Cycling UK Forum

The Human Power World Championships 2018 will be held at Betteshanger 13-15th July 2018
Where: Betteshanger Country Park, Betteshanger, Kent
Postcode: CT14 0BF

Spectators are free but the site charges £3 per day for car parking.

More details:
http://wc2018.bhpc.org.uk/

This is a chance to see some of Europe's fastest HPVs in action and the Betteshanger track is wonderful.

Both Oxford and Cambridge have high rates of cycling probably thanks to the Universities forbidding undergraduates to have cars. Also both places are flat(ish) and during peak times a cycle is the quickest method of getting around. By NL, DK, D, and A standards the cycling network in both places are really poor. So I think that Gilligan is suggesting that the cycling network (not the roads) in both places should be improved and he is right about this. In north Cambridge for example he has picked out a bridleway that if upgraded to a cycleway would really help the development at Waterbeach as well as people working at the Science park. Not even Cambridgeshire CC spotted this route.

I will stay out of the argument about huge house building and property development in both places and if this is a good idea or not. That is another story.

On Milton Keynes he suggests maintaining the redways and improving signage as well as extending the redway network into the centre and new developments. I do not think Gilligan is suggesting building a grid of dual carriageways and roundabouts in either Oxford or Cambridge.

Personally I would like to see more joining up of existing cycleways using underpasses. But that does not come cheap. So I think Gilligan has been quite pragmatic in his budget.

Milton Keynes has a network of hard topped paths for pedestrians and cyclists. These are called Redways. If you use them I would recommend getting a good map or satnav otherwise you will get very lost, the signposts on paths are non-existent.

I found using the dual carriageways and roundabouts quite a surprisingly nice experience on a bike.

Despite having this network of cyclepaths MK has a surprisingly low percentage of cyclists compared to drivers. This is maybe because MK was designed for the car. There are various debates about this.

Others could probably help better on MTB trails. There is the grand union canal through MK which has a toe path (gravel track) beside.

Hopefully this is very good news for cycling in Oxford, Milton Keynes, and Cambridge. I noticed this on the twitter feed of Andrew Gilligan:

Andrew Gilligan‏ @mragilligan · Jun 29
Glad to say my report for the National Infrastructure Commission on cycling in Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge will be published on Monday. It ought to be worth reading...

The report can be found here:
https://www.nic.org.uk/news/new-report- ... nd-oxford/

This report is brilliant.

The British Human Power Club were at York and they had a marquee as well as some races at the nearby York University track:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/recumbents/

and more photos here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beqi/sets ... 7881124074

They were on the velodrome as well as the outdoor track. The racing was excellent apparently - I missed it unfortunately because of some lurgy or other.

The solution is to remove the junctions at least as far as cyclists and walkers are concerned. Keep the two groups (vulnerable and motor-vehicles) segregated.

I know the junction referred to in Ely. Like all the other Cambridgeshire towns cycleways are bad. For example much more could be done to make the riverfront to the station safe and direct - instead near the rail bridge the road crossings are awful.

Would it have been possible to put a cycleway in near the Broad Street junction? There is no money, no room they wail. Funny how there is money and room to build new housing estates and supermarkets in that area. Just knock down an old brewery, flatten a chemicals company, or build on a free car park. It always seems possible to do these things.

They just are unable to build high-quality continuous and segregated greenways @CambsCountyCouncil

Khan't not Khan

I cannot remember if MB has a mono fork on the rear of his bike.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/recumbents/41336650131/

He does not seem to loose much power from any extra flexing of the mono fork. This based on the speed that he seems to be overtaking these days. He always points out that pedals are only fixed on at one point i.e. cantilevered.

@Hoarder Please do not worry about the navigation. I can not talk as my attempts to help failed when my Garmin refused to powerup due to me not checking and charging before starting! How on earth would we know that the UKs biggest quarry was going to be put slap bang on our route if Google had no idea it was even there.

Hope you did not mind me heading off with Dave. I think he was on low battery and it was probably good someone went with him. As luck would have it we headed back down that track for 5 minutes then we were on a road into Willingham before sinking two very fine pints at the most lovely pub this year. Then a quick stop to visit my hospitable mate Terry who stood us two lovely cold cans of Dr Pepper. Then a quick zipp down the misguided busway. Loads of families out for a ride (why could this be @GCP?) on the busway path.

Please do download a bit of the bouncing video. This must have been a dystopian vision of a future UK - no pubs, no cafes, cracked concrete roads riddled with weeds, and the last of the UKs mineral resources being plundered by multi-national companies. This could be better than the Mad Max series and you should definitely send it to the Cannes Film Festival.

Thanks very much for organising,

I first noticed the overtaking effects of presumed liability when cycling in Normandy. I noticed the drivers being very careful with overtaking giving plenty of room and even giving a quick warning with the horn. It was explained to me why the French should take such care and the reason of presumed liability was given. Any crash and the motorist is automatically held liable - unless the motorist can prove beyond doubt that the cyclist was at fault. I really noticed the effect of French motorists being careful, there were no close passes or punishment passes.

When turning at a junction in NL or D if the motorist even touches you then bang they are liable. It just means they are more careful than they would have been otherwise. It does not make them brilliant, it just makes them better and amen to that.

Also of note on the continent (Germany / Netherlands) is that motor vehicles have to give way to pedestrians / cyclists when turning at junctions.

We have a similar law here in the UK but it only applies to pedestrians / cyclists who are already crossing a minor junction. IMHO our continental friends have this right, especially since in the event of a collision it establishes automatic liability (the French have presumed liability as a default).

It is time to make the key required to drive a vehicle belong to the person and not the car. Think of it like a driving licence built into a key fob.

Any previous offences result in automatic removal of driving entitlement either by physically removing the fob or by putting it on a blacklist. Each car then grants usage permission to specific individual or fobs to use the car. Fobs may be required to authenticate via finger prints.

Job done.

I was quite amused at the suggestion of phoning the police. In Oxford and Cambridge the vans parked on cycleways have Police written on them. There is a special law that allows them to park on pavements/cycleways when dealing with emergencies.

The real joke here is that this 'response to an emergency' can be as little as two hundred yards from the main police station. A car journey of 200 yards in either of these cities at peak time can take up to 45 minutes.

A bike journey of 200 yards to get a PC to the emergency in either city would take about 3 minutes. I have not seen any PC in either city on a bike, but I have seen then in London at Hyde Park.

I thought this was a well deserved effort and worthy of praise.

I love the SI units of measurement (m kg s etc) but until such time as the UK switches over from mph to km/h they should probably stick to UK units otherwise confusion (like the crashed mars lander) reigns.

It has always puzzled me why cycle paths are often designed with turns at right angles or even worse. As a result I have kept a keen lookout for any UK design guide which specifies the minimum turning circle for a cycle. This is obviously information kept on a need-to-know basis. So imagine my surprise when I recently came across this very figure in LTN 2/08:

Conventional bicycle
1800mm Overall length
1650mm Minimum turning circle Outer radius*
850mm Minimum turning circle Inner radius**

* The outer radius governs the distance between walls required to execute a full turn.
** The inner radius indicates the size of an imaginary circular obstruction which the cyclist moves around.

So I tried this on my conventional bike. The tightest turning circle *diameter* I could manage was 3m (approx.). If I got off the bike then I could steer the bike within approx 1.7m diameter. I am fairly certain that the Outer 'radius' as described is the outside turning diameter. When LTN refers to a radius the measurement they describe is actually a diameter.

Does this explain the impossible turning circles of UK cycle paths?