City centre cycling ban

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Cyril Haearn
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Plus One for local knowledge, living nearby for decades, reading the local media, Pedals2slowly knows more than the rest of us put together I imagine

Maybe we could all meet at Lady Foleys Tea Room, Great Malvern station. I will pick up the bill :wink:
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mjr
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by mjr »

pedals2slowly wrote:
mjr wrote::lol: Disqualifying all opinions that a road is unpleasant to ride if the rider doesn't ride it often seems a great way to declare all roads as great to cycle on!


The point is how can you make a sensible judgement if you don't know the road and the local conditions?

And the retort is how does it make any sort of sense to demand that people regularly ride a road they don't like before being qualified to say they don't fancy riding on it?

Anyway, I'm sure many of us have enjoyed cycling on similar inner ring roads in many places, busy dual-carriageways with plenty of side turnings so jammed up with motorists getting in the way. What makes Worcester's different and enjoyable to cycle on?

Addressing Cyril Haearn's repeated point: if we refuse to consider ideas from elsewhere, nowhere will improve until outsiders from places that have implemented better ideas move there and live there for a few years. Do we really want to wait that long to improve cycling conditions? Also, how many outsiders from cycling-friendly areas will Worcester attract if there's no prospect of it even considering being friendlier for years?

pedals2slowly wrote:
mjr wrote: Why shouldn't cyclists use Worcester Bridge instead, to control the motorists on it and educate them about driving safely near cyclists?

They do and I do.

So what's the point of Sabrina Bridge? Why is it an achievement and not "Counter productive because motorists don't expect cyclists to be on the road and think they should be off the road and behave accordingly"?

pedals2slowly wrote:
mjr wrote:Roads like Friar Street do not stop being roads just because motor vehicles are banned from them. Reopen such roads to cyclists and it'll also improve things for walkers because motorists will have to slow at junctions with them and expect vehicles(cycles) to be emerging, not only walkers that they can almost always bully into yielding (often with highways engineer complicity) and who almost never have cameras.

They become pedestrianised areas with no need for cycles to use them if there were safe through routes for the same journey.
Cyclists cannot expect everywhere to be available to them, just as pedestrians, motor vehicles, horse riders cannot expect to go everywhere.
I see no reason why there cannot be one N/S and one E/W cycle route through the city, as proposed 20+ years ago and still on the current campaigners hit list but there is absolutely no prospect of this happening in the next decade - we have to look at alternatives

Of course there's no prospect of this happening when even cycle campaigners oppose complying with 30+-year-old government guidance to allow responsible cycling in pedestrian areas when the alternatives are unattractive traffic sewers, based on the strangest and most self-contradicting set of reasons.

pedals2slowly wrote:Come to Worcester some time as the cycling in the countryside around is second to none.

I've been there, even if I'm not sure that I remember which one it is (thanks to medicine side-effects, described in other discussions on here). I think the Mendips and Pembrokeshire both beat it for countryside cycling, among others.

pedals2slowly wrote:If you ride with any of the local groups or in the city centre the chances are that you will bump into me and we could discuss rationally and actually understand what the other meant. Social media is like any other technology - great when used sensibly, appalling when misused!

Cyclists are so rare that you'd spot an outsider by sight, eh? ;-)
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Cyril Haearn
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Used to know Worcester quite well many years ago, interesting how much one forgets, only had a vague memory of the Sabrina bridge, but I must have used it

I bet the problems described are similar in dozens of cities, Gloucester, Hereford, Lincoln, Canterbury, York..

Even worse in Oxford and Cambridge?
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Richard Fairhurst
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Richard Fairhurst »

Oxford's very different. It didn't have '60s/70s road schemes like the roads we've been discussing in Worcester, so traffic is slow throughout the entire city. There's also a near-universal 20mph limit. You do get some fast traffic on the Marston Ferry Road but happily that has a really excellent cycleway alongside it. Infrastructure is patchy: some (like that) is excellent, some very poor, and there are a few curious attempts to create shared spaces. There's a much greater number of cyclists, so motorists are looking out for you more than they would in Worcester. Like Worcester, it suffers from a city centre cycling ban on certain streets, but there is at least an alternative north-south route and two alternative east-west routes. I'd rate it as "getting there" but there's a long way to go - see Andrew Gilligan's excellent recent report.

Cambridge is generally better in pretty much every way: infrastructure, cycling permitted on city centre streets, number of cyclists, and so on. It's just a shame the surrounding countryside is so boring. ;)
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Cyril Haearn
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Cyril Haearn »

Objection, the fens, the devil's dike, Gog Magog hills may be queer and different, but not boring :wink:

Oxford has some really steep hills (Divinity Road) too, -1?

Maybe the thread could drift to comparing Camford and Oxbridge :?
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bikepacker
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by bikepacker »

Vorpal wrote:That's the nub, isn't it? People wouldn't ride like idiots through the town centre, if there were better optins available.



There are quite a few options available.
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Cyril Haearn
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Cyril Haearn »

bikepacker wrote:
Vorpal wrote:That's the nub, isn't it? People wouldn't ride like idiots through the town centre, if there were better optins available.



There are quite a few options available.

Yes they would/do drive/ride stupidly

I have been riding through town (not Worcester) for 16 years, I still come up with new/better routes
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Si
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Re: City centre cycling ban

Post by Si »

The utility cyclist wrote:
Si wrote:Vehicular Cyling.....
Both roads and infra should be designed for people on bikes not for cyclists. I earn a living from teaching people to ride in traffic yet i do not see this as an answer - only proper infra will solve our problems and get a significant number of peoole on bikes. Thus just because you or i might be happy riding on a particular road does not mean that that road is fine for cycling on.....you'll just get the hard core and the brave using it while the majority stay in theit cars and just use the bike yo ride around the park at the weekend.

On the other hand, if we make our towns cycle-friendly like some of the northern european ones, then not only do we improve things for bike riders but for the whole of society.

far be it for me to say this is incorrect, however it is, in fact it's not even the best solution, the Dutch have proven it's not the best solution and the Danish and latterly the Norwegians are the leaders in increasing cycling and making it safer by stopping up roads to motorists/motoring completely, giving over the existing highways back to cyclists. THAT is the 'only' true solution that works for mass cycling.

Segregated infra fails in many parts, it fails on being convoluted, yes even the Dutch have a convoluted, meandering, circuitous infra system that forces you to go further than if in motorvehicle, this is simply a fact, even Michael Coalville-Andersen states that people on foot/bike want to and will make to take the most direct route, specific cycle infra rarely ever does this, roads for the most part do. Having circuitous stop start infra is a part of the problem that puts people off from cycling because it's still not better/easier than driving.

Second, infra is not wide enough for mass cycling on the levels we want it to be, not for the type of mass cycling we have/want in the UK, that is various types of people on bikes at various speeds, including your serial commuter to 5 year olds. Most of the segregated infra in NL is not wide enough for this for it to be safe.
Thirdly, the criss crossing of roads by segregated infra has also proven to be extremely dangerous, even in NL where cyclists are kept apart from motorists and supposedly most motorists are cyclists too, there are over 60 reported deaths annually where segregated cross roads where the motorists are supposed to give way. On a highway totally bereft of motor vehicles, this would be removed completely.
Taking back a whole 6metre lane for bi-directional cycling not only would be instant in terms of not having to wait for something to be built, it would be wide enough for all types of cycling with space to spare. It would be direct and to every single part of the nation without any place being disconnected.
What is being built in the UK is not even close to acceptable, have you seen the Manchester infra that Chris Boardman is bigging up, sorry but I'm not impressed, stopping up all motor traffic along that section of road would have been a far better solution.
Can segregated improve things to what we have currently, it can if it's built to the very highest standards - and that's the problem, it isn't or simply not being built at all. 2.5m in each direction as a minimum (so that overtaking can be done safely for the reason I gave) and direct and connected having priority over motor vehicles, but that simply will not and never has being built here, nor is it built anywhere else.


you give the impression that you have taken my phrase "proper infra" to mean only/mainly segregated paths. No, what i mean is a whole raft of different built solutions, each being the best for a specific location. In some places segregation may be the best, in others filtered permability, and in some closing roads to motor traffic completely.

What is not the solution is trying to train people to ride with hostile motor traffic, especially in the case of children. In my experience the vast majority of children who do bikeability rarely maintain what they have learned.

However, as has been stated already, we are not going to go from where we are now straight to banning cars from lots of roads. The political will needs to be in place first, and that means lots more people on bikes are required....catch 22. Thus, infra that gets more people riding will in turn generate yet better solutions. Just like it has in the more civilised countries where cycling society has evolved over time.
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