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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
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#102
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Tue, 25 May 2004 22:03:34 +0100 someone who may be "burt"
wrote this:- I can recall reading a synopsis of a report which showed that a new section of segregated cycle path hadn't increased the number of people cycling, but existing cyclists changed their route if it was convenient. Southampton? Plymouth? I have no doubt that this can be the case. However I am talking about a network of paths, not just one. The network is fairly dense and there are more people using them now than there were some years ago, from my limited observations. -- David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government prevents me using the RIP Act 2000. |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
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#104
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Wed, 26 May 2004 00:16:46 +0100 someone who may be Gawnsoft
wrote this:- I'd still like to see the details of the study that concluded this. As would I. -- David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government prevents me using the RIP Act 2000. |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Wed, 26 May 2004 11:17:00 +0100, Nick Kew wrote:
You certainly can borrow a bike, but would be uncomfortable till it gets adjusted to suit you. And they come in different sizes. I don't see borrowing a bike as any different in principle to borrowing a car Cars are very standardised. The pedals are in a standardised layout, as are (generally) the controls on the steering wheel. Manuals cars mostly have the gears in the same pattern (OK, you have to look where reverse is). Seats adjust such that the majority of the population can drive the car. My contention is that most bicycles are more personal - you tend to fit pedals you like, a saddle which suits you. Frames come in different sizes depending on how tall you are. Different gear changers. You might have fitted handlebar ends etc. I'm stretching an analogy here, but I think bikes could be compared more to older cars which people restore by themselves (sports, classic cars). Of course, my argument falls down when you talk about shopper style bikes. |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
"David Arditti" wrote [snip] So the British just happen to be the laziest nation in Europe, hence low cycling levels? I doubt it. I would have thought it was pretty generally accepted that the reason more people do not cycle is the environment. The interesting thing about Britain is how variable the amount of cycling is. It ranges from Cambridge, with a higher proportion of cyclists than Amsterdam [ref EU "Cycling: the way ahead for towns and cities" 1999] down to places in Wales and Scotland where its pretty neglegible. The biggest deterent to cycling seems to be hills. This is complicated by the fact that hilly places tend to be rainy places, but it does seem to be the hills that do it This correlates with experience in other countries. The Danes reckon a 50 m hill halves cycling, and the one hilly part of the nethrelands, down by Maastricht also does not have so much cycling. Virtually every household has a bike but few people cycle regularly. Many British people on holiday cycle in continental cities when they would not dream of cycling at home. If we created the right environment in British cities we would get high levels of cycling. A part of that is to create the motor traffic-free cycle routes that most people who don't currently cycle say are what it would take to get them cycling. There's some interesting research about what it would take to acheive the (then) British target of doubling cycling. Building door to door bike paths for everybody wouldn't, apparently, but paying people £3 per trip would, instantly [ go to www.regard.ac.uk and search for "cycling and urban mode choice"] You might say they are lying - that they are just lazy, and wouldn't cycle anyway. But evidence of the few places in the UK where it has been well-done suggests to me this is wrong. 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. I suppose it depends on how you measure "effective" - you wouldn't want a circular definition. I would rate the top few effective bike networks as 1. Stevenage 2. Harlow 3. Milton Keynes 4. Peterborough I don't think they confirm the theory that effective networks increase cycling. Evidence? Edinburgh spent large sums and the number of utility cyclists apparently dropped. The evidence is very clear. The OECD international study published in 1998 "Safety of Vulnerable Road Users" (doc. no DSTI/DOT/RTR/RS7(98)1/FINAL) shows how the age and gender profiles of cyclists vary from country to country. This evidence was summarised in my & Paul Gannon's article in the October 2002 London Cyclist. It shows how those developed countries with high cycling levels, which are universally those with well-developed cycle networks, all have an almost equal distribution of men and women on bikes and a smooth linear decline of cycling with increasing age. Those places with low cycling levels (like the UK) have a very large imbalance between men and women cycling and fewer children and old people cycling. It becomes obvious Not to me, it doesn't. There are many possible resons for this, of which I quoted half a dozen or so when David and Paul first wrote their article. studying this that the only way we can substantially increase cycling in the UK is to increase the uptake in the under-represented groups: women, children and older people, and therefore we have to address their concerns about the safety and pleasantness of the cycling environment, rather than make policy for the group who already cycle here (the young men between ages 20 and 30). I'm 62. What do plan to do for me? What I am advocating primarily are urban on-road but segregated cycle tracks on the Dutch pattern. What the Dutch say about this idea is, "Evaluations, however, showed that although a good infrastructure for bicycle traffic is a basic condition, it hardly leads on its own to an increase in cycle use." see McClintock, "Planning for Cycling" 2002, p197, the article by Ton Welleman of the Dutch Cycling Council There are none of these in Edinburgh (so far as I am aware) Edinburgh has several disused railway paths within the city ....and few in the UK, so discussions of UK cities (including Stevenage & Milton Keynes) are of limited relevance to my argument. I don't follow this. We shouldn't look at Stevenage and Milton Keyes because they are different from other places? Is David saying that Stevenage and MK are so good that we couldn't acheive similar results elswhere? Surely the important point about these cities are that they are the best networks acheivable. If a solution doesn't work there, it won't work anywhere. It is surely true that no matter how much money is spent in London's Camden or Edgware the resulting bike networks are bound to be ***vastly*** inferior to those of Stevenage or Milton Keynes There is a long-term high user base in these countries. No, usage in 1950 was similar in the UK. The divergence has occurred since then and corresponded to a divergence in planning policy. Not true. Usage varies greatly now in the UK, and always did. Cambridge beats Amsterdam now, and may well always have done. There is little Cycling in Cardiff now, and there probably always was little. I first saw the bike paths of Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1940s, more than half a century ago. Denmark and the Netherlands were already renowned as cycling countries then. It was generally agreed that they had lots of bike paths because they had lots of bikes, and that they had lots of bikes because they were flat. The evidence still points to that. In other places, some Italian towns and cities particularly, in recent years a high level of usage has been built up through appropriate planning measures where there was not a high level of cycling before. Turning "appropriate planning measures" back from newspeak into plain English. I think David is saying that they made use of competing modes difficult to impossible. 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. He is right that there are various elements to it. There are attitudinal changes needed that take a long time. But it is possible to get the details of the engineering right with the right expertise and sufficient money immediately. I continually go to meetings of cycling officers where the principle subject is to bemoan the inability of the bureaucracy to spend the money they have, although, to their great pride and astonishment, they did manage it this year. As for engineering, and expertise, I imagine London gets the pick of what is available (although they don't employ me, thank goodness) Aren't the results wonderful. The knowledge exists, and we should be using it. To do that requires project managers who can distinguish knowledge from nonsense. John Hearns wrote: Speed limits don't apply to bicycles Well perhaps they should, but actually, I don't think speed as such is a big issue. That seems to be a common view among those who advocate and design facilities. 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. I don't advocate preventing cyclists from using any route they want (and in Holland they are allowed to use all roads other than those of motorway standard, just like here, and they do). Not true. Cycle tracks are not roads. But also, I don't accept the equation between cycle tracks or paths and "leisure use", or indeed "beginning commuters". If they are well enough done they are "universal use", for leisure and commuting, and suitable for all cyclists of almost all levels of experience and fitness. That's probably a definition of "well done", and a fairly good one too. If a substantial group - any substantial group - of cyclists complain about a cycle facility then it is not well done. Some cycle facilities mange to harm even those cyclists who don't use them. That perhaps is the ultimate in badness. I regularly cycle a journey of about 13 miles, Edgware to the City. I need to do it quite quickly. The quickest way in the middle section is to use the largely segregated Somers Town cycle route in Camden. I also use some sections of segregated track in Islington. These are actually beneficial to the faster cyclist since they allow one to avoid the congestion and larger number of controlled junctions on the main roads, as well as being obviously more pleasant to use for beginners. In the outer-London parts of my journey, where there are no cycle facilities at all, I see few other cyclists, and they are all fast. In south Camden, where cycle facilities are present, the jump in cycling levels is very striking, and also the sudden spread of types of cyclist, fast, slow, young and old, male and female. My experiences suggest to me that cycling uptake is a tremendously localised phenomenon (on a scale of 1-2 miles) and depends in a very detailed way on the quality of the environment (and not much on social factors such as race or class). This is because people like John and I will always be a small minority. Most people only want to cycle a couple of miles. I agree that we should not do anything that gets unnecessarily in the way... I don't like that word "unnecessarily". It seems to imply that David knows that his vision must, necessarily must, do things that necessarily get in the way. of those who do want to cycle further and faster, and I believe good design would not do that. David Arditti |
#107
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Wed, 26 May 2004 19:42:47 +0100 someone who may be "Jeremy
Parker" wrote this:- The interesting thing about Britain is how variable the amount of cycling is. It ranges from Cambridge, with a higher proportion of cyclists than Amsterdam [ref EU "Cycling: the way ahead for towns and cities" 1999] down to places in Wales and Scotland where its pretty neglegible. I think your comparison is English-centric. Wales and Scotland are rather larger than Cambridge. Scotland is in fact 1/3 of the land mass of the UK. Within both countries there are large variations in the amount of cycling, just as in England. -- David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government prevents me using the RIP Act 2000. |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
David Hansen wrote:
On Wed, 26 May 2004 19:42:47 +0100 someone who may be "Jeremy Parker" wrote this:- The interesting thing about Britain is how variable the amount of cycling is. It ranges from Cambridge, with a higher proportion of cyclists than Amsterdam [ref EU "Cycling: the way ahead for towns and cities" 1999] down to places in Wales and Scotland where its pretty neglegible. I think your comparison is English-centric. Wales and Scotland are rather larger than Cambridge. Read again. Jeremy said places /in/ Wales and Scotland. Pete. -- Peter Clinch University of Dundee Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/ |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Thu, 27 May 2004 11:04:30 +0100, David Hansen wrote:
On Wed, 26 May 2004 19:42:47 +0100 someone who may be "Jeremy Parker" wrote this:- The interesting thing about Britain is how variable the amount of cycling is. It ranges from Cambridge, with a higher proportion of cyclists than Amsterdam [ref EU "Cycling: the way ahead for towns and cities" 1999] down to places in Wales and Scotland where its pretty neglegible. I think your comparison is English-centric. Wales and Scotland are rather larger than Cambridge. Scotland is in fact 1/3 of the land mass of the UK. Within both countries there are large variations in the amount of cycling, just as in England. Yeah, Jeremy showed really his prejudices there. He could just have easily written, "It ranges from Cambridge....., down to places where it's pretty negligible". (Fewer words, therefore more easily written, in fact.) Still, I suppose he didn't make the mistake of lumping Northern Ireland into Britain. -- Michael MacClancy Random putdown - "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde www.macclancy.demon.co.uk www.macclancy.co.uk |
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The _Observer_ on "deadly" bike lanes
On Thu, 27 May 2004 11:20:28 +0100, Peter Clinch wrote:
David Hansen wrote: On Wed, 26 May 2004 19:42:47 +0100 someone who may be "Jeremy Parker" wrote this:- The interesting thing about Britain is how variable the amount of cycling is. It ranges from Cambridge, with a higher proportion of cyclists than Amsterdam [ref EU "Cycling: the way ahead for towns and cities" 1999] down to places in Wales and Scotland where its pretty neglegible. I think your comparison is English-centric. Wales and Scotland are rather larger than Cambridge. Read again. Jeremy said places /in/ Wales and Scotland. Pete. Yes, but it's still evidence of a bias. I'm sure there are places in England where there's very little cycling. -- Michael MacClancy Random putdown - "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb www.macclancy.demon.co.uk www.macclancy.co.uk |
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