dumbass LCC bike lane on Stratford High Street

[dellzeqq]

What % of London cyclists are in the LCC? I've no idea but I'd bet its less than 10%. From a campaigning perspective thats hardly a resounding mandate from the cycling community for baziollions of £ of investment is it, so claiming to be speaking for the non cycling millions sounds much more impressive I suppose.

And as for the letter from the LCC Comms Manager, just wow, if a comms manager from any organisation had such a beligerent 'my way or the highway' approach (whoops thats a wrong choice of words), they'd be sacked quick sharp. Again another example of LCC action just leaving a bad aftertaste

about one and a half per cent

 

[subaqua]

about one and a half per cent

that much ?

 

[dellzeqq]

Dell, isn't the Wandle Path supposed to be a leisure route? Seems like that would serve a different purpose for cycling than the A217 (& hopefully come out of a different budget).

yes and no. The clear ambition, set out by Carl Pittam of Sustrans that it would become a commuting route. The assumption was that Garratt Lane would never be acceptable to the majority of cyclists. Six years on the commuting cycle traffic on Garratt Lane is probably fifty times the cycle traffic on the Wandle Path. The difference is that Garratt Lane didn't have £1.3 million spent on it.

One thing bears examination. LCC policy
3. If cyclists will share space with motor traffic, volumes must be low. On the core cycle route network this should not exceed the Dutch maximum for main cycle routes, 2,000 Passenger Car Units per day

well, the simple truth is that cyclists choose to travel on routes that have over 10,000 vehicles a day. That's because those routes go where the cyclists want to go. Where the LCC has posted alternatives these alternatives have been ignored.

 

[theclaud]

Mike clearly has a problem with his fantasy of my bulging lycra clad muscles.

Well, to be fair, who doesn't?

 

[Fab Foodie]

I have exchanged emails with Mike in the recent past. The most disturbing thing in this one is that the LCC believe the issue to be settled

"Without high-quality separate facilities for cycling on main roads there will never be mass cycling in this country because people will be too scared to cycle

There's not a single post-industrialised country in the world that has achieved mass cycling any other way

I would argue that the pro-motoring lobbyists are delighted when cyclists insist on sharing the road, because that means more space for their cars

Sorry you don't agree, but the arguments over segregation are over – separation is essential on busy roads and at large junctions, or there will be no mass cycling

Kind Regards

Mike

Mike Cavenett
Communications Manager
London Cycling Campaign
020 7234 9310 - 07939 606359"


Perhaps what we need is a campaigning organisation to represent London's cyclists.

That's pretty damn depressing reading ....

 

[mcshroom]

Is there a yellow face thing holding its hand up?

What, like this one?

 

[The Jogger]

I crossed the westbound lane last week on my way to a meeting in Stratford depot and I was thinking it was a good day idea , I would like one in High St Ken.

 

[The Jogger]

Or are you just talking about the bus stop diversion lane?

 

[Frood42]

Well I tried a small section out today, the one part that wasn't full of cones that is, it was nice being able to ride down that part of the road without being tailgated by some twonk in a white van...

However @mike-LCC, those advanced stop lights at Bow roundabout going to East to West are a real danger, I can see these bringing cyclists into conflict with other vehicles, they need to be looked at again and re-designed, they are a real danger

I shall reserve further comment until I can try out the rest of the route and see if there is room to overtake other cyclists properly...

One thing I cannot get my head around is why the ASL's only goes over two lanes and not across the whole road..

I see plenty of people at the lights just before the bus station going across the pedestrian/cycle crossing, I need to look again as to how these people are catered for, as I have doubts over what real research on current road use habits was done before this was put in...

 

[angus h]

yes and no. The clear ambition, set out by Carl Pittam of Sustrans that it would become a commuting route. The assumption was that Garratt Lane would never be acceptable to the majority of cyclists. Six years on the commuting cycle traffic on Garratt Lane is probably fifty times the cycle traffic on the Wandle Path. The difference is that Garratt Lane didn't have £1.3 million spent on it.

I wouldn't commute on the Wandle Path for sure, nevertheless I don't see the £1.3m on it as a waste. I wouldn't go for a sunday ramble with the family on Garratt Lane either

But.. I supsect that even the numbers of sunday-pootler cyclists on the Wandle & routes like it is somewhat suppressed by the relatively poor state of the routes leading to it (poor in terms of whether an 8 year old, or an unfit 50 year old who never learned to drive, could access it safely & comfortably). Case in point.. as things currently stand, getting to the start of the Lea Valley trail from Whitechapel with the family is far more difficult than it needs to be. Four stops on the tube, a short walk, and then up the Greenway. Should they ever rebuild the western bit of CS2 to the standard of the Stratford Extension, it's a trip I'd be much more inclined to make.

One thing bears examination. LCC policy
3. If cyclists will share space with motor traffic, volumes must be low. On the core cycle route network this should not exceed the Dutch maximum for main cycle routes, 2,000 Passenger Car Units per day
well, the simple truth is that cyclists choose to travel on routes that have over 10,000 vehicles a day. That's because those routes go where the cyclists want to go. Where the LCC has posted alternatives these alternatives have been ignored.

Or.. the people who are going places on a bike now are people like you, me and, in fact, most of the LCC people I've met, who are prepared & able to deal with 10K PCU roads. LCC have an ambition to enable cycling for all ages/abilities. The sane response to anyone who suggests an 8 year old should cycle on an unsegregated 10K PCU road is: "no thank you, we'll take the bus instead.". People who can't or don't want to deal with the big roads, which is the majority of people, don't cycle.

The way I see it, the only barriers to making a trip by bike should be that it's too far, or too much effort. Right now that's a long way from true for anyone other than a reasonably fit, skilled, knowledgeable adult. Dumbing down cycling? If it gives kids more freedom & gets a bunch of those cars on sub-5-mile trips off the road, hell yes - the dumber the better.

 

[StuartG]

Or.. the people who are going places on a bike now are people like you, me and, in fact, most of the LCC people I've met, who are prepared & able to deal with 10K PCU roads. LCC have an ambition to enable cycling for all ages/abilities. The sane response to anyone who suggests an 8 year old should cycle on an unsegregated 10K PCU road is: "no thank you, we'll take the bus instead.". People who can't or don't want to deal with the big roads, which is the majority of people, don't cycle.

It is not that simple as you showed earlier in your post. One reason the Wandle Path doesn't work is because of the entry points. People will be prone to judge the safety of a route by the most dangerous part. If the danger is above their threshold they simply will not cycle. The safe bits don't count because they are - err, safe.

In London if you cycle more than a mile or two that is going to include a gyratory. These are a real challenge to the most experienced cyclist. A complete blocker for the novice.

Hence I do get irritated when LCC, Sustrans and my local council spend all their time and our money fiddling about with 'segregated' stuff in places where it is easy to do and merely convey the novices to the real danger points which are ignored just because they are difficult (and expensive) to sort.

If LCC named and shamed the worst ten gyratories in London and vowed to stretch their council across them until they were fixed - I would be very happy, Novices would be happy and many more would take to the road. We can the argue about whether we should join up the 'smoothed' gyratories with segregated paths later. But that's a very second order consideration in changing modal rates.

 

[Frood42]

Does anyone know how you get from the front of Westfield Stratford City shopping centre onto the CS2 extension towards Central London on a Boris bike?
Currently by road there is a three/five lane gyratory to negotiate to do so, unless you walk your bike...

Then when you do get the other end of the segregation you still have to negotiate the Bow roundabout, and with that first left turn onto the A12 it is not the most pleasent, then if you do make it across the roundabout the lane disappears and becomes a crappy guideway... Not to mention that it doesn't go all the way into Central London and when you do get towards London you have the rather terrible Aldgate to get through...

Hmmm, how is this going to increase numbers again?

I would like to see them link the CS2 and CS3 up along Burdett Road with a proper cycle lane, although the junction with A13 leading straight onto the A1261 could be tricky... do you carry on along the A1261 or do you take the A1206 with the cycle lane... and if they were to do this I really hope it will be without door zone shenanigans...

 

[angus h]

It is not that simple as you showed earlier in your post. One reason the Wandle Path doesn't work is because of the entry points. People will be prone to judge the safety of a route by the most dangerous part. If the danger is above their threshold they simply will not cycle. The safe bits don't count because they are - err, safe.

In London if you cycle more than a mile or two that is going to include a gyratory. These are a real challenge to the most experienced cyclist. A complete blocker for the novice.

Hence I do get irritated when LCC, Sustrans and my local council spend all their time and our money fiddling about with 'segregated' stuff in places where it is easy to do and merely convey the novices to the real danger points which are ignored just because they are difficult (and expensive) to sort.

If LCC named and shamed the worst ten gyratories in London and vowed to stretch their council across them until they were fixed - I would be very happy, Novices would be happy and many more would take to the road. We can the argue about whether we should join up the 'smoothed' gyratories with segregated paths later. But that's a very second order consideration in changing modal rates.

That's something TfL & LCC have been looking at as part of the junction review process - and some of them are indeed being fixed. Vauxhall, Elephant, Old Street, Aldgate all likely to get somewhat better over the next few years (jury still very much out as to how much, mind you), and I've heard they're looking at some or all of the Wandsworth system as well. Bricklayers already much improved (well, the on-road layout is still as shite as ever, but they've created huge, wide shared pavements on all sides & Toucans on the crossing arms - so less-confident cyclists don't have to tackle it at all). Elephant has the cycle bypasses a couple of hundred metres down the road.. they're far from perfect, but much better than the roundabout itself.

Those big systems cost massive money to fix & don't tend to be tackled in isolation, so, as best I can tell, LCC have to wait until the council / TfL / property developers etc. decide the time has come for major change, and then lobby hard to make those changes as cycle friendly as possible..

From personal experience though, LCC put across a very professional front, and indeed have some very competent people working there, but that gives the impression of a much more deep-pocketed organisation than they really are. It's a difficult spot for them in some ways - £40 is a fair bit for most people to spend on a membership that brings rather little in direct benefit, but equally with only 10,000 members it's not a massive budget to work with.

The local groups are for the most part small, often between 5 and 10 active volunteers, so when any one junction gets put under the microscope, it falls very much to individuals in those groups to make positive changes happen. Very often on a given street or junction improvement, there will be just one or two people driving the agenda to make it better. They'll rally others round, but still.. it's rather a case of, if you don't like what they're doing, get involved & make something better happen instead.

And while yes, there are major hazards every few miles, you don't need to fix every last one to make things much easier for novices & knock a lot of those <3-mile car trips on the head. Novices by definition are unlikely to be cycling from one end of town to the other. The "Hackney solution" of getting through traffic on the back streets works well for that in a lot of cases, but on the CS2 route there just aren't any minor-road alternatives - that in itself is a strong argument for segregation.

In the case of, say, CS8, the argument is weaker - if you want a family ride along that way, the river path works just as well (if and when they finish the Battersea Power Station redevelopment, at least).

 

[Frood42]

And while yes, there are major hazards every few miles, you don't need to fix every last one to make things much easier for novices & knock a lot of those <3-mile car trips on the head. Novices by definition are unlikely to be cycling from one end of town to the other. The "Hackney solution" of getting through traffic on the back streets works well for that in a lot of cases, but on the CS2 route there just aren't any minor-road alternatives - that in itself is a strong argument for segregation.

But how does this segregated extension of the CS2 actually help "novices"?
It starts nowhere and goes nowhere, not to mention it has made it a little more hazardous for me to go around the roundabout to get to the Lee Valley Way... (coming from Stratford and going towards Bow roundabout) as drivers will be expecting me to "get in the cycle lane", there is no provision for me to go around to the right...

As I said in an earlier post, currently I see no easy way to get onto and leave the CS2 segregated extension by bike from the only attraction either end, the Westfield Stratford City shopping centre, and when you do get to the shopping centre the facilities are almost non-existent, otherwise I would cycle there rather than take the Underground when I go to the cinema...

Not to mention the three/five lane gyratory around the old shopping centre, morrisions and some other shops that seem to be on an island...

That gyratory is not pleasent to go around, especially if you need to cross 4 or 5 lanes of traffic to head to Ilford...

I want to like this, I do, and I am sure it will make things just that little less stressful for a few minutes for me, but I just don't see how this will increase commuting or leisure numbers that much (especially where I come from out in Redbridge)...

It starts no where and goes no where, and it will probably be a long time before the real problem of that horrible gyratory will be sorted, and don't even get me started on the horrible cycle lanes around the shopping centre itself, what a missed opportunity... I went on the lanes and roads once to see what the cycle parking was like, it was a joke and until there is a drastic improvement I won't be using that infrastructure again...

 

[angus h]

It's the first bit to be done to this standard, so right now it's fair to say it's not a network.

TBH that whole area of town is such a building-site at the moment, hard to say what'll be there in a few years.

Why would you go around the roundabout to get to the Lee Valley Way from the East? As things currently stand I'd get on to the pavement at the SE corner of the roundabout & go south along the side of the sliproad for about 50m to the access gate. (Don't think you're allowed to cycle on the slip roads anyway? Damned if you do & damned if you don't).

The consultations they did at the beginning of this year suggested some sort of contraflow at the Stratford gyratory for cyclists headed W<=>E (not much use for getting in and out of Westfield, admittedly), has that gone in yet?