Re: BBC New website media request - What do you think of the government's new proposals for cycling?
Posted: 29 Nov 2018, 7:24pm
Yes. The political reality is that they are both active travel and therefore both, from a political view, can be very conveniently lumped together. (Non motorised user is another lumping term.) Provision of shared use paths politically meets the need of active travel. Problem solved!pjclinch wrote:MikeF wrote:The only commonality between pedestrians and cyclists is that both use human energy as a means of transport. Apart from that they are vastly different - but not according to the Government.basingstoke123 wrote:As others have said: shared use facilities are disliked by cyclists and disliked by pedestrians. But these are the only two groups that shared use is supposed to serve. Which probably suggests that the real reason for shared use is not to benefit pedestrians or cyclists, but to get cyclists off the roads so as to benefit drivers.
It also causes other problems, as there is usually very little physical difference between a shared 'facility' (or "Cycle Route Along Pavement"), and a non-shared use facility.
Some cyclists cannot see any difference between a typical shared use facility and a typical pedestrian only facility, so continue to cycle along the road instead using the shared facility.
Some cyclists cannot see any difference between a typical shared use facility and a typical pedestrian only facility, so continue to cycle along the pavement instead of the road.
The political reality is that they are both "active travel" and AT is having (relatively) large amounts of money thrown at it, but that means you can't do one and ignore the other. This is potentially a Good Thing, though for it to be good it needs something like the level of Clue being shown in Manchester. That is a very long way off being a Given
Pete.
That political reality is why we won't have Dutch style infrastructure.