Oh dear, yet another attempt to deny the existence of the redway network.
Just for reference - here is a map:
Not at all. It was just a reaction to yet another attempt to assert that the redway network is complete and built as an equal-status network with the roads. It never was. Its roots in the motor-supermacist culture of the 1960s-1990s are very visible, such as the fastest road remaining level and/or having precedence at any crossing of a redway (at least until the mid-1990s).
Or perhaps try to use cycle streets to plan a route from the station to somehere else in the town:
http://www.cyclestreets.net/journey/42608802/
That was picked at random - I am sure if you take long enough you could eventually find an example that ventures onto a slightly busy road for a short stretch.
To somewhere avoiding all the old towns and even heading to the mainly-new-town east flank - yes, very random(!) Nothing to do with heading west from the station almost always routing you onto some small roads for part of the route through neighbouring partly-pre-MK Loughton?
Indeed so - the only way to find the space for a network as comprehensive as that is building from scratch on geenfield sites. So the towns that predate the new town development retained the traditional street layout. However, this is another good opportunity to test the cycle-pathes-generate-cycle-traffic hypothesis. If there was any merit in the theory then it would show up in the census results with much higher levels of cycling in the new town than in the older areas of Newport Pagnel or Bletchley:
http://datashine.org.uk/#zoom=12&la...TTT&table=QS701EW&col=QS701EW0010&ramp=YlOrRd
Not "much higher" but it still looks higher to me - I think it's easier to see if you change the colour ramp to the blue/green one, but maybe you also need to know which of the parts labelled with the old town names are actually the old towns rather than the new-build infill. Is it possible to set the colour ramp to deemphasise the distortion from the bit of CMK? I don't remember much residential property there but it seems a high proportion ride - maybe downhill to the Elder Gate area which has Argos, Santander and so on.
Some parts of some of the old towns used to have famously high cycle-to-work levels, such as the railway and printing works in Wolverton and you can still see that legacy in its high-density town centre streets. I'm not sure whether Newport Pagnell had similar with the car works there - oh and Newport Pagnell isn't part of MK, although it's still under MK Council.
The other major confounding factor is walking to work. The redway network is also useful for walking, plus there's a greenway network, so what you find is above-average walking to work around major employment areas like CMK and Kingston and those are nearly all new town areas (NIMBYism of the old towns in the 1960s?)
Not according to the 2011 census
That's only travel to work, but still puts MK council area (including the rural-ish bit north of the M1) at 2.8% against a national average of 1.8% and higher than all but one of its neighbours. Meanwhile, the Active People Survey puts MK at 18% cyclist against a national average of 15%. It's no Cambridge (29% and 49% IIRC), or even a West Norfolk (4.7% and 20%), but it is still above the average.
Indeed so - so even given ideal conditions - with no constraints on space - which allows the development a comprehensive, signed, well surfaced network there is no effect whatsoever on cycling levels.
There were constraints on space because MK was a finite area of north Buckinghamshire designated for London overspill, constrained east and west by county boundaries, north by the M1 and south by politics. This led to the original redways being botched by compromises including giving priority to all-user roads and even houses over cycling, leading to mistakes like squeezing the grade separation through underpasses on tight corners - with the anti-social behaviour and fear of crime that eventually led to underpasses in other towns being filled in!
The original redways were woven in among grid, link and residential roads, giving way to all of them. What happened to the original redways was similar to what would happen if you tried to build a road network formed of only C and U roads. When the equivalents of B roads were added in the form of the 1990s grid redways, they either reused the bad underpasses (sometimes with remedial work to open them up) or more often, they crossed grid and estate link roads on the level.
I don't remember any A-road-equivalent redways in MK. Other than the lorry/people split in the city centre, I suspect there's no best practice showcase stuff in that city. There are elements of best practice, but more than an argument for constraining motoring, MK is really a great example of how shoddy compromises at junctions and so on can completely undermine a cycleway even if the bits in between are very good... so when a cycleway is built, it needs to be done properly throughout, else I'll join the anti-every-path crowd in saying it's worse than the road.
The London CS designers seem to acknowledge that junctions need provision, even if I don't think they've got them all right, but it's extremely unlikely that the new London CS routes will be as bad as MK. I know some people who have never lived in MK love to demonise it, but please be realistic. Personally, I sometimes wonder if designers and builders should be required to ride new cycle paths on a bike with impact-triggered explosives mounted around it so if they fall, clip a pole or barrier, or simply hit a lumpy section too hard, then, well, they won't make that mistake again!
