Cycling Eutopia ?

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NUKe
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Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by NUKe »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29601069
The Danes certainly know how to do it.
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kwackers
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by kwackers »

Yeah, but imagine if each one of those was a car!
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foxyrider
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by foxyrider »

kwackers wrote:Yeah, but imagine if each one of those was a car!


The Danes did!
Convention? what's that then?
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Postboxer
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Postboxer »

I was thinking the other day about the driverless car, thinking that maybe they could park themselves in a carpark, bumper to bumper, then shuffle themselves to the front when you want it.

Maybe the solution with cycles is some kind of winch system, each winch lifting several bikes at a time, then lowering them all when someone wants their bike back, all controlled securely by winchAp.

Or the rival bike big wheel, like the winch, but a big wheel lifting the bikes up into the air.

The Japanese big hole in the ground system seems overly engineered and overly high tech, but probably fits a high density of cycles but lacks flexibility for anything other than a standard bicycle.
Ron
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Ron »

NUKe wrote:The Danes certainly know how to do it.

It's not just the Danes, sadly the UK lies well down the Euro league table for cycle friendliness :(
Postboxer
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Postboxer »

foxyrider wrote:
kwackers wrote:Yeah, but imagine if each one of those was a car!


The Danes did!



So did the Latvians.

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/lat ... ues-139912
Ayesha
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Ayesha »

If you Google "Hills in Copenhagen", you get Copenhagen, Louisiana, USA.

Why? Because there's NO hills in Copenhagen, Denmark.

If there were no hills in Birmingham, we'd have the same problem with too many cyclists.
Mark1978
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Mark1978 »

Ayesha wrote:
If there were no hills in Birmingham, we'd have the same problem with too many cyclists.


Nonsense.
iviehoff
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by iviehoff »

Hilliness does make a difference to people's propensity to cycle, as does weather. Statisticians have demonstrated it pretty clearly (sorry no citation to hand). Nevertheless if you've seen how much cycling they have in hilly Swiss or Norwegian cities, both with much bigger hills and worse weather for most of the year than Birmingham, one realises that one can do a lot better than Birmingham. I spent a year cycling around Birmingham and the West Midlands, including 6 miles each way to work, and mostly the ups and downs were pretty small, gentle and infrequent.
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mjr
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by mjr »

Hilly, cold Norwich has more cyclists than flatter, warmer King's Lynn, 50 miles west under the same highways authorities. I suspect at the UK's low cycling levels, these aren't significant limitations, but I'd love to see that reference if someone can find it.
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Postboxer
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Postboxer »

Drain the canals! Traffic free, level routes, no junctions with motor vehicles, right into city centres!
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mjr
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by mjr »

Postboxer wrote:Drain the canals! Traffic free, level routes, no junctions with motor vehicles, right into city centres!

My current theory is that you don't even need to drain them: just build bike routes alongside waterways and current/former railways. This can also give us no-motor-traffic, fairly level routes, few junctions with motor vehicles and access to urban centres. I was contemplating places in England which have higher-than-average cycling and many of them (Cambridge, York, Norwich, Gosport, Bristol... even my local King's Lynn) have this, then I pondered why and realised waterways and railways don't have many side roads, plus their routes are fairly well-known to non-cyclists so navigation becomes more obvious.

This effect seems to have been overlooked in the popular "failures" (still above average, but less than people expect given the infrastructure) of Milton Keynes and Stevenage. In MK, cycleways like the Newport Nobby in MK are rare and it's more common for them to be lower-status poorer-surface greenways like most of the one alongside the Grand Union. In Stevenage, I don't remember any major waterways and it looks like a cycleway runs alongside the railway for only 500m or so past the station, then wiggles away.
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Postboxer
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by Postboxer »

I'm near the Manchester Ship canal and can't understand why it doesn't have a cycle route all the way along it, at least the Bridgewater canal has the Bridgewater way slowly being upgraded next to it, still not sure they've made it wide enough if it were to be a main traffic free cycling route into the city centre and Trafford Park.
mike_dowler
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by mike_dowler »

I don't remember Cambridge's cycle routes being particularly linked to either the river or the railway, at least not in the city centre. And Birmingham has loads of waterways (more canals than Venice!) yet terrible cycling infrastructure.
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mjr
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Re: Cycling Eutopia ?

Post by mjr »

mike_dowler wrote:I don't remember Cambridge's cycle routes being particularly linked to either the river or the railway, at least not in the city centre. And Birmingham has loads of waterways (more canals than Venice!) yet terrible cycling infrastructure.

The river and rails in Cambridge aren't right in the very centre, but NCN11 runs along the river northeast from the edge of the centre from Park Parade, under Elizabeth Way, over the new bridge and along the Cam towpath to Clayhithe; southbound along the river is the Grantchester Meadows Cycleway; NCN11 south of Addenbrookes follows the railway to Shelford; NCN51 runs alongside the old railway to St Ives (now a busway); there's another cycleway alongside the old Varsity Line (another busway) as far as Trumpington. Cambridge is above-average in also having routes alongside arterial and radial routes, though.

Birmingham has loads of waterways and quite a lot of railways but any cycleways that follow them tend to switch to roads outside the centre. NCN5 follows the canal north of the city, but then dances through the centre and swerves between roads vaguely near the River Rea to the south. Most other routes seem simply to give up when they reach the Middleways. Cycling in Birmingham is around 11% I think: could it be higher if there were more high-quality routes built alongside the plentiful waterways and railways?
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
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