last month's FNRttC safety talk featured 'avoid the stupid bike lane' in Woolwich. Our next ride to Southend, Burnham or Southwold will have a heftier warning along the lines of 'avoid the totally dumbass LCC bike lane on Stratford High Street'.
Yup - they're building this sucker, if only to prove that the LCC really does hold pedestrians in contempt. Never mind the inevitable stopping and starting as the bike lane crosses a dozen side streets, just imagine the delight that Ashok and his mates will experience whizzing around the bus stops scaring the daylights out of people queueing for a bus.
I confess I wasn't the first to spot this horror. We rode along Stratford High Street yesterday and Agent Hilda (as in woman, 53 years old*, not some big macho cyclist) said 'oh-no what the **** is that!' And then we worked out that any cyclist doing the sensible thing and sticking to the carriageway is going to have a cab driver on her or his back wheel giving them sputum-flecked abuse - just like the old days on Chelsea Bridge. Have we really gone back fifteen years in time?
The nub of the matter is this. The LCC doesn't do cities. The slicing and dicing of public space, where people move precisely in accordance with some master plan is actually a kind of Le Notre rus in urbe fantasy. Not nice.
* whoops - now I'm going to have to kill you all
Yup - they're building this sucker, if only to prove that the LCC really does hold pedestrians in contempt. Never mind the inevitable stopping and starting as the bike lane crosses a dozen side streets, just imagine the delight that Ashok and his mates will experience whizzing around the bus stops scaring the daylights out of people queueing for a bus.
I confess I wasn't the first to spot this horror. We rode along Stratford High Street yesterday and Agent Hilda (as in woman, 53 years old*, not some big macho cyclist) said 'oh-no what the **** is that!' And then we worked out that any cyclist doing the sensible thing and sticking to the carriageway is going to have a cab driver on her or his back wheel giving them sputum-flecked abuse - just like the old days on Chelsea Bridge. Have we really gone back fifteen years in time?
The nub of the matter is this. The LCC doesn't do cities. The slicing and dicing of public space, where people move precisely in accordance with some master plan is actually a kind of Le Notre rus in urbe fantasy. Not nice.
* whoops - now I'm going to have to kill you all
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