Stupid cycling infrastructure

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mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
Those bottlenecks have all been removed in nearby Milton Keynes as the figures over the years had shown that they simply turned a minor speeding problem into a fairly serious head-on collision dead people problem.
Isn't speeding only minor if everyone is in metal boxes? Seems like bottlenecks were removed because police don't want to police traffic, yet again, so the council gives in to the criminal motorists and rewards them for their continued lawbreaking.
 
One of my local faves, main road with a cycle path all along. Get to the new housing estate and only side road and they decided to end the cycle lane force you onto the pavement to cross the road then the pavement ends the other side so your pushed back onto the cycle lane back on the road.
Surely they'd be better with a narrower pavement and continuing a separate cycle lane rather than a shared path for 100mtrs

View attachment 697803

Sometimes you get ridiculously short farcilities because a planner is reserving the short corridor anticipating other developments or schemes will eventually come forward to make it a useable length.
 
This could be a long and depressing thread.

I used to be part of a local group campaigning for walking and cycling to be properly included in local infrastructure. It became clear to me that the Highways people thought their job was to make life easy for motorists. Anything else was an inconvenience.

It was not good for my health so I stopped and got out on the bike more.

Thankfully that's changing but a lot of older Highways Engineers were guilty of that approach.
 
Probably because it took up a chunk of time and achieved little beyond depressing campaigners and annoying the people we need to change.

Some examples are things being built piecemeal by developers and then councils never funding the things they should connect to. Some, especially Cycleways Resembling A Pavement are just cheapskate councils. Both those are finally starting to be punished by Active Travel England's scoring of councils that affect their budgets. Things can be fixed but it ain't quick and there's a lot to fix.

Worryingly, just as we are finally starting to address things Sunak goes for the populist vote by promising to end the war on motorists 👎
 

Mike_P

Guru
Location
Harrogate
The only local blocking of a road to vehicles that has been removed was on a designated cycle route that forces you into a right turn onto a busy B road. Many never use it as the next road to the west, a normally quite back street, leads to a far easier left turn on right turn off the B road.
 

presta

Guru
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mjr

Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
My son sent a strongly worded complaint about traffic light sensors that do not respond to bicycles, pointing out the safety issues.

Here's the reply he got.

View attachment 712610
There's one for the local press: "Council says lethally dangerous traffic lights not serious enough to fix" and so on.
 

Mike_P

Guru
Location
Harrogate
There's one for the local press: "Council says lethally dangerous traffic lights not serious enough to fix" and so on.

If I understand it right it's the traffic lights not detecting a cyclist waiting at a red. I know of a set which thankfully can be avoided. Nothing "lethally dangerous" until a cyclist gets fed up with waiting and chanses it. Of course their is the option if getting off and walking
 
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Drago

Legendary Member
Isn't speeding only minor if everyone is in metal boxes? Seems like bottlenecks were removed because police don't want to police traffic, yet again, so the council gives in to the criminal motorists and rewards them for their continued lawbreaking.

Minor or not is all down to perspective I guess, but I hear what you're saying.

Nevertheless, the bottlenecks resulted in an increase of dead and seriously injured road users cluttering up the place. The whole point of traffic calming is to, erm, actually calm the traffic, not encourage drivers to put their foot down and take risks and bring about a significant rise in casualty rates,
 
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