British Cycling unveils 10-point manifesto urging government to #ChooseCycling

Yes we can change political attitudes to cycling. The Netherlands does not have such good cycling infrastructure or high cycle usage rates by magic. People got onto the streets and protested. We'll get the same facilities when we start fighting for them in the same way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o

nowasps wrote:

Selling off the NHS is what the government have in mind. The physical health of the nation is not their concern.

Interesting comment. Who's going to buy a free at the point of use healthcare system that costs the taxpayer £96 bn a year and employs 1.35m people?

I've been around a while now and lived through 11 Prime Ministers. Every single year since 1947 the NHS budget has gone up by more than inflation.

95% + of the UK population regard a free at the point of use Health Service as a good thing and it has massive overwhelming support for that model of health care. It's got so much support in fact that it is very difficult to introduce changes that match technology, usage and demographics. It's massive popularity makes it difficult to manage.

For example in 1947 accident and emergency was very basic. It wasn't really specialist at all. It was advanced first aid. If you had major injuries from say a car crash your chances of survival were pretty poor. Transportation was not so quick either. So it made sense to locate lots of small A&E departments all over the place.

Nowadays it's a specialist field. If you are alive and can stay that way for an hour with the help of paramedics you stand a really good chance of living. But this specialism means that it makes sense to locate fewer but more highly specialised, centres at strategic locations ie fully equipped and with highly specialised clinical practiotioners.

But just try and shut down one of the old smaller A&E departments and a whole shit storm erupts about people getting a worse service longer transport times etc.

This is the politics of the NHS. Even when service is improving (and it is all the time) and budgets are going up (and they are all the time). Even when 95% + support the NHS (which means almost all Tories do as well) And even when the Government is a coalition and the Tories would need lib dem support to sell off the NHS. There is still someone out there saying it's all being sold off.

If IF the Tories were going to sell off the NHS they would have done it between 1983 and 1992. That's when they had a three figure majority for both Parliaments 83 and 87.

The NHS budgets went up in those years too. Not even a blip.

And you think they've waited all this time to try it now in a coalition?

What have you been smoking?

levermonkey wrote:

How about?
11, Where a cycle track crosses a side road then any cyclist on the cycle track must have protected right of way in the same way that a pedestrian does.

Number 11 so much. When I am asked why I don't use the off-road (on-pavenment) cycle lane, this is the biggest reason why. A clsoe second is the over-abundance of street furniture (bus-stops, lamp posts, sign-posts etc.).

levermonkey wrote:

How about?
10a, Where it is impossible of impractical to physically separate motorised transport and vulnerable road users in an urban environment then steps must be taken to reduce or remove the threat posed by motorised transport.
i.e. Reduction of speed limit to 20mph or banning of motorised transport.

11, Where a cycle track crosses a side road then any cyclist on the cycle track must have protected right of way in the same way that a pedestrian does.

Sorry but no. You have to make cycling safer or should I say feel safer on ordinary roads. If you just separate cyclists from traffic at every opportunity all you do is reinforce the message that roads aren't safe or the right place for cyclists and you encourage motorists to regard the road as generally being free of vulnerable road users.

There are some places where it would be good to separate cyclists and motorised transport. But that isn't the answer to everything. Motorists (and I am one of them as well) need to learn to be safer around cyclists. It's not hard skill wise. There's very few special tricks. Most of the time it just requires a change of attitude and overall behaviour to being a bit calmer and a bit more patient.

In most cases that doesn't even increase overall travel time. You'd be amazed the number of people that argues that they cab beat the average speed of traffic.

I remember whenmy wife and I were first living together back in the early 90s. We used to share my car to work and I'd drop her off at work. She used to get really irritated by my "slow driving" and how long it took. All I was doing was leaving a sensible gap and not speeding along to get to the back of the next traffic queue.

So I used the stopwatch to time it over a month she drove one day and me another. Virtually identical times and identical average times. She couldn't believe it. It just felt slow to her.

That's what you are up against. The people that think you are holding them up or in the way. Just this morning I am approaching a line of stationary traffic. Signalling right and have just taken the lane because in 75m I am going to be overtaking a long line of stationary traffic. And there's a Nissan Micra overtaking me on the wrong side of the road to get to the back of the stationary traffic ahead of me.

I bet if you asked the "lady" driver she was irritated because I was "holding her up". Doesn't dawn on her that either way she's sitting in stationary/slow traffic for the next mile or so and the next time she's likely to see me (if she's going my way) will be about 5 miles up the road.

But in her head she was annoyed I was holding her up.

These are the attitudes we need to change. And I have seen them change a bit. Average speed cameras have a massive impact on motorways for example. Get people to think about their average speeds and journey times as well as the fuel they waste accelerating past the speed limit only to slow down and stop in a queue.

oozaveared wrote:

Sorry but no. You have to make cycling safer or should I say feel safer on ordinary roads. If you just separate cyclists from traffic at every opportunity all you do is reinforce the message that roads aren't safe or the right place for cyclists and you encourage motorists to regard the road as generally being free of vulnerable road users.

And if you think about the difficulty of intertwining two completely "separated"networks everywhere that the existing network goes then it becomes very plausible that the second network is going to have much less coverage. And, this second "separate" network will have normalized the banishment of cyclists from the first.

oozaveared wrote:

In most cases that doesn't even increase overall travel time. You'd be amazed the number of people that argues that they cab beat the average speed of traffic.

Trying to explain the difference between instantaneous velocity versus average speed is not easy. Many people simply believe that you must push as hard as you can at each available moment and then jam on your brakes at the next inevitable hold up.

Ush wrote:

oozaveared wrote:

Sorry but no. You have to make cycling safer or should I say feel safer on ordinary roads. If you just separate cyclists from traffic at every opportunity all you do is reinforce the message that roads aren't safe or the right place for cyclists and you encourage motorists to regard the road as generally being free of vulnerable road users.

And if you think about the difficulty of intertwining two completely "separated"networks everywhere that the existing network goes then it becomes very plausible that the second network is going to have much less coverage. And, this second "separate" network will have normalized the banishment of cyclists from the first.

While it's a laudable ambition to make cycling feel safer on ordinary roads, the main beneficiary of this will be those who already cycle. But the issue is how do you get the majority who don't cycle to do it - and to do it without fear, without huge preparation, and for that to be the case for 5 year-olds starting primary school, or 85 year-olds visiting the day centre? A commitment to properly designed and built segregated facilities in urban and suburban areas will achieve that; combining cycle and motorised traffic will not.

I have no problem mixing it with cars on urban roads for the most part, but I've been riding for years, and I'm a bloke with the usual overdeveloped sense of my own invulnerability. I don't - and don't wish to - extend that sense of invulnerability to my children, I simply want them to be safe and to actually want to get on a bike. If they then want to become enthusiastic cyclists, great, but that's not the aim.

'Cycleproofing' is not about those who ride bikes. It's about those who don't.

This is a discussion that has been going on for quite a long time. I think that the general consensus is the "Dutch" style means adopting degrees of separation that suits the nature of each route and the volume and type of traffic that uses, or is likely to use it. Full separation at one corner of the matrix, shared use and traffic calming at thr other.

At this infant stage of infrastructure development in Britain it's clear that London's Super Highways - separated by no more than paint - were a failure while Bristol's separate cycle and foot paths (particularly the Bristol and Bath Railway Path) have been so successful that they now need widening, extending and duplicating.

Rather than debate the theology and rehearse personal experiences, we are now in a position to take advice from those who have solved the problems, and then use what we know about local conditions to agree on what can be done as funds become available.

We have a great opportunity to do a lot to improve things, with each step bringing new sets of people into everyday cycling for simple journeys. The breakthrough will have come when schools have full cycle storage every day and the school run is frequently done on bikes.

The new national manifesto shares many features with the one that 4,000 Bristolians have already signed up to. IF you haven't seen it it#s worth a look.

http://bristolcyclingmanifesto.org.uk/manifesto/