dumbass LCC bike lane on Stratford High Street

[w00hoo_kent]

I'm sorry you regard this as "willy waiving" but, ahem, you have not supplied any evidence that size is a factor. I've already pointed out 1) that distances travelled are larger in the Netherlands and 2) that the extent of a conurbation called by a single name is neither here nor there where both the Netherlands and the South East of the UK comprise a large number of entirely contiguous urban settlements. (A rose by any other name...) Pop. density, too, is entirely similar.

If you cannot think of a relevant response to points 1&2, you could always think of some rude words ("willy waiving").

I'm guessing the point is that the contiguous built up area of London looks a bit like this

I'll let you ignore some of the SW bits although equally there are some bits missing elsewhere.

While at the same scale the equivalent in Amsterdam is more like

So while your journeys may be longer, a big chunk of them are going to be using nice open not really urban in the London sense roads. They will be coming in from suburbs that are properly detached from the city in a way that London journeys aren't and because of that the ability to give them long contiguous (word of the day obviously) compulsory cycle lanes is greater. Of course they then let 50cc 'cars' drive on them which are an utter menace and you can't really go quickly because of the width. But we can ignore those bits if you'd prefer.

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

I'm surprised Mark Treasure gave it as an example of best practice, but I've not found any verification of that. At best, I'd say it has some elements (eliminating most turns across cycle traffic at signalised junctions), but there are the sadly-typical mistakes (Byng Place and the give-ways!).

What you've said here is pretty much exactly what Treasure has said. Reason you've not found verification of him saying that it's 'an example of best practice' is that he has not said that. But anything goes in resisting the hated lanes.

Come on, this isn't a difficult argument to understand: putting forwards arguments that all cyclists should use the mixed lanes rather than building cycleways results in development of a dual network where mixed lanes are for the fast and the brave so cycleways don't need to be built to cope with fast travel because they're for slowcoaches.

Nicely put.

Yet, where are the riders who live in Hackney riding to? They're riding south-west into Camden... http://commute.datashine.org.uk/#zo...TT&mode=bicycle&direction=both&msoa=E02000361

But that doesn't tell us much about their routes. I'll be interested to see the street-level map @knocksofbeggarmen mentioned.

It was created in the last 6months (May? March?) from TfL data by a chap called @nuttyxander -as autocomplete came up just then, maybe this works to bring him into the conversation on cyclechat? It's also been published by LCC on their site- I'm sorry I haven't found it as quickly as I'd like.

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

I'm guessing the point is that the contiguous built up area of London looks a bit like this

I'll let you ignore some of the SW bits although equally there are some bits missing elsewhere.

While at the same scale the equivalent in Amsterdam is more like

So while your journeys may be longer, a big chunk of them are going to be using nice open not really urban in the London sense roads. They will be coming in from suburbs that are properly detached from the city in a way that London journeys aren't and because of that the ability to give them long contiguous (word of the day obviously) compulsory cycle lanes is greater. Of course they then let 50cc 'cars' drive on them which are an utter menace and you can't really go quickly because of the width. But we can ignore those bits if you'd prefer.

Unfortunately your pics didn't load. Contiguous is probably not the word you want about cycle lanes, and I don't really follow what your argument is. If you mean that the Dutch will have more capacity to install continuous cycle lanes because some urban commute routes go through green land, this doesn't strike me as a particularly powerful explanation, since the whole point about the green land is that it is not continuous. Plus, I suspect you could do with a map open in front of you of Holland (which is a region of the Netherlands).

In general I recommend we stop trying to think of surperflous ad-hoc explanations for our not doing something that we have not decided to do. If the UK decided to do this, it would get done. Imagine where the NL would be if they had spent most of their time trying to think up reasons why they had not done what they needed to do, instead of doing it.

 

[zimzum42]

I'm guessing the point is that the contiguous built up area of London looks a bit like this

I'll let you ignore some of the SW bits although equally there are some bits missing elsewhere.

While at the same scale the equivalent in Amsterdam is more like

So while your journeys may be longer, a big chunk of them are going to be using nice open not really urban in the London sense roads. They will be coming in from suburbs that are properly detached from the city in a way that London journeys aren't and because of that the ability to give them long contiguous (word of the day obviously) compulsory cycle lanes is greater. Of course they then let 50cc 'cars' drive on them which are an utter menace and you can't really go quickly because of the width. But we can ignore those bits if you'd prefer.

Your pics aren't working, but it sounds like you know what you're talking about!

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

Your pics aren't working, but it sounds like you know what you're talking about!

'I don't know what your hypothesis is exactly, but the upshot of your hypothesis seems to amplify my prejudice. THEREFORE your hypothesis (whatever it is) must be right.'

 

[zimzum42]

'I don't know what your hypothesis is exactly, but the upshot of your hypothesis seems to amplify my prejudice. THEREFORE your hypothesis (whatever it is) must be right.'

I don't know how much more evidence you need that Amsterdam is massively different from London, maybe you could look at a map or a satellite picture or something.
Pretty much all the comparisons that people of your ideology make are entirely spurious

 

[mjr]

Plus the fact that it will be clogged with groups tourists on Boris Bikes...

Despite the protestations of the Twitter crew, I still reckon it will actually lead to fewer people cycling in the capital - they may claim greyer numbers, but most of them will be tourists and other day-trippers who would have been walking anyway

Oh yeah, I'm sure the cyclechat naysayers will be proved as right about these reducing cycling as they were when the hire bikes were welcomed almost immediately as "probably awful" ;-)

If they didn't cycle, wouldn't tourists be in taxis or those horrendous unpredictable tour buses more than walking? I think I'd prefer them to be on bikes and it even makes their movements a bit more predictable than walking.

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

I don't know how much more evidence you need that Amsterdam is massively different from London, maybe you could look at a map or a satellite picture or something

Hell they even speak a different language, and the cheese is a bit different.

Come on. This is not hard. You've been asked repeatedly to substantiate the claim that Dutch cities are *relevantly* different. And this you have not done.

What might be fun for you is to look at photographs of Dutch streetscapes in the 1960's. You'll probably declare them perfect- and confuse them with the UK.

 

[zimzum42]

I asked for a bike last Christmas but I didn't get one...

Plus I was a massive supporter of the Boris bikes and I use them almost daily, so natch...

 

[Dan B]

I asked for a bike last Christmas but I didn't get one...

You should have nicked one and apologised: better to ask for forgivenes than permission

 

[zimzum42]

And FWIW, that Torrington Place cycle lane is a shocker

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

I'm guessing the point is that the contiguous built up area of London looks a bit like this

I'll let you ignore some of the SW bits although equally there are some bits missing elsewhere.

While at the same scale the equivalent in Amsterdam is more like

Now your pics have loaded your argument is clearly sophistical. You haven't even included the whole of the tag 'amsterdam', you've left off most of that city including lots that I've cycled in, and a similarly sized map at the same scale covering Holland (a region of the NL) would have included a series of contiguous urban areas.

In other words, you are having a laugh. But I don't find your disregard for fact funny.

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

Yeah but that is your fault, apparently. If you hadn't been an antilaneist, it would have been done properly. God might have spared a kitten or two as well, although I might be imagining that bit.

Not imagining, no. Deploying rhetoric and evasion, yes.

Here's that thought you don't want to understand, expressed succinctly by mjray: "putting forwards arguments that all cyclists should use the mixed lanes rather than building cycleways results in development of a dual network where mixed lanes are for the fast and the brave so cycleways don't need to be built to cope with fast travel because they're for slowcoaches."

 

[knocksofbeggarmen]

Once again, it is not " the mixed lanes " it is "the road".

Except by 'the road' we don't mean the M4. Although it has been rumoured the M4 is a road.

Anyhow, that was a rare case of an evasion of mjray's point that didn't involve rhetoric per se, only a weird redefinition of ordinary words.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

Hell they even speak a different language, and the cheese is a bit different.

Come on. This is not hard. You've been asked repeatedly to substantiate the claim that Dutch cities are *relevantly* different. And this you have not done.

What might be fun for you is to look at photographs of Dutch streetscapes in the 1960's. You'll probably declare them perfect- and confuse them with the UK.

Much like I'm only arguing for London here, I'm also only using Amsterdam, because that's the city I have actual experience of cycling in.

If I compare my 12 mile commute in to Greenwich, not even the middle of London, I do around 7 miles of that in a properly urban environment. Last time I was commuting in to Amsterdam I was doing it from Zaandam, it was around 8 miles of commute and maybe 3 miles of that in a properly urban environment, although where my London commute takes me nowhere near the centre my Amsterdam commute took me within spitting distance of it.

What I found in Amsterdam was that there was a reason everyone rode knackered bikes (our current family expression for a buckled wheel is 'that looks a bit Dutch') and that was thanks to a sufficient number of the segregated paths not being in great condition. There's a lot of blockwork used out near the edges which suffers from the normal issues of paving stones on sand. There were the odd patches of broken glass which didn't get dealt with day on day and didn't get swept away by bigger road traffic, there were the normal roots under tarmac and bits just missing completely. The Dutch have a weird 2 seater motorised car thing that is allowed to use the cycle paths, it completely fills the larger lanes and travels at the best part of 30mph, they are somewhat terrifying, especially after dark. Also the mopeds use the cycle lanes, they aren't much better, but they are better. So the actual safety on the cycle lanes is better than sharing it with HGV's, but hardly what I'd call complete.

Yes, there were a lot of people cycling, I saw a lot more than I would have done on my commute in to Greenwich each day, even out around Zaandam. They were all on crap bikes because bike theft is so high (the Dutch we were with said that you don't so much own a bike, as use it while you happen to be in possession of it. We carried a large number of locks because our friends had basically told us not to bring our bikes at all. Also there are bikes locked up all over the place, again some locals 'own' 2 or 3 and can't necessarily remember where they've left them all.)

Ignoring the riding on the wrong side of the road thing, riding in Amsterdam didn't feel like riding in London, the closest I could suggest would be like riding down the Cable St bits of CS2 when they are at their busiest, but really it wasn't close. While some of the freedoms were nice, legal salmoning for instance, the actual experience while in the city wasn't that great, and not something I'd want to deal with every day. As I've mentioned before, even riding at odd times of the day our average speeds weren't that high because of the nature of the cycle paths. As a pedestrian it was significantly more terrifying than being in London, again this could be down to familiarity, especially when playing Frogger trying to get from one pavement to the other (with a cycle lane, then a car lane, then a pair of tram lanes, then a car lane, then a cycle lane). I don't know how significantly the roads have been mucked about, I'd guess the more major roads in London are similarly wide to the ones I've just described in Amsterdam, but they are running multiple lanes for cars at the moment. The cycle provision was taking space from a wide pedestrian pavement with the kerb segregating from a fairly narrow car carriageway. Without the mopeds being able to use the cycle lane I'm not sure you wouldn't just be moving the accident statistics from cycles to powered two wheelers.

Out in the countryside, I'm sure things are different, although the cycle lanes still never look as clear of debris and as well maintained as the roads and where there's no cycle provision you can even use the roads, which is nice. But I'm never sold when people just say 'like the Dutch' as a description of cycling nirvana. I'm really happy with where the bicycle sits in the Dutch consciousness but I'd like to think there are other ways to get it there and we'd be better off using one of those.

Oh, I know this is all anecdotal and really you want some statistics from a report somewhere, but it's all I have.