Cyclecraft is "destroying" UK cycling

[MacB]

Undoubtedly

The assumptions are all yours. My observations are based on what I read on cycling boards and by listening to other cyclists. I don't believe there's any consensus on the way forward for cycling, with the result that issues have become atomised into hobby horses, vested interests and pet projects, many of which masquerade as Big Ideas.

None of those most vocal in their antipathy to segregation have any solutions for what happens to cyclists outside cities - except that it mustn't involve dedicated cycle provision - an opinion only matched by the vehemence that traffic must be calmed to completely safe speeds within it. I came in by saying there is no plan for the advancement of cycling and have read nothing that minds me to think otherwise. Basically, it's the same factionalised nonsense I've heard since the 1970s in which time the road lobby has gone from strength to strength while activists operate on the Apocalypse Soon principle to elevate the just to their desserts. It's a religion with different funny clothes and just as evangelical about its abstractions.

Well I think you need to add a bit of the comprehension factor to your reading and listening, cycling is good, but so's walking, jogging, getting the bus, train, scootering, taxis...what degrades public space is the private motor vehicle. Bunging in segregation infrastructure isn't going to do anything to solve that degredation.

You are(and correct me if I'm wrong) taking a 'build it and they will come' attitude to cycling infrastructure - I don't believe this I think make the car less attractive and they will come is far more realistic.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

bus lanes are public space. The bus is the great democratic vehicle. They are, for want of a better word, about sharing. They offer each and every one of us an efficient way of getting around town, regardless of who we are. Buses are the apotheosis of civilisation. To ride on a bus is to take part in the life of your town or city.

Well, I could also say that a bicycle is a great democratic vehicle, that offers each and every one of us an efficient way of getting around town, regardless of who we are, that they are the apotheosis of civilisation, and that to ride a bike is to take part in the life of your town or city, couldn't I?

I do like buses, but I'm not particularly convinced that you have presented a case that exclusively allows public space to be sliced up for buses, and buses only. Not with the above argument, anyway.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

So to summarise, we have a cycle campaign agenda that isn't really pro cyclist, it's a means of making cities more desirable places to live. Those who live 'outside the built up area', which in the case of London runs from Berkshire to Essex and Hertfordshire to Sussex, have to make do with fast roads because campaigners don't believe in 'segregation' on principle, while those inside get blanket 20 mph zones.

You'll have to explain how that isn't NIMBYism.

Why don't you just read what people have posted rather than responding from your own dogmatic viewpoint

 

[MacB]

Well, I could also say that a bicycle is a great democratic vehicle, that offers each and every one of us an efficient way of getting around town, regardless of who we are, that they are the apotheosis of civilisation, and that to ride a bike is to take part in the life of your town or city, couldn't I?

I do like buses, but I'm not particularly convinced that you have presented a case that exclusively allows public space to be sliced up for buses, and buses only. Not with the above argument, anyway.

The point is that it's not slicing up public space it's merely blocking the use of certain space by certain vehicles, the space is still there and open to the rest of us. It doesn't matter how much we love cycling you're never going to get everyone on bikes, or on foot. Buses, trains and taxis provide an alternative for those not wishing to walk or cycle.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Newsflash - we've had, as you refer to it, transportation apartheid for decades. There are many roads that are dangerous and alien to any pedestrian or cyclist, and that's before we look at motorways.

So help me out here. Apart from motorways how many miles of road as a % of the total non-motorway road mileage are actually barred to cyclists?

Forget subjective arguments about alienation. I see people cycle down roads I would not care to tackle under my own steam. Some of these people are in lycra, others look like stereotypical utility cyclists to me, whilst others are lads and lasses on BSO's and, judging from the time, they are going to or from work.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

The point is that it's not slicing up public space it's merely blocking the use of certain space by certain vehicles, the space is still there and open to the rest of us. It doesn't matter how much we love cycling you're never going to get everyone on bikes, or on foot. Buses, trains and taxis provide an alternative for those not wishing to walk or cycle.

That's fair enough, but your argument seems to be setting out from a starting position that the bicycle is, and always will be, a minority form of urban transport. My personal opinion that a bicycle is pretty much the ideal way of negotiating urban areas, and that levels of cycling should be far higher. But that's just me.

 

[Dan B]

In an urban area less than couple of miles wide, I'd rather walk. No issues with finding somewhere to lock the bike, nobody cursing me as I wheel the bike on crowded pavements, little need to pay attention to traffic, and I can stop and look at anything I want to.

 

[dellzeqq]

bicycles have their virtues (I wouldn't have spent the last forty years being obsessed by the blessed things if they didn't) but they are, if I understand the word correctly, marginal. The rider has to have the ability, the will and it is an individual thing (tandems aside). They are not public.

Bicycles afford the wider population (that is to say non-cyclists) considerable benefits by getting people from A to B, by being quiet, by being healthy even, but, in that getting people to and fro they're not a shared thing. You can't take part in riding a bicycle. We make the space ahead of us private, in the manner of a car, although clearly to a lesser degree, and, in fairness, some cyclists privatise space to a greater degree than others.

That may seem an abstract argument, but the day-to-day manifestation of it is in the way that cyclists 'meet' with their surrounding and with other people. I don't have a problem with cyclists being in conflict with motor vehicles (provided the cyclist is the winner) but where cyclists meet pedestrians, or where they want 'stuff' that says 'this is our bit' the outcome is likely to be prejudicial to pedestrians (and wheelchair users) and the public nature of the space in which the 'stuff' is placed.

I'm happy to accept that there are different degrees, and that compromise is inevitable, but, in general, the complexity of city life and the use of public space, not to mention the perception of public space as public means that where cycling infrastructure exists in towns, it exists to the detriment of public space.

But........again. Show me the drawing. I think the LCC gave it a go with LCN+ and, given the formal constraints, did pretty well in the sense that what was public remained public (with exceptions like Tooting Common, which is sliced in two by a cycle path) but came up with something that few people use. A loooong time ago I gave Islington Green a go and my best shot showed how incredibly difficult it is to work these things out 'on the ground'. Somebody, maybe you, can always prove me wrong.

 

[psmiffy]

That's fair enough, but your argument seems to be setting out from a starting position that the bicycle is, and always will be, a minority form of urban transport. My personal opinion that a bicycle is pretty much the ideal way of negotiating urban areas, and that levels of cycling should be far higher. But that's just me.

Even in places where bicycle use is high - it is a minority form of transport

and yes the bicycle is an ideal way of negotiating urban space - for some people - one size does not fit all - true for both the general population and cyclists

 

[dellzeqq]

Even in places where bicycle use is high - it is a minority form of transport

and yes the bicycle is an ideal way of negotiating urban space - for some people - one size does not fit all - true for both the general population and cyclists

wotIsed. You just used a tenth of the words. Pah!

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

In an urban area less than couple of miles wide, I'd rather walk. No issues with finding somewhere to lock the bike, nobody cursing me as I wheel the bike on crowded pavements, little need to pay attention to traffic, and I can stop and look at anything I want to.

You are talking about cycling in Britain as things stand, I take it? Where you can't find somewhere to lock your bike, you do need to pay a lot of attention to traffic, and you can't stop and look at things that catch your attention.

Surely all those things should change? And if they do, cycling is certainly a far more attractive way of covering a couple of miles - i.e. a 10 minute journey time, rather than 40 minutes.

If conditions for cycling are utterly crap, then of course walking is more attractive. But it needn't be.

 

[Red Light]

So help me out here. Apart from motorways how many miles of road as a % of the total non-motorway road mileage are actually barred to cyclists?

Forget subjective arguments about alienation. I see people cycle down roads I would not care to tackle under my own steam. Some of these people are in lycra, others look like stereotypical utility cyclists to me, whilst others are lads and lasses on BSO's and, judging from the time, they are going to or from work.

I used to commute daily for several years for ten miles along the A10. Never had a problem and pretty soon I became known to the regular users who always treated me with consideration. The problem with these sorts of road are there are too few cyclists on them so motorists get taken by surprise* when then encounter one and are maybe not paying as much attention because they are not expecting cyclists or horses or pedestrians, not that the roads are intrinsically dangerous**.

* there was a cycle track alongside the road but I saw just one or two people a month using it, far fewer than the numbers of other cyclists using the road which was probably 5-10 a week. So much for the blockend theory.

** which they are not as the accident rate is very very low.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

Even in places where bicycle use is high - it is a minority form of transport

and yes the bicycle is an ideal way of negotiating urban space - for some people - one size does not fit all - true for both the general population and cyclists

Yes, but I don't believe for one second that the "some people" we are talking about make up only around 1-2% of the UK population, which would be suggested by current statistics.

There is latent demand there, I am sure of it. But maybe I have been blinded by my own cycle-love.

 

[MacB]

That's fair enough, but your argument seems to be setting out from a starting position that the bicycle is, and always will be, a minority form of urban transport. My personal opinion that a bicycle is pretty much the ideal way of negotiating urban areas, and that levels of cycling should be far higher. But that's just me.

I agree and disagree, any mass move to cycling would be an extremely long term thing and for future generations only, it would need to start in schools. Adult education, infrastructure changes, they take time, money and would be prone to limited take up and limited success. That's assuming you can get the £millions to build cycling infrastructure without first demonstrating the demand, or even with that evidence. If you're looking for short term gains then limiting non public transport vehicle use is going to be the most effective.

I genuinely have no idea as to whether the bicycle will move from minority to mainstream, I'd like to think it will but I can also accept that it may never happen. As I said I don't believe in 'build the cycling infrastructure and they will come', remove the private vehicle and see what pans out is more to my taste.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

I agree and disagree, any mass move to cycling would be an extremely long term thing and for future generations only, it would need to start in schools. Adult education, infrastructure changes, they take time, money and would be prone to limited take up and limited success. That's assuming you can get the £millions to build cycling infrastructure without first demonstrating the demand, or even with that evidence. If you're looking for short term gains then limiting non public transport vehicle use is going to be the most effective.

I genuinely have no idea as to whether the bicycle will move from minority to mainstream, I'd like to think it will but I can also accept that it may never happen. As I said I don't believe in 'build the cycling infrastructure and they will come', remove the private vehicle and see what pans out is more to my taste.

Yes, it's not going to be easy, and there is no one simple strategy. The Dutch have, of course, got things absolutely right, in that they have tamed the motor vehicle in their urban areas. But - currently reading the work of Lynn Sloman - they seem to have been deeply blessed in that their Oil Shock coincided with an earlier environmental awareness. Our environmental movement did not really start until the 1980s, by which time attitudes towards road building and public space had become yet more entrenched, and the bicycle had basically disappeared from Britain.

A broader point I would make is that a lot of the posts here - on this thread, and on the wider Cyclechat site - are about the attitude of drivers, and the general hostility towards cyclists. Surely one way of mitigating those attitudes - rather than through publicity campaigns - is to get more people cycling? I can appreciate that we are never going to get everyone cycling, but at present there are many people out there on the roads who do not know anyone, be it in their circle of family and friends, who cycles. Cyclists on the road are "the other" to them. Get cycling more mainstream, and I think a great deal of that hostility and lack of understanding will melt away.