You are reading a single comment by @dancing james and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
Really well put, and I grudgingly have to agree. Yes I want more people cycling and if infrastructure facilitates this it's great. I'd just like other road users to understand that I am not obliged to use it and that some of it is dangerous and poorly designed.
dancing james-
The kind of road-users that want you out of 'their' carriage-way, and into the bike lane are likely to be the same kind of people that shouted at Klaus Bondam (former deputy Mayor for Transport of CPH and current chief of the Danish Cycling Union) & I to get off the road when he was here 2 years ago. Presence of infra, decent or not, will not make a jot of difference to these knuckle-draggers.
Buffalo_Bill
I wrote this, which is sort of aimed at a typical forumenger:
https://buffalobillbikeblog.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/boris-new-bike-lanes-are-not-for-me/
It's quite long, so here's the last 3 paras:
"Because I now get it. I get that if I want to see a civilised, cycling city in my lifetime, ordinary people, people who would otherwise drive to the shops, or to the school with the kids, or get the bus or the train to work, need to feel safe on their bikes on the road, which they do not now. They need to feel that there is a safe space in which to cycle. Training alone will not do it. I have lost count of the number of times that I have heard friends & acquaintances say something like, I’d like to ride, but I just don’t feel safe, or, I used to ride but stopped after I was (nearly) knocked off by a bus / lorry / car.
Under Boris’ leadership, Andrew Gilligan and his team have made a great start. I know that all of the roadworks have been a pain, although there have been one or two upsides: we all immensely enjoyed Nigel Lawson’s assertion “that [the cycle lane construction program] has done more damage, and is doing more damage, to London than almost anything since the Blitz”. But it’s only a start.
If we aren’t careful, this summer will mark the high-water mark of cycling advocacy in London. At TfL the bus is king, and all this cycle-lane stuff has been, in their view, a bit of a distraction, and a bit of a waste of money, but, hey, now the box marked ‘cycling’ has been ticked, they’ll be able to get back to the real world of buses and trains. Also, cuts to funding are looming, and that will mean it is likely to get a lot harder to get any money spent on cycling, never mind increasing it.
Cycling in London has momentum. After several years of flat-lining, modal share has started to nose up again in the last couple of years. The new lanes will surely accelerate the upward trend. But the job’s only just begun. And if we don’t carry on pushing, the vocal but statistically small anti-cycling caucus will get the airtime and the audience, and cycling will be pushed back to the margins from where it is now, virtually centre-stage in London politics."