Leeds Council builds bus stop on cycle lane and designates it "shared space"

Leeds council has a long history of building cycling facilities that are hostile, sometimes lethally hostile, to their supposedly intended users.

Riding a bike in Leeds, one quickly gains the impression that Leeds Metropolitan District Council is quite deliberately anti-cycling, while pretending to be cycle-friendly.

Added to the local cops being institutionally anti-cycling and extremely hostile to bike riders (therefore all drivers know they will never be prosecuted for killing or maiming bike riders), this makes every ride an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This latest bus stop episode is just an extension of the norm, but taking the situation into pantomime levels of absurdity. To build physical cycling infrastructure, because of a bike rider that was killed, and then deliberately nobble it so that it is more dangerous than having done nothing at all? That's just "typical Leeds" but funny in a very dark way.

This is why Leeds has close to the lowest modal share of transport that is bike use, out of British cities.

At least this cycle path doesn't have a police van parked in it, like the one on Cookridge Street often has.

It might have made more sense just for LCC to say, look we've got to accommodate various different road and path users and the needs of bus passengers to stay dry, after all there's limited room, therefore cyclists should dismount and walk around all bus shelters.

In fact cyclists should dismount and walk here, here, here and again here along this road then cross on foot at these junctions and then ride again for 10 yards staying below 10mph because this is what pedestrians and car drivers are happy with.

Yep just like Copenhagen.

Would they put such infrastructure in the road?  Of course not.  So why is it considered appropriate for one part of the highway, and not the other?  It seems custom-designed to bring cyclists and pedestrians into conflict - and perhaps collision.

This is on my regular commute. It is just plain dangerous, because the bus shelter obstructs the view for drivers trying to pull out of the road jnction just beyond it. There are usually enough people waiting for the bus to block the pavement, so the only way round is to take to the road, which has just become narrower due to the presence of the cycle lane.

The cycle lane had marginally improved safety. However with this bus shelter in the way it is now impossible for a driver to see to the right when emerging from the side road without pulling far enough out to block the cycle lane. So the layout is now more dangerous than before the cycle lane was built. This is an accident waiting to happen.

Completely daft

I particularly like the amusing way they have placed the signs which tell you about the cycling facility in precisely the right spot to make the facility unusable. I think someone in their planning department is an aficionado of the self-refuting. It's the kind of thing I'd like to do if I were a bored bureaucrat too intelligent for the job, then write a first novel that nobody will ever buy, in which the main character does this sort of thing.

And people wonder why cyclists avoid cycle paths.

Shared use paths can be nightmares, and that's just navigating pedestrians and junctions with side-roads. Poorly placed clutter just makes it worse.

I often wonder: who designs cycle lanes and what is wrong with them? 

Around my was we have some lovely ones - like a bidirectional cycle lane on a shared path that goes for about 500m then throws riders out into traffic. On the wrong side of the road. Seriously, what is wrong with these people?

Plenty of examples around where I live where some eejit has decided to put some sort of post, either for street lamps, signage or telegraph poles (many of them unlit), in the middle of the shared-use path. All painted grey, of course. The tiny little bit of white paint on the path around the bottom of them isn't fooling anyone!

Why they couldn't put them a couple of feet back and sited them in the grass verges is anyone's guess.

possibly both the worst and most dangerous single bit of cycling infrastructure I have ever seen

Unfortunately, this is absolutely typical of local authorities, my own, SGlos, included.

About a month ago, the leader of the council, Matthew Riddle, appeared on our local radio station, and after some rather robust debate, he agreed to ride with me on a short trip to look at some of the areas where his council had made things worse for cyclists, against all their own policies.

Yesterday, the radio presenter, the leader and myself rode about three miles and I showed them eight separate places where they had made cycling more difficult, dangerous and less attractive, and to be fair Matthew listened politely and made all the right noises and has said he will go back to the officers and find out what is going on.  I've heard this before from various councillors and officials so I'm not holding my breath, but I live in hope.

Interview and phone in here, starts at 0:06:00 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dm043#play

My first thought was that this seemed like a Monty Python scetch. The planners must be a bunch of numpties.

You can't allow for any form of common sense when it comes the council's in the UK. Thick as two short planks!

Riding in primary position on the road is the obvious - and only - safe course of action.

"we put up a sign, what more do you want?"

The dutch must surely be laughing at us... 

Screw it, just ride on road.

This is news?

There are loads of examples of this in Oxford, of which rdmp2's photo shows just one.

This recently popped up in shared use cycle path near Oxford

If it's a shared cycle/pedestrian space then I see little problem, other than the practical use of a small space.

The sinister undercurrent is the cynical stealth based approach to simply getting bikes of the road and squeezing them out completely by making it practically impossible for anyone to ride a bike.

As the great Grant Lee Phillips once sang:

They talk about building morale and hope
They're just building bigotry, a better rope
One that won't break, one you can't even see
One made of paper and policies

(listen, it's brill)

ffs.

Rotate 180° and move 1.5m to the left. Layout implemented in Oxford.

Shared space is fine, I assume the bus stop is able to move around other objects in the shared space?