Bucks: Petition to ban cyclists from 'high speed' DC's

[Bez]

But the petition does not use the term 'trunk'. As it stands, this ban could include any and all dual carriageways.

Oh. Well, I should confess that I didn't read the original petition. They're generally not worth the electrons they're written on: many anti-cycling petitions have come and gone in the past and, like the vast majority of online petitions, they're rarely worth any attention.

What is worth discussing is the matter of what pragmatic measures would best allow higher rates of cycling with lower casualty rates, because the answer isn't what exists at the moment.

[9494arnold]

Bez

Thin end of the wedge mate.

Couple of years ago I went to a meeting in Birmingham where the Council were effectively trying to get the pesky cyclists off the road. Didn't happen thanks to a Mobilisation of Local Cyclists

[Bez]

Yeah, I get that, which is why I said there needs to be good quality provision.

Fundamentally, the aim should be to reach the point where a ban is essentially completely immaterial due to the fact that everyone is choosing the better alternative.

[thirdcrank]

IMO, a big problem with what I'll term rural dual carriageways - often, but not always, trunk roads - is their gradual "improvement" to being motorways in all but classification. An entirely new motorway should present no problems for cyclists, except where it affects other roads, especially at junctions. If an existing road is reclassified as a motorway, then an alternative must be provided for prohibited traffic, including pedal cycles. What's provided is not always brilliant from a cyclist's POV but generally better than the shambles provided as an alternative cycle route when they decide to shift cyclists off a DC with a lowest common denominator dirt path or similar.

(As an example of "not always brilliant" the A1 north of the M62 has been reclassified A1(M) with an alternative route. The glaring weak link is that at the junction with the A64 - formerly the historic Bramham Crossroads, it's necessary to use the large roundabout provided to accommodate motorway traffic leaving and joining the A1(M).)

[SA_SA_SA]

....Fundamentally, the aim should be to reach the point where a ban is essentially completely immaterial due to the fact that everyone is choosing the better alternative.

Then why bother banning cyclists thus legitimising bad driving, whilst removing a route option from cyclists in case their 'special' route is blocked. If the authorities want a pseudo-motorway then let them actually build a motorway with the legally required all-purpose alternatives....otherwise dual carriageways should be built as all-purpose roads with an appropriate speed limit: if limits above 50mph require flashing amber lights then I do not see how a 70mph limit is justifiable. (Why do busy 60mph single carriageways not require tractors to have amber flashing lights....). So 50 or 60mph max limit on dual carriageways: simply done by changing the definition of the national speed limit sign and ignoring the temporary whining noise.

And even stuff presented as best practice abroad is still narrow compared to many country roads.

[Bez]

Then why bother banning cyclists

Well, quite. Virtually the only calls to do so come from people who drive and couldn't give two hoots if other people weren't allowed to ride a bike. I suspect few if any consider alternative provision and fewer still would want public money spent on it (due to the aforementioned hoots). It's essentially driven by a desire to get into fifth gear and start daydreaming.

But anyone expecting people who want to cycle to do so on quasi-motorway roads is also being ignorant and selfish.

[gaz]

Then why bother banning cyclists

They don't, even when the POPE recommends it .

[SA_SA_SA]

Then why bother banning cyclists

They don't, even when the POPE recommends it .

I was referring to those cyclists (ie some posters here) who seem to want to collude with such future banning.

[Richard D]

IMO, a big problem with what I'll term rural dual carriageways - often, but not always, trunk roads - is their gradual "improvement" to being motorways in all but classification.

This. A new motorway is almost always a new route. The pre-existing roads still exist (albeit with some disturbance), so it's still possible to get from A to B without using the motorway (important, given that several types of road user are banned from motorways).

But dual carriageways and trunk roads often ARE the alternative to motorways. They're the main routes that existed to get from A to B before the motorway. Ban bikes, slow loads, learners etc from them and getting from A to B is going to require a detour through C and D.

Not that you'll catch me riding on a dual carriageway. Drivers have proved again and again and again that they cannot be trusted to not to kill cyclists who use them.

[Barks]

If you look at the other petitions you'll see there is a counter-petition already.

I live in Bucks and have signed the counter petition which now has about 3 times more support. There is another petition now that calls upon Bucks CC to restrict its petitions to Bucks residents only - perhaps I should start a petition to ban all Bucks residents from driving on roads outside the County boundary?

[MikeF]

If you look at the other petitions you'll see there is a counter-petition already.

I live in Bucks and have signed the counter petition which now has about 3 times more support. There is another petition now that calls upon Bucks CC to restrict its petitions to Bucks residents only - perhaps I should start a petition to ban all Bucks residents from driving on roads outside the County boundary?

This is the sort of thing that really irritates me. I live very close to the point where 4 counties meet, and, of course, councillors in neighbouring counties do not necessarily have to respond to me. Cross county co-operation is zero, and often antagonistic. Grrr!

[reohn2]

If you look at the other petitions you'll see there is a counter-petition already.

I live in Bucks and have signed the counter petition which now has about 3 times more support. There is another petition now that calls upon Bucks CC to restrict its petitions to Bucks residents only - perhaps I should start a petition to ban all Bucks residents from driving on roads outside the County boundary?

This is the sort of thing that really irritates me. I live very close to the point where 4 counties meet, and, of course, councillors in neighbouring counties do not necessarily have to respond to me. Cross county co-operation is zero, and often antagonistic. Grrr!

It irritates me too,people claiming what's not theirs,motorists do it all the time.

[Pete Owens]

Then why bother banning cyclists

Well, quite. Virtually the only calls to do so come from people who drive and couldn't give two hoots if other people weren't allowed to ride a bike.

Remove the word "virtually" and there you have it - remember that includes yourself, however hedged your support fpr banning us is.

I suspect few if any consider alternative provision and fewer still would want public money spent on it (due to the aforementioned hoots). It's essentially driven by a desire to get into fifth gear and start daydreaming.

Same goes for advocacy of farcilities - the only purpose of which is now and always has been to keep us out of the way of the "proper" motorised traffic. Of course in the absence of a prohibition this is dressed up as a pretend concern for our safety; curious how every example of infrastructure intended for our "safety" happens by pure coincidence have the effect of optimising motorists convenience.

But anyone expecting people who want to cycle to do so on quasi-motorway roads is also being ignorant and selfish.

And sometimes the true anti-cyclist nature of the segregationist rises to the surface.
You (just like a small minority of the motorists in Warrington) want to use the full force of the law to ban me from riding to work along the safest and most convenient route to work in the morning. Yet somehow it is me who is selfish and ignorant for standing up for my rights.

[Bez]

Same goes for advocacy of farcilities - the only purpose of which is now and always has been to keep us out of the way of the "proper" motorised traffic.

This ridiculous straw man *always* gets wheeled out by dogmatic vehicularists.

No-one here is advocating "farcilities". Christ knows I'm not, I merrily slag them off on a regular basis.

You might not have noticed, but what I said was that the aim should be to get to a point where being excluded from this type of road should be immaterial because the alternative is the first choice for everyone. And *at that point*, I personally wouldn't care about cycling being banned on the carriageway of trunk dual carriageways because it would be no-one's choice to do so anyway.

In other words, far from "trying to ban you from the safest and most convenient route", it's about trying to give you a safer and no less convenient route, in order that you don't feel your safest option is to pedal along with traffic doing 70mph along a road designed specifically to encourage unimpeded flow.

If you want to persevere with the straw man and call this (which I realise alongside a class of road) a "farcility" then frankly any discussion is pointless:

Yet somehow it is me who is selfish and ignorant for standing up for my rights.

Did you actually read the bit that I wrote, which you quoted immediately before that response? If you did, try reading it again. But to spell it out: the "selfish and ignorant" description was not related to the that some people choose to ride in these roads, but to the expectation that people in general should cycle on those routes. I wouldn't, no-one in my family would, and having driven up and down one such road on a near daily basis for over a decade I believe, truthfully, that other than time trials I've seen three people cycling in that road. Standing against things that many people would use, on the false premise that anything other than being in the path of motorised traffic is inherently farcical, is to my mind ignorant and selfish.

[MikeF]

That looks an excellent cycle route, but there doesn't seem to be provision for pedestrians. In this country we never seem to have a route for cycles only. It seems routes have to have a pedestrian facility as well, eg shared use. There is some perceived connection by "powers that be" that walking and cycling are virtually the same. Hence we have "walking and cycling" strategies, but not walking strategies and cycling strategies.

Compare this that West Sussex CC is building with the example above. WSCC, like every other council around here, is clueless as they now don't have a cycling officer or anybody that cycles.

Although it's a long way from me I did add my comments. I did ask the design speed for cyclists, but received the answer faster cyclists can always use the road. Doh!

The problem is most councils do not recognise that cycles need their own purpose built infrastructure.

As for time trials the A264 between Crawley and Horsham, which is a 70mph dual carriageway, is often used on a Sunday morning, but there doesn't seem to be a problem as traffic tends to be relatively light.