I have seen hell, and it's...

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Lurker

Senior Member
Location
London
cygnet said:
Having been down it a few times, I'd say it's not pleasant but bearable on a bike, though there are more interesting routes. On foot: get yourself an OS and check out the off-road footpaths - it seems quite possible to make a much pleasanter (though slightly longer) walk between the two.
Indeed.

So in this example, to drive from A to B, it's easy - just follow the waymarked signs on the well engineered smooth road, which has been helpfully designed by 20th/?21st century highway engineers for your mode of transport.

To cycle from A to B, the options are either to put up with an unpleasant ('but bearable' - at least for confident cyclists) journey or to get a map and work out another route, possibly via F, K, P, X...

To walk from A to B, one would need to get a map first, work out a route using badly maintained footpaths (often inaccessible for mobility impaired people...), and take a route from A to B via F, K, P, X....

Hardly a way to encourage cycling or walking, is it?
 

Cab

New Member
Location
Cambridge
Lurker said:
Hardly a way to encourage cycling or walking, is it?

Precisely. The road is not just for cars, other road users are just as valid (in fact one may argue that cyclists and pedestrians, causing less damage, using less resources, are more valid). 'Bearable' for cyclists or pedestrians is far from good enough.
 

Ivan Ardon

Well-Known Member
"Bearable" is sometimes just going to have to be good enough.

In a cyclists/pedestrian's utopia we'd have a separate infrastructure like the Dutch have (which, having experienced it recently is fantastic), but for the few people who do wish to walk from point A to (obscure) point B, the return on the cost of providing the infrastructure doesn't make financial sense.

Spending the money on, for example, a cycle bridge over a river between an industrial park and a big housing estate would be a better use of the money and encourage more people to cycle instead of use their cars for work (as happened locally around 20 years ago to reduce a fifteen mile round trip down to around three).

Ideally we'd have the money and will to do both, but until the oil runs out, it won't be a priority.
 

Amanda P

Legendary Member
And yet, Ivan, it seems to have been a priority for the Dutch, and they have the facilities as a result. Their economy and way of life is not so very different from ours. Likewise the Danes, Norwegians, many of the Germans...

The only difference I can see is that their (mostly coalition) governments have had the balls to say "no" to the motoring lobby. Ours have not.
 

Cab

New Member
Location
Cambridge
Uncle Phil said:
And yet, Ivan, it seems to have been a priority for the Dutch, and they have the facilities as a result. Their economy and way of life is not so very different from ours. Likewise the Danes, Norwegians, many of the Germans...

The only difference I can see is that their (mostly coalition) governments have had the balls to say "no" to the motoring lobby. Ours have not.

Precisely so.

In Britain we shrug our shoulders and say 'well cyclists just have to put up with it'. Its daft.
 
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