New cycling infrastructure - a noteworthy obstacle is cyclists themselves, apparently.

[Drago]

https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...undermine-uk-cycle-lane-planning-report-finds

TBH I'd be rude too if asked to ride on some of the deathtrap infrastructure round here.

But this also highlights a concerning issue that those in authority are considering social media chatter and nonsense when formulating policy.

 

[classic33]

Local council are building cycle lanes that many local cyclists, including cycling clubs have said they'd never use.
Council are looking into making the newly built stuff mandatory. Even when it's been proved to be unsafe in design.

We've had "suicide lanes" running down the centre of "A" roads, some of which still exist. Lanes that go down the left hand side of the road, and then you cross in front of two possibly three lanes of traffic to get in front of the lane you need to be in.

 

[raleighnut]

Quite right, Cyclists belong on the roads not on bits of pavement or side bits of painted road covered in broken glass and other debris.

 

[Vantage]

Agreed. We don't need bloody cycle lanes. We need safer drivers and much harsher punishments for those who put us at risk through not being safe.
And it's not just us that need drivers to improve, but society as a whole.
It's pointless spending hundreds of thousands on ways to avoid the danger when the danger itself isn't being taken away.

 

[classic33]

Agreed. We don't need bloody cycle lanes. We need safer drivers and much harsher punishments for those who put us at risk through not being safe.
And it's not us that need drivers to improve, but society as a whole.
It's pointless spending hundreds of thousands on ways to avoid the danger when the danger itself isn't being taken away.

Living near one of the testing centres, I've sort of got used to drivers(Instructors and learners) doing odd things. Turning into the road on the right hand side being a common one. Followed by turning out onto the main road on the right hand side.
Instructors objected against cycle lanes being put in on the grounds that it would confuse them.

 

[Drago]

Agreed. We don't need bloody cycle lanes. We need safer drivers and much harsher punishments for those who put us at risk through not being safe.

This in spades.

I don't want cycle lanes. I want to be able to simply be able to ride safely on roads that I have, and which I continue to, pay towards.

 

[MontyVeda]

Quite right, Cyclists belong on the roads not on bits of pavement or side bits of painted road covered in broken glass and other debris.

We know but the councils want to lay enough kilometres of segregated lanes to qualify for a 'celebrating cycling' sign and maybe a few extra grants that come with it.

 

[raleighnut]

We know but the councils want to lay enough kilometres of segregated lanes to qualify for a 'celebrating cycling' sign and maybe a few extra grants that come with it.

Aye but they do some good.......................especially for kids and mums going shopping etc and the converted former rail lines are good (apart from holidays when they're packed with walkers)

 

[YMFB]

I’d like more cycle routes on former train tracks. The only way to ensure safety of cyclists and pedestrians is complete physical segregation, clearly unrealistic. Painted lines and plastic bollards are not good enough.

If anyone believes car drivers can be trained/retrained/persuaded to treat cyclist/pedestrians as per the Highway Code you probably thought Brexit would stop the immigration problem. Complete cuckoo land. There are so many issues particularly with the drivers of cars and small vans, being inattentive just being the tip of the iceberg.

I don’t know the answer, sadly cyclists, like many other road users take the easiest option, which isn’t always the safest.

 

[Baldy]

There's one in Stirling, I saw the other day. It goes from a drop kerb all of four meter's to a Zebra crossing where it ends. There's another one the other side of the crossing. I was scratching my head thinking "What is the purpose of that." It just seemed totally ludicrous to me.

 

[presta]

A couple of figures from the paper:

Cyclists 64% positive motorists 80% negative.

Email's best.

Lanes that go down the left hand side of the road, and then you cross in front of two possibly three lanes of traffic to get in front of the lane you need to be in.

An inevitable consequence of separating different categories of traffic is that those streams of traffic will then have to cross each other at junctions. If you don't want conflict with other classes of vehicle at crossover points, don't separate them in the first place.

Quite right, Cyclists belong on the roads not on bits of pavement or side bits of painted road covered in broken glass and other debris.

One instance where cycle lanes are worth having is contraflows. They made this junction one way back in the 1970s, but it took until last year before someone realised that 130m of cycle contraflow avoids cyclists having to make a half mile detour just to get to the other side of it.

I’d like more cycle routes on former train tracks.

There aren't enough of them to make any material difference though. Our old railway is a leisure trail, but it only serves the few who live next to it, and it gets cluttered with dogs & walkers anyway. Unless you're a walker, in which case it gets cluttered with cyclists...

Most of the convenient direct routes have already been taken for motor roads, and there isn't very often room on them for the sort of facilities that cyclists say they want, so I'm all in favour of the LTN/shared space/15 minute city type of approach to the problem and direct incentives to force drivers out of their cars, because I think it's the only practical one. The Netherlands' way of doing things has just led to more travel rather than less motoring. Interestingly, in the wake of the Oxford anti-LTN protests, the council did some research that found 90% of the locals were in favour of LTNs.

 

[Punkawallah]

Cycle lanes that don’t go where you need to be are inefficient - unless they are converted ‘leisure trails’ that have nothing to do with the road network.

 

[oxoman]

Locally to me they built a series of cycle paths going into town. There useless as to short have road signs and bollards in them so you have to swerve around them. Local foreigners just ride anywhere with impunity, cross in front of cars regardless of how fast your going. Local delivery brigade are the worst. Certainly for me locally there's only 2 I will use. 1 is across river trent and washlands, narrow but way quicker than trying to get through stationary traffic. 2nd is on a fast section of A road and is a about a mile long, saves me being dragged under a lorry. Most town and city cycle paths are to short, inherently dangerous so I refuse to use them.

 

[MontyVeda]

I’d like more cycle routes on former train tracks. The only way to ensure safety of cyclists and pedestrians is complete physical segregation, clearly unrealistic. Painted lines and plastic bollards are not good enough.

...

I'm sure if a ped was hit or injured by a cyclist on our local disused railway tracks, the keyboard warriors would be all over the local FB groups... but i can't recall a single incident.

Only the Lancaster-Morecambe track has a segregation line, the others don't and work just as well. It's just a case of cyclists giving way to peds which so far as I can tell, is working.

 

[craigwend]

(Old)
Confessions of a cycling officer...

http://notanothercyclingforum.net/bikereader/contributors/peel/confessions.html