What is cycle proofing?

Average cost of an RTA in London is £65,000 to the various emergency services, what does it cost to arrest and ban someone before they knock someone over?

I'm not saying that you're wrong. Just that you're coming at the problem from a logical holistic POV.

None of which really seems to apply to public policy.

Pretty much every cycle path in this country is rubbish - why make more?

This is probably one of the most significant points made in this thread so far

^^^ Right but who's budget does that come out of/go into?

Enforcing the rules of the road should/could be self-financing, as we've already invested hundreds of millions over the years in creating the infrastructure. It just needs to be turned on and used.

The biggest problem is getting the politicians to activate it, as its an election loser, thus none will bring it up.

+1 to hippy's initial post

I was thinking about this at lunch (thrilling detail that eh?), as I walked around London watching the various traffic offences committed by the majority of vehicles.

Before embarking on shared use, segregated paths, different light phasing, etc etc why don't we try enforcing the current rules and regulations?

Oliver mentioned this the other day- it seems that in the UK we simply don't have any enforcement of traffic regs- that which we do have tends to either be focussed on a specific junction for a couple of mornings, or done via camera and therefore long after the fact.

Before we introduce strict liability why not introduce strict enforcement - if someone has managed to tot up 12 points on one journey by driving with no regards to speed limits, bus lanes, ASL's etc then lets get them banned for 2 years with a compulsory re-test before they get a licence again.

They (the driver and the magistrate) will wet the bed by pleading 'hardship'. We are in the same loop that we've been in for the last 7 years. Until the utterly horrible happens to someone with the power to make change forget it.
The idea of the motoring populous accepting liability until proven otherwise is currently laughable.

^^^ Right but who's budget does that come out of/go into?

If you ask the police to do it it then it either increases their budget or they have to take money from somewhere else.

As for making driving more expensive. It's is a pretty narrow minded attitude. Driving is already incredibly expensive; passing your test, insuring your first car, purchase, general running costs, etc. Lots of people actually need their cars, so penalising those people hardly seems fair and are you only going to apply that to people in places like Stevenage?

Plus I echo Dammit's point about reinforcing a them and us.

TBF Hugo, despite what you think of the expense driving is still (heavily) subsidised by those that do not drive.

Before we introduce strict liability

If this refers to my post I would like to make it clear that I am not suggesting strict liability, just something along the lines of: a motorist would have to show some evidence that he was not at fault.

Just move a little bit away from a mere balance of probabilities in civil actions (that is, for example, negligence).

I think the main benefit to us would arise from the propaganda element (which would need frequent advertising).

As to enforcing regulations, I believe the last Labour government created over 3,000 new criminal offences, but we now have less enforcement than ever.

The hardship thing needs to be examined, and essentially the bar re-set.

If it is true that someone simply cannot function (as in: cannot feed themselves) without a car, then fine.

If they have to get up two hours earlier than they are used to in order that they cycle to a train station, then fuck'em.

Stephen Hammond's latest wheeze, to be implemented this autumn following consultation. I don't know who he'll be consulting with - probably not Chris Boardman:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/driver-training-exemption-set-to-cut-costs-and-bureaucracy

^^NO fuck you, if you drive in a manner that consistently endangers innocent parties sharing the road.

TBF Hugo, despite what you think of the expense driving is still (heavily) subsidised by those that do not drive.

I assume you're referring mainly to road / infrastructure maintenance? If not what? (I'm curious)

I agree with you in part, but a lot of that is to facilitate transport for business, goods, etc. so if even if you don't drive you benefit. Regardless, lots of us subsidise lots of things - especially if you're under 35 without children. That's just life.

I just dislike the premise that driving is always some sort of extravagant actively that is always wasteful and needs to be punished without options being put forward. Realistically what are the alternatives if you've got say 3 kids and you live outside of a major city in the 'burbs with no decent sized shops around what do you do?

It's easy for me to say people should drive less because I've got about 12 cornershops, 2 sainsburys, a tesco, and a lidl within 10mins walk as well as a tube, train, and a ton of buses. When I do drive it is predominantly a leisure/potentially extravagant actively - going away for the weekend, holiday etc. So increasing costs further would have a relatively small impact on me because my use is low. For others, especially at a time when real inflation is rocketing it makes life a lot harder.

I'm merely pointing out, they don't cover their costs.

Fair enough.

'Cycle proofing' is just another attempt at a label of what needs to be done to general highway engineering practice. They get 'invented' all the time. From trusty old 'cycle-friendly' to 'cycle-sensitive' to 'cyclised' ... people often try to put their finger on what makes a street 'suitable for cycling'. Chris here is probably just trying to use his public persona to communicate something like this in simple terms. It's a neverending effort--there'll be another couple of dozen videos like this before you can say 'boo'.

The truth is that, while it's not rocket science, it's pretty fiddly and detailed work to criticise traffic schemes designed by people who don't have cycle traffic in mind. Most inexperienced campaigners just go for the old 'stick cycle specifics everywhere' strategy because it makes them feel as if they don't have to engage with any of the detail.

Rules of thumb include, first of all, the planning context (don't plan low-density, windswept, desolate cityscapes with large distances built in--build intimate, relatively dense, compact cities with an evenly-distributed network of centres and a vibrant local economy that thrives on lots of bike traffic and employs many people on and around bikes), don't create an extensive secondary network for long-distance travel (shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted here, obviously), keep the primary network's integrity in the sense that the same rules should apply everywhere, i.e. no one-way streets, keep it simple (no roundabouts or hugely complex junctions or excessively multi-lane roads with wriggly lane layouts), make nearside lanes quite wide so that they are easier to share, especially in the UK, where most urban streets tend to be one lane each way, etc.

In practice, much of this is being done in the London Borough of Hackney--see this chart for a timeline of modal shift 1991-2011.

Other policy measures that have been mentioned in the thread include 20mph, enforcement, stricter liability (burden of proof on the motorist that they didn't injure or kill a cyclist rather than on the most likely victim (who will often be incapacitated in the event of a collision and incapable of finding witnesses etc.), controlled car parking, lots of cycle parking everywhere, modal filtering, and so forth.

Most of all, aim for making cycling normal, i.e. don't constantly give people the impression that it's 'dangerous' (which it isn't, but by all means work on road danger reduction, of course) or set up other artificial barriers to cycling. Make it as inclusive as possible. Create a cycling culture which is contained in people's (civic) identity. This will gather momentum (people will tell their friends/monkey see, monkey do) and take up a larger and larger proportion of the economy.

As for actively working on making driving unattractive, that isn't really necessary if you make cycling more attractive/appropriate and change some conditions. For instance, many people have to commute fifty miles or so.

Motorway - The Kinks 1972 - YouTube

Almost nobody, except for tricitybendix, will do that sort of commute on a bike. There's no point in making driving less attractive to make people take other modes, as building railways is very expensive and impossible to do to every door and cycling just isn't quick enough. (Electric bikes will somewhat increase distance assumptions, however.) The job needs to come closer to where people live (or they need to move). Once certain conditions (shortish trip distances and much of the above) are in place, people will cycle, as almost anybody enjoys cycling.

As Patrick Field sometimes says, it should be the default non-walking mode of transport. Any environment that doesnt' facilitate this needs to change.

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BTW, don't fall for the traditional false dichotomies in cycle campaigning. They only divide people and make cycle campaigning less effective. There can be very useful cycle-specific tracks but given the complexity of what needs to be done, cycle specificity is only one tool among many--there is no magic wand. It takes people a while to learn how to apply all the tools, though.

You can take the road train out of Australia but you can't take Australia out of the road train.

True, true.

Thanks for taking the time to define this Oliver.
I suppose on the point regarding making driving less attractive. I agree that 50 mile trips where necessary need to be doable comfortably on a car. Driving trips which can be replaced buy benign modes such as to school, the local shops, short commutes should be harder, less convenient to do in a car (So not allowing any parking around local schools would support this)

What a terrible idea. Mother of three drops off kid 1 to school but now has to park a 15 minute walk from school so has to put kids 2 and 3 in a pram to walk kid 1 there. Why?

Or
Mother of three rides with 1 kid to school carrying 2 and 3 in a Bike trailer or this:

Kids should be thrown out the front door and made to walk everywhere. Sorted.

Or
Mother of three rides with 1 kid to school carrying 2 and 3 in a Bike trailer

This is quite a narrow view of the world.

This is quite a narrow view of the world.

Perhaps a narrow view of what is likely in the UK. Elsewhere in the world, in some places, what I described is normal

Kids should be thrown out the front door and made to walk everywhere. Sorted.

This is what i had to do as a kid, not sure why it isn't considered a valid option these days

Is it to do with all them paedos on the internet?

Yeah, but once those fuckwits in gubbmint block all that porn from the kiddies they'll be safe to walk outside alone again, right?

I think that the idea of trying to make driving more unpleasant (it's already deeply unpleasant at rush hour) both distracts from what should be the goal (making cycling better) and creates un-need antagonism - there is already plenty of that.

With regards to the mother of three situation- a car can be purchased for less than a Kristiana type cargo bike, a car can also be stored on the street with a reasonable assumption that it will still be there the next morning.

Finally, whilst fine for somewhere pancake flat, if you issued a "normal" mother of three with a cargo bike to transport her kids with in (for example) Forest Hill, then you are going to see a family in a taxi every morning.