If you support segregated cycling infrastructure in Hackney

I'm confused. Our roads and coffee are, mostly, shit.

There are a variety of tools in the box to encourage mass, safer cycling

The nice thing about building stuff is that a) it's cheap,
b) it's quick and c) it's really easy to tell if it's working - or not, and is easy to change.

You can't deny that there is too much of both, tho

I'm going to disagree with you about the coffee, there's a lot of good coffee about. However, quality was irrelevant to the point, it was the experience of the cafe culture that was the object of the comparison.

As for building stuff, particularly roads and transport infrastructure, is that it isn't cheap and it isn't quick. It may look like that from the point of access but going through the scoping, tendering, design, planning, consultation and early implementation stages are both costly and long-winded. This is the reason we don't just whack stuff in and see what happens and then play about with it later. And we absolutely shouldn't. That, if anything, is the lesson that the whole country should be leaning from the tragic fiasco that was, and in some ways still is, Blackfriars Bridge.

It should be remembered that a city like Amsterdam is an 'inside out' city, i.e. much more of the big commercial buildings etc are built on the outskirts while the centre is to a much greater extent residential and historical buildings etc (because of the limitations on building on unstable foundations). That makes the centre far quieter in terms of traffic than other cities and contributes hugely to making it a possible to have the infrastructure they have.

Why not just pick 'a' way that works. It needn't be either/or.

It's also very visible. Handy for convincing people that something substantial is happening, when it isn't.

Well I pick the Dutch way as it blatantly is the best.

As I see it, what we call 'cycling infrastructure' is a public realm equivalent of the kind of shit 'foreign' food turned out by British chefs in the 1970s. It understands that other practices exist, but filters them entirely through the lens of our own concept of public spaces.

It will likely never work in London, as a solution, because London does not function in the same way Amsterdam does. This is what frustrates me about the perennial 'BUT HOLLAND THO' argument of some activists. It's not pragmatic and ultimately it distracts attention from the most important issue - that people drive poorly, selfishly and without any sense of responsibility to other road users.

Of course if you can build completely from scratch, as happened in a few og the 50s - 70s new towns, you can build a very high quality entirely segregated network. That's probably closer to Dutch practice, but as I've said above is unlikely to work in London.

That's a rather basic way of looking at it

You seem a little entrenched there.

Unfortunately the entirely segregated networks I mentioned above tend to be very lightly used as they have two problems:

1. Local authorities do not have the cash to maintain them in our periodic cycles of throttling public sector budgets

2. The British just fucking love getting into their cars to drive half a mile

From personal experience and from the numbers cycling in the Netherlands is a joy, it's an argument the vehiculists have lost.

Modal share in Dutch towns and cities in 10x that in the uk. Regional segregated routes mean you can cycle across the whole country in peace and ease.

The coffee thing was kind of a joke. And it depends on what you class as good coffee :) I would imagine that if you just look at the pure amount of good coffee sold then yes - it is 'a lot' in the same way that 'a lot' of water is drunk each day and a 'a lot' of apples are eaten etc etc. The reality though is that if you don't class a coffee from the usual suspects / hotels /
Pubs etc as good, and you look at the amount of 'bad' coffee drunk in the UK vs 'good' you will see that most - as I wrote before - is ducking shite,
Which doesn't preclude some of it being good. Of course the grounds and or beans might have been 'good' to start with - I suspect most of it is ruined by poor technique and badly maintained equipment.

In the same way, if you look at the cost of building something in isolation it looks pretty bloody pricey, but if you then compare it with, say, the cost and time required to change the driving habits and sense of entitlement of an entire nation or super city, an effort that would need to be maintained for a period of time and intensity, getting permission and smashing some concrete around starts to look like not such a bad idea.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't try both, concurrently which is what I would like, I just suspect the permenance of concrete and it's ease of manipulation will trump the cash return of asking the dominant species to play nice, and convincing the authorities that there's value in it for them to correct that behaviour by punishment if asking nicely doesn't work.

What is the substantial thing you want to see?

Better cycling conditions in London.

As opposed to 'perceived safety' based infrastructure that may encourage take up of cycling, and provide political ballast, but not much else.

Nescafé instant is as good as any coffee. All other opinion on this is HOKUM. @spotter and @Fox would agree.

In Spain they had concerted adverts about how much clearance to give cyclists, a law about the safe distance and strict liability.

It's similar to changing perceptions about drink driving, people used to think it was ok, maybe others were too intoxicated after a couple of pints, but, you know, they were better than that and it was fine for them to do it. These days drunk driving is no longer socially acceptable and if caught for it people generally accept that the person who has been caught should lose their license and accept the punishment.

What is it that puts people off cycling? It's the risk from other road users, especially people who drive inconsiderately.

Make it a legal requirement for people to give cyclists adequate clearance, educate them of this change in the law and the potential consequences for flouting the law, and then fucking well enforce the law. This is what happened with drink driving.

You still don't seem to be getting the point I was making about coffee but it doesn't seem worth labouring the point any further.

However, as you're making a pretty clear assertion, I am going to have to ask for your comparative sources of data on the cost of building vs. the cost of engineering behavioural change. I'm quite interested to see this.

^^but Holland...

Just in case one of the segregationists chimes in.

... and where we fell down colossally with the use of hand-held devices.

What we did not do was build wider roads so drunk drivers could swerve around more safely.

Whole heartily

In Spain they had concerted adverts about how much clearance to give cyclists, a law about the safe distance and strict liability.

Cool. What was the cost, how was success measured, and how do they know it worked? I'm not saying it did not work, I just suspect that if you pick in to it you will find that being really, really sure that attitudes were changed and cycling became better is pretty tough to measure and conclude with a degree of certainty.

I would also claim the 'but spain tho' argument, and try to point out that spain has more roads than us, and more space, in the same way that France does, meaning drivers get to see cyclists less and are less pissed when they get mildly inconvenienced by them. It doesn't stop them from being douchebags though - even in Morzine yesterday I was close passed and pooped myself a little bit. To me, cycling is pretty shit everywhere, unless there are very few drivers or I am separated from them.

Drink driving is a good one because you are right - it's not as common as it once was. Well, that's the perception, anyway, and unless I see some data that's credible stating the opposite I'm happy with that. It's also really interesting in that NOBODY thinks drink driving is a good idea, even the people that do it, because there's a good chance that they might die, or even kill someone else, even in another car - even the drivers are threatened. Socially engineering change isn't that tough when everyone agrees with you.

You could argue that generally slowing down and being more attentive is a good idea and will benefit everyone - it does - but I suspect people don't think they need to slow down or need to be more attentive, because if these bloody cyclists just fucked off everything would be OK.

Re-read my post - I don't need to understand your coffee thing. I'm just pointing out to you that just saying 'building stuff is expensive' is not an argument when you don't know the costs of engineering mass social change.

Or do you? In which case I look forward to your data :)

So anecdote and extrapolation then?

You should probably have finished with "End of" to make sure that everyone knows that you have won.