cromolyolly

Member

would cost very little and has NO downsides

That just isn’t true. When you look at what various places have spent, and the knock on effects the changes have had the evidence is ample. It would be nice if it were true because then it would make it a no brainer

Unfortunatly for your arguement it is true. The cost savings from the reduced pollution, reduced congestion and improved public health mean that overall there is very little cost. Its very cheap to add a proper cycle lane to most roads compared to the cost of building those roads.

Certainly in the low countries it is not a net cost. Its a net benefit

I’ve been Edukator on here since the great hack, Cromolyolly, check my posting history and see how many anomolies and inconsitencies you can find in 5 minutes. I don’t own a tin-foil hat.

guys – its been a bit heated but don’t make it personal please

MOlgrips – cyclepaths are not compulsory in the netherlands!

I asked several people at work and they told me they were. The wiki article says that there are two kinds of cycle path but in most cases the segregated ones are obligatory.

I’m not saying that cycle infrastructure is impossible here. I’m saying that we should not simply copy their layout. We need to find out own solution. But we do need one.

I’ll say it again. I am pro bike and anti car. I hate having to use mine.

Did you miss this from Molgrips on page 4, TJ?

Also good job you and TJ totally **** up the thread. Take a forum break, please.

Your latest post is appropriate but a couple of pages late. There are confirmed petrolheads presenting a series of spurious arguments to justify doing absolutely nothing in favour of bike infrastructure on a bike forum and getting more than a bit personal with the cyclists. Cromolyolly’s message through the thread doesn’t change:

Cycle infrastructure isn’t the answer

Despite the examples yourself and others present to prove the contrary. And still he continues with ever more extreme attempts to justify his untenable position. At what point do you point out to that person that he/she is either trolling or demonstrating gross ignorance.

Do you want the STW forum to resemble the Daily Mail comments section (because that’s where it’s heading) or do you counter the trolling and ignorance, TJ?

We’ve lost Junkyard, Grum, Woppit, Don Simon, Teasel, Grum, TSY, Ernie… and many others have given up on topical threads. Good debate needs people capable of building arguments that stand up to examination even if you don’t agree with them. Debate is very difficult when the level of nonsense and fake news in contributions drowns out reality and drags threads into a downward spiral where I end up posting a link to an online VAT calculator on a thread about cycle infrastructure because soemone has posted about the five-fold tax increase needed to pay for it without having a clue what a five-fold tax increase means.

Just a thought, carry on as usual.

where I end up posting a link to an online VAT calculator on a thread about cycle infrastructure

Ed, you should have let that one go. Don’t go down the rabbit hole. Not everything has to be a confrontation. I presume you don’t talk like this when you’re at the cafe drinking wine or whatever it is you do 🙂 If you did you wouldn’t have any mates left.

Back on topic: What I’d like to see is a quiet road network for cyclists in cities and towns. They’d be designed to take cars for access but primarily signposted and signalled for bikes. And they’d be direct, not meandering. We already route cars down major roads and block off side roads to manage traffic and preserve environments. It would be easy and crucially not controversial to incorporate bikes into the side street network. I’d only add dedicated bike specific lanes where they are needed. For example, in Cardiff we need superhighway type lanes in some places and priority signalling and road layout in others where there are already quiet streets. This kind of thing has been done in London for ages and I’ve also seen it attempted half-heartedly elsewhere.

In the countryside I think I would put in dedicated lanes linking towns. Because there it would mostly be easy and relatively cheap.

https://goo.gl/maps/nNKRRph12zA2

A great example molgrips
Canning St runs parallel but it’s been split so you can’t drive all the way down it, it’s still straight and fast on a bike but cars can’t get through so it’s just residential to them, another one linking up with other proper strategic cycle routes
Couple that with strategic public transport and it starts to work better. Stuff like this needs to be put in place right now.

Not everything has to be a confrontation.

That’s a bit rich from you after the gratuitous shouty character assassination on page four, Molgrips, were you drunk? Skim reading and not following the “tread” of the thread? Or still sore about iDave?

That’s an incredibly shitty thing to say. Basically, you’re saying life is easy, just make the right choices, and anyone who isn’t enjoying it only has themselves to blame so stop whining. **** me that is awful, truly awful. I’ve often stuck up for you Ed but that is deeply offensive. You have absolutely NO IDEA how people end up in poor situations. You think you do, but you don’t. So you REALLY should stop talking about it when you are so ignorant. My god.

Also good job you and TJ totally **** up the thread. Take a forum break, please.

That was a fantastic exercise of putting words in someone’s mouth. You read what others had said and followed blindly rather than reading and adressing the quote for youself and reading back to see what it responded to for context.

Anything to say about “Fewer cars”? (Edit: I see you have 🙂 )

Progress on cycle paths around here is painfully slow but there has finally been a change in favour of “site propre” which I guess translates as dedicated infrastruture away form the traffic. We’re geting a new bridge every few years and a long distance route from coast to coast is slowly being pieced together

Some are great

Some have obvious flaws

Jesus wept, TJ posts asking folk to stop getting personal and your reply to that is shit stirring? Really? Grow the **** up you massive man child.

Jesus wept, TJ posts asking folk to stop getting personal and your reply to that is shit stirring? Really? Grow the **** up you massive man child.

Just in case you stealth edit, Squirrelking. That is sooo funny.

Anytime you talk about infrastructure projects the costs shift the scale on little an a lot, so that affects the definition

The cost savings from the reduced pollution, reduced congestion and improved public health mean that overall there is very little cost.

All true and valid. But those offset the cost, which I would view as different than the thing costing very little to begin with. Also they are compensatory upsides but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any downsides. There are, of course.

A lot of this reminds me of the climate change cartoon

What if we make the world a nicer place to walk, ride and travel, move people more efficiently, reduce pollution and stress along with cutting road deaths and it turns out it’s cost neutral or even cost us something. Wouldn’t it be worth it.

Anyway.

I think the problem is people are looking at everything on entirely different scales. Matt is looking at local level. TJ is looking at micro societal and those he disagrees with seem to be looking at macro societal. The thing is none of these are really at odds with each other and nobody seems to be saying anything massively at odds with the bigger picture question. The change isn’t a single answer. Local authorities need to stop passing crap planning that doesn’t consider the local environment or quality of life. Urban areas need to get their shit together and sort out decent mass transit that negates the overwhelming amount of car journeys, once that’s sorted you can start removing cars from the equation by other means, less parking means less street clutter means more attractive for cycling. Decent planning can also pull offices, retail and the like back into town and city centres and away from out of town mall sprawl. Likewise repopulating cities and getting rid of rabbit hutch suburban sprawl (with your 0.9 car driveway and postage stamp “garden”). More mass means mass transit is more effective.

The thing is, that takes a long time, more than an election cycle or even a generation. I’d be happy to start paving the way but nobody seemingly wants to spend money on something that probably won’t be realised until their children have reached adulthood. Me, me, me.

Finally, there is a school of thought that says pavements are bad in that they segregate and drivers have one less thing to think about. Remove them and they need to slow down. Ideal for housing estates and such as children can play in the street and drivers have to come second. I’d be well up for that. You can even make it semi permeable!

Mike – exactly.

Finally, there is a school of thought that says pavements are bad in that they segregate and drivers have one less thing to think about.

Can you link something on that, please. I’d like to know who belongs to that school of thought and what it’s based on. The only places I know where pavements have been removed they have alos banned cars.

Finally, there is a school of thought that says pavements are bad in that they segregate and drivers have one less thing to think about. Remove them and they need to slow down. Ideal for housing estates and such as children can play in the street and drivers have to come second. I’d be well up for that. You can even make it semi permeable!

Have you been following my brothers designs for new estate builds in NZ?

Go do some reading on Skyscrapercity.

Matt, nope. It seems quite popular amongst the Scottish armchair (and qualified) architects on the aforementioned site. I’m not sure myself but I thought it worth mentioning as the subject was brought up. It could either go as I describe which would probably have additional traffic calming in place or else you end up in a US type scenario with a massive tarmac strip in the middle and the only other paths being driveways.

I couldn’t trust the UK goverment to do anything about. Tragically. So reducing number of vehicles is not realistic in the medium term. But we can reduce the size of the vehicles. Micro cars, electric push scooters and mopeds, ebikes all seem to be helping on some parts of the world. And don’t rely on government proactively, crucially.

Finally, there is a school of thought that says pavements are bad in that they segregate and drivers have one less thing to think about. Remove them and they need to slow down. I

That originated somewhere in scandanavua didn’t it? Or they named it. I can’t recall the name, probably couldn’t spell it anyway. It’s been done in Holland, Austria, bunch of places. No markings, no signs, nothing. Users just figure it out. Works it seems for everyone. Somewhere in England wanted to try a light version, Sussex, maybe? Remove centre line and sideline markings. It was thought this would make drivers go slower and be more disciplined about positioning relative to other traffic.
I was in one place in North American that tried it and it was an absolute mess. Takes a certain mindset or culture, I guess. They ended up painting lines and markings and so on everywhere.

Remove centre line and sideline markings. It was thought this would make drivers go slower and be more disciplined about positioning relative to other traffic.

It did by confusing drivers into slowing down, not sure of the long term effects.

I was in one place in North American that tried it and it was an absolute mess. Takes a certain mindset or culture, I guess. They ended up painting lines and markings and so on everywhere.

Huge amounts of the US has very little. Road markings as there are no people, their road systems seem so badly designed that with no clear indictation it would fall apart really quickly anywhere busy. More to do with the overall system than a du gle implementation.

Also interested if you had a username before this one though.

Huge amounts of the US has very little. Road markings as there are no people,

Yes, the rural areas are like like but there aren’t many users so it isn’t a problem. The busier areas are fine.

That wouldn’t appiy to the place I’m thinking of, it was a mixed use development that was (I think) meant to mimic an old town in europe, central square, tables outside cafes etc. I think they bungled the built design by not building the shared space into it from the beginning and tacking it on at the end. The were lots of cues as to where the road, pavement etc would/should be even though there were no kerbs, lanes markings etc. Shows that it takes more thought to work.

As to you other question, while it wasn’t you the insinuation has been made repeatedly with either a parenthetical or outright accusation of doing so with underhanded behaviour as the motivation and violation of the t&C’s. It is mildly offensive and I’m not going to respond. You can make of that what you will, that is beyond my control.

The pavements are bad etc concept is IIRC the dutch “shared spaces” concept. Something we should adopt on all narrow urban roads. Havinfgg seen how well in works I am hugely in favour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space

Cromollyolly – I’d love to know what all these huge costs you keep mentioning for providing cycle provision are and what you think the downsides are? That is for the dutch style cycle provision not the useless UK style ones.

Sure it would take a generation but I can see zero downsides and minimal costs with plenty of financialo benefits.

Squirrelking good post.

I’ve seen residential developments in Germany that, despite being through roads, are just long open areas with kids play areas and lots of space. Being Germany it had marked parking bays but they were spread about.

Our street (12 years old) by contrast, every house has pointless tiny front gardens and inadequate drives. They should have just paved the lot and made it look like a car park as per the German example. It would have created far more space and a much better living experience. And ours isn’t even a through road. I’ll find pics later if I can be bothered.

The pavements are bad etc concept is IIRC the dutch “shared spaces”

I was thinking of woonerf, which is related but no quite the same.

these huge costs you keep mentioning for providing cycle provision are and what you think the downsides are? That is for the dutch style cycle provision not the useless UK style ones.

Sure it would take a generation but I can see zero downsides and minimal costs with plenty of financialo benefits.

So I don’t think I ever used the word “huge”. So that kind of makes it sounds like an invitation to have a willy-waving discussion rather than an actual one. Rather like if I said tell me more about this no downsides and ‘massive’ financial ‘windfall’ you keep ‘banging on’about.
Although the people that do infrastructure stuff talk about billions like it’s nothing, so while they don’t think costs are huge,others who deal with samller amounts might
There is a lot of info on the costs and downsides on the ‘net, particularly in light of the “copenhaganise” thing. Just keep in mind that the guy that kicked that off wants other places to pay for his consulting, so tends to talk up the positive. Others, like economists, environmentalists planners etc have suggested alternative interpretations.

As far as I am aware the costs of doing this are minimal and the benefits huge. You certainly suggested in one of your posts tht the costs would be prohibitive. Maybe if you want to do it overnight but I keep stating its the dutch option – takes a generation.

I really just cannot fathom your opposition.

As far as I am aware the costs of doing this are minimal and the benefits huge. You certainly suggested in one of your posts tht the costs would be prohibitive.

Do you have some numbers of what the costs and benefits are?

I *think* you might be conflating two different but related things I said. Addressing the broader environmental challenges we have will be very expensive and very painful, partly because we have dithered so long that we have to do it in a short time if we are to have any hope.

Its sad that new development isn’t trying to accommodate for cycling as well. Whilst I am not sure of the suitability of redesigning our network, new planning should always consider cycling.

cromolyolly

Member

Huge amounts of the US has very little. Road markings as there are no people,

Yes, the rural areas are like like but there aren’t many users so it isn’t a problem. The busier areas are fine.

It’s almost as if I went on to make the point right after you cropped my post….

It’s almost as if I went on to make the point right after you cropped my post….

I didn’t think it was worth cluttering the thread by copying a lot of the post which was immediately above mine, when all that was required was enough to indicate which part I was referring to. I probably should have put “…..” to make that clear but it’s the internet and I’m not writing a formal document. I thought in fact I was responding to your point.

It’s almost as if I went on to make a point right after youcropped mypost but since its right up there ∆ I can scroll up to it if needed.