It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

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mjr
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by mjr »

Cugel wrote:Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it. That might solve a lot of the tin-litter problem of thoroughfares clogged up by pavement-parking cars, as well as the death, maiming and pollution issues.

Wouldn't that just create Radburn-estate-style problems on a much bigger scale? Including (but not only) cities ringed by disaster areas of parking wastelands where the more unruly children go to play among vandalised vehicles.
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pete75
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by pete75 »

Cyril Haearn wrote:People would soon be bleating if the roads were full of whining electric vehicles
The pollution is just moved elsewhere :?

Quite - pollution coming from emissiosn from powers stations or visually from wind turbines. Both are generally in rural areas so it would move pollution out of cities. Urban dwellers produce most of it so it's only right they suffer it's effects.
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The utility cyclist
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by The utility cyclist »

I've said on other forums that acceleration and top speed plus restricted speed limits controlled by computers should be what we need to add in. Someone said to me that Twizzy size motors at 500kg is the way forward, I don't agree it's still much too 'massive' for city driving with the present system of motorists being allowed to drive however they like with virtually zero consideration for vulnerable road users, it's still able to go fast relative to users ability to control that.
An 80kg covered pedelec such as that that Sinclair has designed should be just about acceptable for commuting up to 20 miles for 90% of people.
Instead of the government 'investing' billions into EVs they should be investing it in covered pedelecs as well of course as cycles for people with disabilities whom are currently punished/pushed away from cycling due to the huge costs. The subsidies given to EVs is disgusting and the money being thrown at the whole EV thing is insane!
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by reohn2 »

The answer is reliable,clean,affordable public transport run as a service not a business along with active travel,soon or later the penny will simply have to drop before we all choke
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Spinners
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Spinners »

What a crap article.

So a kitten was allegedly killed by a cyclist on a towpath? Well, possibly it was a blessing in disguise as it was only a matter of time before the dogs she also refers to would have torn it apart.

About 30 years ago I had the misfortune to run over a kitten in a country lane when it just ran straight out of a farm courtyard under my wheels - so by her reckoning cars should therefore be banned from country lanes at peak times (whatever that means).

If that's the standard of online journalism then I'll continue to buy the Daily Star and/or cadge a free look at the Daily Mirror in the local cafe.
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Cugel
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Cugel »

mjr wrote:
Cugel wrote:Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it. That might solve a lot of the tin-litter problem of thoroughfares clogged up by pavement-parking cars, as well as the death, maiming and pollution issues.

Wouldn't that just create Radburn-estate-style problems on a much bigger scale? Including (but not only) cities ringed by disaster areas of parking wastelands where the more unruly children go to play among vandalised vehicles.


Secure parking facilities are impossible, eh? Let's just keep on killing them naughty child vandals with exhaust gases then.

Meanwhile, planner-vandals can knock down all sorts to make your extensive cycling facilities. Of course, the cyclists, vandal-children, vandal-planners and everyone else in the cities will still be getting gassed by car; the car-borne and pavement-borne humans will still be getting winnowed via "accidents"; tin litter will continue to spread, perhaps on to the cycle paths (gotta park somewhere).......

Perhaps the UC is right and we must all have a Sinclair C5? You first. :-)

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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Cugel »

pete75 wrote:
Cyril Haearn wrote:People would soon be bleating if the roads were full of whining electric vehicles
The pollution is just moved elsewhere :?

Quite - pollution coming from emissiosn from powers stations or visually from wind turbines. Both are generally in rural areas so it would move pollution out of cities. Urban dwellers produce most of it so it's only right they suffer it's effects.


I like those big windmills. We walk under a large clutch of them on Mynydd Llanllwni.

Elegant; beautiful even. Quiet. An enhancement of that bleak moor in many ways. And what's this!? No dead birds or anything else clustered at their feet? Can these detractors be making stuff up because they prefer Drax-like arrangements for making go-juice!?

I would like a-one turning at the bottom of the garden. Perhaps this, rather than more solar panels, is the answer to getting closer to the carbon-neutral goal? That and a geet big battery of the new high capacity and low cost type. After all, it's that or death-by-storm come 2030.

Cugel
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Cugel »

Spinners wrote:What a crap article.

So a kitten was allegedly killed by a cyclist on a towpath? Well, possibly it was a blessing in disguise as it was only a matter of time before the dogs she also refers to would have torn it apart.

About 30 years ago I had the misfortune to run over a kitten in a country lane when it just ran straight out of a farm courtyard under my wheels - so by her reckoning cars should therefore be banned from country lanes at peak times (whatever that means).

If that's the standard of online journalism then I'll continue to buy the Daily Star and/or cadge a free look at the Daily Mirror in the local cafe.


Why not go the whole hawg and purchase (on a regular basis) The Hate Mail or Torygraph? These Daily Frighteners will have even more garish & ghoulish "stories" to excite your ire. I know several "readers" of such rag and all them are very excited by, oh, all sorts! See them rant, go red then purple before getting another small brain-blott (which makes them like their rag even more). :-)

As to jay-walking kittens: only a kruel and thrusting cyclist would not feel shame at having squashed such a heartstring-tugger. Your penance should be: slave to a bad-tempered tomcat, for a period not less than 15 years.

Cugel, still morose at having run over beetle in 1994.
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pwa
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by pwa »

Cugel wrote:Personally I would ban private cars from cities like London, Manchester and other places where it's socially and economically possible to have a high-grade public transport network to serve everyone, as well as a road design that includes pedestrians and cyclists as equals to the buses, underground/rail and trams. Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it.
Cugel

Ultimately it isn't me you have to convince. Like yourself I am living in the countryside. It is city dwellers you must convince. In a democracy this cannot be imposed, it has to be through consent. As a group, city dwellers will have to choose to give up cars, not have them taken away by an authoritarian government. Are city dwellers close to that tipping point? The ones I know don't seem to be.
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Cugel »

pwa wrote:
Cugel wrote:Personally I would ban private cars from cities like London, Manchester and other places where it's socially and economically possible to have a high-grade public transport network to serve everyone, as well as a road design that includes pedestrians and cyclists as equals to the buses, underground/rail and trams. Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it.
Cugel

Ultimately it isn't me you have to convince. Like yourself I am living in the countryside. It is city dwellers you must convince. In a democracy this cannot be imposed, it has to be through consent. As a group, city dwellers will have to choose to give up cars, not have them taken away by an authoritarian government. Are city dwellers close to that tipping point? The ones I know don't seem to be.


Madrid seems keen on the notion.

I suspect that even them Londoners are too, en-masse. Has anyone asked them or are you going by the hoots of the motor-mad press, yelps of taxi-drivers and similar? The noise made by the car-mad is often much louder than that made by the potentially squashable.

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
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reohn2
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by reohn2 »

Spinners wrote:What a crap article. .......

And thoroughly anti cycling.
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by reohn2 »

pwa wrote:
Cugel wrote:Personally I would ban private cars from cities like London, Manchester and other places where it's socially and economically possible to have a high-grade public transport network to serve everyone, as well as a road design that includes pedestrians and cyclists as equals to the buses, underground/rail and trams. Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it.
Cugel

Ultimately it isn't me you have to convince. Like yourself I am living in the countryside. It is city dwellers you must convince. In a democracy this cannot be imposed, it has to be through consent. As a group, city dwellers will have to choose to give up cars, not have them taken away by an authoritarian government. Are city dwellers close to that tipping point? The ones I know don't seem to be.

I encourage you to watch this video https://vimeo.com/76207227
It was imposed by radical lefties and found to be just what was needed.
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mjr
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by mjr »

Cugel wrote:
mjr wrote:
Cugel wrote:Let city dwellers who want to use a car outside the city keep their car outside of the city, cycling or bussing to access it. That might solve a lot of the tin-litter problem of thoroughfares clogged up by pavement-parking cars, as well as the death, maiming and pollution issues.

Wouldn't that just create Radburn-estate-style problems on a much bigger scale? Including (but not only) cities ringed by disaster areas of parking wastelands where the more unruly children go to play among vandalised vehicles.


Secure parking facilities are impossible, eh?

Not impossible but expensive and I can't think of a single "keep their car outside" residential area which has only secure parking provided, can you? I've lived in a couple and expensive-yet-undermaintained parking areas are the norm. There would probably be very heavy pressure for cheaper parking and I expect the market will provide in some way, like how illegal cheap farm field parking springs up around airports with expensive car parks. Then the costs of enforcing the law against those may well make the amounts you'd want for better roads policing seem trivial.

Also, isn't it just another form of moving the car problems around, clearing the city of car parking but dumping this litter/visual pollution problem onto parking zones in the countryside around the city? Maybe the car parking should be provided at the power stations generating the electricity for electric vehicles, combining all our village-[rude word removed]ing into one easy eyesore?
Let's just keep on killing them naughty child vandals with exhaust gases then.

That's a false dichotomy fallacy, m'lud.

Meanwhile, planner-vandals can knock down all sorts to make your extensive cycling facilities. Of course, the cyclists, vandal-children, vandal-planners and everyone else in the cities will still be getting gassed by car; the car-borne and pavement-borne humans will still be getting winnowed via "accidents"; tin litter will continue to spread, perhaps on to the cycle paths (gotta park somewhere).......

Don't knock down: take it from the car-ways where possible, which would reduce the gassing and winnowing and eventually the littering. It's such an obvious logical step towards better places (not the ideal by itself, though) that I can see why opponents of cycleways have to rely on various logical fallacies.
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by Morzedec »

No probs in France ....................
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Re: It’s time to ban bikes at peak times - tow paths

Post by iandriver »

I can only speak for the ones I use, but I grew up by the River Lea in North London and cycled it regularly as a kid in the 70s. To see a single moored up narrow boat was highly unusual.

Now, I still use it to get into East London. From the M25 at Waltham Abbey right into the Olympic Park, it's basically now one giant housing estate for narrow boats. The tow path seems to be no different.

I'm not surprised problems have happened. These waterways have seen a huge change of use from the preserve of kids and fisherman to urban landscapes and major commuter routes. Virtually nothing has been done to accommodate it that I can see.
Supporter of the A10 corridor cycling campaign serving Royston to Cambridge http://a10corridorcycle.com. Never knew gardening secateurs were an essential part of the on bike tool kit until I took up campaigning.....
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