Cycling UK Forum

jgurney wrote:I don't believe most shared cycle/ped paths were created for the purpose of making either pedestrians or cyclists take more care. They were built as a cheap excuse for neither building real cycle facilities nor enforcing road rules properly to make road cycling safer.

I'm sure that's true of some, most near me were created for leisure cycling, to join disparate parts of the community that aren't directly connected by road and because most people want facilities away from roads and cars.

What I find annoying though is where such facilities (particularly the ones that run alongside roads) are often hogged by young male cyclists who apparently are too scared to ride on the road but see no issues with riding at high speed and weaving in and out of pedestrians.
If it's a shared path then there's no reason not to expect cycling speeds to be reduced.

Broadly though we're probably in agreement.

From the link in the OP:

However there is increasing evidence that drivers alter their driving style and behaviour in response to the form of the street, regardless of the presence of signs

While I'm generally in favour of the gist of the document, I think it's misguided to believe that the behaviour of some drivers will be improved by changing the visual cues: my evidence for this is the number of drivers who will drive at some speed around corners and over blind summits, relying only on chance to avoid a crash.

thirdcrank wrote:From the link in the OP:

However there is increasing evidence that drivers alter their driving style and behaviour in response to the form of the street, regardless of the presence of signs

While I'm generally in favour of the gist of the document, I think it's misguided to believe that the behaviour of some drivers will be improved by changing the visual cues: my evidence for this is the number of drivers who will drive at some speed around corners and over blind summits, relying only on chance to avoid a crash.

Yes, but they also say

At many street corners the layout and geometry of the kerb puts people on foot at a disadvantage.
The wide sweep of the kerb helps drivers to get around the corner with the least amount of effort and often without needing to slow down very much.

and

Tighter corner radii reduce the crossing distance and encourage lower speed.

It's a mixed bag. I don't think much of the road position cyclists are shown using in the illustrations.

kwackers wrote: such facilities (particularly the ones that run alongside roads) are often hogged by young male cyclists who apparently are too scared to ride on the road but see no issues with riding at high speed and weaving in and out of pedestrians. If it's a shared path then there's no reason not to expect cycling speeds to be reduced.

Are they scared, or are they simply doing as they are told? The signs say 'cycle path' not 'slow or timid cyclists path: others go on the carriageway'. The Highway Code recommends they use it. The local council's cycle routes map, if one exists, probably marks the path as a 'cycle route', not as a 'slow or timid cyclists route'. Their motorist friends and relatives probably tell them they should use it. If they don't use it they get drivers shouting 'get on the bike path' at them. The idea that such paths are only for slow or timid riders and others should be on the carriageway is almost wholly confined within the serious cycling community. If they perceived themselves as being banned from the carriageway and ordered onto the shared path, then feeling that they have no duty to reduce their speed might well seem logical.

I think there is a serious problem over these sub-standard shared paths being promoted as being real general-purpose cycle routes, which leads to exactly the sort of behaviour you are complaining about.

jgurney wrote:I think there is a serious problem over these sub-standard shared paths being promoted as being real general-purpose cycle routes, which leads to exactly the sort of behaviour you are complaining about.

There is, but that doesn't excuse the behaviour.
They're still aware that there are pedestrians around and they still choose to ride too fast. A lot of these paths (near me) are actually paths through parks and countryside with no marked separation and similar behaviour can also be observed on pavements that are very obviously not cycleways at all.

In these respects a lot of cyclists are no better than the drivers we berate for exhibiting similar behaviour.

kwackers wrote:

jgurney wrote:I think there is a serious problem over these sub-standard shared paths being promoted as being real general-purpose cycle routes, which leads to exactly the sort of behaviour you are complaining about.

There is, but that doesn't excuse the behaviour.
They're still aware that there are pedestrians around and they still choose to ride too fast. A lot of these paths (near me) are actually paths through parks and countryside with no marked separation and similar behaviour can also be observed on pavements that are very obviously not cycleways at all.

In these respects a lot of cyclists are no better than the drivers we berate for exhibiting similar behaviour.

Why would we expect "them" to be - in the most part it's the same people, the same society.

There is such a pressure to "succeed" in some entirely fictitious and financial definition of the word, and such pressure to do so by yesterday that people don't stop to smell the roses, listen to the birds, watch the stars or any of a million things that could actually enrich their lives.

kwackers wrote:There is, but that doesn't excuse the behaviour.

It doesn't excuse it, but hopefully it explains why your elected representatives and their constituents should share the blame. Stop demonising the kids doing the obvious act of cycling on a signposted and mapped cycle route, and start pushing your elected representatives to upgrade the routes to be safe, or provide alternative safer cycle routes (maybe even - shock horror - taking a lane from motor vehicles).

[XAP]Bob wrote:There is such a pressure to "succeed" in some entirely fictitious and financial definition of the word, and such pressure to do so by yesterday that people don't stop to smell the roses, listen to the birds, watch the stars or any of a million things that could actually enrich their lives.

This IMO is at the bottom of it all,we're a disintegrating/dismembered society becoming ever more 'driven',rather than doing the driving.
We work the most hours in Europe,and appear to be the most pressurised to perform,so much so that 'success'(dubious definition alert)is all there is to life.
UK society is becoming disgusting IMHO where increasingly you are what you have,rather than valued as another human being.
Where in the 5th richest country in the world people are forced to use food banks to keep life and limb together.

mjr wrote:Stop demonising the kids doing the obvious act of cycling on a signposted and mapped cycle route,

Errr - why?
What happened to taking responsibility for your actions? I know this is the 21st century UK where apparently nothing is 'our' fault but even so...

Anyway - by "young male cyclists" I'm not talking about 13 year old's who've probably never been taught any differently, but blokes in their early twenties to early thirties who in theory have both the ability and the sense to know better.
(i.e. younger than me. )

kwackers wrote:

mjr wrote:Stop demonising the kids doing the obvious act of cycling on a signposted and mapped cycle route,

Errr - why?
What happened to taking responsibility for your actions? I know this is the 21st century UK where apparently nothing is 'our' fault but even so...

And what happened to you taking responsibility for the fools who signpost crap cycle routes getting elected? The riders are to blame and so are the public.

What's the harm? It's a bit of a nuisance but it doesn't kill many people... about 2 a year nationally IIRC and that includes some downright odd situations. Still worth fixing, I guess, because it's bad publicity.

Anyway - by "young male cyclists" I'm not talking about 13 year old's who've probably never been taught any differently, but blokes in their early twenties to early thirties who in theory have both the ability and the sense to know better.
(i.e. younger than me. )

Younger than me too. Kids! What makes you think that blokes in their early twenties to early thirties will have ever been taught any different? I'm acutely aware that I'm probably among the last whose parents rode bikes as a matter of course and cycling continued in decline through the 1980s and 1990s when those now in their 20s and early 30s were growing up... as well as campaigning for cycle route improvements, we also need to educate the "temporarily misplaced generation"

mjr wrote:And what happened to you taking responsibility for the fools who signpost crap cycle routes getting elected? The riders are to blame and so are the public.

Sadly we can't elect officials based simply on their cycle route performance - as a rule most voters simply don't care and even those of us that do have bigger fish to fry...

mjr wrote:What's the harm? It's a bit of a nuisance but it doesn't kill many people... about 2 a year nationally IIRC and that includes some downright odd situations. Still worth fixing, I guess, because it's bad publicity.

Bit like cars - they don't actually kill that many cyclists, not in the general scheme of things, but what they do is make using the roads unnecessarily unpleasant.
Similarly riding bikes at speed amongst pedestrians probably doesn't cause many deaths or serious injuries but it can make using such routes unpleasant.

Anyway my experience is that most of these routes aren't 'crap' cycleways but perfectly good shared use facilities in country parks that I use where there's no good reason to ban sensible cyclists nor is there the possibility of creating dedicated cycle paths.

Personally I think the buck stops with the individual. Just because the facilities are crap doesn't mean you have no responsibility for your actions, it's a bit like throwing litter on the floor and then claiming you had no choice because the council didn't provide a bin...

kwackers wrote:

mjr wrote:And what happened to you taking responsibility for the fools who signpost crap cycle routes getting elected? The riders are to blame and so are the public.

Sadly we can't elect officials based simply on their cycle route performance - as a rule most voters simply don't care and even those of us that do have bigger fish to fry...

We can make it a bigger part of the mix, though... anyway, what we can or can't do doesn't excuse this bad behaviour.

kwackers wrote:

mjr wrote:What's the harm? It's a bit of a nuisance but it doesn't kill many people... about 2 a year nationally IIRC and that includes some downright odd situations. Still worth fixing, I guess, because it's bad publicity.

Bit like cars - they don't actually kill that many cyclists, not in the general scheme of things, but what they do is make using the roads unnecessarily unpleasant.

Maybe not cyclists in particular but motorists kill about 47,000 people/year. A whole different scale of problem, even while cycling is still relatively safe.

Anyway my experience is that most of these routes aren't 'crap' cycleways but perfectly good shared use facilities in country parks that I use where there's no good reason to ban sensible cyclists nor is there the possibility of creating dedicated cycle paths.

If they were "perfectly good" then they would be wide enough for sharing without the sort of problem that you're complaining about, either because it's wide enough for the volume of user like https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/ ... b789db45cd or because it's split like in http://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/photo ... tober-2014

Personally I think the buck stops with the individual. Just because the facilities are crap doesn't mean you have no responsibility for your actions, it's a bit like throwing litter on the floor and then claiming you had no choice because the council didn't provide a bin...

It's more like walking in the road and then claiming you had no choice because the council didn't build footways. In other words, it's perfectly understandable (even though some people will get upset at how you're being anti-social) and the public share responsibility for the conflict.

mjr wrote:If they were "perfectly good" then they would be wide enough for sharing without the sort of problem that you're complaining about, either because it's wide enough for the volume of user like https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/ ... b789db45cd or because it's split like in http://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/photo ... tober-2014

The places where I have issues are probably as wide as they can be. They also have 'blind bends' which some feel require a racing line. In fairness you *could* remove trees and bushes but turning a park into a bicycle motorway simply because a handful of riders think they have a moral right to cycle as quickly as they like is a bit OTT (plus it would simply make them even faster).

In practise just like the roads most folk manage quite well, it's the other 10% that could do with a stick ramming in their spokes.

kwackers wrote:The places where I have issues are probably as wide as they can be. They also have 'blind bends' which some feel require a racing line. In fairness you *could* remove trees and bushes but turning a park into a bicycle motorway simply because a handful of riders think they have a moral right to cycle as quickly as they like is a bit OTT (plus it would simply make them even faster).

So they're not "perfectly good", then! Could the blind bend be mitigated by something to encourage cycles to keep to the outside of the corner (like they would if they'd been taught)?

If it can't be designed to be a decent cycleway, then the faster riders should be encouraged to use other routes where they won't cause as much conflict. If there aren't any good alternative routes, then that's probably part of why racers are popping across a park.

In practise just like the roads most folk manage quite well, it's the other 10% that could do with a stick ramming in their spokes.

Yeah, many riders manage to cycle around quite a lot of rubbish. It does not make that rubbish acceptable.

mjr wrote:So they're not "perfectly good", then! Could the blind bend be mitigated by something to encourage cycles to keep to the outside of the corner (like they would if they'd been taught)?

Taught? I think it's blindingly obvious if you barrel around a bend faster than you can stop you're going to run into problems. The side you cycle on is irrelevant since you've got pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers and small children. Car drivers are 'taught' but they don't get it either, the muppets grossly underestimate their speed and overestimate their ability right up until the point it all goes pear shaped.

The places I'm thinking of you can't change the paths without either major infrastructure work or work that significantly changes the nature of the area.
Give a choice between that and banning bicycles I'd opt for banning bicycles. If people can't use something properly then they deserve to lose it particularly if that makes life better for the majority.