"Only in Florida...": Rider with "armed cyclist" jersey, close-passing flags and countless bike lights goes viral... again; Jeremy Vine responds to those "focusing rage" on cyclists; A PROPER turbo set-up + more on the live blog

Careful of the Met Police if cycling in London, then...

Rome73 wrote:

Gotta get one of those 'armed cyclist' jackets. 

25 years ago I used regularly to see a motorcycle courier around the Fleet Street area (at a time when I was spending a few months doing the same myself) who had a notice stuck to his top box reading: "Full of pills, armed to the teeth, mad as hell. Please take care when passing." Don't know if it had any effect on drivers, always made me laugh.

Say no to putting cars on the road

That's a bit sad actually if you did it in the Pennies that would be hardcore

OTOH in one sense they are not new at all and rather widespread, in the UK...  Here's Ranty Highwayman demonstrating just that.

Yeah - I don't really think that helps the argument, though.

Firstly, I'm not convinced such arrangements are as common as he suggests - I can only think of a couple anywhere near me, and I don't know that they have any bus stops on them. Maybe things are different in that London, or other parts of the country, but then Vine'd need to be quoting statistics for those areas to make the point - not national ones.

Secondly, while there's a superficial resemblance in some of those 'service road' examples, I don't think they're relevant to the argument. As RH notes, they're not typically carrying through traffic, and certainly not intentionally directing cycle traffic off the main route onto them. Plus foot traffic tends to cross more at the end points, where there tends to be more of an obvious junction point than there would be with a cycle track bypass.

None of which is to say that those moaning that these things are dangerous have a point - just to say that Vine's counter-argument (if you can counter an argument which isn't really an argument) isn't as much of a knock-down as he thinks.

The strongest part of that article that Vine could have used is the latter part, where it says 'well they've been doing lots of exactly this kind of stuff in other countries for ages, and it doesn't seem to have caused a problem there'.

In response to "yeah, but it works every day with no issues in NL" you will probably get the response "but we're not Dutch!  That is over there, not in the UK..."

It's tempting to mock that ("you're right, we're not Dutch; it's the ... cheese and windmills - that makes the difference?").  After all it's not much over a hundred miles away, with similar climate, a rather similar culture (even speaking a fairly closely related language and in many cases English also).

OTOH there is something to getting something new into the minds of people - particularly in situations where people may be operating more on autopilot / "muscle memory" e.g. navigating around in public (and driving, frighteningly).

Probably it's like so many things - there are tons of objections, "nobody wants it" etc. ... until it's everywhere and it's been a couple of years; then people are just using it, getting on with their lives and would struggle to remember all the fuss.

They really are common.

Here's a gallery of 50 examples from London, with some going back nearly a century.
https://floating-bus-stops.tumblr.com/

It really is a total storm in a teacup.

For research, we have a substantial base - the same points were being made by the same groups back in 2014 or so, demanding studies, and studies were done.

They did not like the results, so inflammatory videos are still being trolled into the Daily Mail etc. A case based on emotion and scaremongering is being made, because that's pretty much all they have.

Issues are mainly around some people riding hacked e-cycles and e-mopeds rushing too fast, but that is manageable via regulation of such vehicles and employment contracts.

What Vine misses imo is to point out that these are mobility tracks, not cycle tracks, and are used extensively by disabled people using mobility aids, which may well include a standard cycle. So the disabled people vs cyclists narrative is both wrong and disingenuous.

mattw wrote:

They really are common.

Here's a gallery of 50 examples from London, with some going back nearly a century.
https://floating-bus-stops.tumblr.com/

As I said, though - London's London, not the UK. And even then, some of those still aren't really relevant to the 'but it's them terrible cyclists that are dangerous' claim.

mattw wrote:

It really is a total storm in a teacup.

I don't disagree (I basically said as much).

Anyway, my minute of advocacy is more than up - I'm off the clock now.

Have heard about the rumble strips.  Ultimately if they're not in NL (where there are thousands of these things in use every day all across the country) they're not needed.

Given where we are in the UK though it may be we can't get direct to the best design (when there is population-level "mass cycling" across the whole country at over a fifth of ALL trips!) but have to work our way there via some intermediate place?

chrisonabike wrote:

Have heard about the rumble strips.  Ultimately if they're not in NL (where there are thousands of these things in use every day all across the country) they're not needed.

Given where we are in the UK though it may be we can't get direct to the best design (when there is population-level "mass cycling" across the whole country at over a fifth of ALL trips!) but have to work our way there via some intermediate place?

No, it wasn't the NL. Probably parts of France.

It is fair to say that these lanes work fine in the NL where they don't have rumble strips, but what they do have there is a culture of people cycling and mixing with pedestrians and decades of investment in infrastructure that has been given the required space and isn't bodged.

Ideally we'd like non-bodged infrastructure too, but often we end up with whatever could be squeezed into the space available, and at a population level we have less experience of pedestrians and cyclists getting along together. Cyclists in the NL tend to cycle at a more sedate pace on upright bikes than the typical British commuter. The people on the NL learned how to keep themselves and each other safer in these spaces before e-bikes or cyling with headphones became common.

Consistent design, education and councils holding their nerve while people get used to systems are all important, but we shouldn't rule tweaking the design to consider concerns from a population who are less used to cyclists. 

They wouldn't need to be everywhere, but rumble strips are easy enough to install and provide a reminder to those who need it to look up and consider whether they need to adjust their speed.

It also shows a willingness to consider the concerns of the visually impaired at a time when the anti-cycling groups are very keen to claim we are the selfish ones.

Probably only if they're easy to uninstall and not too intrusive.  As for the average UK cycle commuter don't forget that this infra is for the UK cyclist of tomorrow e.g. exactly like the average Dutch cyclist - going slowly, not going very far, might be a young child, an elderly person, someone with disabilities using their wheelchair or some mobility vehicle etc.

I have zero evidence but I wonder if there may have been some motivated "selective concern" amplifying this...  (without dismissing the genuine concerns, as per my other posts).

I used to go on bike rides with members of RNIB. Obviously in tandems. Everyone loved it. Always had a pub stop before heading back. I wonder how NFBUK would feel about this?

Andrewbanshee wrote:

I used to go on bike rides with members of RNIB. Obviously in tandems. Everyone loved it. Always had a pub stop before heading back. I wonder how NFBUK would feel about this?

I suspect your stoker would be subject to disciplinary procedures for fraternising with the enemy…

This is terrible - are you suggesting all blind people have to equip themselves with a tandem and a captain just to feel safe on our streets?!

Their membership numbers are a little over 500.

It is in the Annual Reports on the Charity Commission website.

If you hunt around you can find the type of organisations listed, and they tend to be small groups, local branches of organsations, and all kinds of strange setups.

Cheers - I did ask them directly earlier this year but they didn't respond, for what seem like obvious reasons given that information, 320,000 people registered blind in the UK and "The Voice of Britain's Blind People" only has 500 members...

Absolutely.  Unfortunately I think it will be just like how it was when cars appeared (only much, much less bloody) as it's partly "learn by experience" for the more vulnerable mode in some situations.  So while we should try to do as much education as possible (campaigns etc.) some of it is going to be people just stepping out without thinking or looking - and hopefully having a shouty "jeezus!  You nearly hit me!" moment rather than being run into.

Also agree on the "no to zebra crossing" - at least that is where we will find we end up (if we get there) because it simply isn't a problem for pedestrians to informally cross 99.9% of cycle paths, even where they're really busy:

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/how-hard-is-it-to-cross-th...