MacBludgeon said:
...
I would be very wary about acting on the results of a survey based on the views of non-cyclists. My own views have changed drastically since taking up cycel commuting and longish social rides. My previous views were well intentioned but very poorly informed.
Absolutely. These sort of surveys are very dubious and usually based on the flawed assumption that everyone makes informed and objective decisions about every journey they make, when in fact travel is largely determined by habit. The reasons a non-cyclists gives for not cycling, especially when given a list of prompts to chose from, are likely to have little to do with the real reason why they don't cycle. So even if you believe what they tell you, and spend lots of money on the things they've said they want, they probably still wont' cycle!
This sort of thing crops up in travel plan surveys a lot, which is why I've always tried to steer clear of asking people leading questions about their reasons for their travel choice.
Lots of non-cyclists
think cyclists need more off-road cycle paths, because they imagine that is what they'd want if they cycled, but they don't cycle, so they don't know what it is really like, nor do they know how utterly useless so many of the 'off-road' (i.e. on pavement) cycle paths actually are. Indeed, many cyclists might think they'd like more off-road paths, because they've seen Sustrans leaflets showing the Bristol to Bath path, or indeed some of the admittedly nice routes around York, but haven't grasped that you usually can't build that sort of thing on a busy city street, so the choice is either riding on the road or the pavement...
Dellzeqq quite rightly says we should look at what actually works. Sustrans type routes are great where there is room to do them well, but can't provide a comprenseive network across a whole city. In London, there has been a massive increase in cycling achieved almost entirely on-road, using a combination of traffic restraint, shared use of bus lanes (thanks for letting the motorbikes in Boris...), improved junction design, better parking provision etc. Likewise, Oxford achieved a large increase in cycling in the late 1970s and 80s, again almost entirely on-road, initially with virtually no cycle-specific infrastructure at all, and largely driven by traffic restraint.