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Massive faceplam to the local council - they're doing some standard bike lanes but with a delicious added twist.
To avoid problems with buses at bus stops they are building the bus stops out into the road (yes out...) and directing the cycle path behind the bus stop onto the pavement and back out the other side.
Sounds possibly a sensible solution until you realise its a very narrow existing pavement, so the bike lane is literally inches behind the bus shelter - to get out of the bus shelter to actually get on the bus you'd have to walk and queue on, guess what, the bike lane 😯
That's becoming more common breatheeasy, but they have to come out the back of the bus shelter to get on the bus? seems strange.
It works in a windy, drizzly Northern European country that looks out across the North Sea 100 miles away. It would work on our windy, drizzly Northern European rock in the North Sea just the same.
The distance between the two countries is entirely irrelevant. The street layout of Amsterdam and London is really very different.
Grid topology vs tree topology. That is a real issue. I'm not saying we shouldn't try and solve the problem, but I don't think we can rely on the Dutch solution for British cities. They're laid out differently to begin with. If you don't know why this difference is important I'll post more later on.
weekday mornings where are most people going? I'm not arguing for banning cars or anything daft like that. I'm saying aim at those town to town, or suburb to town and all those sub two mile trips. The car should not be the easiest way to do those trips, you need to make public and bike/foot travel easier and more convenient. Fortunately due to our limited road capacity that all the nay sayers bang on about this will inevitably mean taking space away from cars - which should naturally* take some of the advantages cars currently have going for them.not everyone's going from the suburbs into town, or city centre to city centre
*If we had unlimited space then we'd have to intentionally make car travel less convenient because even if you made the more sustainable travel options as convenient as cars then people would still take their cars because we as a society are infatuated with them.
weekday mornings where are most people going?
Out of town business parks?
you need to make public and bike/foot travel easier and more convenient.
Easy to say, not so easy to actually do.
Continuing from yesterday - the problem with our citiy topology is that much of it is arranged like a tree, meaning that you have main arterial routes that take all the traffic, then side streets that lead to ever smaller side streets that eventually don't go anywhere. You can't easily take space away from the arterial routes because they handle all the traffic. And you can't make the small side streets one-way because there's no alternative street to use for the other direction.
If your cities are arranged as a grid, then you can easily make every other street one-way, without causing much of an inconvenience to anyone. This would then leave tons of space for cycleways. We don't have that luxury very often - although where we do, at least in London, they seem happy to put contraflow cycle lanes in.
although where we do, at least in London, they seem happy to put contraflow cycle lanes in.
London is so far ahead of the rest of the UK it's quite worrying when you leave the big city and come back to the provinces.
Public transport in London is very very good.
Far from perfect of course but you can travel more or less wherever you want in a short space of time with nothing more than an Oyster Card. What slows it down massively is all the bloody private cars.
A gradual removal of space for cars, congestion charge, rebuilding of things like contraflow bus lanes, adding in Cycle Superhighways (let's leave the argument that they're nothing more than a bit of blue paint for later, they are at least an intention, a statement that other modes of transport are being recognised). Hopefully it can progress from there.
London of course put in those "Olympic Lanes" almost overnight, if the political will was there they could do exactly the same for bikes.
Cycle-only roads might work. However, you'd have to do something about the cabs. Maybe make the fares walk to the next street? Then you'd have disability campaigners complaning, and they'd have a point.
Banning private cars in central London wouldn't make that much difference imo. Having watched the traffic I reckon 3/4 of it is commercial vehicles or taxis, so all you'd do is lighten traffic rather than achieve anything revolutionary. Making some streets bike only might though.
Making some streets bike only might though.
I think there's something on the way for Tottenham Court Road re making it bus and cycle only
[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33005019 ]Tottenham Court Road[/url]
Only buses, bicycles and local access would be allowed on the street from 08:00 to 19:00 Monday to Saturday, but side streets should still give other vehicles 60% access to Tottenham Court Road, the council added.
Quietly, there's a lot going on in London to improve the situation for cyclists. We need to expand to the rest of the UK though. My experience is that as soon as you're out of London, the attitude of drivers is more aggressive and negative... Bromley and Beckenham for e.g. are still in Greater London and it's noticeably more fraught than Brixton
This is interesting... at least in a 'something useful appears to be being looked at' kind-of-a-way
[url= http://www.cityam.com/217295/london-trial-world-first-traffic-technology-cyclists ]Adjusting traffic light phasing for cyclists[/url]
Aylesbury had a large campaign to increase cycling. Whilst the infrastructure changes have been small, the number of cyclists is definitely up. Most of them are commuters, many of them in normal clothes, many without helmets. Just the way it should be.
Yep.. loads of people are receptive to the idea, they just find it hard to change their habits. Probably applies to me too except that my habit has always been cycling since before I could drive.
Towns of that sort of size are perfect places to cycle I reckon. Too big to walk everywhere, not big enough to have big busy urban streets.
There's something wrong in the UK TBH. I've dealt with aggressive drivers here in Luxembourg (and in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc) but it's nowhere near as bad as the UK (well, London and environs when I lived there). It was pretty common place to get close/punishment passes or people shouting abuse at you on the commute or weekend rides in the UK but here I can go weeks without one despite riding a few times a week at lunchtime on main roads.
The lack of tolerance towards different road using groups seems to be, in western Europe at least, a British phenomenon.