Target pavement cyclists, say MPs

[very-near]

Sorry - you're just flat-out factually wrong, and not just wrong but really wrong. I live in one on the UK's largest cities, Glasgow. While urging us to get on our bikes, the local authority blithely refer you to a charity for learner tuition: the website looks full of possibilities. However, it turns out the charity only provides tuition to children and to adults being certificated as tutors. But for beginner-adults - nothing.

Contact your local authority and follow up on whoever they put you in touch with. You may get a bit of a shock. The adult tuition you (and I) complacently assume is in place all over the country is not - not by any stretch of the imagination.

In the end, the charity recommended that I hire a private tutor - in Edinburgh: (Not unlike a lot of other new cyclists, I imagine, I can't afford to go to Edinburgh, let alone hire a private tutor. And if I did, I'd first have to cycle through two city-centres in order to get to a lesson.)

I'm not familiar with Glasgow, but I just came up with this in about 20 seconds with Google.

they offer off and on road training from basic skills to advanced stuff.

A cop taught me on the cycling proficiency in school as was the case with both my kids.

There is no charity to help people learn to drive, why should this be provided for people to cycle .

I read on here a while ago that cyclists are usually higher earners than car drivers and have a higher disposable income. A decent cycle is not cheap so if someone can afford one, then they (or their parents) can pay for training if this bit is wanting (IMO)

 

[brokenbetty]

So let's prevent anyone but the most confident of cyclists from being able to ride in a city?

Eh? How does stopping cyclists riding on the pavement prevent them riding in a city?

They can ride on the roads that they are confident on
They can get off and wheel the bike where they aren't
They can get back on again when they are past that bit
And of course they can use cyclepaths should they choose to

I doubt there are any places that can't be reached this way yet could be reached by cycling on the pavement.

People who cycle on the pavement could get off and wheel, they just don't want to.

Liz

 

[rh100]

Ah, like me you mean?

They wheel the bike to a quieter road, which almost everywhere in the urban UK is no further than a block or so.

Liz

OK, so we've gone up and down a side street a couple of times - I'm still not getting anywhere I want to go to. Should I give up on the bike and get the bus - (and lose all the benefits of cycling like health and finance). When I want to go to the shop's, should I push the bike the 6 mile round trip? Explain all this to Joe Bloggs, who might be thinking of starting to cycle, and he'll think sod it, I'll keep me car. For me, the thrill of riding a bike again is what made me persevere, if I had to spend ages going up and down side streets (which I did for a very short while, incidentally didn't teach me anything about cycling through busy junctions etc) I wouldn't be getting to places I wanted to go and interest would easily wane.

 

[Trevrev]

I'd better give my 6 and 4 year old some training on the roads.
PMSL !!!!!

 

[rh100]

I'm not familiar with Glasgow, but I just came up with this in about 20 seconds with Google.

they offer off and on road training from basic skills to advanced stuff.

A cop taught me on the cycling proficiency in school as was the case with both my kids.

There is no charity to help people learn to drive, why should this be provided for people to cycle .

I read on here a while ago that cyclists are usually higher earners than car drivers and have a higher disposable income. A decent cycle is not cheap so if someone can afford one, then they (or their parents) can pay for training if this bit is wanting (IMO)

I have to now ask what planet you come from? Do you think everyone is on a decent cycle? Is £80 extravagant? How much is a cheap car? At least £500, for some people a bike is ALL they could afford. To be honest I think you are a wind up merchant now. Best wishes.

 

[very-near]

Nonsense.

Spend a day in Cheltenham looking at the cyclists linf.

The comment you refer to was about a particular group of cyclists, that being roadies.

Anyone can pick a bike up for £20 upwards.

You are saying that cyclists should not just be treated as 2nd class citizens whoshould not be treated as equals on the road, but it is the preferred mode for the poverty stricken - oh dear

 

[WeeE]

"they offer off and on road training from basic skills to advanced stuff."

Yes, exactly what I said - on - on the website, it looks like it.

And did you take my advice and actually follow up on this?

Because when I did, everybody told me this was something that "used to" happen, or happened "last summer at some point", and that "somebody" else was doing now. And every "somebody else" tells me it's the other lot doing it.

 

[very-near]

I have to now ask what planet you come from? Do you think everyone is on a decent cycle? Is £80 extravagant? How much is a cheap car? At least £500, for some people a bike is ALL they could afford. To be honest I think you are a wind up merchant now. Best wishes.

Solihull is proper posh, I'll bet you all ride full carbon bikes up there

 

[jimboalee]

A person decides they might like to ride a bicycle. A friend helps them chose a suitable bike. It comes to their first ride. "I can't ride on the pavement, that's not allowed" they say, and "I'm scared of riding on the road".

It's decision time. Now is the time for them to decide whether cycling is their 'cup-of-tea'.

"Let's go to the park. There are cycle lanes there." the friend suggests. "No. I will be looked at if I fall off" replies the new cyclist.

"If you ride on the footpath, just stop if someone else walks the other way" says the friend.

There is silence.

"Are you sure you want to ride this bike?" asks the friend.
"Yes.".
"Then the footpath is the safest place".

So the new cyclist gently rides off along the footpath. 15 minutes later, the new cyclist is riding their bike and even changing gear.


Did you laugh?
This is the tale of when jimboalee's ex wife got a bike.

Two weeks after this, Ex-mrs jimboalee rode the whole length of the Camel Trail from Padstow to Bodmin and back.
Now, Ex-mrs jimboalee rides to work on the road like ( 'cus she is ) a confident cyclist.

We broke the law. Throw us in jail.

 

[rh100]

Solihull is proper posh, I'll bet you all ride full carbon bikes up there

I only ride though Solihull's leafy suburbs, I don't live in them (and not all of it is posh, believe me)

 

[HJ]

What disappoints me about this article is that they're not looking at WHY some people cycle on pavements.

Absolutely right, what we really need is to tame the Sacred Bull in Society's China Shop, a blanket 20mph speed limit would be a good start.

I notice that an awful lot of you, when talking about pavement cycling assume that new cyclists will have a driving licence, or don't have one because they've been banned. Bbefore you condemn "wusses" cycling on the pavement, have a wee think on how you'd have felt on your first-ever time on the road as a learner driver if you were expected to just get in the car and drive down the road alone - albeit in your protective metal tank.

I think you underestimate how many people there are out there for whom just being on a road facing along the way instead of across the way is an entirely new experience.

More than half of the urban poor have never learned to drive. And it's skewed by sex; even fewer women drive. These are the people who could and should benefit by cycling more than anyone else. The big thing stopping them is perfectly rational fear (There are little things too: like social pressure borne of unthinking snobbery and kneejerk condemnation by people who prevfer to keep "chavs" in their place - off bikes.)

These are SCottish statistics, but I don't imagine the situation is far different south of the border.

"In 2007, two-thirds (68 per cent) of adults (aged 17+) had a full driving licence: 78 per cent of men compared to 60 per cent of women, according to the Scottish Household Survey (SHS). The percentage was highest (81 per cent) for those aged between 35 and 44. Licence possession was higher for men than for women in almost every age-group. Possession of a full driving licence increased with income, from 46 per cent of adults living in low-income households (net annual household income of up to £10,000), to 92 per cent of those in high-income households (net annual household income of over £40,000). In rural areas, over four-fifths of adults had a full driving licence, compared with three-fifths in large urban areas."

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Transport-Travel/TrendDrivingLicense

The odd thing is that the majority of adult cyclist come from the higher income groups...

 

[brokenbetty]

OK, so we've gone up and down a side street a couple of times - I'm still not getting anywhere I want to go to. Should I give up on the bike and get the bus - (and lose all the benefits of cycling like health and finance). When I want to go to the shop's, should I push the bike the 6 mile round trip? Explain all this to Joe Bloggs, who might be thinking of starting to cycle, and he'll think sod it, I'll keep me car. For me, the thrill of riding a bike again is what made me persevere, if I had to spend ages going up and down side streets (which I did for a very short while, incidentally didn't teach me anything about cycling through busy junctions etc) I wouldn't be getting to places I wanted to go and interest would easily wane.

Well, that's how people learn to drive safely. They don't get anywhere they want to go at first, they go up and down the quiet streets building their skills.

They don't say "I'm not ready to go on a main road yet but I really want to drive to the shops so I'll go on the pavement instead".

You don't spend ages going up and down side streets for no reason, you just keep on quiet roads until you feel confident trying busier ones. And if you don't want to do that, that's your call, but that doesn't give Joe Bloggs the right to ride on the pavement just because he can't be bothered to learn road skills.

And if that 6 mile journey to the shops is so much on busy roads that he would end up pushing the bike all the way, then yes, for that journey he should still be on the bus. That doesn't stop him using the bike to go to the corner shop half a mile away, and maybe after a few trips like that the busy road will look a bit less scary.

Oh, and you learn busy junctions by working up from un-busy ones.

Liz

 

[CotterPin]

This bit is boll0cks, because if you'd ridden there and not used a path where there is one, you'd have been beeped.

I've ridden through Holland and never experienced any of that, and neither did I see any of it when I wasn't on the bike.

Happened to me in Belgium, which has a similar network of bike lanes. More perversely I encountered a local club riding (at some speed) the cycle lane.

 

[brokenbetty]

You're more than capable of coming up with your own examples of urban trips that require either a lot of busy road riding or a considerable detour. If not, I'd be happy to show you a few.

Urban trips that can be reached by riding on the pavement but not by wheeling the bike? Yes, please do.

 

[WeeE]

The odd thing is that the majority of adult cyclist come from the higher income groups...

Well, I won't argue that they do - you're probably right - but it's not at all odd that they do.

Q. What do non-cyclists say stops them cycling? A. Fear of traffic

Q. What demographic group is more likely than not to be traffic virgins? (ie highest proportion of non-drivers?) A The poor.