dumbass LCC bike lane on Stratford High Street

[zimzum42]

I can't speak for London

I take your point entirely, but I think it being London does change things. We have an inordinate number of cyclists who race around and don't consider peds much, as well as, much more significantly, hordes of tourists and other folk who won't necessarily know a thing about the arrangement.

I should also declare that I'm in a similar camp to Dell and don't believe in segregated facilities on principle. Plus what we already have in London is pretty terrible too

 

[dellzeqq]

the Zimmers and Dell camp! Where's Adrian when you need him?

 

[theclaud]

the Zimmers and Dell camp! Where's Adrian when you need him?

Adie Camp?

 

[Pete Owens]

You are of course utterly joking right? These plans are about the best thing for british cycling for decade, possibly since the thirties when the CTC killed off cycle infra.

You seem to be under the impression that UK transport policy is dictated by the CTC when in fact just about every traffic engineer and planner over the past 80 years is fully signed up to the segregationist orthodoxy you advocate. Haven't you noticed the blue signs? Just in case you don't get out much take a look a selection:
http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.uk/facility-of-the-month
That is the reality of segregation. Clearly you think that those of us who are sceptical of the merits of this kind of thing are mistaken - that is a matter of opinion. However, it is simply absurd to attempt to claim that the CTC killed it off when the evidence is out there for us all to see.

Of course back n the 30s, the planners didn't even try to pretend that the paths were for our benefit - they openly admitted that the purpose was to prevent us impeding the progress of motor vehicles. The motor lobby at that time was campaigning (fortuanely unsuccesfuly) for the use of paths to be made compulsory. However, the enthusiasm for the planners never dimmed and they have been doing it your way ever since. Look at any new settlement or road scheme - and see segregated infrastructure tagged on to increasingly cycle hostile road layouts.

This is most apparent in the new towns. Starting with Stevenage these were built around completely segregated cycleway networks (building on green fields without the constraints of space).

They WILL protect people on bikes, but more importantly they will enable lots and lots of people who would cycle but feel too scared to do so.

Which is exactly what every traffic engineer spouts whenever we take issue with their latest scheme - and what they have been continuously spouting ever since Eric Claxton was designing Stevenage. OK, 60 years ago and without any evidence to go on it was a plausable hypothesis, but the folk of Stevenage did not take to 2 wheels - nor did they in Harlow or Livingston or Milton Keynes or Telford or Runcorn or Skelmersdale. Instead these became the most car dependent towns in the UK.

It's not about the brave souls now, but about the next 10 and 20% of the population that will ride if it's safe enough

And of course one of the problems with cycle paths alongside roads is that they are much less safe than riding on the carriageway.

 

[Drago]

Actually, I lived in Milton Keynes briefly and their 'redway' cycle track system is pretty well used. The bulk of the roads are 70mph duel-carriageways, so by default if you want to get anywhere on a bicycle and arrive alive you've not got a great deal of choice. The design is OK-ish, but poor maintenance and lightling let it down.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Actually, I lived in Milton Keynes briefly .....

Lucky escape ....

 

[Drago]

It was ok. Better than a lot of nearby towns like Bedford, Luton, Northampton etc. Very car-O-centric though.

 

[dellzeqq]

Actually, I lived in Milton Keynes briefly and their 'redway' cycle track system is pretty well used. The bulk of the roads are 70mph duel-carriageways, so by default if you want to get anywhere on a bicycle and arrive alive you've not got a great deal of choice. The design is OK-ish, but poor maintenance and lightling let it down.

Milton Keynes is, in fairness, a one-off. The design brief changed midway through, and roads that were supposed to be 30mph went NSL. Local shopping centres never materialised. The bus service is pants. And cycle usage is 3% of all trips, but way less than 1% of all miles. Add to that Derek Walker's obsession with Mies, the building of 120 metre wide boulevards, 20,000 car parking spaces in CMK .....It's life, Jim, but not as we know it

but I digress. London, no less than any other city in this country, is divided, but it's divided in different ways. The big gap is between those who own their houses and those who rent. There's a gap between the employment prospects of young afro-Caribbean men and young white men. But (and this is a huge but) people still live, work, walk, shop, and worship cheek by jowl - at least in the inner zones. That's the bit the LCC simply does not or will not get. They would have us in our little lanes, separate (but, as Zimmers points out, in conflict with) pedestrians and drivers. They want to recreate the horror that is suburban Utrecht. And they want to do that because, fundamentally, they lack the gift of adult conversation. It's the AspyCyclist view of the world.

 

[subaqua]

at least the stupid bollard things at the romford road end before the plaistow turning have been removed

 

[Fab Foodie]

It was ok. Better than a lot of nearby towns like Bedford, Luton, Northampton etc. Very car-O-centric though.

I lived in Wilden just outside Bedford for a while ... we don't speak about it much ....

 

[Pete Owens]

Milton Keynes is, in fairness, a one-off.

Unfortunately not. While it does have some distinctive features such as the grid layout it shares the same overall segregationist design philosophy of all new-towns since Stevenage. With limitless constraints on space it was possible to create a separate path network for cyclists. A hierarchy of distributor roads were then see as the exclusive domain of motor traffic, they are lanscaped, have no pavements or frontage development so give drivers the impression of a high quality rural A road - hence the national speed limits. You see these high speed distributor cutting though all modern UK settlements.

In order to get anywhere You drive off the major distributor road to a district distributor road, to a local distributor road and eventually to a cul-de-sac where there will be a zone of houses - or a school - or shops - or an employment site - never a mix. While each of thes little zones will be designed as a pleasant envionment in itself, with more landscaping and no through traffic it is cut off from all the island developments by all the auto-centric distributor roads. All that transport infrastructure takes up a huge amount of space so destinations are too far away to walk. Bus services cannot work as they require through routes to work efficiently - picking up and dropping off people along a linear route rather than taking long loopy detour along destination free roads to get from one bus stop to the next. And while the proponents of cycle paths never cease to claim that they are the only way to get large numbers of people cycling, it fails time after time after time to materialise, and the new-towns have ended up as the most car-dependent settlements in the UK.

They want to recreate the horror that is suburban Utrecht. And they want to do that because, fundamentally, they lack the gift of adult conversation. It's the AspyCyclist view of the world.

Actually, when the Dutch were designing Houten and seeking to improve their road safety record, they looked to what was at that time the country with the best road safety record - the UK. So Stevenage is the model for suburban Utrecht - not vice-versa. While "Sustainable Safety" is often pushed by those demanding segregation as some uniquely Dutch cycle-friendly way of doing things it is indistiguishable from the principles we have been using to design new settlements for over half a centuary.

 

[noodle]

It seems that the idiocy highlighted in the OP continues unabated. Here's an image from the latest plans for a segregated East-West cycle highway:

When will they work out that this is truly retarded?

Consultation details:
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/cycling/eastwest/consult_view

please ill take that up here if you lot dont want it. it is far better than the single shared path i have, especially when the shared path drosses the same road twice and swaps the cycle and pedestrian side once along its length of about 3/4 of a mile. oh and the bus stops actually half the width of th eshared path taking the whole pedestrian area up, except for where the sides swap and the bus stop is on the cycle path

seriously us out in the hicks would love just to be thought about in any way

 

[noodle]

You seem to be under the impression that UK transport policy is dictated by the CTC when in fact just about every traffic engineer and planner over the past 80 years is fully signed up to the segregationist orthodoxy you advocate. Haven't you noticed the blue signs? Just in case you don't get out much take a look a selection:
http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.uk/facility-of-the-month
That is the reality of segregation. Clearly you think that those of us who are sceptical of the merits of this kind of thing are mistaken - that is a matter of opinion. However, it is simply absurd to attempt to claim that the CTC killed it off when the evidence is out there for us all to see.

Of course back n the 30s, the planners didn't even try to pretend that the paths were for our benefit - they openly admitted that the purpose was to prevent us impeding the progress of motor vehicles. The motor lobby at that time was campaigning (fortuanely unsuccesfuly) for the use of paths to be made compulsory. However, the enthusiasm for the planners never dimmed and they have been doing it your way ever since. Look at any new settlement or road scheme - and see segregated infrastructure tagged on to increasingly cycle hostile road layouts.

This is most apparent in the new towns. Starting with Stevenage these were built around completely segregated cycleway networks (building on green fields without the constraints of space).


Which is exactly what every traffic engineer spouts whenever we take issue with their latest scheme - and what they have been continuously spouting ever since Eric Claxton was designing Stevenage. OK, 60 years ago and without any evidence to go on it was a plausable hypothesis, but the folk of Stevenage did not take to 2 wheels - nor did they in Harlow or Livingston or Milton Keynes or Telford or Runcorn or Skelmersdale. Instead these became the most car dependent towns in the UK.


And of course one of the problems with cycle paths alongside roads is that they are much less safe than riding on the carriageway.

i think the figures are wrong for this one town at least
i work there and it is horrendous for drivers and bliss for pedestrians and cyclists this according to the locals all who cycle to work meanwhile people from out side the town drive in and have to double any distance they travel if you choose to use a car in the area
said it elsewhere recently on here (asking you the question i think) but i think most wouldnt consider themselves commuters they jsut use a bike to get to work as its quicker and cheaper due to the layout of the town

 

[Pete Owens]

2011 census figures for cycling to work in Skelmesdale:
http://datashine.org.uk/#zoom=14&la...TTT&table=QS701EW&col=QS701EW0010&ramp=YlOrRd

 

[MrHappyCyclist]

http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.uk/facility-of-the-month
That is the reality of segregation. Clearly you think that those of us who are sceptical of the merits of this kind of thing are mistaken - that is a matter of opinion.

You do realize that the title and the strapline are ironic, and the site is dedicated to showing how NOT to do it, don't you?