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Electric bikes.. but.. my eyes..

http://www.gogobicycles.co.uk/product-category/racer-ebike/

Found abandoned on Finchley Rd this evening (the Raleigh in front..) - name the book on the back carrier and it's yours..

@dancingjames

link to experiments?

@skydancer

everyone makes mistakes from time to time (just some more than others). it is good to organise things so they are not lethal. this has nothing to do with women and men, unless you think it's possible to rape by mistake.

@brokenbetty yes, or perhaps they protect pedestrians by restricting motor traffic movements to narrowly defined through routes and crossing opportunities, leaving the rest of the road for free pedestrian movement. the exact degree of priority and amount of space given to pedestrians is entirely a political decision, and has nothing to do with the benefits of separating traffic of different speed and momentum.

@dancing james... , @edscoble

i am sure drivers would crash into and kill many more people on foot if there were no footways. similarly, protected space on main roads would reduce the number of people on bikes killed and injured. nobody's saying that it'll be prevented entirely...

(and, sure, better law/prosecution will help too. but it doesn't do much for incompetence..)

i am not sure 'ghetto' is an accurate term here, btw. these are protected lanes on main roads. do we talk about the footway as a 'pedestrian ghetto'? or bus lanes as 'bus ghettos'? or the east coast main line as a 'train ghetto'? sometimes it's just safer to separate traffic of different speed/momentum..

multigrooves, vanneau

you can cycle as predictably as you like, be as experienced as you like, wear flashing lights, and still there can be some incompetent driver who drives into you from behind:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/cycle-death-daughter-may-prosecute-driver-9925170.html

exactly. placefaking. the actual (motor) traffic is pretty similar.

Disagree. I cycle both quite regularly. The A5 through Kilburn and the A10 through Dalston Kingsland are pretty similar. The A10 has a bit of added placefaking... but more or less the same levels of motor traffic. Both routes will need protected lanes and junctions to allow cycling by the majority of current non-cyclists.

This is interesting:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2014/dec/11/mass-cycling-social-justice-equalities-case

I guess, you don't find it intimidating, but many other people do?

This is the key issue with cycle campaigning - the people who already cycle are the ones who aren't intimidated - and they're also many of those involved in campaigning. A lot of people tend to think, well, if I can do it, everyone else can - but that's not necessarily true.

Just to note that confidence is not always a good thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxgUr75eCa4

Some very confident cyclists there...

'The idea of segregation being the solution for all cycling problems has been vastly oversold, '

Sorry, by whom? And how? Well-designed protected lanes and junctions make it possible for people who don't dare to cycle on main roads right now to use the fastest, most direct routes. That's pretty important. We also need well-designed crossings of main roads, and traffic removal from minor roads - but there are many place where minor roads just don't go where people want to go..

The narrow section of Kingsland Rd (Hackney's eternal example, ignoring all the other roads in the borough..) is tricky (but not impossible - a central two-way track is one feasible option. not perfect, but nothing will be..), but there are miles and miles of A-road in London where protected lanes are pretty easy to put in place.

About 10% of cyclist deaths in London happen to riders at junctions on routes with separated cycle paths, I find that to be a frighteningly high percentage

Hmm. Are you sure? We have very little properly separated cycle track, so I have doubts. And only a couple of properly separated junctions on these But there are generally about 12-18 deaths a year, so you could easily give a list of specific incidents to back this up (and maybe an account of what happened in each case, so design could be improved..)

Yes. Unfortunately, there are (in the foreseeable future) always going to be roads (often the most direct) with heavy bus traffic (and Hackney council are very very keen on buses. no traffic reduction there..), and there's always going to be deliveries. And it's on those roads that HCC and Hackney Council are saying 'we just can't do protected lanes' where they should be saying 'we maybe can't work out how to do protected lanes everywhere, but we're going to do high quality protected lanes and junctions wherever and whenever we can..'

I'm not sure I know any kerb nerds who deny that cycle training will help people (I am not sure about the evidence on strict liability, though can't see how it would do any harm). All children get cycle training in the Netherlands. I think what they are saying (rightly) is that we need high-quality protection on busy roads and all these other measures. Just one or the other is not enough.

I think key point here is that most of the cycling infrastructure that has already been built is so shit that it's better to avoid it. Infrastructure that's not shit (and that sorts out the junctions, too) is worth having, on busy roads. None of your 'kerb nerds' want shit infrastructure. All of them also want filtered permeability, driver education, strict liability etc - because these will make an effect on the 98% of roads that still won't have infrastructure. Also, irrespective of infrastructure, cycle training becomes more vital as more people cycle. Even with infrastructure, they'll still need to know how to use that 98% of roads without infrastructure safely..

Stepping away from the pro- and anti- protected lanes for a moment.

TfL (which has come up with a few decent designs recently) is about to shit out the biggest most steaming turd of a junction it has designed in years:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/a2-deptford-broadway-deptford-bridge-junction

Please , pro-protection and anti-protection people, unite to respond to the consultation and tell TfL how utterly lousy this design is.

No. Most of what holds people back doesn't seem to be 'psychological'. If you ask people who try cycling and give up, the overwhelming reason appears to be the stress of near misses (this is anecdotal, but there's some formal research ongoing). One can prevent some of these through assertive riding, but one can't control really aggressive drivers, or the incompetent, or inattentive. Cycle training can help somewhat, but in general, the busier the road, the less use it is (because cyclists will encounter higher numbers of vehicles, and more aggressive/incompetent/inattentive drivers - and those drivers will be paying more attention to the motor traffic than to cyclists..).

Nope - I'm replying to Vanneau. Who seems to imply that people asking HCC (which is funded by LCC, and comprised of LCC members) to go along with (democratically established) LCC policy is divisive. It seems to me that, in this context, HCC's refusal to support LCC policy is what's actually divisive..

As for other campaigners. I would presume the majority of campaigners in London are also LCC members. If they want to be effective in influencing policy, non-LCC members will join forces with these. If not, not.

A serious campaign for better driver behaviour is always welcome - and it's needed, because we're unlikely to see protected lanes on more than 1 or 2% of London's road network in the near future. But even better-behaved drivers still make mistakes. Protection on the bits of the network with both heavy bike and heavy hgv traffic is the best way to make sure that those mistakes don't result in death or injury for others.

Nope. My 'we' is all involved in cycling activism in London. Including those who were making noises about divided activists earlier in this thread..

Uh, I've been cycling in London for twenty-odd years. I fully support protected infrastructure, as long as it's done bloody well (ie 2m lanes minimum 2.5 preferably, well maintained, with protection maintained in time or space through junctions.).

I recognise this might make some routes a bit slower for some of the people on this forum (myself included). However, it opens them up to a mass of people who just wouldn't cycle otherwise (and training is good, but doesn't help enough. it's the near-misses that put people off.)..

And, you know what, the joy of the open road in London, forget it. Actually, we're never taking the lane. We're just filtering through 18 inch gaps between stopped buses. It's no fun at all. If someone wants to build me a 2m lane to bypass all that, good on them.

As for disputes within cycling groups - outside Hackney LCC, and this forum, that discussion is over. LCC (centrally) has made a (democratic) decision to back high quality protected lanes and junctions on main roads. If we don't want public division, we should all be backing that democratic decision..

I think they would have much preferred Holland Park Avenue, but that road is owned by the borough, and they won't have been able to push it through. These routes are a TfL enterprise, so much easier to achieve when on TfL roads..

Deadline this Friday for Camden's West End Project consultation. Re-working of Tottenham Court Rd and Gower St, so relevant for all who cycle in Central London.

http://lcc.org.uk/articles/london-cy...st-end-project

http://rachelaldred.org/writing/west...n-core-routes/

http://www.voleospeed.co.uk/2014/07/...d-project.html

a week left to respond to the consultation on camden's west end project:

http://lcc.org.uk/articles/london-cycling-campaign-calls-for-stronger-safety-benefits-from-camdens-west-end-project

http://rachelaldred.org/writing/west-end-project-we-need-space-for-cycling-on-core-routes/

http://www.voleospeed.co.uk/2014/07/more-on-camdens-west-end-project.html

tell camden they need to make it better...