"How comfortable is your cycle path?" Meet the measuring bike

[mercalia]

"How comfortable is your cycle path?" Meet the measuring bike

sorry to say its in Belguim and Netherlands

"Thierry Jiménez cycles with headphones on a bike festooned with cameras and other monitoring equipment, and he rides with a trailer that can measure the width, smoothness and all-round usefulness of cycle paths. He works for Belgium's Fietserbond, or "cyclists' union", and is a full-time cycle-path comfort measurer."

some thing tells me it would have a fit on ours


http://www.bikebiz.com/index.php/news/read/how-comfortable-is-your-cycle-path-meet-the-measuring-bike/021549

[meic]

Yes, I bet he couldnt even get it on our cycle paths.

In Belgium the cycle paths are very comfortable compared to the cobbled bits of road.

I think that there is a divide between Flandres with its Dutch style cycling facilities and Walloon with an apparent absence of such things , though my Belgian mileage is pretty limited.

[mercalia]

maybe the ctc should employ a full-time cycle-path comfort measurer

any one here want the job?

[The utility cyclist]

maybe the ctc should employ a full-time cycle-path comfort measurer

any one here want the job?

No thanks, it's miserable enough round my way which has hardly any, not that I use them aside from one 25m cut through on NCN12 which is just a badly broken up bit of footpath that the highways refuse to fix. So doing them around the country or even just county would just put my blood pressure up stratospherically

[chocjohn9]

Just checked the date. Its not 1st april. Uumm.
Its a big myth that cycle paths are lovely in belgium*. I could rant for hours. Huge sections of it are block brick work, with bits missing or very poor surfaces which are ocassionally badly patched up. There is no money here to keep the road network half decent. Car drivers iften park on it. Grass and hedges are left uncut. People have a habit of walking on it, with their back to the direction of travel. Ggrrhh.

You could argue that at least they exist but then you have to use them by law and car drivers will be unkind to if you do not.... and sometime you can not, which might not be obvious to a driver.

But, compared to the UK, the big difference is drivers acknowledging a cyclist existence. I cycle in london once a month and i always have a shocking time.

* it is better around the coast and canals towards brugges, for the tourists, but dont think the rest of the country is like this.

[mercalia]

Just checked the date. Its not 1st april. Uumm.
Its a big myth that cycle paths are lovely in belgium*. I could rant for hours. Huge sections of it are block brick work, with bits missing or very poor surfaces which are ocassionally badly patched up. There is no money here to keep the road network half decent. Car drivers iften park on it. Grass and hedges are left uncut. People have a habit of walking on it, with their back to the direction of travel. Ggrrhh.

You could argue that at least they exist but then you have to use them by law and car drivers will be unkind to if you do not.... and sometime you can not, which might not be obvious to a driver.

But, compared to the UK, the big difference is drivers acknowledging a cyclist existence. I cycle in london once a month and i always have a shocking time.

* it is better around the coast and canals towards brugges, for the tourists, but dont think the rest of the country is like this.

if you have to use them is there a legal penalty for not?

[atlas_shrugged]

The Measuring bike is a brilliant idea being used in Belgium and the Netherlands.

I think there is a international standard measurement for road roughness (called IRI - International Roughness Index or some such). It may even be possible to get a mobile phone with an accelerometer to produce such a crude measurement on a standard bike.

I love the bit where they compare roughness of the cycle path to the road beside it. In fact this should be an aim of all cycle path construction: no cycle path should be rougher than the road beside it.

Three other things I would like to see red ringed on a cycle path are turning radius (i.e. red flag all 90 deg turns), tactile paving (because it is a skid risk), and barrier width (which especially affects multitracks, mobility buggies, tandems, and trailers).

[chocjohn9]

Yes, you can get an on the spot fine for not using them... but its the drivers..... they are all little policemen and will drive very close to you and hoot. Very unpleasant and its not the odd one, its most people. sometimes there are good reasons not to be on them, but this all gets lost .

Then there will be a cycling priority and they will all stop for you. this took some getting used to

Rules, rules, rules with no pragmatism, for good measure.

[Postboxer]

I'd do it if it would make a difference, so if they'd repair pot holes, relay rough, bumpy sections, remove barriers, cut back overgrown vegetation etc etc.

[Audax67]

I was just thinking on my ride yesterday that I if I could build the appropriate vibration sensor I could feed it into the unused cadence port on my eTrex.