Cycling UK Forum

Wishful thinking or a likely outcome? London's plans to accommodate the unprecedented levels of walking and cycling when the lockdown is relaxed or lifted.
https://www.bikebiz.com/mayors-streetsp ... -lockdown/

PH wrote:Wishful thinking or a likely outcome? London's plans to accommodate the unprecedented levels of walking and cycling when the lockdown is relaxed or lifted.
https://www.bikebiz.com/mayors-streetsp ... -lockdown/

A necessary outcome. There is just not enough space on the streets for social distancing unless more space for walking and cycling is created. An economic necessity, too.

LinusR wrote:

PH wrote:Wishful thinking or a likely outcome? London's plans to accommodate the unprecedented levels of walking and cycling when the lockdown is relaxed or lifted.
https://www.bikebiz.com/mayors-streetsp ... -lockdown/

A necessary outcome. There is just not enough space on the streets for social distancing unless more space for walking and cycling is created. An economic necessity, too.

To maintain social distancing cyclists need to be able to use the entire width of the roads - and the space is there now on all but the narrowest streets. On the other hand there is not and is never going to be enough space to maintain social distancing within that portion of the street devoted to any conceivable segregated facility.

Whatever you think of the merits or otherwise of segregation during normal times the last thing you want to do as a response to the pandemic is to encourage cyclists to share space with, or to ride on the part of the carriageway closest to, pedestrians. (unless of course you are actively trying to create herd immunity by infecting as many cyclists as possible). At the moment, the proximity of pedestrians and other cyclists presents orders of magnitude more danger to us than motor vehicles. For our own safety, we need to avoid existing cycle lanes and ride on the roads (the only places currently wide enough to pass pedestrians and each other safely) even if this might delay the all important motorists for a few seconds.

Pete Owens wrote:To maintain social distancing cyclists need to be able to use the entire width of the roads...

Did you bother typing all that out again, or did you just copy and paste from the other thread?
You may find the rules on outdoor social distancing changing as the evidence becomes clearer.

PH wrote:

Pete Owens wrote:To maintain social distancing cyclists need to be able to use the entire width of the roads...

Did you bother typing all that out again, or did you just copy and paste from the other thread?
You may find the rules on outdoor social distancing changing as the evidence becomes clearer.

Aw! I was going to paste my rebuttal but now you've spoiled the surprise!

PH wrote:

Pete Owens wrote:To maintain social distancing cyclists need to be able to use the entire width of the roads...

Did you bother typing all that out again, or did you just copy and paste from the other thread?

It needs restating because some of the more extreme advocates of segregation keep popping up in various threads to push their obsession as a response to the pandemic. Pushing people closer together (as all segregated facilities do) is so obviously a wrong headed approach to an infectious and lethal disease it shouldn't really need to be stated.

You may find the rules on outdoor social distancing changing as the evidence becomes clearer.

Quite possibly, for all I know the government may start to advocate mainlining Domestos. But the fact that the only way you can justify the advocacy of segregation is to speculate that at some point in the future the rules may change only emphasises the point that the case against segregation at the present is unanswerable (whatever your views at normal times).

In any case - whatever way the rules change, social distancing is going to be with us for a long while. The main reason outdoor settings are safer than indoors are that there is more space available to keep apart from each other. The rules will (hopefully) be relaxed in the fairly near future to permit a wider range of outdoor activities - but those will still need to be conducted in a socially distant form.