Cyclecraft is "destroying" UK cycling

[dellzeqq]

I don't accept that divvying up the road is barbaric, otherwise we wouldn't have pavements. What's barbaric is people using a road purely as a link, with no consideration for it's role as a place. Given the press of traffic, I think you can only make them respect "place" if you give them a defined, and deliberately tight space.

really? That people occupy something over half of all urban public space at their peril?

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I don't accept that divvying up the road is barbaric, otherwise we wouldn't have pavements. What's barbaric is people using a road purely as a link, with no consideration for it's role as a place. Given the press of traffic, I think you can only make them respect "place" if you give them a defined, and deliberately tight space.

Why are pavements necessary? I contend because the barbarians are in town with their various chariots and wagons and don't/won't behave in a civilised manner. Peds need to be put in their place, out of harms way, restricted and confined, so they don't injure themselves under the barbarians' wheels. The next step is to demand peds only cross the streets at places and times allotted to them so as not to inconvenience the barbarians. The whole thing is arse about face when you stop accepting the status quo and start to think about it. Towns are for people, they are a machine for living in, they aren't there for other machines but the civil authorities are in thrall to the barbarians.

Segregated streets stink significantly smellier than a visiting visigoths vest.

 

[Richard Mann]

Why are pavements necessary? I contend because the barbarians are in town with their various chariots and wagons and don't/won't behave in a civilised manner. Peds need to be put in their place, out of harms way, restricted and confined, so they don't injure themselves under the barbarians' wheels. The next step is to demand peds only cross the streets at places and times allotted to them so as not to inconvenience the barbarians. The whole thing is arse about face when you stop accepting the status quo and start to think about it. Towns are for people, they are a machine for living in, they aren't there for other machines but the civil authorities are in thrall to the barbarians.

Segregated streets stink significantly smellier than a visiting visigoths vest.

I'd agree with most of that - which is why I prefer the subtleties of surface changes and white paint to kerb separation.

I call it asymmetric space-sharing: certain spaces are reserved for certain participants, but others are shared. Pedestrians have exclusive use of the pavement, plus crossings, plus maybe a median, plus (with a certain amount of negotiation) priority using everything else. Cyclists have exclusive or dominant usage of a strip of space, but are freely allowed to move into the general traffic. Motor vehicles have what's left - which isn't much.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

Re Botley Road - the awful bit on the pavement outbound was done before we knew about set-backs etc. There's a cunning plan to sort it out, funding permitting (which would make a bus/cycle lane on the road, and a separate slow route on the pavement). A lot depends on quite how little width you can get away with giving cars (and buses).

Hmmmm - how would this work? There's not much space in Botley Road the way it is at the moment, outbound, as there are those island-things in the middle of the road for pedestrians. In the absence of the islands, I'd rather cycle in the road, but with the islands you run the risk of someone cutting in at the last minute when overtaking.

Your other comments about general compliance speedwise in Oxford seem spot on, but the numpties I do come across seem to be on Botley road outbound - normally at night, heading for the motorway on a largely un-occupied road in their Subaru.

 

[dellzeqq]

Segregated streets stink significantly smellier than a visiting visigoths vest.

may I put in a word for the visigoths? Their laws afforded women property rights 1000 years before the Married Women's Property Act and their church architecture was far more sophisticated than contemporaneous Dark Age church building in England

 

[GrumpyGregry]

may I put in a word for the visigoths? Their laws afforded women property rights 1000 years before the Married Women's Property Act and their church architecture was far more sophisticated than contemporaneous Dark Age church building in England

Don't get me started on the erased glories of Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon Church architecture. Bloody Normans, bigger vandals than the Vandals. That the Lex Visigothorum was enlightened I'll not argue. In defence of my forebears the Visigoths had a big head start on the Godbothering, and thus buildings for the use of, having converted well in advance of the anglo-saxons.....

 

[Mad at urage]

I blame the Victorians! Polishing the f@(& out of all the armour and stuff that had survived (so we can't see now how it was preserved), "rebuilding" and "renovating" surviving ancient architecture (Cardiff Castle walls anyone?). Dreadful people.

And don't get me started on Capability Brown! The landscapes and archeological contexts that he ruineddon't bear speaking of!

 

[dellzeqq]

I blame the Victorians! Polishing the f@(& out of all the armour and stuff that had survived (so we can't see now how it was preserved), "rebuilding" and "renovating" surviving ancient architecture (Cardiff Castle walls anyone?). Dreadful people.

And don't get me started on Capability Brown! The landscapes and archeological contexts that he ruineddon't bear speaking of!

you must come on the Southend FNRttC if we do the old route in December. My little roadside disquisition on the Victorian re-working of the church at Chadwell St. Mary has them...........cycling off in the opposite direction.

 

[Mad at urage]

you must come on the Southend FNRttC if we do the old route in December. My little roadside disquisition on the Victorian re-working of the church at Chadwell St. Mary has them...........cycling off in the opposite direction.

I've been invited I've been invited ...

Saaafend? Whears dat den?

Going past anything associated with Hawkwood by any chance?

 

[dellzeqq]

Hawksmoor we can do. Hawkwood I don't know about. I really should sort out a fly past Christ's Church.

 

[Mad at urage]

Ahhh, just that you might have headed north - Sible Hedingham way (memorial chapel to Sir John Hawkwood of variable fame). Keep meaning to drop in whenever I'm out that way...

 

[dellzeqq]

Ahhh, just that you might have headed north - Sible Hedingham way (memorial chapel to Sir John Hawkwood of variable fame). Keep meaning to drop in whenever I'm out that way...

that's on the Dun Run, isn't it?

 

[Flying_Monkey]

Try looking at Asia, Japan being a good example. The correlation you are seeing with the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland is a result of many other things than segregated facilities. In three of the four (I don't have the data for Switzerland), large facility building programmes resulted in no increase in cycling (see Fig 7 of http://dx.doi.org/10...441640701806612)

Having lived in Japan for several years, I can tell you one thing - there may not be formal segregation, but most people - with the exception of roadies like me - cycle on the pavement along with pedestrians and at very low speeds, given the chance. This and the culture of politeness on the roads has more to do with the low number of deaths and injuries in Japan than the number of cyclists per se.

On the OP, I am not sure you can blame Cyclecraft. I don't expect many people have actually read it or care about what he says anyway.

However, having cycled in many countries around the world, including the Netherlands, Britain does not come off well in comparison. Sure, if you are an experienced cyclist who enjoys the kind of insanity in London, it's okay, but that will never, ever, generate a real critical mass of cyclists, or mean than Joe or Jane Ford will decide to take a bike and not the car for shorter trips - which is what happens in the Netherlands, Denmark or even Germany. And frankly some of the comments on the other thread about how boring the Netherlands are simply ignorant, and just add to the impression that even quite intelligent cyclists are rather stupid when it comes to realising what it will take to get people out of their cars and onto bikes. Frankly cyclists like us are not best placed to understand people who wouldn't considering cycling at the moment and therefore think of appropriate ways to make them do so.

 

[davefb]

I have to say, i dunno about cyclecraft, but I do think that spending money on stupid unusable cycle lanes on roads means it isnt available to be spent on 'off road' cycle lanes..

i was commuting bolton to manchester and some of it , i used ncn6 , for part of the route, its great , fairly straight, gravel ( not too bad) and nice and clear in the woods... but into manchester it then follows main roads with heavy traffic , has a couple of stupid junctions where its non-obvious you have right of way ( ie, one way for cars, but cycle lane goes opposite , across a heavy junction),
whats stupid ,is that the money they spent, could have followed a different off road ( the path down the side of the river) which would have been segregated..

what they've spent, doesnt make the on road cycling any safer, but that money could have been spent cleaning up and making clearer bits where the route follows footpaths and also the bit outside the m60 which is a muddy bridleway...(okay in the summer,but in the dark winter, not so okay)..

personally, by all means stick paint down , but rather than spend thousands on reworking roads which aren't usable , spend the money on segregated routes to follow say old train lines or perhaps more direct routes of other kinds...

 

[srw]

Sure, if you are an experienced cyclist who enjoys the kind of insanity in London, it's okay, but that will never, ever, generate a real critical mass of cyclists

Come back for a visit one day. London is no longer insane for cyclists - at least in the centre. It's almost getting to the stage where there are too many cyclists for some of the roads. I can walk out of my office and see a phalanx of cyclists across the whole width of the road, waiting at the red lights.