Lord Foster takes on plans for London SkyCycle with 135 miles of elevated safe cyclist routes

Now if they were proposing a system of giant tubular water slides high across the city, on the other hand..._that_ I might consider paying money to try.

Being elevated, with no "escape route", would simply encourage the sort of orchestrated robberies that are becoming all too common in underpasses and where cycle paths cross bridges in urban areas.

Lord Foster is a clever guy, but he's clearly not streetwise.

Well done Foster for raising the profile of
cycle lanes sky high. Brought to mind Stairway to Heaven by Led Zepplin. Another nice fantasy with a beat.
I'm with street level thinking. More caring on the part of
all road users and cycle safety would improve lots.

“To improve the quality of life for all in London and to encourage a new generation of cyclists we have to make it safe. However, the greatest barrier to segregating cars and cyclists is the physical constraint of London’s streets, where space is at a premium. SkyCycle is a lateral approach to finding space in a congested city.”

There is space on Londons streets, it has just been given over to extra lanes and parking. Most roads have the space to put in segregated cycle lanes. It's the will to do it that has been lacking.
The few very narrow streets (mainly in Soho and the City) should be pedestrian and cycle only.

Skycycle is wrong-headed in so many ways, and was obviously dreamed up by people who have no concept of city or utility cycling and aspire to a life of taxi rides and gyms.

One of the major factors that drives cycling's popularity in London is that it's free. Another is that it's relatively direct and quick. Introduce a cost to use infrastructure that isn't convenient, and you're more likely to repress cycling. After all, the bike hire scheme doubled in price last year and saw an immediate fall-off in membership, and journeys made on it are now falling away.

Just how useful would Skycycle be? Would it appeal to schoolchildren going to their lessons, for example? Could they afford it? What about those who want to make other journeys by bike, the 60 per cent who currently don't because of safety issues?

Everyone on a bike will still need to use surface streets, but by the sound of it these will only become more unwelcoming and motor-vehicle oriented, since proper infrastructure here is much less likely to be deemed necessary. That doesn't bode well for other vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, who already pay a high price for unrestrained through traffic, or pollution levels, either.

Even with more than 200 access ramps (about 21 per route and one every 2/3 mile), Skycycle will be useful for only a fraction of possible journeys. It has an inbuilt inflexibility which means it will appeal mostly to those wanting to travel direct routes across the city and for whom speed is of prime importance.

I envision long sections with no convenient point of entry or departure, so if one has a puncture, or needs to stop to rest or for whatever reason, you instantly become an obstruction and I'm certain there aren't going to be handy pavements or open spaces to step onto. Or if there are, will these be open to regular pedestrians? Will they have to pay, too?

Many ramps will of necessity be quite short with steep, tight curves, making entry a challenge for very young or elderly riders, or those carrying freight by bike. Is it really a good idea to introduce hills which will be encountered only by those travelling under pedal power? Much the same compromise stymied the growth of cycling on Milton Keynes' Redways.

What I like most about cycling in London is that, as well as getting to work quickly, cheaply and conveniently, I can take alternative routes if I want, explore at will, stop at shops, libraries, cafés, meet friends or even clients, and actually see and learn about the city streets I'm travelling through.

With Skycycle, I'd be travelling in what is essentially a tunnel, with adverts obscuring any views, few opportunities to stop and appreciate them and having to back-track to get to where I really want to be, on potentially even more lethal surface streets. It doesn't sound like a positive move for cycling in London. In addition, many of the reported benefits that increased cycling brings to local retail businesses would be lost.

British transport planners stubbornly cling to the view that infrastructure for cycling must be exotic and futuristic (and by extension expensive), and the more it takes bikes off the roads the better.

They'd be better employed taking a look at where safe infrastructure for cycling has successfully been introduced elsewhere, and using their ingenuity to work out how it can be introduced even more successfully here.

@congokid

I suppose if the completely-and-utterly insane 'ringways scheme' of the 1960s was taken sufficiently seriously that it had many real effects before common sense took over and it got cancelled then one can't rule out any form of idiocy from possibly having some bad effect somewhere before it inevitably gets abandoned.

I don't understand why this daft idea has surfaced again after apparently being smacked into touch by the mayor more than a year ago.

Piecycle sorry skycycle may be a future infrastructure feature for london, if ever it happens then it should be free, there needs to be a significant differential between socially desirable and undesirable transport.

However, Piecycle is currently no more than a distraction from more urgent issues with the current london cycle network and no excuse for inadequately addressing them.

Well, it's not entirely bonkers if bits of it are done sensibly. From my point of view, I often look out of the window of the train from Kingston to Waterloo, and I see a long unbroken strip of waste-ground next to the rails that could whisk cyclists from the suburbs to the city if it were to get a cycle path.

The alternative on this route is hilly and with lots of traffic. A cycle path next to the railway lines would be great. It doesn't need any fancy tube technology.

It's not total pie-in-the-sky, it just needs a bit of joined-up thinking to make it happen.

Quote:

Foster, the architect who masterminded the Millennium Bridge and Wembley Stadium,......

The guy certainly has form when it comes to crap infrastructure and projects. You've picked two really good examples.

Millenium Bridge, that was the one that had to be closed after a couple of days, for 2 years of remedial work, because of harmonic vibration problems that caused it to ripple when people walked over it.

Wembley Stadium, Initial cost £440 Million, final cost £980 Million.

Yes, give bikes roads that are removed from the through motor network. Enough of this Boris bonkers stuff please!

Far cheaper to just identify roads across the entire country that could be removed from general motorised use and set them up as cycling only roads to link cities across the UK.

1/ The roads are already there.
2/ Cyclists could easily pay a nominal annual sum to maintain the facilities and promote future investment. I'd happily pay £100 year to have use of such a network.
3/ Cyclists of all abilities and interests could use the space as they wished, meaning you could actually go for a very long ride on essentially protected roads.
4/ Skyborne tubes are cool from a design perspective but that cost is absurd and doesn't offer any rural protection for those of us who want to go cycling in safety.

If the government can (most likely will) push forward with the HS2 project then doing the above should be a walk in the park.

(Couldn't they route wide cycle lanes along the full length of the HS2 route?)

Can you imagine being able to go for a long training ride in complete safety on older roads now free of motorised traffic? Would be fantastic and is actually not that impossible to implement.

So many problems.
So, the basic idea is cycleways above railways (not roads). That runs very quickly into problems. What happens when the railway goes into a tunnel, or even just has an over bridge- even just a station footbridge? In central London itself, where most of the focus is, the railways either terminate or are underground.

The "narrow ancient streets" straw man is duly raised into position. But the narrow streets are generally fine and could be often further improved by restricting through traffic to just bikes- no roadscpace reallocation, segregation needed.

Where the big focus is, where the greatest need for segregation and reallocation is, are the wide multi lane roads- often with three or more lanes in at least one, if not both, directions. The fantasy £6-7billion they're talking here could give a vast swathe of London street level provision that would truly be the envy of the world.

But of course Boris is attracted to this sort of dribbling lunacy.

£55m a mile? For that kind of investment you could make improvements to the existing road network that would give Holland a run for their money. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to learn from what already works in the country with the highest modal share of cycling.

As for the 'London's narrow road network' nonsense, take a drive along the Euston Road, through Vauxhall, Pall Mall or Old Street, and tell me there's no space. We've got space for five lane urban gyratories, but bike lanes need to be at sky level? Ridiculous.

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

So the surface of the planet, which belongs to all of us, is to implictly be reserved for motorists, while cyclists will have to pay a special premium in order to travel anywhere?

How long before they decide that pedestrians also need to be shoved out of the way of the motorist (and charged for the privilege also?).

"Hmmm. Let me see. Car drivers will now realise they DO own the roads, and any cyclists riding the 1/2mile from home to nearest on-ramp will be deemed to be "in the wrong place" and rightfully mown down.

It's attitudes, not infrastructure that needs to change.

Car drivers in general (and I include myself), drive too fast, rely too much on technology and do not pay proper attention when driving, and seem to have this misapprehension that they own the road. If we could beat that out of the system, there would be no need to spend money on cycling infrastructure."
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Absolutely. You do have to have some infrastructural changes for cycling, but they are about taking space from motor traffic on our streets, not sticking us up in the sky.

When it comes to cycling, there's always an excuse for not doing what needs to be done.

This is, to use a Hesjedal-ism, coconuts.

How this crackpot and self-evidently stupid notion has even got this far, I don't know. It's a child's idea, though presumably even a child would recognise some of the problems inherent to it. Textbook Johnson stuff - as with the cockamamie island airport, all he cares about is the press release with his name on it, not the execution of a practical idea.

......but when the oil runs out we'll have a national network of wide asphalt cycleways!

Now let's see...

OK, so opening scene of Blade Runner, the camera pans...what, what, what - is that people on bikes in tubes??!!!

Now, obviously they are recognize that cyclists (in general) are an evolved bunch that need to cruise in the sky above the common car driving neanderthal

* * * * *

OK down to business. Boris, the cars are the problem. Spend the money on a decent tube system. One which you don't have to squash into just to get to work. I think it's illegal to treat animals like that, why is OK for tax paying humans?

The bottom line is it's better to sort this issue out now, before the oil starts to run out.

Have to say that I'm intrigued by this proposal, but am not convinced that segregation such as this is the answer, particularly if you would have to pay to use it (M6 Toll anyone?).

On a related funding note, there does seem to be a glaringly obvious sponsorship opportunity here, the clue being in the name of the scheme itself. That may solve a large part of the problem in getting it off the ground - no pun intended!

Sounds brilliant, just the ticket!

£55 million a mile which will probably end up £100 million. Imagine instead if that money was spent on policing the roads? Ok so we may have to curtail jumping lights but that would be a small price to pay.
The moment drivers or cyclists or even dopey pedestrians see police they become saints, now imagine that all over London.

After ten years you could reduce the number of officers as peoples habits would have changed and far more people would be cycling.
Oh and crime in London would drop dramatically massively improving the quality of life, saving Londoners a fortune and encouraging huge amounts of inward investment.

Will never happen though as there's no money in it for big business.

What a complete and utter load of bollocks.

I can not even imagine what this project would cost but I hope it works out somehow.

Did no-one learn from the 60's where architects talked of 'streets in the sky' which turned into nightmarish, crime ridden council estates with walkways.