The Very Best You Can do For the Motorist

[presta]

In the 50s & 60s, Eric Claxton designed Stevenage New-town to be a cycling utopia, with a network of separate cycle paths so that people could travel the town by bike without ever being bothered by cars, but here we are half a century and more later, and it's a failure. Almost nobody uses it: just 7% instead of the predicted 40%. Why? Because in Stevenage, the car is more convenient than even the 'utopian' cycle network, as Carlton Reid notes.

What's needed is to curb car use directly, leaving motorists to look for alternatives to their cars, and you do that by creating traffic-free roads and LTNs, not by building cycle paths. Cycle paths are a form of apartheid: cyclists relegated to a second class ghetto whilst all life goes on elsewhere, in the case of the Stevenage network in subways, the ghetto is quite literally a hole in the ground. How depressing.

According to Reid, Claxton became quite disillusioned by the failure of his dream later in life, and yet here he is explaining to us all why it failed:
"The very best you can do for the motorist is give him a road free entirely of cyclists and pedestrians"
The well-meaning cycling advocate created a utopia for motorists, instead of cyclists.

Cycle paths: the very best you can do for the motorist.

 

[Cycleops]

And I thought all he could do was play guitar.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Many years ago a friend of mine started working in Sheffied
I went to see him a couple of times and followed his direction to his house. I queried the direction as it seemed to be a long way round

Turned out that the council - who were vilified by the Tories for being the Looney Left - had introduce a system where all the main routes into the city, especially at rush hour, were bus lanes.
Clearly bike etc could also use the bus lanes as usual
To get in my car you had to go down one specific route
At the same time they had put large 'Park and Ride' facilities all around the city with frequent buses into the centre
And the normal buses were upgraded to be more pleasant and frequent whether or not they were going to be full

As a result, according to him, the vast majority of him colleagues came into to work by bus - or drove to the 'Park and Ride' and then used the bus


Seems like a solution to me

I seem to recall that it was stopped by some sort of political manoeuvring or something but lets not go all NACA

extra note - I do not know if extra allowances were made for disabled people - but I assume there was something

 

[Deleted member 26715]

and you do that by creating traffic-free roads and LTNs,

???

Many years ago a friend of mine started working in Sheffied

Seems like a solution to me

This was 10am yesterday morning, when I used to use this facility before lockdown you had to be there before 8am to get a spot, coming back home at 3pm it would still be rammed. Which means either lots of people in Sheffield have lost their jobs, or a huge many are still working from home

 

[steveindenmark]

It amuses me how people who know sod all about cycle infrastructure, including cycle paths. Have so much negative things to say about them.

Take a cheap Ryanair flight to Denmark. Hire a cheap bike for a couple of days. Find out just how much second class citizens we are not.

Its just astonishing that people write tosh like this and other people just swallow it up.

 

[Dogtrousers]

It amuses me how people who know sod all about cycle infrastructure, including cycle paths. Have so much negative things to say about them.

Take a cheap Ryanair flight to Denmark. Hire a cheap bike for a couple of days. Find out just how much second class citizens we are not.

Its just astonishing that people write tosh like this and other people just swallow it up.

Flygskam!

Think of the emissions dear boy

 

[Dogtrousers]

Some years ago I rode through Milton Keynes, famous for having lots of cycle paths. I was aiming for the station from outside so quite a short journey. I did, however, get beeped a couple of times and I wondered if it was because I wasn't on the cycle path.

The reason I wasn't on the cycle path is that my experience of unknown paths in unknown places is not good, and there's every chance they'd take me where I didn't want to be and then peter out. I'd figured out the road route to the station and it was quite direct so that's what I took.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I do think signage on cycle paths leaves a lot to be desired
Many times I have been on a cycle path and started wondering "is this still a cycle path???" only when the kerbs stop being dropped and the width starts getting less
no sign or anything

or I am riding along a road and notice that the pavement next to the road is rather wide - again no signs - and it turns out that it is a cycle path some time later on
or - one place round here there is 2 way cycle path on one side of a duel carriageway but on the way home (for me) there is absolutely no indication that it exists or when/where/how to cross to get to it. Quite a good path as well!

Even if it is a cycle path, unless it is clear all the time then sometimes pedestrians don;t realise and cyclists get nasty looks from others because it is not clear it is a shared path

I did mention a new one round here to the council - and to be fair they added some painted signs a few weeks later.

 

[Baldy]

Haven't been to Milton Keynes for years, I did once deliver to the place twice a week. My understanding is no one used the cycle/foot paths because they were a muggers paradise. Like the ones in Stevenage out of sight underground and lots of hedges.

 

[classic33]

It amuses me how people who know sod all about cycle infrastructure, including cycle paths. Have so much negative things to say about them.

Take a cheap Ryanair flight to Denmark. Hire a cheap bike for a couple of days. Find out just how much second class citizens we are not.

Its just astonishing that people write tosh like this and other people just swallow it up.

You are comparing the infrastructure in place in the UK, which is what most who've replied, experience on a daily basis. Not somewhere else, that they may never visit.

I know that the local, to me, cycle lanes are high on useless. There's a shared use path that narrows to less than three foot wide. If you have to get out of the way of anyone coming the other way, you end up going into the road, into traffic that the shared use path was put in to avoid(Get you out off the way of).

The West Yorkshire mayor is backing a shared use path that takes you through a site so contaminated that it's been fenced off. The first half of that stretch is on a pavement 18" wide. The road can't be narrowed, as it serves the local recycling centre.

 

[mistyoptic]

Cycling abroad makes one realise how poorly many of us are served in the UK. we cycled the length of France a couple of years ago and were amazed by the courtesy of motorists, often stopping to allow us to proceed across their road on our cycle lane. Only when we reached the touristy areas down by Biarritz did this change.

We cycled into Vienna on another occasion and were stunned to have our own lanes with our own traffic lights.

Here in Stafford, it’s not uncommon for the cycle lane to disappear at a moment’s notice, the surfaces are often carp but we are lucky that, in general, the local motoring population are fairly well behaved. It’s rare for us to have a problem but they do occur.

 

[TheDoctor]

In the 50s & 60s, Eric Claxton designed Stevenage New-town to be a cycling utopia, with a network of separate cycle paths so that people could travel the town by bike without ever being bothered by cars, but here we are half a century and more later, and it's a failure. Almost nobody uses it: just 7% instead of the predicted 40%. Why? Because in Stevenage, the car is more convenient than even the 'utopian' cycle network, as Carlton Reid notes.

What's needed is to curb car use directly, leaving motorists to look for alternatives to their cars, and you do that by creating traffic-free roads and LTNs, not by building cycle paths. Cycle paths are a form of apartheid: cyclists relegated to a second class ghetto whilst all life goes on elsewhere, in the case of the Stevenage network in subways, the ghetto is quite literally a hole in the ground. How depressing.

According to Reid, Claxton became quite disillusioned by the failure of his dream later in life, and yet here he is explaining to us all why it failed:
"The very best you can do for the motorist is give him a road free entirely of cyclists and pedestrians"
The well-meaning cycling advocate created a utopia for motorists, instead of cyclists.

Cycle paths: the very best you can do for the motorist.

Not sure I'd entirely go along with this. The bike paths are pretty well used, from what I see, and I've lived here for 40 years. When I worked at Airbus, the bike sheds were full, even in winter. Stevenage station has unbelievable amounts of bike racks, plus bikes chained to fences and all sorts. There's a cycling hub - https://www.stevenagecyclinghub.co.uk and two cycling clubs.
Carlton Reids Grauniad article, linked above, was written in 2017.

 

[Mike_P]

IMO cycle path/route signing should identify the standard of the route - it could be done simply by showing dropped handlebars, straight handlebars with thinish wheels and straight bars with thick wheels indicating a range from suitable for road bike to suitable only for MTB. Obviously would need to be sorted by a cyclist and therein is no doubt the problem.

 

[fossyant]

We've got a great new 'pump' track cycle lane in Hazel Grove Stockport. The road has even been narrowed for it. It's horrendous. Up, down, up down as it's been dropped near driveways, rather than have the whole path lower. It's a nightmare on a bike, especially road bikes. Total waste of money and as the road is now narrow, drivers are getting hissed off with cyclists who don't use it. I avoid the road completely.

 

[Brandane]

It amuses me how people who know sod all about cycle infrastructure, including cycle paths. Have so much negative things to say about them.

Take a cheap Ryanair flight to Denmark. Hire a cheap bike for a couple of days. Find out just how much second class citizens we are not.

Its just astonishing that people write tosh like this and other people just swallow it up.

Yebbut, when we (UK cyclists) "have so much negative to say about them" it is well founded. Separate cycle infrastructure may well work in Denmark, as it does in Netherlands and other civilised countries. But in the UK, well.......

We have half baked, badly thought out, excuses for cycle paths. Done as cheaply as possible by councils whose only real goal is to qualify for Government grants for installing "x" miles of cycle paths. And after they receive the grant money, they have eff all interest in maintaining them. A fine example local to me being the cycle path adjacent to the A78 between 2 roundabouts at Hunterston power station and Fairlie, and from Fairlie to Largs. It was a fine piece of infrastructure when new, just a few years ago. But the ongoing maintenance programme seems to involve one guy running along it with a strimmer once per year. The rest of the time it's an overgrown mess. Tree roots are now beginning to damage the surface, as is the case with most cycle paths throughout Ayrshire and beyond.

Then we have to contend with the mindset of the Great British driver, who see us as something they scrape from the sole of their shoe. Where crap cycle paths exist, we should of course be using them, in their eyes. And if we are on "their road" we are deserving of a side swipe and/or some verbal abuse. That will teach us.

My own view is that unless they are going to go full on and give us good, usable cycle facilities like you in Denmark are lucky enough to have, then don't bother. This half way house nonsense is no use to anyone. I would rather have zero cycle paths and use the public roads which we all pay for. And I would like aggressive, impatient, self entitled prix in cars to face tough consequences if they cannot share the road with other road users. British attitudes to cyclists (and most other things!) needs to change.