Levelling up?

[[XAP]Bob]

Rumble strips with a central "smooth" section, marked with cycle sharrows in that central zone should be a sane option.

So of course it won't be taken.

[simonineaston]

Cyclists in Britain always have been treated as second-class (third, even?) citizens, paid lip-service only and fobbed off with minimal often indequate and dangerous, resources. In Britain, the loud, aggressive, ignorant, planet-ruining car driver rules - and know it. I am therefore not suprised to hear the OP's news - just, as usual, upset, disappointed and depressed...

[Wanlock Dod]

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.

[prestavalve]

...potential to be good but were implemented poorly...

Where I live (historic area, narrow streets, blah), the local council saw fit to widen the pavements to allow pedestrians to socially distance. In doing so, they covered hydrant access caps (those little square metal things in the road that have stop cocks and other things under them) under two inches of asphalt. Well done.

Local councils are mostly awful, having neither good ideas nor the gumption to implement them.

[Bmblbzzz]

Well done to Prestavalve Land for widening the pavements.

Shame about the stop cocks.

[RH20]

Here we go again, could reach 0-60 mph in under three seconds. I have just been reading about a new type of electric vehicle battery, a lithium-ion phosphate battery that could have the ability for a car to achieve 0-60mph in under three seconds. Hmmm. Until we get away from the idea of how can we get from A to B in as short a time as possible or acceleration from standing, we will never achieve good quality shared road usage. How many of us need to proceed as fast as possible? We all need to slow down.
Perhaps instead of cycle lanes it might be better to have traffic calming measures installed. Pinch points, humps etc. Traffic calming measures are self policing, but do not create the impression of favouring one mode of transport over another. Yes, people would complain about calming measures, but complaints would not be about favouring one road user over another.
It’s almost a chicken and egg situation. Which comes first, the cyclist or cycle lanes? “Waste of money this council has spent a fortune on a cycle lane, but here’s hardly any cyclist using it.” Is a mantra often used. Calming measures affect everyone.
As cost will always be a main factor, perhaps a study should be undertaken into which system is most beneficial, traffic calming or cycle lane.

[prestavalve]

Which comes first, the cyclist or cycle lanes?

I really dislike the current campaign posture from many groups, which seems to suggest that cycling infrastructure is almost necessary before cycling can happen.

[mjr]

Which comes first, the cyclist or cycle lanes?

I really dislike the current campaign posture from many groups, which seems to suggest that cycling infrastructure is almost necessary before cycling can happen.

Not necessary before cycling but it is almost necessary before you will get mass cycling happening.

Well, that or you have something that makes almost all motorists stay off the roads, such as a strict lockdown or a fuel crisis or a fundamental redesign of an area to keep almost all unnecessary motorists out and tame the few that persist.

But, politically, infrastructure is probably the easiest to do first, then that encourages the suburbanites to ride in, which encourages the politicans to do more, and so the virtuous circle should begin. The challenge, as ever, is to avoid deliberate or incompetent sabotage, such as not joining things up, or designers adopting every possible compromise or easement for motorists until the infrastructure is just too fiddly to ride on.

[prestavalve]

Not necessary before cycling but it is almost necessary before you will get mass cycling happening.

Can you cite an example from history (any country is fine) in which an increase in cycle infrastructure caused a cycling boom? Rather than following it?

The only one I can think of is the invention of proper road surfaces - and we have those. That seems to have been enough for all the previous booms and golden ages, as far as I can see.

[drossall]

I think people understate the difference that where you live makes. If you're in a city, infrastructure is probably needed. From what I've seen as a commuter, London's routes are positive, though there's lots of really successful on-road cycling as well.

If you're out in the country, extensive networks of cycle paths are improbable, though obviously some exist. Along main roads in the country it's more variable, but most such paths in the UK are rubbish (converted pavements, very narrow, failure to manage side turnings properly so probably more dangerous than no provision at all).

In small towns like ours, space is limited and full networks are unlikely, so again it can be counter-productive to push for paths because the result will be converted pavements. But clever thinking can provide useful routes by focusing on fixing individual problems along important travel lines.

So I think that any talk that suggests that one approach will work everywhere is probably confusing the issue. And drivers who read that cyclists need cycle paths will not necessarily stop to think that the writer was thinking of the London Embankment, when encountering cyclists using a country B road.

[djrikki]

There is absolutely no justification for doing things differently to the Dutch. If it works in one country it can work everywhere, the debate of terrain is null and void.

I don't want to hear anymore excuses from those who in a position of power who can make things happen; I just want them to crack on and build it.
And the 'it' being cycling infrastructure the dutch way, the world over.

[mjr]

Not necessary before cycling but it is almost necessary before you will get mass cycling happening.

Can you cite an example from history (any country is fine) in which an increase in cycle infrastructure caused a cycling boom? Rather than following it?

The only one I can think of is the invention of proper road surfaces - and we have those. That seems to have been enough for all the previous booms and golden ages, as far as I can see.

I think that's going a bit extreme, demanding both "a cycling boom" and "caused" to be proven. Any recent example I could give would probably be disqualified as not a boom because cycling numbers have been in decline since WW2; and not proven as causal because of the "virtuous circle" I mentioned earlier. It is very kind of you to suggest one, but did tarmacking the roads cause the boom or did it follow a growth in cycling and the resulting CTC-linked campaign?

What we are far more likely to see is build-a-bit, grow-a-bit, repeat. Then we have arguments about which came first: the growth chickens or the building eggs. Personally, I don't much care as long as both chickens and eggs keep coming!

It's certainly fairly easy to find claims of growth in cycling following building. Of the 2010s "Cycling City Ambition" UK projects, the Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle ones found growth that was "likely to be attributable to the new infrastructure" (Cycle City Ambition Programme: Interim Report, DfT, 19 June 2019) and five other cities "may be". Even where there are already cycleways, improving them can be linked to growth: I think that the Copenhagen Cycle Superhighways (or whatever they are called - the new ones with the © symbol which are easier to follow with fewer, less fiddly junctions) also found increases in cycling where the routes were built (I think it is reported in the Copenhagen Bicycle Accounts).

[mjr]

If you're out in the country, extensive networks of cycle paths are improbable, though obviously some exist. Along main roads in the country it's more variable, but most such paths in the UK are rubbish (converted pavements, very narrow, failure to manage side turnings properly so probably more dangerous than no provision at all).

Well, I think we all hope that Cycleways Resembling A Pavement are on their way out now, with LTN 1/20 and DMRB discouraging them and hopefully Active Travel England will penalise both new construction and eventually continued use of them.

I don't think an extensive network is improbable in the countryside, but it will probably be achieved using different tools, such as:
· blanket 40mph rural zones to make sat navs stick to the A/B roads;
· converting more back roads into resident-motors-only no-through-motoring roads, enforced by either bollards that can be collapsed by emergency vehicles or number plate reading cameras on the banned turnings.

Both of those are quite similar to what is often done in rural DK and NL away from major roads. For example, my day riding from near Utrecht to Dordrecht on tour was 72% road cycling, many of them dead-ended residential service roads linked by short stretches of cycleway or cycle/foot bridges over drains, which was as good a day cycling as any I've had. Even Breda to HvH in 2019 was about a third on-road despite crossing both Dordrecht and Rotterdam.

In small towns like ours, space is limited and full networks are unlikely, so again it can be counter-productive to push for paths because the result will be converted pavements. But clever thinking can provide useful routes by focusing on fixing individual problems along important travel lines.

I disagree entirely. Even in the few pinch points where there is really no space, all it needs is the political will to convert carriageway instead of footway, or to close off a parallel route to motoring instead of leaving it as a "relief route" aka rat run.

So I think that any talk that suggests that one approach will work everywhere is probably confusing the issue. And drivers who read that cyclists need cycle paths will not necessarily stop to think that the writer was thinking of the London Embankment, when encountering cyclists using a country B road.

I can certainly think of some country B roads which really need cycle paths! They can be surprisingly deadly. Many others could be re-humanised with 40mph limits and camera enforcement, though.

To some extent, you are correct, in that different scenarios will need different tools, but they could still both be under the same broad approach.

There is absolutely no justification for doing things differently to the Dutch. If it works in one country it can work everywhere, the debate of terrain is null and void.

Oh I don't know: I suspect the Danish style would apply to UK towns more easily than the Dutch, but I think Danish-style is not as intuitive to use. I feel I was helped by my experiences around MK, where the Redways flow in a similar manner, although MK's still vanish in its old town centres rather than squeeze in Danish-style. I suspect it was for good reason that Yugoslavia started to copy Denmark instead of the Netherlands.

But when the main argument becomes between Dutch and Danish styles, things will be really good here!

[Bmblbzzz]

There is absolutely no justification for doing things differently to the Dutch. If it works in one country it can work everywhere, the debate of terrain is null and void.

I don't want to hear anymore excuses from those who in a position of power who can make things happen; I just want them to crack on and build it.
And the 'it' being cycling infrastructure the dutch way, the world over.

Sing...
De Nederland, de heeft de fiets, de heeft de fiets van grout.


There are lessons to be learned from the Dutch way, as there are from the Danish and other ways. None of them is likely to apply directly, though terrain is unlikely to be the reason. It's more likely to be law, culture, tradition, urban layout, rural land use... I think if we look at what's going in now in some of our big cities, those lessons are being applied and new ones learnt. Still a lot to do, that's true, and it will evolve as everything does.

[prestavalve]

... did it follow a growth in cycling and the resulting CTC-linked campaign?

Well, scratch another one for cycling-before-infrastructure then.

My point is that external forces (fuel crises, growth/decline in affluence, campaigns against road death in the Netherlands, etc.) have been the catalyst for the past cycling booms. I see no reason why this pattern is going to change: it may very well be the case that concerns over the environment will cause the next cycle boom, independent of whether there are lines painted on the ground or not.