Feedback : 2 year old law junctions

[ChrisButch]

I suspect that unless national government starts putting motorway-like sums into cycling infrastructure, most of it will continue to be funded by builders and this announcement does not appear to require councils to spend builders' funding only on standards-compliant stuff. What we really need is full compliance with LTN 1/20 adding to the binding planning policies, so councils must neither approve planning applications or discharge planning conditions if the cycleways are crap. .

And that, in my view, should now be the first priority for campaigners and lobbyists. Planning regulation is getting a fundamental review also, so this is the best opportunity for a long time. It's also a matter of DfT/DCLG communication: and on that score the Cummings-led push to centralise control of the different govt. departments could be helpful.

[ChrisButch]

Is that enough to make the old men in limos running some councils order their car-crazy highways departments to rewrite their design handbooks (or adopt someone else's) and possibly retrain a few crap designers?

No, it isn't. What it does, however, is add significant power to the arguments of younger, more cycling-aware highways officers (some of them even, mirabile dictu, cyclists themselves), in internal policy debates with their less-enlightened colleagues. That's how progress is usually made.

[Jdsk]

What it does, however, is add significant power to the arguments of younger, more cycling-aware highways officers (some of them even, mirabile dictu, cyclists themselves), in internal policy debates with their less-enlightened colleagues. That's how progress is usually made.

Yes, that's you, me and... Max Planck. : - )

Jonathan

[Manc33]

Hard to keep up with today's sequence of government pro-active travel announcements.

This is why I don't bother trying to keep up and voila, the problem is suddenly solved.

[Tangled Metal]

@Pete Owen
That £386k is chicken feed I'm afraid. Add a digit for the cycle route from Lancaster city centre to the Lancaster university campus alongside the A6 but separated from it. Money was supposed to be ringfenced just for that project nothing else such that the LCC had to put it into its own account to receive it. Money went out, loads of roads in Lancaster for painted with bike symbols and dashed lines in the middle of a carriage lane appeared as part of road improvements legally required and the CFO for LCC couldn't find any record of where the money went. Freedom of information requests, ICO involvement and no information came on the money from the council. In the end the information commissioner gave up, possibly because he couldn't force a council to say where money went when they don't know!!

BTW there's no segregated cycle path along the A6 to the university. You have to take a very convoluted, low traffic route or cycle down the A6 which is the main way to the M6 in the southern direction.

[mjr]

That £386k is chicken feed I'm afraid. Add a digit for the cycle route from Lancaster city centre to the Lancaster university campus alongside the A6 but separated from it.

Yet the 126km Vennbahn cycleway cost only €14m. We do seem to make things expensive!

But you could probably make it £386m if they are losing the money and still not get much good. It sounds like Lancs CC has bigger problems.

[Tangled Metal]

Iirc it was £5 million local sustainable development fund to make the A6 corridor safer for bikes. It was the A6 between Preston and Lancaster with key projects IIRC including to the university. Not much happened for the money. Near the end of one budget cycle a few old signs and markings got replaced but not much got done I believe.

Earlier £1.5 million went to the cycling demonstration town scheme which made a big difference to cycle use in the city.

[Pete Owens]

In future he sequence of event should be as follows:
1. East Riding Councillor Chris Matthews applies to Department of Transport for £868000 of public funds to construct a high quality cycle route.
2. Councillor Matthews awards the contract to PBS construction to construct a narrow footway and throw in a few blue signs in give-way markings to pretend there is a cycle route.
3. Councillor Matthews arranges a photo-op in front of bulldozers. (your link)
4. PBS construction builds the pavement puts up the blue signs and pants the cyclists give way markings
5. PBS construction sends an invoice for £860000 to East Riding Council
6. East Riding Council passes on the invoice to DfT
7. DfT sends Active Travel England inspector
8. DfT reminds the council that schemes which make pedestrians and cyclists share the same space are not to be funded
9. East Riding council surcharges Councillor Matthews personally for the misuse of public funds and he is forced to sell his house to repay the £860000.

Well we can live in hope.

Indeed. I've had a good look at the scheme in question on Google Maps and, ... £868,000 for that?!?!?!?! I'd like to see the Cost-Benefit Analysis. It looks to me like the "cycle path" was formed out of existing footways and lay-bys formed when the geometry of the road was changed to smooth out some of the tighter bends - so where did the £868,000 go?

Actually the £868,000 is probably a reasonable amount for resurfacing a footway of that length. The fact that the quote was so low should have of itself rung alarm bells for whoever at the DfT was responsible for deciding whether to fund the scheme at step 1.

[Pete Owens]

BTW there's no segregated cycle path along the A6 to the university.

Ah at least there is some good news then - since I was a student there a very long time ago and cycled to and from Morcambe an awful lot of dangerous segregationist stupidity has appeared in the city, when the one thing that would really really improve things is ending the horrible one way system round the city centre which makes the A6 into a multi-lane race track requiring you to filter across high speed traffic. Not even after building the new expressway from Morcambe to the new monster motorway junction (which must have cost several orders of magnitude more than they have spent on active travel in all of history) removing the need for any through traffic whatsoever does it occur to them to re-humanise the city streets.

I'm not sure where you would find space for segregated cycle tracks in any case. There are no surplus traffic lanes to reallocate - even if you thought it remotely sensible to do so on a residential road with so many side streets and bus stops:
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.0330708,-2.7945951,3a,75y,353.83h,91.09t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMX7TlItSkeObl582YYbCCA!2e0!5s20180801T000000!7i13312!8i6656
There are some stretches where parking is allowed, but that would be better allocated to widening the pavements.

[Jdsk]

I was interested in the discussion of changes to the Highway Code. Any more thoughts after completing the survey?

Thanks

Jonathan

[Oldjohnw]

https://road.cc/content/news/club-chair ... sts-276119

[ratherbeintobago]

https://road.cc/content/news/club-chairman-complains-being-held-cyclists-276119

I saw that; I suspect he won’t be the club chairman for much longer…

[thirdcrank]

I presume he was driving, although it's not actually stated in the article.

I was once riding home in the winter evening rush hour from Leeds in the rain when the window of an overtaking car went down and the driver shouted something - a bit like a directeur sportif but no sly hand sling with a bidon.

I inevitably caught up with with the car when it was standing at the next set of lights. I was taken by surprise when the driver jumped out and angrily introduced himself as some sort of official in a Halifax cycling club with a comment along the lines that I was probably the type of cyclist who wrote to Cycling Weekly complaining about drivers. The lights changed so I was on my way and so lost for words that I had no time to come out with anything, witty, rude or both. FWIW, I've only ever heard anybody refer to that magazine as the comic.

Getting behind the wheel changes many people, not usually for the better.

[Oldjohnw]

I don't know the gentleman, nor do I read this magazine. Just a news item that was repeated in wider press. I have a general view that anyone challenging in this way another road user - whether cyclist or motorist - makes themselves a hostage to fortune. Too often things get out of hand and people end up saying far more than they intended .

[thirdcrank]

It was only a brief encounter so I never discovered what he felt I had done wrong. It was probably something to do with this roundabout - in those days recently constructed - because the first interraction was just as I was leaving it on the A62. Note that there's a sad cycling farcility on the pavement and only one lane around the roundabout. I don't know if he thought I should have been on the footway or in the gutter, but I certainly and unintentionally upset him by riding in the safest, most prominent line. (Top-notch lights and plenty of reflectives BTW so visible from outer space, or almost.)

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.78025 ... 384!8i8192