I don’t think my local council are quite clued up on this “New Cycling Century” thing – they’re spending £640k on a new cycle path from virtually my back door to halfway between me and Epsom.

They reckon it’s not for the “lycra brigade” but to encourage young and new cyclists to come to Leatherhead to shop by bike!

To achieve this, they’re going to narrow a busy two-lane road.

So – members of the “lycra brigade” 🙄 will use the path anyway to avoid the now more dangerous narrow road, mixing with “new” and “younger” cyclists, having to rejoin the road anyway when the path runs out halfway to Epsom.

Sheeesh…

It’s the typical British thing of building seperate routes (well, not building, usually just signposting existing pavement/road) for ‘experienced’ and ‘less confident’ cyclists.

Rather than build something good, you get a choice between a ‘safe’ route and ‘more direct’ route. Or to put it another way: convoluted and slow or downright dangerous.

Edit: and in this case, as in so many others, the ‘safe’ option doesn’t actually go anywhere. So to stay ‘safe’ you’ll be advised to follow the “Cyclists Dismount” sign and walk the second half of your journey.

This one will simply run alongside the road, using existing pavement plus extra, built-on width.

Why couldn’t they just widen the road and put in a “CS” highway a la Boris? It would make cycling safer and cost a fraction of the money, plus making it easy to extend it all the way to the next town.

Ah yes. Something similar near me (but on a smaller scale). MaccyDs and Costa got granted permission to build on a burned out chinese restaurant, but one of the conditions was that they had to build a cycle path connecting my village to the site/existing cycle track to the next village and a bridge over the dual carriageway.

Christ knows where they are going to put this cycle track. The road is dangerously narrow as it is for cyclists and the HGVs that use it to miss traffic on the larger trunk road go past close enough to blow you into the hedge. They can’t put it on the verge because there’s no verge really and area behind that is arable.

I can strongly believe that they will get out of doing anything because it will be too expensive/difficult and the council will just roll over for them.

Why couldn’t they just widen the road and put in a “CS” highway a la Boris? It would make cycling safer and cost a fraction of the money, plus making it easy to extend it all the way to the next town

The CSs where people keep dying because big chunks of it give absolutely no protection from, and even force you to share space with, motor vehicles?

Doesn’t look very safe to me!

… with a separator barrier…

… away from people pulling into or out of them for parking…

Maybe elevated cycle pathways would work. Put them above footways and cyclists would have a place where they were safe from cars.

… with a separator barrier…

Yep! 😀

There’s a lovely quiet rural B road between Abergavenny and Usk that has a white line painted on it as a cycle lane.

Not only is the leftover road not really wide enough for cars anyway, but the road is very quiet as there is a dual carriageway option for cars and it’s perfect for cycling on just as it is. What a waste of paint. And, the line just marks out the exact same spot you’d be cycling in anyway even if it wasn’t there.

Even in places like Holland where cycle paths are good you won’t want to go for a lycra clad road ride on them. They are full of slow people and junctions etc.

Road cycling is for the countryside.

Cycle lanes are about utility, separation from traffic, not speed. granted ours are crap at this but we shouldn’t critisise them because they will have slow cyclists on them.

jfletch:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wD1qqqO4fx0[/video]

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JjPI2IMpefM[/video]

A38 Approaching Tewkesbury

Decent path, but it goes from basically nowhere to finish just before you get somewhere?