Bit of an understatement that! How are you going to widen city centre roads without loosing (often inadequate) pavement width or knocking down entire streets? Sometimes, usually in-fact, we have to find a way to deal as best we can with the street layout we have, and that often involves recognising that streets, especially historic ones, are often narrower than we'd build if we were starting from scratch.
This came up in Oxford a few years ago, where there was a major reconstruction of Cowley Road. For those who don't know it, this is one of the major corridors into central Oxford from the east, and carries very high flows of cars, buses and cyclists. It is also an important centre, with shops, cafes, restaurants etc and lots of people and deliveries to make. As there aren't many bridges, or places you could usefully build new ones, it isn't realistic to try to find alternative corridors, so everyone has to share the same road. There was quite a lot of pressure to provide segregated cycle paths, but no-where they could realistically go, given the space constraints and heavy pedestrian flows. And the narrow road meant that on-road cycle lanes couldn't be provided to an acceptable width, so in the end the decision was made to encourage better sharing of the road. The speed limit was reduced to 20mph in the busiest section and publicity to road users said that you have to get used to following cyclists if there isn't room to overtake safely. Not everyone is happy, they never are, and no-doubt there is room for improvement (extending the 20mph limit in particular), but the key point is that a pragmatic approach based on recognising the constraints and getting everyone to share the road better was better than bodging in sub-standard cycling infrastructure on the dubious grounds that tokenistic measures are preferable to none.
Complaining for 5 years does nothing.
Complaining for 5 years does nothing.
