Cycle paths, tracka and facilities: a proposal

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

If there is a positive response here I'll set up a mailing-list so
discussion can carry on out of the public eye. I am also going to
register a suitable internet domain.


Anyone interested?


Mike

Mike Causer wrote:

Anyone interested?

Count me in.

--
Dave...

Mike Causer writes:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think
I can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.
Count me in if you need any translation of Dutch documents though.
When Pete contacted out local MP about some new rather useless facilities
he was asked what he thought should have been done - a resource to point
him at would help.

And I'm wondering if you should move the focus away from "cycle
facilities" and more towards "road design that includes/facilitates
cycling" or something along those lines.

Roos

Mike Causer wrote:
For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example,
the Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity -
maybe that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant
sites, and how they relate to the new proposal.

Anyone interested?

Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?

--
not me guv

in message , Nick Kew
') wrote:

Mike Causer wrote:
For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The
intimidation by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is
getting worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and
the non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them",
is very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example,
the Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity -
maybe that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant
sites, and how they relate to the new proposal.

Anyone interested?

Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?

I would be prepared to put some work in.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
/-\ You have discovered a security flaw in a Microsoft product. You
|-| can report this issue to our security team. Would you like to
| | * Be completely ignored (default)?
| | * Receive a form email full of platitudes about how much we care?
\_/ * Spend hours helping us fix this problem on your own phone bill?

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:08:18 +0100, Nick Kew wrote:


Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example, the
Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity - maybe
that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

I don't know if Warrington/Pete Owens would be interested, but the idea is
to be more formal. Think about pointing your local County Council to
Warrington, and they will categorise it as whinging. You and I might
think it does a good job as a gadfly, but someone who was held up for 10
seconds behind a cyclist negotiated some dodgy "traffic calming" in a safe
manner will disagree (happened to me this evening, honked at by a Cavalier).


How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant sites,
and how they relate to the new proposal.

I haven't seen anything that covers what I propose, and I've looked at
everything I can find (in English, and a few in German).


Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?`

Yes. Initially in space holding my own stuff (mainly car-related, Google
"mike causer lotus"). I have MySQL, Perl, Python, PHP, Ht://Dig; /and/ the
ISP lets me install my own software, provided I can get it to work in a
chroot jail. I would like to play with Ruby on Rails and Zope, but this
proposal wouldn't need either.


Mike

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:40:49 +0000, Roos Eisma wrote:

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think I
can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.

It would be useful to have comments from people not directly
involved in the production. How does that sound?


Count me in if you need any translation of Dutch documents though.

How's your German? I would really like to find out what the active anti
cycle-path people there are saying. I can handle touristy conversation
with my 1964 O-level German, but can't hack this technical detail. [1]


And I'm wondering if you should move the focus away from "cycle
facilities" and more towards "road design that includes/facilitates
cycling" or something along those lines.

That /should/ be what "Cycling Friendly Infrastructure" does. But the
revised version is now two years overdue....




[1] Because I know that speaking German is not appreciated in Holland I
always kept quiet and only used English or possibly French. Until in
1995/6 I was in an old hotel in Amsterdam over the winter, and the
owner (good English) and his daughter (excellent English) were away. The
owner's father tried Dutch, I replied in French. No go. So he tried
German. He was certainly old enough to remember the War, but when I
replied in German we got on fine :-))



Mike

Mike Causer wrote on 09/08/2006 17:34 +0100:

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?


One of my Round Tuits has been to do a quiz page called "Is it a Cycle
Path?" with pictures of pavements where you have to guess if it is a
legal cycle path or not. If you are interested maybe it can be changed
to a Gotta Round Tuit.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

Mike Causer wrote:
For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

If there is a positive response here I'll set up a mailing-list so
discussion can carry on out of the public eye. I am also going to
register a suitable internet domain.


Anyone interested?


Mike


Don't know what use I could be, but happy to help at comment/critique
type level.

--
Brian G

Mike Causer wrote on 09/08/2006 17:34 +0100:

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?


FWIW, my view of where we should start from is he
http://www.camcycle.org.uk/newsletters/66/article8.html


--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci