The National Cycle Plan - what do YOU think?

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it's not a chicken-and-egg situation: it HAS to begin with provision.

I see your point Dave.

Earlier this week I was talking with someone who had been cycling in Holland. He said they came off the ferry and straight onto a dedicated cycletrack all the way to Rotterdam. He said getting off at Dover when he returned was like going back to the Dark Ages.

In response to Tony's comment about road projects, I'm part of a campaign against Shrewsbury's North West Relief Road. Projected cost for this 4-mile stretch of single carriageway is currently at £100 million. There are so many other ways to improve transport options in and around the town (which already has a ring road AND a bypass!).

Looking at that from a glass half full perspective though Old Ridgeback it's the big road projects that cost the serious money. The politicians could cut one big road, save the money and still invest a significant wodge into cycling infrastructure and claim that they are both being far-sighted and planning for a low carbon future while making hard choices for hard times etc etc

Given the way the UK Government is having to slash budgets to cope with the financial black hole it's now in, I think we can expect about 50p, two shiny buttons and a heap of old egg boxes to be available as funding for a National Cycle Routes Scheme. The DfT is having to cut £28 billion from its projected spending plans.

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For it to succeed there will have to be a seismic shift in attitudes towards cyclists riding on the road

i agree, but i also agree with purplecup: that shift can only happen as a result of changes to the infrastructure and the subsequent uptake in cycling. it's not a chicken-and-egg situation: it HAS to begin with provision. look at cities like copenhagen and you'd assume that everyone's been cycling there forever, but in fact the policy changes 40 years ago that have brought about that culture were massively unpopular when they were introduced. if we want to genuinely increase cycling, we have to make those hard choices too. I'm not talking about crap cycle lanes, i'm talking about giving lanes back to cyclists and buses, closing roads, pedestrianising centres, removing car parks.

I had an interview with a local authority yesterday, one of their key objectives to developing a cycling culture is to target the elderly...getting old people (70+) cycling. Now, i dont know about you but my grandparents on bikes on roads worries me, imagine them being involved in an accident or merely falling off...we are talking broken hips, severe damage.

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all the words in the world won't make an atom of difference. investment in cycling infrastructure will.

Even that won't be enough. There will have to be a complete change in attitude of this car-obsessed culture before a significant number of people will ride their bikes on a regular or daily basis. So many people are genuinely frightened of riding on the road, parents even more so for their children. It doesn't matter how many times you tell them it's really safe they believe otherwise. Having cycled since I was a youth some routes feel more threatening than ever, and that's almost entirely due to driver impatience and inattention, both of which are symptoms of a lack of respect.

Dedicated cycle provision (crap cycle lanes, shared ped/cyclist paths etc) is not an the answer. It's nice for young families and people wanting a traffic-free route or leisure ride but it is NOT going to work as a substitute for cyclists as part of the traffic.

For it to succeed there will have to be a seismic shift in attitudes towards cyclists riding on the road. I don't see any prospect of that in all this hot air. We all know the government will say all the right things then spend the money on bailing banks and car manufacturers or widening motorways.

Maybe it's not the tyre that's soft, maybe it's the road

I dunno looks like a photo in a "What happened next?" competition

perhaps she's running tubeless

Not sure about the substance of the article but she needs a bit of air in that back tyre!

All cyclists have the right to bear arms and shoot anyone that pisses them off.

Cycling as a compulsory part of the progression to having a driving licence might be worth looking at - although that then suggests that you'd need to have a license to ride a bike… which would be unenforceable.

I thinks a lot more cycle parking and safe places to leave your bikes at station would make a difference + changing planning law to force developers etc to include cycling in their transport and infrastructure planning - down to requiring all new business premises to have sufficient showers and parking spaces. They've had that in places like Holland and Germany for a generation. And before anyone says that would be unaffordable well, the Germans and the Dutch managed to afford it so why can't we. We can give £100 billion to the banks - imagine how that money could have been used to transform the infrastructure of this country.

what do i think? all the words in the world won't make an atom of difference. investment in cycling infrastructure will. let's see if the government will put its money where its mouth is.

i'm with you (mostly) oldridgeback. there's no point banning driving to school, that's just a nonsense. enforced by whom? what we need are routes to schools – and just routes in general – that favour bikes over cars, and more education about bikes in general. And less time concentrating on how dangerous it is (not very) and trying to make us all wear gash-looking jackets and piss pots for the benefit of blind drivers.

I think banning driving to school is unrealistic, as is introducing safer storage at train stations and so on. Making it an offence to overtake a bicycle with less than a 91.44cm gap is also unrealistic and unenforceable. Reducing or removing VAT on bike sales will do little or nothing to promote cycling.

Making cycling an obligatory sport at school may do a lot to help.

I don't know who came up with these suggestions but I don't think they live in the real world.