So they damn well knew all along!

[Mike Causer]

Cambridge Cycling Campaign has just unearthed a document by the City's
Planning and Engineer's departments from 1975 that shows they knew all
about the minimum width for on-road lanes, why off-road (pavement) is more
dangerous than on-road, why it's junctions that have most accidents, why
there should be no parking alongside cycle lanes, etc, etc, etc!

Which leads to the question - why have they been ignoring this document
for the past 30 years?

http://www.camcycle.org.uk/resources/cycleways1975/


Mike

[naked_draughtsman]

On Jan 28, 5:33 pm, Mike Causer >
wrote:
> Cambridge Cycling Campaign has just unearthed a document by the City's
> Planning and Engineer's departments from 1975 that shows they knew all
> about the minimum width for on-road lanes, why off-road (pavement) is more
> dangerous than on-road, why it's junctions that have most accidents, why
> there should be no parking alongside cycle lanes, etc, etc, etc!
>
> Which leads to the question - why have they been ignoring this document
> for the past 30 years?

Although mostly specifically about Cambridge, some general points
which were interesting:
Cars parking in is recognised as a problem and parking restrictions
are suggested to stop this. While it may have worked in 1975, it
doesn't work today.
Problems such as raised lines and sunken gullies are recognised as a
problem then, and are still a problem today.
A lot of things are described as not legally possible (e.g. off road
cycle routes, priority cycle lanes at traffic lights) which are more
common today so something has been done to allow these.
2 way cycle lanes should be 2.2m wide, has the recommendation been
increased recently to 2.5m?

An interesting read though. I didn't realise cycle lanes had been
around for such a long time!

peter

Interesting reading though.

The report recognises that cyclists won't use a new route if it is
more inconvenient (including short sections) - which is still valid
today

[Jeremy Parker]

"naked_draughtsman" > wrote in

[snip]

> An interesting read though. I didn't realise cycle lanes had been
> around for such a long time!

Modern bike lanes descend from the ones introduced into Davis,
California, in 1967, as a compromise between the cycling students of
the University of California, and the locals who wanted bikes banned
completely. However, although Davis invented the term "bike lane",
they were a reinvention there. Belgium had what were essentially
bike lanes in the 1940s, for example. Belgian cyclists liked them
because they were less dangerous than cycle tracks.

The oldest cycle track I know of will be one-hundred-and-twelve years
old in June. It's in Brooklyn, New York

There's remarkably little institutional memory in cycling. In 1958
Professor Sir Colin Buchanan wrote in his book "Mixed Blessing, The
Motor in Britain"
"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been."



How much have things changed?



Jeremy Parker

[Nick Kew]

On 28 Jan 2007 10:03:24 -0800
"naked_draughtsman" > wrote:

> [chop]

'Twas in the autumn of '79 I went up to Cambridge as a
brand new student. One thing I faintly recollect was
a policeman giving a little presentation to us freshers,
and telling us how dangerous the then-new contraflow
thingey on (IIRC) Downing Street was. Points like,
where it emerges there is no physical separation from
the main road so that cars will be able to swing across it.

It puzzled me at the time, that something planned and executed
by 'officialdom' should be so firmly condemned by 'officialdom'.

--
not me guv

[Tony Raven]

Nick Kew wrote on 30/01/2007 21:16 +0100:
>
> It puzzled me at the time, that something planned and executed
> by 'officialdom' should be so firmly condemned by 'officialdom'.
>

You've presumably since learnt about the concept of "departments".

--
Tony

"...has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate..."
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