?

Show me the data that shows what you claim is true and not just a wishful assumption. Wherever people have collected the data it has shown cycle facilities to be more dangerous than the road so why should Bristol be any different?

[mjr]

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.

Nice narrative, but is it true? http://www.voleospeed.co.uk/2011/06/und ... -deja.html suggests not.

[mjr]

It need not make cycling more dangerous, slower or less convenient. Do the cycleways alongside the harbour through Bristol's Castle Park and from Counterslip to Temple Quay do any of that? What about the cycleway by the road up the north side of Temple Meads station?

Show me the data that shows what you claim is true and not just a wishful assumption.

Bristol's Castle Park: cycleway is 500m with priority and no reported collisions, road route (via Newgate) is 800m with at least two sets of traffic lights and a few junctions and 10 reported collisions along route (1 serious at junction with Union Street).

Counterslip to Temple Quay: cycleway is 600m with one road crossing (Friary) and no reported collisions (I wouldn't have been surprised by one on that crossing), road route (via Victoria Street) is 900m with I'm not sure how many traffic lights around Temple Circus, 8 junctions and 14 reported collisions along the route (5 serious).

Distances from http://cycle.travel/map, collisions from http://bristol.cyclestreets.net/collisions (and I think I'm being generous in not counting some which are at the ends of the road routes) and descriptions from maps and memory.

So both seem faster, safer and more convenient. This shouldn't be surprising: I think I've ridden all of those quite a bit over the years and I chose them because I knew they were like heaven and hell!

Wherever people have collected the data it has shown cycle facilities to be more dangerous than the road so why should Bristol be any different?

Now show me your data, but if it's Franklin's Redway data, then I'll laugh at it for reasons me and others give on http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/cyclynn/redways#comments and the earlier page.

[honesty]

It need not make cycling more dangerous, slower or less convenient. Do the cycleways alongside the harbour through Bristol's Castle Park and from Counterslip to Temple Quay do any of that? What about the cycleway by the road up the north side of Temple Meads station?

Show me the data that shows what you claim is true and not just a wishful assumption. Wherever people have collected the data it has shown cycle facilities to be more dangerous than the road so why should Bristol be any different?

Profpointy made the original assertion, so its up to him to provide evidence Tha segregation is more dangerous, not the other way round.

[honesty]

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.

Nice strawnan... No one has ever talked about stopping cyclists riding on the road.

[TonyR]

Profpointy made the original assertion, so its up to him to provide evidence Tha segregation is more dangerous, not the other way round.

What a strange inversion of the normal logic. You are proposing to introduce something that you claim will make me safer and its not your responsibility to show that it will but mine to show that it won't? The pharmaceutical industry would love you. No need to prove their drugs are safe/work, its the users responsibility to prove they're not safe/don't work.

[TonyR]

Bristol's Castle Park: cycleway is 500m with priority and no reported collisions, road route (via Newgate) is 800m with at least two sets of traffic lights and a few junctions and 10 reported collisions along route (1 serious at junction with Union Street).

Counterslip to Temple Quay: cycleway is 600m with one road crossing (Friary) and no reported collisions (I wouldn't have been surprised by one on that crossing), road route (via Victoria Street) is 900m with I'm not sure how many traffic lights around Temple Circus, 8 junctions and 14 reported collisions along the route (5 serious).

Sorry, I misread your first post as referring to segregated cycle facilities not off-road cycle routes. I have no problem with off-road routes that provide a genuine alternative and shorter route. Its on-road segregation we were primarily talking about. But in any case the safety comparison you've made is bogus. The accident map you refer to is based on STATS19 data which is accidents on the road It won't record anything happening on an off-road cycleway

Wherever people have collected the data it has shown cycle facilities to be more dangerous than the road so why should Bristol be any different?

Now show me your data, but if it's Franklin's Redway data, then I'll laugh at it for reasons me and others give on http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/cyclynn/redways#comments and the earlier page.

There are plenty of studies that are much more rigorous than Franklin's rather arm-waving Milton Keynes comments. Probably the best study is the one done in Copenhagen where they measured before and after on a new construction to the highest Danish standards and included factors like changes in routes people took before and after. But there are many others. http://trafitec.dk/sites/default/files/ ... 0lanes.pdf
http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/helsinki.htm

[aspiringcyclist]

[youtube]XpQMgbDJPok[/youtube]

Here is a video explaining some solutions to the junction/side road problem.

[reohn2]

Whenever I see videos of NL cycling infrastructure I see civilisation.
I then have to ride my bike in a mad land

[Penfolds11]

Here is a video explaining some solutions to the junction/side road problem.

This Walter Mitty world tries to show motorists voluntarily stopping to let cyclists go past. Dreamers!









But it would be nice to think it could one day happen in this country....