Comments on: Poll: Share the road or separate?

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:55:56 +0000

MOre and more cyclists are being killed every year because of wreckless drivers colliding with them. With the recent snow that britain has had there are more pot – holes than ever, cyclists swerve out to avoid these pot holes and are being hit by drivers, some even lost their lives due to this so i think that that cycling lanes should be created.

By: Ali

Ali — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:21:43 +0000

Good article from John Franklin on cycle lanes:
http://www.cyclecraft.co.uk/digest/cfi_jaf.pdf

By: Chris B

Chris B — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:07:34 +0000

Cycle lanes are 2 to 3 times as dangerous as riding on the highway (John Franklin and others) because, as has been pointed out, most collisions happen at junctions and all cycle lanes do is create more junctions and/or put cyclists at a position where motorists don’t expect to see a cyclist. We have to lobby for a change in the law (the EU directive) which makes motorists automatically liable when they hit pedestrians or cyclists. This would make the motorist drive more intelligently (a hard task I know!) and give respect to vulnerable road users. The CTC campaign “safety in numbers” is also helpful, but will gain momentum only if new cyclists are confident about riding with other traffic, so, I suppose, more cycle training will help.

By: Joby

Joby — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:21:11 +0000

Having just come back from cycling along Route 5 in North Wales – if all cycle routes / paths / lanes can be made to this standard, I’d be more than happy to stay segregated.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:24:28 +0000

Matt – “I’d argue that’s a problem with that specific path, rather than all bike paths”

I didn’t choose the example path though

My point was that this path is particularly bad, but all segregated routes do is segregate BETWEEN junctions. At the junctions they dump cyclists in odd positions relative to the traffic. The Tavistock Rd path is in fact trying to remedy this (the staggered nature of the junction really doesn’t help, cf Drayton Park/Holloway Road Junction)

You are segregated until you get to the place where the most accidents occur – the junction. So why bother segregating?

Oh my god – am I actually arguing for non-mandatory cycle lanes? Oops.

By: George

George — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:03:23 +0000

I voted against because
1. They tend not to go the most direct (and on a bike, I want to minimise distance, to get to my destination quickly)
2. They tend not to have a lot of room, it can be hard to pass other cyclists.
3. They fill up with rubbish. Road sweepers can’t get down them.

By: Adam Edwards

Adam Edwards — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:55:02 +0000

The more cycle lanes the better and if that means losing road space for cars, so be it. Why are planners obsessed with maintaining space for an unsustainable form of transport?

Interesting to see the way Paris is taking three lanes in each direction boulevards and changing them to one lane for bikes, one lane for buses and one lane for cars. There’s an example just out site the Gare du Nord.

This could be applied to quite a number of the major routes into London. It would be far more effective at getting people out of cars on to buses (which would be a lot faster) than the congestion charge. Imagine how much nicer Kingsway or Regent Street could be.

I suspect not everyone will agree!

Adam

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:02:49 +0000

Best to learn to share safely on the narrow, by in large, London Streets as others have said. Any new super highways etc though should cater for cyclists in separate ways. It will be interesting to see development around my part of East London. I live a short distance from the Olympic Park to be!

By: Andreas

Andreas — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:22:24 +0000

reverent, the number of crap cycle lanes websites are a testament to the bad upkeep of cycle paths. I think that is a big problem with London’s design. Having become so built up and so centred on cars its hard now to start switching things over to cyclists. Doing so will unfortunately largely be at the expense of car drivers. Whether it should negatively effect them or not is another massive argument entirely.

By: thereverent

thereverent — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:01:32 +0000

I prefer intergaration on most roads. I find where the upkeep of segregated cyclepaths very poor and they too often are badly designed. There are too many roads that are not wide enough for segregation and so I would rather drivers were use to cyclists sharing the road with them.

Also the issue with a bad cyclepath means that drivers think that no cyclist should be on the road at that point.
I was at Vauxhall cross not long ago and watched as a driver drove inches behind a cyclist hooting his horn and pointing at the cycle path. The cyclist had come from a direction where there was no cycle path and couldn’t get on to the one being pointed at because there was no dropped curb.