As Easy As Riding A Bike
Well-Known Member
I do think it is a little "off" that you have chosen to use a word that is innately associated with racism, instead of using the word that is in common usage.
Wouldn't you agree?
London Assembly Transport Committee's review of cycle schemes
- Thread starter gaz
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I do think it is a little "off" that you have chosen to use a word that is innately associated with racism, instead of using the word that is in common usage.
Wouldn't you agree?
As Easy As Riding A Bike
Well-Known Member
Not "obviously" at all, because it is entirely possible for you to simultaneously consider it "off" and still write it.
it is. That may not be what you want to hear, but buses move people more efficiently than bikes.
so people who don't want segregation are troglodytes? And morons?
As Easy As Riding A Bike
Well-Known Member
No, I am certainly not saying that!
I thought I was referring quite explicitly to the minority of motorists who think you or I should "get off the road".
fair enough. I misunderstood.
To return to a theme. One of the mistakes we make is to believe that if you give over a bit of tarmac to cyclists then that tarmac will carry an infinite number of bikes. CS7 is showing us that, in truth, a modest number of cyclists are capable of holding each other up. Yes - cycle congestion is here!
To return to a theme. One of the mistakes we make is to believe that if you give over a bit of tarmac to cyclists then that tarmac will carry an infinite number of bikes. CS7 is showing us that, in truth, a modest number of cyclists are capable of holding each other up. Yes - cycle congestion is here!
As Easy As Riding A Bike
Well-Known Member
No problem.
To return to your bus point, I certainly think buses are more efficient space-wise than bicycles - provided they are sufficiently full. Not sure about energy though. A typical double decker is well over 10 tonnes - hard to see how the energy required to shift that when laden with 80 passengers stacks up against the energy required to shift 80 bikes.
I suppose it depends whether we are concerned with alleviating congestion, or being energy efficient.
jonesy
Guru
And as has been pointed out more than once already in this discussion, one of the reasons TfL wants to increase cycling is to shift the shorter trips from public transport so as to provide greater capacity for shifting longer distance car trips to public transport. 51% of cycle trips are less than 2 miles, 83% less than 5 miles; whereas 73% of bus trips are above 2 miles. While there is certainly a large overlap between bus trips and cycle use, bus travel provides a more practicable alternative for the longer distance trips. And even for those trips within cycling distance, there will be a large number that will remain by bus, because not everyone is able to cycle, or wants to, even if conditions are ideal, and not every short trip is suitable for cycling. So, even without further modal shift to bus for longer trips, the figures you quote actually show that a very large proportion of bus trips aren't actually so easy to move to cycling. If the objective is to reduce car travel, then both bus use and cycle use need to increase, and that means any proposals for cycling provision have to allow for there being lots of buses, just as any infrastructure for buses should allow for cycling.
Yes, they did. If you believe it for Cambridge then why not for Oxford? It is simply a fact I'm afraid- cycling had a high modal share in the 1980s, with very little cycling infrastructure around and most of the cycling still takes place on the road. Indeed, there is very little cycling 'infrastructure' as such, mostly on road cycle lanes which, as has been pointed out before, are a very different thing from segregation. And on many stretches of the busiest cycling streets there are no cycle lanes at all. I suggest you visit. And if you do, you can take a look at Cowley Road and, as Dell would put it, "show us the drawing" of where the segregated lane could go.
jonesy
Guru
Well, clearly there are lots of reasons why local authorities make mistakes, and I'm unclear why ozzage thinks I'm somehow to be held to account for them; however, very often, yes, poor quality cycling infrastructure is installed in response to demands from cyclists. There are lots of reasons for this, but the main one is simply that cyclists aren't, for the most part, transport planners or highway engineers; while the people who design and install the infrastructure aren't cyclists. So some cyclists might say, with the best intentions, that they want cycle lanes, but there isn't space for adequate width lanes, so dangerously narrow ones are installed, when none at all would have been better. People like ozzage insist we have to have segregation when there isn't space or resources to do it properly, so we get crappy lines painted on the pavement, conflict with pedestrians and loss of priority, and we all suffer as a consequence. We desperately need better informed highway authorities who understand how to implement the Hierarchy properly and know that compromised, sub-standard farcilities can be worse than nothing at all.
This is also why it is important that, when making demands of local authorities, cyclists make themselves familiar with guidance on best practice in cycling provision and are very precise in what they ask for. Hence my getting grumpy with ozzage earlier about not differentiating between segregated paths and on-road cycle lanes. I've seen community groups make vague references to wanting "cycle ways"- what does this mean, exactly? Is anyone likely to be satisfied with the outcome when the requirement is so unclearly defined from the outset?
stowie
Legendary Member
Drawings are not going to be forthcoming because they will only prove one thing. That any cycle facilities require space to be taken away from private cars and given to cyclists, if they are to work correctly.
I am surprised that buses have been mentioned - where bus lanes were introduced and helped turn the bus system from a joke to something useful - and yet no-one has commented that these bus lanes involved de-allocating 240km worth of road space (on London's busiest routes) previously allocated to the private cars and giving it to public transport. So de-allocation is physically possible on most roads - whether the political will to do so and whether it would help cycling and be a good idea is another matter.
Reading through the posts one thing seems obvious. Everyone wants a similar outcome, namely that cycling becomes more pleasant, convenient and more people feel empowered to cycle. It also seems to me that, actually, cities that have high cycling rates all have something in common - the cities are (either intentionally, or through historical fate) easier to navigate by cycle than by car, and cars are very restricted. Cambridge does this by default (with history meaning that even the most car-friendly town planners couldn't find it within themselves to knock down the colleges to build roads), whilst some continental cities have done it by design, with cycling and pedestrian facilities also doubling as restrictions on car access.
What also is obvious is that I don't think anyone is proposing that any cycling infrastructure is better than none. And you cannot segregate everywhere - even in The Netherlands, much cycling is on road. Bad cycle infrastructure is terrible and completely counterproductive, and good infrastructure implicitly requires cycle prioritisation - for example at junctions as is done in many countries in Europe. But what also seems to be the case is that taking the roads as they are now - after decades of planners catering solely for car use - and then thinking that all these roads can be easily used by anyone wishing to cycle is a touch optimistic. I cycle on the A11 through Bow and Stratford, and yet I wouldn't have dreamt of doing this when I started cycling. So there is a big physical barrier for cyclists unwilling to navigate such a road. I think these types of obstacles have to be addressed, and in some cases the way to address them is to remove space from cars to provide high quality pedestrian and cycle provision.
Things like the hierachy of provision should naturally gravitate road planning towards restricting car use in a way that helps cycling. But I see very little evidence of the hierachy of provision being implemented on the ground in places like Waltham Forest. Cycling facilities should flow naturally from the hierachy of provision where they are absolutely needed, but mostly won't be required as roads become geared towards pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. And when that happens, surely everyone will be happy?!
stowie
Legendary Member
To my untutored eye there is lots of unintended consequences (target driven?) with cycle provision at the moment. Waltham Forest is clearly very proud of its mileage of cycle lanes (on-road), failing, of course, to mention that much of this is poorly implemented and dangerous. I agree that this sounds like town planners who, maybe for the right reasons, want to implement cycle facilities, but have no idea what works, and what doesn't. But this amazes me when, as a simple cyclist, I can access reams of documents detailing good and bad cycle infrastructure provision - documents where it would take minutes to realise that implementing cycle lanes right next to lines of parked cars (for example) is probably unwise and not particularly useful. I am sure LCC and CTC and their local groups have expertise that could help as well.
Do the planners responsible for putting in these lanes get invited to cycle around the areas? Again, I am sure that they would be invited to do so by local groups?
I also see frustration when requests are specific. I know that our local LCC has complained about a set of useful cycle lights which have been turned off for over a year because they "conflicted" with the car phase (they were in use for years before, so how this arose so suddenly is somewhat of a mystery). And yet the best response is the junction may be redesigned in 2011 and will be addressed then (this redesign is unlikely to happen as it is linked in with nearby "regeneration" which I cannot see happening in the near future, but that is a whole other local council scandal).
Finally, I am interested in where money for cycle provision actually goes, as I know my local council gets some but has no documentation released on how it is spent. Last I heard, the local LCC was concerned some of the grant was earmarked for off-road car parking (I kid you not).
So although some of the problem may be local planners trying to implement cyclists wishes, I wouldn't underestimate the target culture, or indeed, the apathy culture either. My new years resolution is to rid myself of some of my "apathy culture" and actually start going to LCC meetings and emailing my MP and councillors.
GrumpyGregry
Here for rides.
me neither! I've pm'd you my email address.
jonesy
Guru
The reason we keep asking for the drawings is because in many locations there simply isn't space for good quality segregated provision at all, nothing to do with car parking. As I've pointed out earlier, that is the situation on much of Cowley Rd, which is also one of the busiest cycling corridors in the country . The road is a narrow single-carriageway, used by large numbers of buses and delivery vehicles as well as cars, so even banning cars from the centre of Oxford wouldn't solve the problem. There simply isn't room to Copenhagenise the road, and that's the way it is. And of course similar situations apply on many other key cycling corridors in the country.
Well, I'd certainly agree with giving buses priority, and that bus lanes can be very helpful to cyclists. But then I've been clear all along that bus travel is an essential part of sustainable transport, it is ozzage who thinks all the bus passengers can be moved onto bicycles so we can get the buses out of the way for segregated cycle paths...
However, I'd strongly disagree that this is possible on "most" roads- unless you have two lanes in either direction you can't create a bus lane. Where is there space for bus lanes on Victoria St for example? And bus lanes plus segregated cycle lanes requires a lot more space than exists on most of London's streets; and you've still got to sort out the bus stops to avoid conflict between bus passengers and cyclists. And find a way of dealing with local deliveries etc, which are essential if you want to maintain vibrant local centres with good local shops and services.
I largely agree, which is why I've been advocating the hierarchy throughout this discussion. Which means moving people like ozzage (and, more importantly, some of the organisations that lobby for and fund cycling facilities...) on from the single-minded obsession with segregation.
jonesy
Guru
I quite agree. Targets for miles of "cycle route" are totally inappropriate and encourage the creation of routes with no reference to quality or the needs of users. Or indeed whether there are any potential users- as is demonstrated by the many miles of "cycle route" that has been developed in remote locations, well beyond typical cycling distances. Indeed, the more indirect and out of the way the route is, the more miles can be added to the target! Clearly it is much easier to map out and signpost a 20 mile route in a rural area than to provide ten 2 mile long good quality routes serving real desire lines in urban areas, even though the latter would carry vastly more cyclists.
I don't really like people telling direct untruths about my position.
You'll never get rid of buses and I never said you would, but when people argue with a statement that a 40% cycling modal share wouldn't reduce the required number of buses then I can only shake my head. If people genuinely don't think that we couldn't significantly reduce load on the public transport infrastructure with a high cycling modal share then there's not much more I can add. People in the UK are often so blinkered because they don't believe, in their hearts, that cycling can take the place of public transport for a massive chunk of the population. But it can.
Firstly not all roads will be suitable. No argument there. London is difficult, but not as difficult as it's made out to be. For your other points we are, as ever, dealing with problems which have already been solved in other countries.
The hierarchy of provision is, quite simply, an unmitigated disaster. It is nothing but an excuse to spend little or no money on cycling. It's been shown to fail in reality in the UK, everywhere you look and it's time to move on.
