TFL Cycle Superhighways

(I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop for NOT riding on the thin blue lane on the way to the launch event )

Talk about picking someone at random ...

Encountered this beast of a lorry parked nicely on both lanes - Cable st.

well, it is inside the yellow lines

Boycott them and ride properly, in the main part of the road. Overtake on the outside. Be strong. Buy our products. Phone your mum.

unless it's cheap HIV+ hookers and blended whiskey i won't be strong nor buy it.

Anyone know for how long the Barclays sponsor deal lasts and how much they pay?

Will the lanes all have to be painted a new colour if for example the sponsor changes to Virgin or Coca Cola in the future?

Phone your mum.

This.

I miss my mum.

I just discovered today that there are tipper that regularly use the cycle superhighway at southwark
Can't be good.

Out of interest is anyone going to try to tell off vehicles using the blue lanes?

My head cam annoyingly ran out of battery before I caught up with ed and multi this morning, but the cam on the back has lovely film of a cab driving on the superhighway for about two minutes... After I passed them and just before I over took short fat max crowe. That's surely longer than is acceptable?

Out of interest is anyone going to try to tell off vehicles using the blue lanes?

I'm always feeling that has never been the case, even in rush hours and on fully painted Smurfway, there's *always (and I meant always) going to be a motorised vehicle parked there.

*they were parked on that red box that allowed car parking.

Frankly, if it going to be a 'superhighway', it should impose a no parking rules on all of the road at all time to make it work, it'd be like letting cars parked on the M25.

It's probably a wrong thread, but can't cope with the cycling lanes on Eastway. It was crap before, but now it's worse.

Those are shared use paths for cyclists and pedestrians. I can't squeeze through with a trailer. Few spots have signposts strategically slapped right in the middle with signs mounted so low, that you have to dismount...

It's hardly an improvement!

(sorry for the rotated pictures - they're ok on my computer and were rotated again by the website's software - tilt your monitors)

http://i31.tinypic.com/ixe002.jpg[
http://i31.tinypic.com/bdwcpc.jpg
http://i25.tinypic.com/21l4cj8.jpg

OK this is a good one. The photo below is of some 'works' (read: bone idles?) on the junction of Union St and Southwark Bridge Road. The blue lane here was put in months ago, then dug up about 4 weeks ago, at a guess. I ride through here every day. This work has effectively shut the road there, though many cyclists were using the little bit of walkway to squeeze round. But basically shut the road. For ages. I saw people working there for a couple of days, then nothing. No-one. Ever. For weeks.

A photo similar to this was printed in the Standard yesterday, to coincide with the launch of the SuperduperBarclaySmurfway.

This morning the works were, miraculously, done, filled in, and some new blue termac laid all lovely, and the side road now open again.

Amazing, the power of the tabloids.

Awesome!

Boris will be officially opening these at 08.30 on Monday by Clapham Common opposite Narbonne Avenue. Just in case you, you know, wanted a word.

This has to be someone from Boris's office?^ I once hollered at him a few years back at Bloombury Sq, when he was just a hack I think, 'Oi Bozzer get some lights!'. Now someone called the BozBoz is a member of the forum?

the beeb has weighted in with a decent, cyclist-oriented article that seems a little cycnical as to the benefits. The comments are even moreso....

big up to Lucas and Raymondo for their sizable commutes. forumengers perhaps?

BozBoz is Boris

Spotted him this morning crossing London bridge (before 9 this time, Veevee!), I think he always has the same young looking bloke cycling just behind him...

And he's always at the front of a nodder peleton, are they afraid to pass him or something?

Hoping he drops something expensive..

... like a really well-fed posh food fart?

A photo similar to this was printed in the Standard yesterday, to coincide with the launch of the SuperduperBarclaySmurfway.

This morning the works were, miraculously, done, filled in, and some new blue termac laid all lovely, and the side road now open again.

Amazing, the power of the tabloids.

A lot of work was done over the week-end. I rode the whole of CSH 7 on Friday evening and there were at least six or seven crews out.

Yes. But this was fixed last night. After the Standard printed the picture. If they were that bothered about road works, they would have had it sorted weeks ago. It's only because of some PR decision that something was done.

I don't quite buy the whole notion that it only get fixed in the weekend, if that's possible, why not in the weekday? everything already been condoned off, tools and material are there already, why does it take weeks for it to get repaired causing a lots more congestion that way?

also the Smurfway get smurfed in the middle of the night, almost every night I think.

Ah is that why it always smells of chemicals!

Quite a good piece by Gilligan in yesterday's Torygraph:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100047776/how-to-make-the-cycle-superhighways-less-pointless/

Of course the comments descend into hilarity and road tax almost immediately, but there's a wicked slapdown, Telegraph stylee:

Your comments are so universally ignorant as to not be worthy of individual response. You're just wrong. I can tell from your silly comments that I earn much more than you, which means that I pay more towards the roads than you. I am also fully insured. This, combined with my driving licence means that you shoud take your silly car and silly ideas elsewhere and get out of my way.

I know that cycle-activist ideologues hate segregation, and cleave to the proposition that we must seize the main roads. But despite rises, cycle use in London – about 2-3 per cent of journeys – remains very low. Having cycled in many northern European cities which enjoy cycling rates in the 20s and 30s of percent, I am sure that the key difference from us is the vastly greater number of segregated bike lanes.

quoted from Gilligan. This has been my experience too, even in -10c you often see grandma riding to the shops. But I don't see how a decent network of segregated cycle lanes could be implemented in London as the street are far more narrow.

Ah is that why it always smells of chemicals!

yep, it's a lots worse when I ride home in the middle of the night, quite overwhelming at time.

Boycott them and ride properly, in the main part of the road. Overtake on the outside. Be strong. Buy our products. Phone your mum.

+1.