I live in Sweden and segregated cycles paths here are great. It meant that I could cycle to nursery with my children when they were 4 (They were cycling themselves) and have a really pleasant cycle to work along here:

It is a small old town and in the centre where the roads are shared the speed limit for all vehicles is 30kph and there are many shared pavements. The number of grannies, old geezers and kids on bikes far outnumber 99 to 1 any speed freak cyclists so there are not that many problems sharing.

I love it and would not have it any other way. Even cycling on a road without a bike path cars tend to give you plenty of room. Maybe one of the reasons is that most people cycle so know what it is like.

I think many UK cities would really benefit from some proper cycle arteries into the centre. Such as making some roads one way and using the other half as a dedicated cycle lane.

They are in the process of public consultation here where I live for puttings in two separated ones way cycle lanes. In some of the research I saw a figure of 6 times safer in a separated cycleway, then a painted one. If I can find the research I’ll link it for you.

Interestly the body organising this, said they have had more public submissions on the cycle ways then any project they have ever built in the country. Business are crying bloody murder (due to some parking space losses), even though research suggests cycle lanes are good for business.

Just so people are clear, LCC isn’t campaigning for the sort of shit cycle lanes we’ve got at the moment, they want this…

The current status quo is only safe with vehicular cycling, which pretty much excludes 99% of the population from ever wanting to do it, even if you create this magical situation where every car driver is educated so they are only to happy to have a cyclist in front of them doing 15mph in the middle of the road because theres a pinch point coming up.

The problem with the above utopian picture is how do people access their properties on the left hand side of the road, from the car lane, and same for people on the right side of the car lane.

They all have to to turn across the cycle lane, and to see cyclists approaching from behind that wouild require them to use mirrors and common sence when turning.

“Segregate bikes off at a dodgy roundabout and Drivers won’t learn how to deal with cyclists”

Personally I think this a total non-argument. It’s easy to deal with people on bikes: keep your car well away from them. I don’t see why it need be more complex than that.

Here in sweden alot of the junctions that cross cycle lanes are raised.

Kicking off a knee jerk policy of segregated motor and pedal traffic will mean that most local authorities (especially those outside of london) just paint some more lines on the pavements and continue to try and dump cyclists at dangerous crossing points

good point, we don’t want segregation we want good segregation done properly. Unfortunately the TFL/DFT whoever it is, seem to be trialling all the stuff amsterdamn tried (and discarded) instead of just starting at the designs that have evolved and been proven to work! Bonkers, why alpha/beta test everything again when someone has already done all that!

They all have to to turn across the cycle lane, and to see cyclists approaching from behind that wouild require them to use mirrors and common sence when turning.

eh? There’s bloody big islands for cars to turn off the road and then wait for a gap to get across the cycle track, looks easy enough in that pic.

Not every road is as wide, also one car in the turning point, with another following behind waiting to turn, will cause grid lock behind and intimidate the fist driver into making a dart.
Then what about larger vehicles and delivery trucks bin lorries etc,that will have no where to park while they load and unload.

Not really thought about it have you Donk.

I think all cycle lanes should be removed.
The roads are a carriageway and my bike is a carriage ,
I do not want to have a small part of the road set aside for me .

Most of the cycle lanes I have encountered are poorly thought out at best and outright dangerous at worse.
And when I choose to not use a cycle lane as I believe it is dangerous, I occasionally get shouted at but more commonly get passed very closely as I can only guess the driver has put his passing me so closely down to me not being in the cycle lane in the first place.
Not realising that the reason I have chosen not to use said cycle lane is it would be better labeled Door zone than cycle lane .

The money would be better spent on advertising that educated the non cycling public that cyclist choose to stay out of the gutter as this is where drainage grates and general debris accumulates and to pass with plenty of room as they could have to avoid hazards like pot hole.
And the reason you sometimes ride in the centre of the road when crossing a single lane bridge or country lane is not because you are an arrogant arse but because it would not be safe to overtake so there is no need to stay to the left aswell as protecting yourself from some one trying to push through.

They should also point out that the rules of the road should be followed by all who use them irrespective of your chosen vehicle and that a cyclist is not a pedestrian on a bike.
The campaign should high volume and consistent like the drink drive campaign at Christmas or the green cross code when I was a kid.

Woah I’m not a highway planner, you asked about cars in that picture I answered with the given info. However I’m sure amsterdamn Copenhagen and other places manage somehow – I did point it it might be an idea to go for stuff that has been shown to work not our own interpretation of bike/car segregation v1.0

Ps some vehicles waiting while someone turns isn’t gridlock it’s, ooh what’s the word…? oh yeah, traffic.

Infrastructure and enforcement are only a part of the answer; Education, Education, Education is the key.

So would you let your kids bike on a main road? I wouldn’t. They are to small, would not be noticed and might make a mistake. The best education is doing something yourself.

Kids are allowed to ride on the pavement as their bikes are classed as toys.
And I would not let them ride on the road cycle lane or not unless I was confident in their understanding of the dangers involved and law.

I don’t like to be cynical but I’m just taking it as a given that any attempt we make would be designed poorly and executed badly.

But, if that were not the case it could be a really important part of the road system. Partly just by keeping people safer but partly by saying “bikes are important”, instead of the current grudging unwelcoming attitude that seems to start with bellend drivers and go all the way up to government and planning.

Our current approach of road-sharing, bikeability and education has given us a modal share for cycling of 2%.

Holland’s approach of high quality, comprehensive, continuous infrastructure has given cycling a modal share of 26%.

And that, to answer the original question, is why segregated infrastructure is seen as the answer.

Sorry, share-the-road, take-the-lane, don’t-segregate people, your argument is lost.

Kids are allowed to ride on the pavement as their bikes are classed as toys.

Wrong. A bike is a bike is a bike; the law says they should be on the road and not on the pavement.

Silly, isn’t it?

The simple answer to the title question “Why is segregated infrastructure seen as the solution?” is “because that is the only way that anywhere has managed to increase cycling rates”.

All the arguments against (no room, it’ll take too long, etc.) work equally valid in the Netherlands in the 70s. They ignored the naysayers and now have huge cycling rates, with all the benefits that brings.

IIRC, it took ten years.

Ten years ago, we were asking for segregated cycle infrastructure. We could have it by now.

Just so people are clear, LCC isn’t campaigning for the sort of shit cycle lanes we’ve got at the moment

And they are getting there slowly. Proposed segregated lane at a junction on the CS2:

Looks pretty good to me. Certainly a big step in the right direction.

Am I wrong , but the picture above , is the cycle lane just to the left of a left turn only car lane. So I take it the car lane will only get the green light when the cycle lane is stopped red.

I always thought kids were allowed, but you’re right.

The problem is not the lack infrastructure but rather that the present stuff is actually worse than none at all.

Who in their right mind would ride down the left of vehicles? Yet the blue paint designers encourage it!,!

Ride in the middle of the road.

Am I wrong , but the picture above , is the cycle lane just to the left of a left turn only car lane. So I take it the car lane will only get the green light when the cycle lane is stopped red.

Yep. The cycle lane is left or straight-on only and is segregated at the side of a left-only car lane.
From the picture it appears the cyclists have separate lights (currently green) while the cars turning left are red.

There is no such thing as a dangerous road, it’s an inanimate strip of black stuff. The problem is the morons whether many or few who use it. Until attitudes change and people learn to give vulnerable road users space and have a little patience then the present situation will not change.

It’s not rocket science, obey the rules, a little patience, job done.

If only it would be that easy.

The practical solutions are the easy bit ( safe ways in urban areas/ decent governance elsewhere
) .

The obstacle is getting our feckless corporate lackey politicians to actually do anything.

It’s safer if the driver physically cannot enter the bike lane due to kerb / design etc. As seen in Copenhagen and Amsterdamn for example.

However, the kerbs etc that divide the lanes can cause accidents in their own right. Some work was done in the Netherlands where they removed the 90 degree kerbs and most of the seperation between cyclists and cars and replaced a lot of it with 45 degree kerbs. The accidents went down overall because there wasn’t such a loss of control if a cyclist hit a kerb and the pedestrians found the transition from pavement to cycle lane to road and back again far easier.

Personally I think segregated space would be brill. Not because it’s safer in particular, but because people will certainly perceive them to be safer, and therefore drive up numbers who make short journeys by bike instead of car. More people cycling, means more people know someone who cycles, and is likely to treat a cyclist as “oh, that might be John, my brother, I’ll give him plenty of space”, when they’re not on a segregated section of road.

I don’t like driving on roads because of tailgating, agressive driving etc etc

Same here 😆

I think the aggressive nature of some drivers AND cyclists is indicative of a society that needs to take a good look at itself in the mirror.

Usual urban based bias.
Just how are we to segregate traffic from the hundreds of thousands of miles of roads?
The problem is the selfish attitude that many motorised vehicle drivers have, added to some plain daft cycling.
Human nature makes these.
It will never stop. Having said that maybe a touch of enforcement of the rules would help.
How about proper penalties such as fines with 3 zeros after them for speeding, parking in cycle lanes? Or automatic 10 year driving bans for making contact with a cyclist if it is proven to be the driver fault.
Will that happen?
No because the majority of the voter drive cars.

Usual urban based bias.

A bias to where the biggest conflict is, where most people are dying, and that would benefit the most from more people choosing bikes over cars? That makes perfect sense to me.

Just how are we to segregate traffic from the hundreds of thousands of miles of roads?

We won’t. No one is suggesting segregated every single road in the entire country. Nor is there any need to.

To use the classic retort: look at the Netherlands.

Will that happen?
No because the majority of the voter drive cars.

Agreed.

There is no such thing as a dangerous road, it’s an inanimate strip of black stuff.

That is absolute rubbish. Of course there are dangerous roads. If they’re not built or planned properly they become dangerous.

That’s like saying there’s no such thing as dangerous asbestos, it’s an inanimate board of white stuff.

That is absolute rubbish.

+1

Its not on iPlayer anymore, but this had some great explanations and examples of what made roads dangerous, stuff like the left hand lane going straight on whilst the right hand lane turned left across it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f438q

All of the stuff thats happening with cyclists vs cars, has previously happened with cars vs cars in the 50’s. It was solved through a combination of road design, car engineering and behaviour.

If you put lots of signs and lanes then that’s great when they are there

As GrahamS has mentioned in passing more signs and markings are part of the problem. It enforces the “it’s my right of way” mindset in some road users. Notice how everyone takes extra care when the traffic lights are out on a busy junction? That mindset should be uppermost in all road users thought processes all the time. Strict liability would help the more vulnerable user as it would introduce the element of doubt about the “right of way” in all users minds.

If I’m ever ruler of the world demarcation between footway and carriageway will be removed along with signs and lines and any driver who kills/injures another vulnerable road user will be on foot/the bus for the rest of their natural life.

If I’m ever ruler of the world demarcation between footway and carriageway will be removed along with signs and lines

They’ve tried this in a few places. If I recall, it’s not as successful as you’d think.

David Hembrow talks about Dutch shared space on his (excellent) blog.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/controlled-chaos-european-cities-do-away-with-traffic-signs-a-448747.html

http://www.dw.de/european-towns-remove-traffic-signs-to-make-streets-safer/a-2143663-1

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/lots-cars-and-trucks-no-traffic-signs-or-lights-chaos-or-calm/5152/

http://www.homezones.org/concept.html

etc etc

Streets do not belong to cars, they do not belong to pedestrians and they certainly don’t belong to cyclists. They belong to us all!

While we’re discussing infrastructure, can I plug this film my friend made about why British teenage girls stop cycling, while their German counterparts do not?

There’s a short version online, but the full length DVD version is better.

There’s some beardy MTBer bloke in it, but you can fast forward him 🙂

miketually, one thing that comes from that blog though, there is an option for cars to rat run.

Human nature is always to take the easy route, why is there almost always a path trodden into the grass in parks when there is a path that goes from the same place to the same place, just via a longer route.

I do think that traffic engineers and organisations like sustrans have forgotten this. If i want to go to the shops, i could go straight there on a main road, or i could take twice as long weaving about on back roads, which way do you think most people will take? So what is the solution?

Accept human nature, What you have in that blog is that there has been a failure to consider that what was the less easy is now the easy route.

You can not do half a job on this, there must be no “easy” route.

why is there almost always a path trodden into the grass in parks when there is a path that goes from the same place to the same place, just via a longer route.

Fun fact: that kind of thing is called a ”desire line”

I do think that traffic engineers and organisations like sustrans have forgotten this.

Sustrans certainly haven’t – at least not in my experience of them locally in the North East. We have some NCN routes through the town and we’d like nothing more than to expand and improve them.

But all Sustrans can really do is pressure, advise, and offer limited funding where it can.

(Sustrans support was one of the factors that got Newcastle the Cycle Ambition fund which aims to put in new cycleways through town)

Our current approach of road-sharing, bikeability and education has given us a modal share for cycling of 2%.

Holland’s approach of high quality, comprehensive, continuous infrastructure has given cycling a modal share of 26%.

This

I don’t think we’re going to get mass participation cycling unless we make non-cyclists feel safe enough to get out of the car. I’d rather live in a place where I ride slower to and from work with hundreds of other bikes than ride quickly to work with hundreds of cars.

I don’t think we’re going to get mass participation cycling unless we make non-cyclists feel safe enough to get out of the car. I’d rather live in a place where I ride slower to and from work with hundreds of other bikes than ride quickly to work with hundreds of cars.

and i don’t think we are going to get people out of cars unless using a car is unattractive, almost to the point of being impossible for many journeys.

Build cycle paths by all means, but take from the cars to do it. A wide road becomes a narrow road and two wide segregated cycle paths. with the cars being forced to drive over kerbs to cross into side roads. Make it so that at a junction bikes are given a clear priority over cars, Force cars to wait for minutes longer than bikes…. Enforce parking restrictions, ban the school run….

You must not under estimate that alot of people, will say the right things, but if they aren’t forced it is just talk.