Cugel wrote:mjr wrote:Cugel wrote:So, if you want a separate cycling infrastructure, you do so because you can't imagine or believe in a road network made safe from the dangers of motorised traffic.
When you start telling other people that they do things for reasons they've already said they don't agree with, that's very silly and pretty much the end of any reasonable discussion about it.
I leave you to knock down the Aunt Sallys you dream up and bid you safe journey!
What was you other reason for wanting cyclepaths besides the avoidance of danger from other traffic to be found on the already very extensive road network? I have looked through your posts and found nothing of any significance. Yes, these new cyclepaths might be quieter or easier for cycling than some roads but would that alone justify the large cost?
The cost is not that large in terms of transport infrastructure. Compare and contrast the £5-16bn cost of building cycleways alongside all A roads with HS2's £80bn, or just current road-building projects, for example.
Is making cycling easier not significant?
Is taking cyclists out of the tunnels of pollution formed by streams of motor vehicles not significant?
Is giving cyclists more direct routes (including access to shops, workplaces and residential areas) not significant?
Is it not significant to enable cyclists to avoid stop-start travel by bypassing traffic signals or disadvantageous priority markings (which exist mainly because motorists have proven themselves as often lethally incompetent to resolve such conflicts safely, unlike most people walking and cycling)?
Is empowering families and friends to ride along side-by-side not significant? (This could be changed in the highway code review by removing the bad advice to ride single file and enable close-passes, but it'll still be a brave parent riding alongside a 6-year-old on a 60mph bit of A10.)
Is giving residents, shoppers, walkers a greater buffer to the motorised noise and air pollution not significant?
Is it not significant to give cyclists a level smooth surface which gets damaged less often because it's rarely used by heavy harmful motor vehicles? (Only emergency vehicles should be allowed IMO - but almost all should be built so emergency vehicles can.)
Is making cycling more attractive not significant?
Cugel wrote:It's disingenuous to deny that the major motive for cycling infrastructure is to avoid dangerous motorised road traffic. Are you claiming that we'd still want (or could justify) extensive new cyclepath networks even if the dangers (real or perceived) of motorised road traffic were removed?l
Of course not, because then we could remove almost all the secondary effects which hinder and discourage cycling, such as traffic lights, but the only way to completely remove the dangers of motorised road traffic is to remove the motorised road traffic, which no-one is brave enough to do much and it would have far larger costs to restructure society to deliver goods by other modes of transport.
Nevertheless, I'll keep campaigning for greater policing and better traffic laws, but that seems a much higher-stakes gamble to me with a much longer-term payoff.
It's disingenuous to argue against cycleways based on a single unproven justification which isn't even the main reason people who feel safe cycling on roads still use some of them. When I ride the cycleway rather than the carriageway, it's not because I feel unsafe on the carriageway but because I can't be bothered with all the annoyances that carriageway cycling brings, including being involved in near-constant overtaking movements by much heavier vehicles and breathing in more motorist pollution. My roadster copes with the local cycleways but of course they should be improved so that all road bikes could use all of them without fear of damage.