Cycling UK Forum

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.

Some drivers will always drive too fast for any given set of circumstances, but that does not mean they are not influenced by the environment. The ones you describe driving round corners and over blind summits at speed will also tend to drive dowm motorways at 100mph and tailgate any slower drivers who happen to be using the outside lane. They may travel too fast round corners - but they won't be doing it at motorway speeds.

What is more, conventional highway engineering is positively encouraging that behaviour - by the very measures that the highwaymen traditionally consider essential for safety. Blind bends and summits, for example, will usually be provided with double white lines (the logic being to prevent head on crashes), but these very features also give drivers the confidence that their path will in fact be clear.

kwackers wrote: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.

Right, well, seeing as I can't see inside kwackers's head, I can't think of other bugfixes to suggest, but I'd still strongly suggest that banning bicycles would be an overreaction to minor discomfort and making a few design changes or providing alternative routes would be a better idea. However, I see kwackers is in Warrington, home of the ride-through phone box, so if a cycle route can be screwed up, it probably has been!

mjr wrote:Right, well, seeing as I can't see inside kwackers's head, I can't think of other bugfixes to suggest, but I'd still strongly suggest that banning bicycles would be an overreaction to minor discomfort and making a few design changes or providing alternative routes would be a better idea.

Alternative routes exist, they're just longer and on roads.
Truth is why would a cyclist choose to ride on roads when they can ride through a fairly pleasant park? Canals, birds, trees etc.
Creating separate routes for cyclists in this case doesn't work. In the example I'm thinking about we're considering several miles of linear park, cycle routes would have to run along it and across it.
In simple terms it works as is - providing you can do something abut the occasional idiot. I cycle along it all the time, at times up to 20mph, the only difference is I drop my speed right back when I'm either around pedestrians or in areas where they might suddenly appear (think little picnic areas hidden by bushes etc).

mjr wrote:However, I see kwackers is in Warrington, home of the ride-through phone box, so if a cycle route can be screwed up, it probably has been!

I could complain all day about the crap facilities I come across! I'm simply making the point that often road or path the facility is actually fine - it's the idiots using it that break it.

mjr wrote: However, I see kwackers is in Warrington, home of the ride-through phone box, so if a cycle route can be screwed up, it probably has been!

While Warrington is the home of the original facility of the month, the standard of construction here is generally much higher than in most places. We don't have any ride through phone boxes, though we do have some ride through bus stops that are all the rage in facility fanatic circles.

This is partly because they know that if they build things that are obviously absurd they will be subject to ridicule. This does not stop them building c**p - just that they try to avoid things that are so self evidently stupid that they merit inclusion on the site. (note FotM features absurdity, rather than poor quality)

And partly because much of the town is a new-town - thus there was actually room to construct a network of cycle paths without the constraints of space that inevitably result in farcilities when you try to retrofit segregation onto an existing road layout. And of course the resulting low-density development (like all post-war new-towns built on segregationist lines) has ended up completely car-dependent.

kwackers wrote:In simple terms it works as is - providing you can do something abut the occasional idiot. I cycle along it all the time, at times up to 20mph, the only difference is I drop my speed right back when I'm either around pedestrians or in areas where they might suddenly appear (think little picnic areas hidden by bushes etc).

Are those areas signed in any way, or would an unfamiliar cyclist be surprised by the sudden absence of bushes by the path (and associated small children stepping out)

[XAP]Bob wrote:Are those areas signed in any way, or would an unfamiliar cyclist be surprised by the sudden absence of bushes by the path (and associated small children stepping out)

Probably not but that's part of my point. The whole area doesn't *look* like a bike expressway, rather it looks like a park, with ducks and geese and swans and children and dogs etc etc.
There's simply no excuse for riding like a pratt in there. You shouldn't need signs to tell you to slow down, it's pretty obvious - providing you have your brain switched on.

Not that anyone takes any notice of signs...

Well, the whole area is a sign then - if there were bushes along both sides making an "enclosed" route, then a sudden absence (for a picnic spot) might be unexpected, but if they are occasional bushes then you know that there is a gap on the other side.

But yes - the behaviour of the few resulting in stupid restrictions which they ignore and the rest suffer...

Pete Owens wrote:While Warrington is the home of the original facility of the month, the standard of construction here is generally much higher than in most places. We don't have any ride through phone boxes, though we do have some ride through bus stops that are all the rage in facility fanatic circles.

Sorry, my memory failed me, it was a ride-through bin - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/w ... ch2001.htm - and I see they're still putting them in cycleways - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/w ... er2014.htm - and that isn't the bus stop design being demanded, which is more like:


Looking at maps and photos of Warrington, I think kwackers may be talking about Sankey Valley Park and if so, a map doesn't show a reason why the cycleable path follow blind bends (such as north of Gulliver's World, where the cycleable one is the one bending around the trees rather than the straight path) and images of nearby roads (A574 and Lovely Lane/Folly Lane/Longshaw Street) make them look wide enough to take cycleways but maybe there's some reason it couldn't be done that's not obvious at this distance. In general, the map of routes through that park look unnecessarily bendy and cycle-unfriendly.

mjr wrote:Looking at maps and photos of Warrington, I think kwackers may be talking about Sankey Valley Park and if so, a map doesn't show a reason why the cycleable path follow blind bends (such as north of Gulliver's World, where the cycleable one is the one bending around the trees rather than the straight path) and images of nearby roads (A574 and Lovely Lane/Folly Lane/Longshaw Street) make them look wide enough to take cycleways but maybe there's some reason it couldn't be done that's not obvious at this distance. In general, the map of routes through that park look unnecessarily bendy and cycle-unfriendly.

Cycleable path & straight path? AFAIK there's only one...

Basically the park is a linear park alongside a canal. The reason you get bikes on it is because they want to cross it, to do that they need to cycle along it until they reach a bridge across the canal.
You may be able to put cycleways on Lovely Lane et al although I doubt many would use them plus I don't think they're particularly bad roads to cycle along (and they have a number of pinch points caused by bridges that would be expensive to fix or would require the cycleway to stop and start - which brings us to cost vs number of users again).

Fundamentally though why would you use them when there's a perfectly nice park to cycle through??? (Unless of course bicycles were banned in the park... )

kwackers wrote:

mjr wrote:...a map doesn't show a reason why the cycleable path follow blind bends (such as north of Gulliver's World, where the cycleable one is the one bending around the trees rather than the straight path) and ...

Cycleable path & straight path? AFAIK there's only one...

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/San ... 7dfea11d24 makes it look like there's two, with the one hugging the trees being marked on OSM/OCM and OS Pathfinder as a cycle route.

Basically the park is a linear park alongside a canal. The reason you get bikes on it is because they want to cross it, to do that they need to cycle along it until they reach a bridge across the canal.

Where are they going to/from?

Fundamentally though why would you use them when there's a perfectly nice park to cycle through??? (Unless of course bicycles were banned in the park... )

Because you want to get from A to B faster than is comfortable on the bendy unpaved route through the park?

mjr wrote:https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/San ... 7dfea11d24 makes it look like there's two, with the one hugging the trees being marked on OSM/OCM and OS Pathfinder as a cycle route.

The section you're looking at isn't widely used and is really just dirt paths etched out by walkers, dogs and probably the odd cyclist. The real use is the path that runs alongside the canal. Away from that there are various paths that go all over the place through the woods etc, but the nature of those mean you only get the odd MTB and they're not usually going that fast anyway.

mjr wrote:Where are they going to/from?

If you look at the canal you'll see houses on either side... (There's also the hospital and the park is a nice route that will run you most of the way to the town centre as well as the local supermarkets etc - to and from the houses).

mjr wrote:Because you want to get from A to B faster than is comfortable on the bendy unpaved route through the park?

All routes lead through the park - unless you stay on the road. Any route that tried to go through the park and form straight fast lines would ruin it, create pinch points and bisect routes used by other people and animals.

TBH I don't see where you're going with this. Yes we could rip up large sections of the park, put a fast straight cycle path in, add a number of paths that cross this and hope that wildlife and pedestrians will stay out of the way. Perhaps with a few crossing points we may even manage to segregate the other park users from cyclists but the question would be why? Why ruin something that works perfectly well bar the occasional idiot? Why are we so against making the point that some cyclists are idiots and why are we trying to excuse their behaviour by claiming it's not their fault because we haven't paved over a section of countryside just for their use?
As I said above personally I'd rather cycling was banned in the park rather than add extra paths and I ride through the park all the time.

FWIW I ride through Sankey Valley park fairly regularly and find it a very pleasant experience as I'm sure pedestrians do to.
I usually ride from Newton le Willows through to Sankey Bridges then pick up the TPT,Moore Nature reserve then the canal from Moore to Preston Brook.A nice ride that gets me out to Frodsham and beyond without heavy traffic hassle

kwackers wrote:

mjr wrote:https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/San ... 7dfea11d24 makes it look like there's two, with the one hugging the trees being marked on OSM/OCM and OS Pathfinder as a cycle route.

The section you're looking at isn't widely used and is really just dirt paths etched out by walkers, dogs and probably the odd cyclist.

As you say, there is no cycle path through that section, though it is just about rideable (it is actually a corridor that was reserved in the original new-town plans for an expessway running from Westbrook Way through Sankey Valley Park and Orford Park to Birchwood Way). The council is planning to build a cycle path along that allignment next year.

Pete Owens wrote:

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.

Some drivers will always drive too fast for any given set of circumstances, but that does not mean they are not influenced by the environment. The ones you describe driving round corners and over blind summits at speed will also tend to drive dowm motorways at 100mph and tailgate any slower drivers who happen to be using the outside lane. They may travel too fast round corners - but they won't be doing it at motorway speeds.

What is more, conventional highway engineering is positively encouraging that behaviour - by the very measures that the highwaymen traditionally consider essential for safety. Blind bends and summits, for example, will usually be provided with double white lines (the logic being to prevent head on crashes), but these very features also give drivers the confidence that their path will in fact be clear.

Another one of the issues is that speeding is associated with risk taking behaviour

If you take a driver with a speeding endorsement then there are links to other risk taking behaviour such as tail gating, failing to stop at junctions, and poorly judged overtaking as above....

I remember one of the SS acolytes expounding his theory how speed limits were dangerous as if drivers did not drive to the limits of their vehicle and ability they would fall asleep at the wheel!