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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes



 
 
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  #41  
Old May 24th 04, 08:04 PM
Nathaniel Porter
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes


"Steve Peake" wrote in message
...
On 23 May 2004 12:35:07 -0700, bikerider7 wrote:

[Note: I have not been on Blackfriars bridge, and the article seems
quite
vague on the "problem" with this particular cycle lane....]

Scandal of our deadly cycle lanes


Same story was on bbc local news tonight on tv. May be repeated later
after 9 if anyone missed it.


Thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded ;-)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/realmedia/news/tvnews.ram

The report in question is at 5:20.

Note this will be updated around 22:45 with the 10 o'clock bulletin.


Ads
  #42  
Old May 24th 04, 08:25 PM
Simon Proven
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

Peter Clinch wrote:

Probably most affected are things like trikes and trailers, which can't
easily get through those little traffic-limiting gates designed to stop
yoofs tearing up and down the things on scooters and mopeds


Yeah. We just got our £2 million bridge over the A14 installed
just outside Cambridge - but if you want to get to the local
household waste recycling centre/tip with a trailer you need to
either go around the roundabout the bridge is supposed to help
you avoid, or cycle all the way through Milton and back down the
A10 to the junction. There's a perfectly good bridge over the
A10 but it's got barriers that prevent a trailer. *fume*
  #43  
Old May 24th 04, 08:27 PM
Philip Armstrong
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

In article ,
Simonb wrote:
Philip Armstrong wrote:
In article ,
Philip Armstrong wrote:
http://www.kantaka.co.uk/blackfriars_bridge/


195.92.67.67 - - [24/May/2004:19:26:33 +0100] "GET
/blackfriars_bridge/ HTTP/1.1" 200 2061 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible;
MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"


Not got mine, then?




You were third I believe:

81.2.107.192 - - [24/May/2004:19:30:31 +0100] "GET /blackfriars_bridge/ HTTP/1.1" 200 2061 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"

$ whois 81.2.107.192
....
person: Simon R Bennett
....

The first two hits were from energis webcaches, so presumably are
freeserve users.

Phil
--
http://www.kantaka.co.uk/ .oOo. public key: http://www.kantaka.co.uk/gpg.txt
  #44  
Old May 24th 04, 08:46 PM
Clive George
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

"Simon Proven" wrote in message
...

Yeah. We just got our £2 million bridge over the A14 installed
just outside Cambridge - but if you want to get to the local
household waste recycling centre/tip with a trailer you need to
either go around the roundabout the bridge is supposed to help
you avoid, or cycle all the way through Milton and back down the
A10 to the junction. There's a perfectly good bridge over the
A10 but it's got barriers that prevent a trailer. *fume*


When I lived in Milton and worked in cambridge, I wanted to get out of the
village as fast as possible. The old road to Histon would have been perfect
for getting onto the A10, but somebody put that fence in the way and built
that bridge.
One day I did a little gardening, and as if by magic a little cycle route
appeared on on the south side of the bridge. (chopped some vegetation,
converted a ditch/lump into something approximately flat). And all was
marvellous. It became quite a popular little cut. But the day I saw a
scooter using it I knew it wouldn't last.
I left for pleasanter places, so wasn't around for a while - but I noticed
on one of my visits back to the place that somebody official had noticed
people using the cut, and declared 'This shall not be used', enforcing it
with a big sheffield stand like object. Grr.
If I still lived there that object would not be there...
(Apparently at the same time as we were there somebody made a couple of the
paths in the estate more cycle friendly by removing a couple of the
irritating barriers. Made getting to tescos much easier).

(dunno how trailer friendly my little cut was - it was designed for me, and
I didn't have a trailer then :-) )

cheers,
clive


  #45  
Old May 24th 04, 09:17 PM
David Arditti
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

Peter Clinch wrote:
If you remove cyclists from roads by
segregation there become effectively less of them, so things instantly
get more dangerous on the road when the road can't be avoided.

This is a crucial error in thinking by UK cycle campaigners, and has been
for many years. It came up in a discussion I had with with Kevin Mayne,
Director of of CTC, and I have been thinking about it since then. It exactly
analogous to the old belief by traffic planners that building bypasses will
reduce traffic on roads in towns because traffic will transfer from one road
to another. We know that what actually happens is that (motor) traffic
expands to fill the space made available and that the increased capacity
generates increased motor traffic. It is strange that cycle campaigners who
see the truth of this then argue that creating cycle tracks and paths
removes cyclists from the road: a parallel wrong idea. What one observes
everywhere where effective off-road or segregated cycle networks are created
in towns is that, in addition to generating cycle traffic on these tracks,
you get **more cycling on the normal roads as well**. You see this in the
Netherlands, Denmark etc but it is a detectable effect in certain British
towns and even in parts of London.

Effective networks of cycle tracks encourage a much larger section of the
population to cycle than we generally see on two wheels in the UK. They then
inevitably spill over onto all the other roads, creating the critical mass
on those roads which makes cycling there safer and changes the perception
and behaviour of drivers. The road conditions in Holland that Peter has
experienced and commented upon are a consequence of this mechanism.

Simon Brooke wrote:
No, you're completely and diametrically wrong, as research done in both
Holland and Denmark has shown. In both those countries (as in the UK,
US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) studies have shown that cycle
paths are substantially more dangerous than the roads.


We've been through this argument again and again; it's like helmets.
Common sense says that cycle paths should help, and everyone initially
assumes they do and that experienced cyclists are just being pig-headed
about this. We're not. Initially we all thought as you do, but we've
read the research, and our minds have been changed.


Believe me, I have looked into this issue. All sorts of contradictory
research gets quoted on this subject. Sometimes it is good research,
sometimes it is bad, irrelevant or mis-applied, sometimes it gets
mis-quoted, taken out of context or mis-translated. Unfortunately most that
is relevant is not in English. For example, a few years ago a study was
quoted all over the UK cycling journals claiming that research in Holland
had proved that there were more accidents at junctions when cycle tracks
were built than when they were not. I looked at that and had it translated
from the Dutch. All the British reports were based on the English summary,
which it turned out had a crucial error in it, which invalidated everything
that was being said. The raised accident levels applied to motorbikes, not
bikes.

In all other cases I have looked at, the safety case against segregation
being claimed by some in the UK cycling world was not really supported by
what the studies were saying. Pretty well everything John Franklin quotes on
his site comes into this category.

I only know one thing for certain, as it is based on official figures.
Studying the cycling statistics of various countries shows a very clear
three-way correlation between the provision of quality segregated
infrastructure, high levels of cycling, and high levels of safety. I suggest
that this cannot be co-incidental.

If we take this kind of thing, quoted by Patrick Herring in this thread:
Traffic safety of cycle tracks in Danish cities.
Before and after study of 105 new cycle paths in Denmark, introduced 1978-81,
totalling 64km. Cyclist casualties increased 48% following introduction of
paths.

one kind of wonders why all the cyclists in Denmark and The Netherlands have
not been wiped out by now, since they have both continued to built more
segregated tracks since then.

People who hold this view need to explain why these localised studies, if
correct, seem so out of kilter with the overall national statistics of
cycling deaths and injuries. Why is it so safe in Denmark and The
Netherlands in reality?

I suggest the problem is that the "micro-studies" do not represent the
large-scale, long-term realities of the changes produced by the cycle
engineering "styles" of various states and regions. The Dutch/Danish
patterns of design do introduce their own issues at junctions, but other
changes occur in the overall environment due to the increased cycling
generated by an attractive cycling environment so that the overall result is
danger reduction on the large stale, averaged over all roads, the "treated"
and the "normal".

Most roads in cycle-friendly towns remain, and will always remain, "normal",
but the benefits of good cycle design elsewhere spill over onto them in
terms of more cycling and better respect by motorists there as well.

As Patrick Herring says,
separate lanes will get many more cycling and we just might end up
like Holland and Denmark.


In a nutshell.

The people who might not like it, in some places, might be a few cyclists
who like to cycle very fast (20+ mph) in towns. But should they be allowed
to do this anyway - consider the poor pedestrians? There is a very
widespread call for motor speeds to be limited to 20 in towns. We need to be
consistent. We shouldn't make roads policy for speeding drivers, and we
shouldn't make cycling policy for fast cyclists.

David Arditti

  #46  
Old May 24th 04, 09:36 PM
Just zis Guy, you know?
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

On Mon, 24 May 2004 21:17:41 +0100, David Arditti
wrote in message
:

If you remove cyclists from roads by
segregation there become effectively less of them, so things instantly
get more dangerous on the road when the road can't be avoided.


This is a crucial error in thinking by UK cycle campaigners [...] exactly
analogous to the old belief by traffic planners that building bypasses will
reduce traffic on roads in towns because traffic will transfer from one road
to another. We know that what actually happens is that (motor) traffic
expands to fill the space made available and that the increased capacity
generates increased motor traffic. It is strange that cycle campaigners who
see the truth of this then argue that creating cycle tracks and paths
removes cyclists from the road: a parallel wrong idea.


Why? The major deterrent to additional car journies is congestion.
The major deterrent to more cycling is laziness. Bulding new roads
spreads out the congestion; building cycle paths does not amke people
less lazy.

Effective networks of cycle tracks encourage a much larger section of the
population to cycle than we generally see on two wheels in the UK.


Evidence? Edinburgh spent large sums and the number of utility
cyclists apparently dropped.

I suggest the problem is that the "micro-studies" do not represent the
large-scale, long-term realities of the changes produced by the cycle
engineering "styles" of various states and regions. The Dutch/Danish
patterns of design do introduce their own issues at junctions, but other
changes occur in the overall environment due to the increased cycling


Which pre-dates the cycling environment. There is a long-term high
user base in these countries. And the fietspads were in some cases
(certainly in Germany) originally built for the benefit of motorists.

The people who might not like it, in some places, might be a few cyclists
who like to cycle very fast (20+ mph) in towns.


Eh? My view is that every road in every town, with very few
exceptions, should be easy for cyclists to use, however fast they want
to ride. My friend Arnold is Dutch and rides 15 miles per day in the
UK; his view is that the cycle paths here are a disaster because we
lack the Dutch laws of presumed fault, and we lack Dutch levels of
cycling so the drivers for the most part aren't properly aware of
cyclists, and we lack Dutch planners who know how to deal with
junctions fractionally better than we do, and we lack the Dutch
commitment to putting bikes first.

But should they be allowed
to do this anyway - consider the poor pedestrians? There is a very
widespread call for motor speeds to be limited to 20 in towns. We need to be
consistent. We shouldn't make roads policy for speeding drivers, and we
shouldn't make cycling policy for fast cyclists.


1/2 mv^2

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
  #47  
Old May 24th 04, 10:02 PM
John Hearns
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

On Mon, 24 May 2004 21:17:41 +0100, David Arditti wrote:


widespread call for motor speeds to be limited to 20 in towns. We need to be
consistent. We shouldn't make roads policy for speeding drivers, and we
shouldn't make cycling policy for fast cyclists.

Don't agree.

Speed limits don't apply to bicycles - I'm sure you know that, and so does
the group.

However, more relevantly, if we restrict out discussion to London and
other big cities, the comparison should be made between cycling and other
forms of transport. We're looking at the door-to-door times and the
convenience of cycle commuting reasonable long distances - by that I mean
distances people would commute on the Tube.
Let's (say) take an hour's commute, door-to-door, people should be aware
they can do the same commute on a bike.

I will agree that we need leisure routes too, eg. along the Thames and
the Waterlink Way etc. in London, which will probably get used by
beginning commuters.
But there's no way people in (say) SE London will commute up to the West
End if they cannot use the Old Kent Road.

Think of Glasgow - to get from the West End to
Partick/Yoker/Clydebank/Dalmuir by your argument you would commute via the
cycle track along the old railway.
I would say wrong - OK for a leisure journey, but for a regular commute
it will take longer than Dumbarton Road, lead to more punctures and
probably a half brick or two sailing in your direction.

Sorry to be so local - but I had to include examples.




  #48  
Old May 24th 04, 10:31 PM
Helen Deborah Vecht
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

John Hearns typed


Think of Glasgow - to get from the West End to
Partick/Yoker/Clydebank/Dalmuir by your argument you would commute via the
cycle track along the old railway.


That is dead scary for a girl, cycling by herself!
I don't think the personal security/crime aspect has been considered in
cycle route planning.

There's one in London (Somers Town) where there have been some truly
horrific attacks on cyclists.
Police presence has been notched up but the advice is still to cycle in
groups here.
This would seriously reduce the utility of any bike route.

I would say wrong - OK for a leisure journey, but for a regular commute
it will take longer than Dumbarton Road, lead to more punctures and
probably a half brick or two sailing in your direction.


Quite! I usually used Dumbarton Road.
Crossing the Clyde was a problem...

Sorry to be so local - but I had to include examples.


--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.
  #49  
Old May 24th 04, 10:53 PM
Mike Gayler
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes

David Arditti writed in
:

snip snip

Effective networks of cycle tracks encourage a much larger section of
the population to cycle than we generally see on two wheels in the UK.
They then inevitably spill over onto all the other roads, creating the
critical mass on those roads which makes cycling there safer and
changes the perception and behaviour of drivers. The road conditions
in Holland that Peter has experienced and commented upon are a
consequence of this mechanism.

lots of snipping
David Arditti


I wonder if we are comparing chalk and cheese. Cycle paths as constructed
as part of the Stevenage scheme in the ?1930s are a long, long way from
those constructed in Milton Keynes, or anywhere else in recent times.
Properly thought out routes like Stevenage, I am sure *will* encourage
cycling, even Milton Keynes type routes had the potential to do so, but
are let down by poor maintenance and some very bad design flaws, in the
newer sections.
Typical 'facility' construction by local authorities in the last 10 years
comes not within a thousand light years of even the poorest of these
(maybe slight exageration).
The problem is that construction of good quality (Stevenage style) cycle
facilities is very expensive and land-hungry as it involves wide lanes,
underpasses and good quality bridges, not to mention lighting,
signposting and maintenance.
I seriously beleive that good quality, voluntary, segregated facilities
have the potential to increase cycling significantly. But, we will never
see them in the UK. We will continue to see the half baked, cheap (and
dangerous) schemes that seek to marginalise the cyclist.
The big difference on the roads (as opposed to facilities) in places like
France, Denmark and The NEtherlands, is that the typical middle aged car
driver, had, in his younger days been a typical cyclist!

Mike - Leicester
  #50  
Old May 24th 04, 11:33 PM
Jeremy Parker
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Default The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes



Effective networks of cycle tracks encourage a much larger section

of the
population to cycle than we generally see on two wheels in the UK.


Evidence? Edinburgh spent large sums and the number of utility
cyclists apparently dropped.


Forty minutes from London's Kings Cross is Stevenage, the town that
taught the Dutch how to do bike paths. You don't have to read
foreign papers, just go and look. It was Stevenage's chief engineer,
Eric Claxton, touring the world, talking about Stevenage, that led to
the idea that you could build bike path systems in towns, at least if
you built the path system first, and then built the town round it.

I don't know what the bike modal split is in Stevenage nowadays.
They don't seem to like to talk about it.

Further up the same line is Cambridge, where the bike facilities are
few, crummy, and were installed only two thirds of a century after
the bikes arrived. Cambridge has a higher proportion of cyclists
than Amsterdam.

Jeremy Parker


 




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