Glasgow to get £6.5m segregated cycle route

What a surprise it's a load of shit, simply depressing. They have no sodding idea, absolutely none and yet people on bikes will get the backlash for these people's cretinous decisions.

The first section was painted and had the barriers removed today, so I used it.

It's awful.

The sections with kerbs are so poorly positioned and barely visible to the extent that you have to think quickly to either avoid hitting the kerb or staying in the main lane. As a minimum, some hi-viz paint is essential or there will be accidents actually caused by this "cycling infrastructure".

The kerbed sections take you inside a bus stop in a chicane and the surface, albeit new is terrible. It felt like an anchor had deployed from my pannier.

The exit from the bus stop chicane is a standard white line and in true tick box style runs straight into a line of parked cars.

Some of the potholes have been repaired (properly!) but the dips around manholes and other ironworks haven't been touched.

Dear Glasgow City Council, please don't bother finishing this project. This is NOT an improvement to this section of an already busy cycle route.

"Why don't you wear that jumper I got you for Christmas? You wanted a jumper for Christmas."

Not that fucking jumper I didn't.

I'm less than delighted to say that work on this has now started.

It would appear that they are digging a slot for kerbstones so it will be completely segregated. Thats great until you get more than one cyclist in the same section.

To be fair, it will be great for those that "pootle" so I guess it may help encourage new cyclists.

For the current all year, all weather commuters it will either slow us down or simply end up with us not using it at all... with all the negative knock on effects that will have..

Hopefully it will be better than the glass  and gravel strewn car park in Leeds. 

Used appropriate 30 metres and came out with five cuts in my tyres.

This is part of my daily commute to work. My reaction when I read this article?

"Aw fuck."

Since repairing a horrific stretch of tarmac between Eglinton Toll and the M74 flyover this is now one of the most incident free stretches of road I use.

I have a feeling that may change for the worse.

That's £21.67 per centimetre.

I'm sorry but from my experience of riding in Glasgow I don't share the optimism of this article. In fact, I'm wondering if the segregation of the route signals a lack of ambition to tackle some of the issues facing cyclists who live in the city.

What the article or plan doesn't really say is that the 'Southside Corridor' or what is locally known as Victoria Road is already a popular route for cyclists esp commuters and much of their route into the city centre already turns into a road for bikes, buses and taxis. In short, traffic is already segregated.  

IMO if Sustrans and Glasgow City Council had a genuine ambition and wanted to address the unfriendly cycle infrastructure, then they'd be better tackling other routes such as how to cross through the city centre or the route around Pomadie (for those who don't know this is the route from the southside to the city's velodrome). The number of urban motorways and their interchanges make some of the internal city's roads hazardous to say the least.

The artist impression also suggest much about how segregation is viewed by planners. Having experienced other segregated routes in the city (see the new segregated route on the A74 or on the A728) , the path is likely to be either covered in debris or follow a maze like pattern up and down kerbs onto moving carriageways. Personally I feel safer if I stay on the road without cars expecting me to be in a cycle lane.  

As somebody has said before: cyclists are part of the traffic.

In related news, Edinburgh council is planning on doing bugger all after a massive costly consultation lasting 10 years. 

Then pat themselves on the back.