Cycling infrastructure good & bad

[mercalia]

you've got to laugh?

[mjr]

you've got to laugh?

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The first one seems pretty surely rubbish, but I do wonder what's been cropped out of the left of the second picture.

[Vorpal]

Several threads have been combined by moderators (not just me!).

The same articles were quoted in multiple threads.

The topics are partly in contrst, as one is about cycling specific infrastructure, and another is about cycle lanes being a waste of money, but, as they were quoted together, it seemed simpler than copying a couple of posts to make two threads out of 4, instead of 1 out of 4.

Hello Vorpal,

I'm sorry, but I do NOT agree with the merging in of the thread started by Cotswolds. That was originally on an entirely different topic, the words (bike lanes are a waste of money) were added in gratuitously (and incorrectly).

Please separate out the threads again. Thanks.

Because one of the original threads covered multiple topics, and had links to the same article that cotwolds posted, and people subsequently commented in a way that was relevant for both topics, it would take roughly a half hour to separate the two topics. Maybe it would have been better to leave them separate, but then there would have been content in common between the two.

It was kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

[mercalia]

you've got to laugh?

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The first one seems pretty surely rubbish, but I do wonder what's been cropped out of the left of the second picture.

if you blow up the 2nd picture right at the top you can see he rest of the cycle path I think that as you say has been erased due to road works?

[reohn2]

you've got to laugh?

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If you didnt cry with frustration of the idiocy of it all
BTW the top photo looks like a road less than a mile from where I live and a little further along the gutter "cyclelane " turns into cobbles TBF though after umpteen years of complaint someone somewhere had the good sense recently to burn off the painted cycling symbol

[pjclinch]

PS, writing to Chris Grayling is like talking to the wall the man doesn't give a toss for cycling like all the transport secs before him.

Perhaps more to the point, since this is Failing Gryling we're talking about, I don't think Peter & Jane have introduced words like "infrastructure" at Level 1a

[pjclinch]

My own view is similar: what's needed is heavy-duty policing of motoring crime so that the existing and very adequate cycling infrastructure known as "the roads" are felt to be safe and actually are safe for the cyclists (and pedestrians; and horse riders; and even the cats, dogs and hedgehogs crossing them).

Though there are plenty of roads that really aren't fit for purpose for sharing, however well they're policed. Rural A roads with plenty of bends are not pleasant to ride on if there's much motor traffic, even if it is being driven just as it should be (I'm not keen on creating big tailbacks behind me, and I'm not keen on pulling over every two minutes for 20 miles either). And if that's the case for me, you can come down several notches for a beginner. There's no shortage of people that don't want to share with fast and/or heavy traffic. Just because these much vaunted roads are okay for the 2% modal share of cyclists using them, the potential order of magnitude more seem to think differently and I doubt that policing alone will change that. Not that I'm against much more policing of bampots on the roads!

Cycling infrastructure making the bicycle the primary and perhaps only transport mode allowed. Is that a good way forward? It seems a bit like making the motorist king....

But if you have a climate emergency (and it looks as if we do) then active discrimination against something that is killing people by directly running them over and poisoning the air in favour of something that doesn't, and where spending actually appears to have an active return on investment, starts to look like a smart move. We need to get it through our collective heads that driving anywhere we want doesn't scale nearly as well as cycling.

PS All on-line Guardian articles - they've gone a bit mad-on-cycling recently.

Peter Walker's main job is political correspondent, but he knows his cycling stuff too. His Bike Nation is well worth a read. Helen Pidd is primarily the Northern Correspondent IIRC, but she knows what she's on about cycling-wise too.

Pete.

[661-Pete]

Perhaps more to the point, since this is Failing Gryling we're talking about, I don't think Peter & Jane have introduced words like "infrastructure" at Level 1a

I don't think "infrastructure" crops up in Toyland, either:

[Tangled Metal]

you've got to laugh?

laugh 2.JPG
laugh 1.JPG

The first one seems pretty surely rubbish, but I do wonder what's been cropped out of the left of the second picture.

if you blow up the 2nd picture right at the top you can see he rest of the cycle path I think that as you say has been erased due to road works?

I took the white surface read original and the black strips were roadworks. The white extends to the constriction, the other side of which has different surface and the same red cycle path. The only thing the white is too large an area for roadworks for utilities. I suspect it's simply missing a section of trees cycle path not roadworks removed a section.

The black strip of utilities roadworks can be seen as being painted over halfway up the short, red section. I can't see the white surface being produced all around the black utilities roadworks but leaving the short red stretch.

I think it can only be the workmen ran out of time on a Friday to paint it all and nobody went back to finish. I think that's more likely looking at the photograph. Although in sure if this is near you you'll know the story better.

[Tangled Metal]

BTW we have short sections of red at side roads but they're used like the red ASLs as the stop line for cars. I mean, you're sticking out into the main road doing that surely you must think doing that when it's a bus lane and you're at risk would stop you.

Coloured cycle lanes with dashed side lines still count as cycling lanes for meeting targets. Pathetic!

[Cugel]

I'm not sure it's worth wasting even more money painting them out. Maybe just burn off the bike symbols and leave the rest to fade.

They should be replaced with protected cycleways of at least 2.5m width (3.5m if bidirectional with priority crossings each end). Where that would leave less than two car widths for the carriageway and single-car-with-passing-places fails modelling, it should become a 20mph-motor-limit bicycle street.

No need to spend zillions on some other faulty cycling infrastructure that motorists will abuse with their force-majeure. No ability to do so either ... unless a letter to the Chancellor, suggesting an increased base income tax increase to 30%, will be successful. Yet even if genuinely-protected cycling infrastructure could be afforded and built, various motoring reactionary bigots would scupper the plans. "Reduce my vrooming space!? Nevah!!"

The swingeing fines and other penalties upon the criminal motorists, caught by swarms of new traffic polis, could pay for not just the polis-swarm but also improved road infrastructure, such as zebra crossings and automated car-speeder crushers, that all make the highways and byways suitable for everyone, even the calmed-down motorists. As the VAT on a bike will not have been increased to 50%, to pay for some ineffective new cycling paths, people will still be able to purchase a nice bike but also ride it without getting car-bit by Mr Toad in a raging hurry to get nowhere in particular.

****
In practice, no improvements will be made as Austerity is set to continue - nay increase - so that we don't have to have anything to do with Johnny Foreigner, especially those ones beginning at Calais. So soon, all cyclists will need a disintegrator laser on the 'bars, with which to exert their own end-to-end Toad-discouraging justice-infrastructure, applying Toad detection, judgement and punishment with one swift blast of the disintegrator, like a Bader with a 109! ('Scuse my ranty Reach-for-The-Sky fantasy).

Of course, in the New Model Anarchy that will be wrought by Boris, in which anything goes (especially for Boris) the motorists too will have means to clear their way of "bluddy cyclists" (who will become literally bluddy). After all, a disintegrator laser is far less damaging to the pride&joy than is running over the cyclist with expensive tyres and a risk of a dent to the bumper.

Cugel, keeping to the near empty roads of The Welsh Hinterlands.

[Cugel]

My own view is similar: what's needed is heavy-duty policing of motoring crime so that the existing and very adequate cycling infrastructure known as "the roads" are felt to be safe and actually are safe for the cyclists (and pedestrians; and horse riders; and even the cats, dogs and hedgehogs crossing them).

Though there are plenty of roads that really aren't fit for purpose for sharing, however well they're policed. Rural A roads with plenty of bends are not pleasant to ride on if there's much motor traffic, even if it is being driven just as it should be (I'm not keen on creating big tailbacks behind me, and I'm not keen on pulling over every two minutes for 20 miles either). And if that's the case for me, you can come down several notches for a beginner. There's no shortage of people that don't want to share with fast and/or heavy traffic. Just because these much vaunted roads are okay for the 2% modal share of cyclists using them, the potential order of magnitude more seem to think differently and I doubt that policing alone will change that. Not that I'm against much more policing of bampots on the roads!

(snip)
Pete.

Those heavily-used rural roads (often rat runs around a heavily used major road) are an issue. However, if I consider those heavily-used rural roads I know of, the amount of alternative cycling path to replicate the road (to keep the same ability to go from various As to Bs that is served by the road) would cost a fortune to build; and in virtually every case involve the need to compulsory-purchase a great deal of no doubt very expensive land.

Alternatively, such roads could be made friendly to bikes and less friendly to speeding cars. A speed limit of 30mph instead of the customary 60mph. for example - auto-enforced with speed cameras. This would be highly unpopular with speeding motorists (until they got used to it) but a brave government could implement it at little cost - certainly a tiny fraction of the cost of an alternative bike path.

Neither solution stands a chance, in reality. One is too expensive and would be unpopular with taxpayers. The other is, politically, very unlikely indeed.

Cugel

[Bmblbzzz]

you've got to laugh?
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Never mind what's been cropped from the left of this, I wonder what's been cropped from the right. What lies beyond those give way lines?

[661-Pete]

I'm sure I've posted these examples on this forum before now, but here's a reminder. Been there for many years now.

At least the paint is fading now.

[Mike Sales]

I'm sure I've posted these examples on this forum before now, but here's a reminder. Been there for many years now.

At least the paint is fading now.

That is horrible. Plainly designed to set you up for a close squeeze.