Rant thread: If we support any segregated cycle infrastructure, will cyclists be banned from the roads?

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Permalink Reply by Antony MCormack on January 10, 2012 at 23:42

I have only recently returned to cycling having been confined behind the steering wheel of fuel guzzler for over 25 years, my return to the two wheel world was for health reasons, both in physical and bank balance senses.

25 years ago when I rode a bike the road was a different place, less cars, less attitude and better standards of driving in general with curtious drivers the norm. Cycles lanes and segregated paths did not exist but traffic generally shared the road.

Today the standards and attitudes of drivers is not what it used to be and every town has too many cars wanting to get to too many places too quickly. Todays cars are faster and safer and as such give the driver the feeling of complete safety while us outside this safety coccoon are still as vunerable as ever apart from a helment which only works if we fall off our bikes rather than knocked off.

My own opinion is one of educting drivers and cyclists to co exist rather than avoid each other, at this point I will draw from my own experience, ASL or advanced stopping lines, I was never aware of the rules regarding these boxes until I became a cyclist again and re educated myself in their use. I never stopped in them in a car but didn't realise that the purpose was to give cyclists the priority and advance their start position away from other traffic., maybe common sense but how many drivers on the road today have forgotten what the highway code says about cyclists and how to co exist with them.

Don't seperate us, educate us all

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Permalink Reply by Chris on January 11, 2012 at 0:13

I understand your reasoning, although I am not certain that drivers' attitudes were really that much better 25 years ago. The level of traffic was certainly lower though.

Education of drivers is certainly essential, but I do not think that it will solve the issue of subjective safety.

Most surveys find that the general population regard roads, especially main roads, as dangerous places, and cycling as a dangerous activity.

Educating drivers may well improve driving standards, but the experience of 1 close miss from a distracted bus driver may well be all it takes to put new cyclists off cycling forever.

The purpose of providing segregated infrastructure on main roads with high volumes of motorised traffic, would be to provide an environment in which novice and inexperienced cyclists feel safe. The ability to use main roads is essential, because those are the roads that connect different areas together - if you only ride on quiet back-streets, it is possible that some of your journeys will be much longer or impossible to make. Providing quality segregated infrastructure at key points on main roads would bridge that gap, and allow all cyclists to use cycling as a utility form of transport.

Also, I hope to still be cycling when I am 100, but I do not expect to have the same reflexes and power that I have now. I would quite like to have segregated infrastructure on main roads to help me out when I'm that old.

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Permalink Reply by Robert on January 11, 2012 at 10:53

Unless you have experienced cycling infrastructure around continental Europe you can have no real idea of how way ahead of us are places like Germany, Holland, and Scandinavia.   Germany does not have a state of the art infrastructure like Holland, but when I experienced it last summer I was shocked at how far ahead they are.   I have to say that my progress on it was not very fast, but that was because my jaw had dropped so low it was scraping along the ground plus I kept stopping to get back on the carriageway since I'm used to "Cyclists Dismount" and "End of Route" signs.   Surely it was illegal to ride up that big fat car-free path?   Well no, it wasn't, and those paths extend vast distances - 1100km in Kreis Plön alone (Kreis Plön being a subdivision of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein and roughly equivalent to a British county).   From my inland holiday flat in North Germany I could have cycled all the way to the coast on direct, segregated paths (though it would have taken me a couple of hours to get there and a couple of hours to get back).   I felt like one of those first contact aliens in Star Trek that accidentally find themselves on the Enterprise.

The segregated paths don't preclude sharing the roads.   Farm roads and wind farm access roads (both of which in Germany are single track roads laid with two lines of interlocking concrete slabs) are all signposted routes on the Radnetz, and many signposted routes are on ordinary country lanes.   I was chasing hares down these routes (and boy can they run!); I was in cycling heaven.

It should be no surprise that Germans cycle until they drop.   I know personally octogenarians in Germany who regularly cycle.   Whilst out swimming I saw one elderly woman (I'm guessing she was 90) cycle up to the Freibad (a section of a lake cordoned off for swimming, in this case directly on the Radnetz), change, swim 100m to the nearest island, swim back, change, and cycle off.

We really, badly, need to learn from our friends across the channel.

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Permalink Reply by James Lee on January 11, 2012 at 12:10

Why in 'Off topic'?

Its 'Hot topic'.

 

What we need is motorists to be aware that cyclists are on the major roads and will ride wherever they are legally entitled to. Not sculking away on cyclepaths, dual use footpaths and quite sideroads.

 

By publishing recommendations of 'quiet and safe routes across town', motorists will think "Hey, that's got rid of the cyclists. We've won".

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Permalink Reply by LS on January 11, 2012 at 13:43

Or they will think "Hey I didn't realise I could get to work by bike safely, quicker,  save money, lose weight, have fun etc.etc. etc,"

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Permalink Reply by Chris on January 11, 2012 at 13:53

James -

We all agree that cyclists have the right to ride on major roads, and we all want cyclists to be visible and respected. But we do not want riding on major roads and taking the lane to be the only option for getting from one place to another.

Options need to be provided for different cyclists' preferences - we want to reach out to people who are too scared of heavy traffic to ride on major roads and take the lane.

At the moment, it looks like you are demanding that this be the one true path - and that seems, to me at least, to be denying many people the right to ride bicycles in the way they want to, or indeed, at all.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Hodson on January 11, 2012 at 15:16

In order to tackle the education aspect: How about calling for bikeability (or similar) to be a mandatory part of the Driving Test?

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Permalink Reply by Chris on January 11, 2012 at 19:44

Tim - It would be a good thing, but there are so many drivers who don't remember the driving skills that they learnt for their driving test, that I don't think it would improve cyclists' situation very much.

Bikeability for people caught breaking traffic laws might target the worst offenders, perhaps.

Personally, though, I'd favour making the driving test much tougher, and making it much easier to take away driving licenses. It is unfortunate that our society seems to think that a driving license is a right, not a privilige.

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Permalink Reply by Robert on January 11, 2012 at 19:50

OK, James, I've been waiting to see how this thread pans out, and now here are some direct questions for you.   I'm mostly fit and healthy and I've been riding primary position as required for decades before I had ever heard of it.   I've both toured and commuted in Wales, which is notable for its hills.    I have on many occasions come very close to overtaking moving cars, only for the driver to get embarrassed and step up the pace.   Recently whilst in what I call the controlling position I zipped past an electronic sign set at 30mph and set the damn thing flashing, which did at least get the car behind me off my tail.   My bike weighs 12.5kg and has dropped handlebars, and you'll rarely see me out of the dropped position.   I have easily overtaken cyclists engaged in time trials.   My GP has told me that according to her lung function test I'm about 15 years younger than my birth certificate would suggest.   Consequently I can easily switch lanes at 30mph junctions, but I generally bottle out at anything faster.   Exactly how do you propose a 90 year-old woman on a 25kg roadster achieves the same?   Do you think perhaps she is too old for cycling?   How do you propose a novice cyclist performs such lane changes?   Do you think maybe they shouldn't be cycling?

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Permalink Reply by Andy White on January 11, 2012 at 23:17

Robert,

clearly you are a special case and should definitely not be allowed anywhere near a dedicated cycle lane.  Rather, you need closed roads, motorcycle outriders, a support vehicle and 9 domestiques. ;-)

Robert said:

OK, James, I've been waiting to see how this thread pans out, and now here are some direct questions for you.   I'm mostly fit and healthy and I've been riding primary position as required for decades before I had ever heard of it.   I've both toured and commuted in Wales, which is notable for its hills.    I have on many occasions come very close to overtaking moving cars, only for the driver to get embarrassed and step up the pace.   Recently whilst in what I call the controlling position I zipped past an electronic sign set at 30mph and set the damn thing flashing, which did at least get the car behind me off my tail.   My bike weighs 12.5kg and has dropped handlebars, and you'll rarely see me out of the dropped position.   I have easily overtaken cyclists engaged in time trials.   My GP has told me that according to her lung function test I'm about 15 years younger than my birth certificate would suggest.   Consequently I can easily switch lanes at 30mph junctions, but I generally bottle out at anything faster.   Exactly how do you propose a 90 year-old woman on a 25kg roadster achieves the same?   Do you think perhaps she is too old for cycling?   How do you propose a novice cyclist performs such lane changes?   Do you think maybe they shouldn't be cycling?

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Permalink Reply by James Lee on January 12, 2012 at 6:58

Chris,

"Bikeability for people caught breaking traffic laws might target the worst offenders, perhaps." is locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Force Bikeablity on to motorists who knock down and kill cyclists???

 

Robert,

"Exactly how do you propose a 90 year-old woman on a 25kg roadster",,, Do you mean The Shirley Roads Club ? :-)

A 90 year-old woman on a bicycle will probably have 40 years more experience than you or I. She'll be fine.

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Permalink Reply by Robert on January 12, 2012 at 9:32

LOL.   You and me both, I'm sure, Andy, though in Germany and Holland we can both use the dedicated lanes without having to negotiate trees, junction boxes, and a cracked, uneven surface.   But seriously, I'm not a special case amongst keen cyclists, I'm just making the point that there is a big difference between someone who has had the lung-busting experience of touring in Wales as a young man and who has yet to reach the age where body parts stop working, and someone with an aged heart and weak limbs who just wants to continue running a few errands for herself.   That woman I saw at the Freibad probably goes "weeeee!" when she hits 8mph.   Her experience would tell her to get off and push at every (British-style) junction, just as I do at junctions that put me in mind of the Man With No Name saying "tooooo dangerous", except in her home country she doesn't have to do that.   Neither does she have to contend with bus drivers driving 10mm from her handlebars, nor does she have to cope with black Audis on a mission.   Consequently she still cycles, whilst most of her counterparts in Britain sit in a warm room staring at the wall and being generally scared of the world outside.   The facts speak from themselves.   Where cycling facilities are provided, the ordinarily fit routinely cycle.   Where they are not provided, only the poor, the keen, and the unusually fit do so.

So, James, your reply reveals that you have no answer to my question, just a vague assumption that isn't reflected in the statistics.   And BTW, you neglected to explain how a novice cyclist would cope.

Andy White said:

Robert,

clearly you are a special case and should definitely not be allowed anywhere near a dedicated cycle lane.  Rather, you need closed roads, motorcycle outriders, a support vehicle and 9 domestiques. ;-)

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