What's your town / city doing?

[redcard]

I'm I naive in thinking that there's going to be a radical overhaul of cycling in the UK over the next few years? The Times campaign, facilities are going to be way better, cycling will get more popular year-after-year, you'll be able to leave your expensive bike locked up at the station without worry, you'll feel safer cycling through city centres? Cycle lanes won't just be an afterthought?

Just looking at the councils in central Scotland, they're all committing to increasing journeys by bike. The only way to do this is by investing time, money and energy to make it happen.

Or is it all just a bit of a fad, and councils will end up saying 'bugger it, we don't have the money'?

 

[classic33]

Local council claims to be spending £200,000 on a completly segregated cycle lane for as many as 17 cyclists a week. IF it gets busy!

 

[Maylian]

Southampton seems to be putting together some scheme requesting funding and last year asked cyclists to complete a survey either online or with various improvements planned below. Hopefully should see some good improvements to road quality and provisions for us.

http://www.southampton.gov.uk/s-environment/transportplanning/cyclesurvey2011.aspx

 

[mangaman]

Nothing much here - except publishing commuting maps - that deviate wildly from the most direct route - and lead on to completely segregated paths.

And off road, multi-use, dog-walking paths that meander around for tourists to pootle on and start in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Richard Mann]

Oxford - mostly additional bits of cycle lane on main roads, sometimes in association with reducing or re-arranging parking to make it fit. A few minor improvements to quiet routes away from the main roads, most notably between one Park & Ride site and the hospitals (as part of a parking clampdown at the hospital). Residential controlled parking zones, to try and stop students from cluttering the place with cars. Some residential traffic calming, mostly raised crossings of side roads to act as a gateway and make it easier to walk along the main road, and create small interruptions in the flow along the main road.

 

[ColinJ]

Our council imposed a 20 mph speed limit in the town centre and motorists complained bitterly about it!

If you take a look at the kind of road in question you will see that apparently those drivers think it is okay to drive at 30+ mph down twisty, turny, narrow roads on steep descents with parked vehicles narrowing the carriageway further!

 

[MontyVeda]

We have them Celebrating Cycling signs as you enter Lancaster... I guess thats the reward for laying numerous very short strips of red paint on the roads here there and everywhere to artificially inflate "The miles of cycle lanes the council has provided". It's not all bad, some of the newer cycle routes are pretty good, but I can't see any council initiative being 'well thought out' for the most part.

 

[Paul J]

As far as I know nothing in Wisbech amd surrounding area. Coucil is more likely to put in tractor lanes than bike.

 

[Rahul Sapariya]

In Leicester, I heard that they might be doing some sort of borisbike thing. It's a rubbish idea seeing as you can get from one side of leicester to the other in 30 minutes. Leicester needs the road surfaces sorting out, winter a few years ago ruined it and I own a bike with narrow tyres that have a high air pressure in them so even the slightly bump and I'd feel it so when I am riding up a road with loads of big bumps and cracks and potholes, you realise that the roads are attrocious. I also think that in Leicester, they need to make some of the cyclepaths wider because for some people (not myself), their handlebars are wider than the bloody cyclepath. There should be a standardised width for cyclepathes.

 

[MrHappyCyclist]

In Bolton, there will be a cycle centre created at the railway station, announced last year as part of a Greater Manchester LSTF bid.

Bolton Council, on the other hand, are completely silent. I got nowhere last year with the highway authority when I raised the issue of sub-standard and dangerous cycle lanes all over the place. In the middle of February, I wrote to my 2 councillors about the Times #cyclesafe campaign and the Parliamentary debate in February, and they haven't even bothered to send an acknowledgement. All rather pathetic really.

Greater Manchester Police have announced a campaign to tackle bad driving (called "Dicing With Death"). It's not about cyclists or cycling, but hopefully may have some effect on the large number of very aggressive drivers. (Fingers crossed.)

 

[bikepete]

What's your town/city doing?

Going backwards is what:

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/9630272.Clifton_Green_cycle_lane_is_scrapped/?ref=mc

Usual depressing comments underneath.

FWIW I was one of the 106 who wrote in to try to save it.

 

[dellzeqq]

Nothing much here - except publishing commuting maps - that deviate wildly from the most direct route - and lead on to completely segregated paths.

And off road, multi-use, dog-walking paths that meander around for tourists to pootle on and start in the middle of nowhere.

yours is an interesting one, because Chichester is of a size that could be ideal for cycling, and the roads south are congested both morning and evening. And yet......the one way system is horrible, for cyclists and pedestrians, but also for drivers. You'd have thought they would try and make something of the land between the railway station and the centre of town, but, no, it's a traffic scheme.

 

[srw]

Resurfacing stretches of the roads through the town. At last.

We must have picked up 2mph last weekend when we went from the clapped-out rutted tarmac onto the spanking new shiny stuff.

 

[gaz]

Croydon council is building a cycle hub at East Croydon station.

 

[snorri]

Transport Scotland are barely willing to admit the existence of the bicycle.