Cycling in the time of Corona

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https://twitter.com/AngelikiStg/status/1269293590670426115?s=19

Great to see people enjoying their weekend again, no need for them to aimlessly wander around the nice parts of the city anymore.

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Few laps of Ricmond park of an evening ? Quiet enough not to be annoying or best avoided at all costs..

can't do proper laps yet unless you're under 12

^ you're

Does anyone else feel that this would be the perfect time to make Richmond Park car free for good?

At the very least, single file & one way.

Absolutely. Don't live in London any more, but it would be so much better. Why on earth do through routes exist, it's mad. Short and direct access to car parks ohh-kaaay, if they must.

Yea, I don't get this. If it has cars driving through it's not a park.

What about Oulton Park?

I'm not sure about car free. It's a big park and there are legitimate reasons to want to drive in and park in the middle (eg families with people with little legs, blue badge holders).

I'd go with ANPR on all the gates. Enter and exit within 45 minutes - £200. 45-90 minutes £5, 90-180 minutes £10 etc. Discounts for blue badge holders staying more than 45 minutes.

A single one-way lane would be a vast improvement, removing it's attractiveness as a rat run.

It will never happen though, eh.

A single one-way lane would be a vast improvement, removing it's attractiveness as a rat run.

Er ... no. Quite the opposite. One-way operation would make everything far, far worse. It would attract much higher volumes of motor traffic and cause a huge increase in crashes. There would then be attempts to remedy this situation by introducing traffic lights everywhere until, decades later, the authorities would still be very reluctant to return one-way systems to two-way, a situation we still have all over London. Seriously, one-way systems have been tried and tested all over and they have massively failed (even by the intentions of those who introduced them).

The main thing to understand about drivers is that, while they may get annoyed about detours like anyone would, the main consideration for them is the time it takes them to get from A to B, and of course their expectation of the time it will take. People who ride bikes are more concerned with the distance they have to cover. I call that time-sensitivity and distance-sensitivity, respectively. That's why one-way systems are so bad for cycling; if people don't have proper permeability ('maximum route choice, minimum diversion'), they will cycle much less. Perhaps you're thinking a little like a cyclist in this instance.

It may be counter-intuitive to think that in a place like Richmond Park the long detours (as a result of its shape) caused by a one-way system would not make it less attractive to drive through. Perhaps it would, at times, but the main effect would be a huge increase in motor traffic capacity (caused by less turning conflict at the junctions), a greater perceived ease of driving (one of the early claims for one-way systems was that it would make everything safer as the operation of junctions in and on the perimeter of the system would be simplified so much; this didn't exactly work out), and, as mentioned, much worse conditions for walking and cycling.

Some people think that with one-way systems you can go for contraflow operation for cycling, but that only really works well in minor streets. The problem points in one-way systems are always the junctions.

So, no, definitely don't go for that, I say. The issue with Richmond Park, as with Regent's Park, is that the former carriage drives, which have been incorporated into the walking-and-cycling-only environments in most other London parks, are still available for driving carriages. This is a difficult thing to manage, as certain carriages, for instance those of the (very few) people who live in Richmond Park, or the tourist buses for London Zoo in Regent's Park, still need to be driven there. In Richmond Park, a permit system is perfectly feasible but would need staff to run it and to prevent tailgating, etc., whereas in Regent's Park off-peak restrictions are certainly possible, as previously mooted, but which also pose problems that need funding to overcome.

With sagas like these, there are always reasons why they've been running for so long.

I think the best suggestion I saw was ANPR which would charge you a fee for exiting at any gate other than the one you came in.

Well, that's just a kind of road user charging. In this instance, I think it would be quite regressive and at any rate there'd be plenty of drivers in this area who could easily afford it. Also, ANPR is really not the future of road user charging. It's a technology that has been available and reliable for some time, and there's a general hiatus while people are trying to work out which system (of many possibilities) to go for, but eventually it'll look very different from the rather cumbersome and infrastructure-heavy stuff we have now. It'll probably remain in certain locations, e.g. around the City, but it's not going to be implemented in Richmond Park.

tl;dr as per

You're a blackguard and a wrong'un and no mistake!

Back to work ride (commute thread?) and left later than would usually this morning... so quiet! 8am would usually have been peak school run hell but more like a quiet Sunday morning. If nothing else vividly illustrated how car dependent (that in this part of the country) people have become, by dint of an (im)perfect Venn of Car Dependence, Car Convenience, To Much Work Stress, Fear of public transport, Total Fail of public transport, Peer pressure SUV small willy envy, etc.
It’s complicated, I’ll admit, if you have to balance all this with lifestyle choices based around ‘wanting it all’ and I have no idea where this little ramble is going... but I (and at least a couple of dozen other cyclists) had a more pleasant experience than would have been the case on a typical Tuesday.
#soonbebacktonormal

Anyone thinking about touring in Belgium now? The country is opening the borders today. I wish there were a direct ferry from Dover though, as France is requiring a 14 day quarantine from UK travelers. Will there be problems catching the ferry to Dunkirk and going straight to the Belgium border?

I'd call the police/gendarmes in Dunkirk/Calais if I were you. I'd guess that if the ferry company will carry you, you're okay but all you need is one person who decides that you're breaching their interpretation of the rules and you're back on the boat.

Edit. Just checked the French consulate website and it says this:

The following people will be exempt from voluntary quarantine, except if they show symptoms:

• people in transit to another country;
  

So book a hotel or campsite over the border to prove you're heading elsewhere.

Technically you're breaching government advice to avoid non-essential travel

Guidelines can do one though. Either make it law or don’t be surprised when people ignore it.

Interesting! Thanks. Looking forward to hearing experiences over the next few weeks.

As the Economy spins back up,
I've noticed that it never occurred to owners of smoke-gushing unserviced diesel vans & cars
to take their pollution-spewing vehicles for a service before venturing back out onto the streets of the Capital.
Those PM10 & PM2.5 figures will be going sky high in the next couple of months.

One of my colleagues wanted to buy a bike online (first timer). Decided to go to a LBS to get a sense of sizing. Lined up for a while and got into the shop and they said they didnt have a single bike left in stock and there was a 2mth wait to get one.

Aligns with my anecdotal experience of seeing way more people out, particularly out in the lanes on weekends.