grufty wrote:We live in a small town of approximately 29000 people. There have been a couple of initiatives in the last year or two which have resulted in the introduction of the classic sub-standard British cycling facility. In my experience these require people on bikes to have a substantially higher level of awareness and competence than is required of motorists. This was highlighted in a blog from a local cyclist who was knocked off her bike on one of these new routes.
Any chance of a link to the blog that you mentioned?
You don’t seem to have said much about the poor facilities, but perhaps they had the potential to be good but were implemented poorly.
I don’t see any reason why small towns might need completely different approaches to larger cities, unless there are fundamentally different reasons why the people there don’t ride bikes. In a country where over half of the population believes that the roads are too dangerous for cycling that seems fairly unlikely. Plenty of large cities have narrow streets in the older parts, York, Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh would seem like reasonable examples, although I don’t want to suggest that they have many examples of excellent cycling facilities. Perhaps rather than needing a different approach it is more a case of needing to ensure that the examples that are followed are successful ones, and that they are implemented well, rather than shoddily and cutting corners. Alternatively, if there really isn’t enough space perhaps consideration should be given to removing motorised traffic, as this will free up a great deal more space for every person that switches from a car to walking or cycling.
Safe and convenient protected routes for cycling on busy main roads that are the most important routes into, and out from, the centre seem to be a universal requirement for facilitating cycling in this country.