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news
Bradford cycle superhighway (picture credit Twitter usser LeeDotDash).jpgCyclists respond to Lord Adonis "use cycle lanes" comments
Last week Andrew Adonis, Former Transport Secretary and Chair of the Infrastructure Commission, asked whether cyclists should be allowed to use the carriageway where bike lanes exist.
The comments came as he retweeted an article, titled “London cycling campaigners must learn from the Charlie Alliston case”, published on the website of former Guardian columnist, Dave Hill, OnLondon.
Adonis commented: “So sad. Worrying trend: cyclists dodge superhighway/carriageway to avoid traffic lights. Common in Parliament Sq”, adding in a second tweet “Should cyclists be allowed to use carriageway where there is a superhighway? Welcome views.”
Should cyclists be allowed to use carriageway where there is a superhighway? Welcome views. https://t.co/DnNWgvLZUS
— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) September 20, 2017
The initial response was one of disappointment. Some say he should know better.
I find it deeply worrying & depressing this is a question someone of your transport expertise would even ask. Answer is yes btw...
— Simon Munk (@psimonk) September 20, 2017
Twitter users began by pointing out the green light for cyclists is short at Parliament Square – five seconds according to this footage, resulting in long wait times during busy periods.
4 seconds of green time from Parliament Sq. to Great George St. might be why. You'll get this when the infra is not quite right. pic.twitter.com/sIVPnGEi2b
— The Ranty Highwayman (@RantyHighwayman) September 20, 2017
Our man, Dave Atkinson gave his two cents: get the infrastructure right, he says, and cyclists won’t need to use the carriageway.
Other examples of when use of a cycle route might not be viable were readily available.
Why are those bicyclists not using the Cycle Superhighway we built for them?!I have no idea. (CS2,by The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel) pic.twitter.com/c1YtRQJ32j
— aviewoflondon (@sw19cam) May 17, 2017
Why do people not use the bike lane at Aldgate? I have no idea. pic.twitter.com/RvhIII6x1u
— aviewoflondon (@sw19cam) April 27, 2017
Guardian journalist, Peter Walker, makes a point about Adonis' choice of source.
Also disappointed to see Adonis cite Dave Hill, a man fighting a cranky, one-man class-based cycling battle based on out-of-date statistics.
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) September 20, 2017
In a fortnight that has seen cyclists singled out for accusations of being a much bigger danger on the roads than the evidence shows, Adonis' comments prompted a wave of sighs and collective sarcasm.
The most thoughtful of the latter, highlighting the prejudice usually reserved for cyclists, was from Mark Treasure, of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain.
In a piece titled Superhighway users dodging infrastructure to avoid traffic lights, Treasure turns the dialogue typically reserved for cyclists to pedestrians, by a tongue in cheek piece accusing “militant walkists” of ignoring the infrastructure built at "great expense" especially for them. He says despite there only being a wait of several minutes to cross the road twice to avoid super sewer works alongside London’s East-West Cycle Superhighway, on the Victoria Embankment, with clear maps instructing them how to proceed, many simply walked along the cycle route for a few hundred metres.
Adonis appears to have blocked Treasure after he pointed out bikes with only one brake are common in the Netherlands.
Cyclists need to be responsible and caring. This is not the way to respond to recent tragic events. https://t.co/YEGtNQkqyU
— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) September 23, 2017
Meanwhile Labour MP for Exeter, and champion of cycling, Ben Bradshaw, offered his help.
Yes Andrew. Come cycling round Parliament Square with me one day & you'll see why.
— Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) September 21, 2017
As chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, which advises the government independently on transport infrastructure, Lord Adonis reaps benefits for cycling, too.
Earlier this year he tasked former London Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, to work with councils and organisations in Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Oxford, "to create a vision of what is required for cycling to become a 'super attractive' mode of transport in these three cities". Gilligan has been looking at what can be delivered in these places, and what funding will be needed. This is part of a wider "growth corridor" vision.
A sensible suggestion, made by Adonis, is that three sides of Parliament Square should be cycle/pedestrian, reducing through motor traffic – an intervention the London Cycling Campaign has long called for. Well, two sides, anyway.
This is part of the wider Parliament Sq mess. It needs to be cycle/pedestrianised on 3 sides with radical reduction in thru vehicles https://t.co/lnaqVfBNhZ
— Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) September 20, 2017
One person urged Adonis to consider the wider safety issues around physical activity, or a lack thereof.
The only significant problem with cycling right now is that not nearly enough people are doing it. https://t.co/7VQVhD7Rep
— Don Shipp (@don_shipp) September 20, 2017
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
Latest Comments
- Cugel 7 min 10 sec ago
The point is that there's no need to create more "infrastructure" dedicated to cyclists if the worst and dangerous offenders on the road are...
- stonojnr 23 min 44 sec ago
True, fwiw they're half decent round my neck of the woods, but I appreciate having travelled around the UK via train, it ain't always so good...
- PRSboy 25 min 19 sec ago
"Mitigating on behalf of the defendant, and addressing her failure to stop, Foster’s barrister said: “This is a young woman who was in shock by the...
- Legin 1 hour 11 min ago
The tory party will oppose anything that might restrict their tanks rolling at the next election.
- EraserBike 1 hour 17 min ago
I'm sure this (and other 3D printed models) are made where labour costs are cheap also. Nobody is making these in Europe. There's only so much ...
- mdavidford 1 hour 42 min ago
Especially since the similarly priced Tickr X did have that functionality.
- anke2 2 hours 22 min ago
CX is brutal in terms of forces acting on the chain. A single, technical kick at 40 RPM by Iserbyt with a small chainwheel might put more load on...
- Andrewbanshee 2 hours 59 min ago
I experience this quite often when out running. I follow the guidelines, running towards traffic and keep hard right. I am very visible too but...
- mctrials23 3 hours 13 min ago
Not enough to warrant having the role exist at all would be my guess.
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37 comments
Dutch like this- https://earth.google.com/web/@52.31854077,5.62434889,11.87224293a,0d,80.68385865y,355.95186426h,66.72951721t,0r/data=IhoKFkQzMkJfN0toWHJQU1FVWDcwN3dQeXcQAg
3m shared use footways, look familiar? And of course you would have to use that or risk a fine
Holland isn't utopia
One would think, with the frequency with which 'straw man' arguments are pointed out on the internet, that people would have given up using them by now.
My commute involves a fair bit of city roads (Bristol), which do have cycle lanes. I rarely use these lanes.
The majoirty of the lanes are so close to the gutter that they have large manhole covers and potholes along their length. A shocking amount of these lanes have cars parked along them (double yellow lines, pavement parked and parked in a cycle lane).
This makes the lanes as good as unusable.
All politicians and public figures, celebs etc should be required by law to cycle round London for min 1 week before being allowed to Twit about it.
These days, whenever the 'bloody cyclists not using the purpose built cycle lanes' come up, I am trying to calmly say the following;
"Cycle lanes are provided as an 'enabler', to provide less confident / competent cyclists a safe environment that encourages more people to use the bike as a means of transport, thus reducing congestion. Cycle lanes have never been about getting bikes off the road, they are purely to encourage cycling not clear the carriageway of motoring obstacles"
Or something like that. Don't moan about the quality of ifrastructure, don't say how they inconvenience you, just politely affirm what cycle lanes are hear to do.
I have a rather more succinct response. It starts with F and ends with two more Fs.
"Faff"? I'm not sure that word really works in the context...
Cyclists demand "Dutch style" cycle facilities and have a hissy fit when politician suggests they should be made to use it, as they are in the Netherlands. Discuss
Nowhere near accurate, you poor impression of a troll.
HTH x
Call me Asmodeus.
I also demanded coffee shops and transexual phillipino whores, but I distinctly stipulated they be optional rather than mandatory!
If the cycle facilities really were as good as Holland, there wouldn't be any need to force cyclists to use them, they would because they would be safer, more convenient, attractive, quicker and more direct. Sadly, something seems to have got lost in translation between Dutch and English.
Yeah the translation from Dutch to English involves "Stupid overprivileged corrupt trough snouters" on the English end
Dear Lord Adonis
Being an occasional visitor to London, my observation is that while London seems to be the place where “questions” about cycle use super-highways arise, it’s also going to be the place where it dawns on people that the private car has well and truly disappeared up its own exhaust-pipe. There are pretty dismal figures around of the average day time motor traffic speed in London, aren’t there? You’re asking the wrong question, particualarly if your eyes are on the future.
it’s not me on my bike you’ve seen dodging the lovingly curated dedicated London cycle infrastructure; there isn’t much of it provided around here where I live and what there is is pretty poor quality. If its existence is going to be used as an excuse to order bikes off the road proper, that’s a pretty rum thing.
For the first thirty years of my life, smoking was allowed in pubs and restaurants - I look forward to the day when the individually owned/driven petrol car is as distant a memory (and what a ghastly memory that was - stinky clothes next day, sore eyes and throat: for anyone reading who’s not old enough).
What you should be welcomIng views on is Why does any able bodied person need to drive an individually owned car in central London?
Of course I'm bl**dy allowed to ride on the carriageway whenever I wish and regardless of whether or not there's an adjacent cycle path.
(I presume his Lordship gets to choose whether to drive on a motorway or on a nearby A-road or B-road, doesn't he? Nobody says, "Well that motorway was built *specifically and exclusively* for motor traffic, so if there's a motorway going more or less in your intended direction then you must use that and not any other road", are they?)
well said.
People are saying "we cycle on the road because the cycle path's crap", as if a good cycle path would justify being banned from the road. Dangerous argument. Pedestrians, cyclists, horses etc have an absolute right to use the roads, whereas drivers do not, and we must resist all attempts, eg through laws agaist so-called jay-walking or restricting cyclists to bike lanes, to limit those rights or extend them to motor vehicles.
Shame the quote you use in your headline isn't actually what he wrote.
Still a 'yes' to his question, but why misquote?
Nice examples of good bike lanes from Al_S. There are a few more here, from Zandvoort (photos I took earlier this month).
(way of topic but) the primary purpose of HS2 is to add two extra tracks to the most congested railway line in the country, the West Coast Main Line from London to Birmingham and the North West. Adding them on the existing alignment isn't feasible, so building a whole new railway is the soltion, at which point it might as well be a shiny prestige high speed passenger line because ripping up just as much countryside for a 60mph freight line is a harder sell.
And I'll happily be banned from the main carriageway if there's v.high quality cycle provision. By which I mean even B Roads having this sort of stuff. Or this
Unless they put lanes on both sides of the road what is the point? Are you happy to cross two lanes to cycle 500 yards then wait to cross back again? Most of these provisions seem designed to get cyclists out of the way whilst giving motorists priority at junctions. I like cycling on the roads, they you know, join up.
Typically they're one side of the road in the country, both sides in town. With priority at most junctions.
"Joining up" is certainly something dutch cycle provision does VERY well. Go there. Try it.
Even if they do then people won't use it. In observing the Dutch correlation between infrastructure and people cycling many are desparate to believe that the infrastructure caused the cycling, which leaves many wondering why e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/sep/19/britains-1960s-cycling-re... ?
It is possible that in countries where there are enough people that choose to cycle and generally are not ***** that they build infrastructure to please themselves and make some cycling easier and more pleasant.
Achieving that balance in the population would probably mean eradicating Lord Adonis and all the hellspawn brood carrying the gene for being a ****.
Those lanes are awful, you could get a queue of massive over-sized family cars with one person in them Sat nostalgia to tail all the way along there...
I think your correspondents are labouring under a misapprehension regarding the purpose of HS2. It is not to get people TO London quickly, it is a humanitarian project to aid those wishing to escape FROM London.
I think I've given up on politics (or, at least, the parties trying to get my vote) now.
Yet another politician feels the need to open their mouth and opine about something they know absolutely nothing about. This is not what I expect from the chair of the infrastructure commission, I expect informed, reasoned statements, not off the cuff nonsense.
I wonder how he'd react if it was suggested that drivers weren't allowed on local roads if there was a motorway nearby?
Ian Hislop or Paul Merton rather finely described Lord Adonis as 'A man whose name is writing cheques his body can't cash' :o)
I'm not sure how.
Tuition fees and HS2 seem the mark of archwankery, to me.
I really don't understand the benefits of HS2. Get to London in 20 minutes less. That'll boost the economy.
[/quote]
I really don't understand the benefits of HS2. Get to London in 20 minutes less. That'll boost the economy.
[/quote]
That's because it doesn't have an economic case and you are intelligent enough to understand that. Which says a lot about the people in power who voted for it at a time of the most stringent austerity in my lifetime, when we can't afford to pay nurses, police, carers etc etc.
Just imagine if all that money, £56bn, was actually invested in something with a proven economic case, twenty times at least that of HS2, like cycling for instance?
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