Anti-LTN ranter's accidental active travel advert... bemoans congestion while walking past gridlocked bumper-to-bumper cars; Giro d'Italia mountain stage; Short stay bike racks? Coming to cycle parking near you? + more on the live blog

A few miles left in this picture yet.

Average American: "Why can't we have both?"

OT, but...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/25/winnie-the-pooh-books-te...

Quote:

Inside pages of the book, featuring other characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, tell kids: “If it is safe to get away, we should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay … If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear.”

The “hide” page has a drawing of Pooh burying his head in a pot of honey.

On the following page, Kanga and baby Roo are shown wearing boxing gloves. The text says: “If danger finds us, don’t stay, run away. If we can’t get away, we have to FIGHT with all our might.”

The book was given to children in Dallas-area schools on Monday without discussion or comment either with teachers or the families who received it. The move came on the week of the first anniversary of Uvalde, the mass shooting in a Texas elementary school in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.

brooksby wrote:

OT, but...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/25/winnie-the-pooh-books-te...

"No Way to Prevent This", says only nation where this regularly happens

I'll join you off topic with a poignant quote I saw last week from a parent who had lost a child in a school shooting: "You had a choice between stopping selling guns and starting selling bullet-proof school backpacks. You chose the latter."

Ah, yes, but capitalism. Why not sell both guns and bulletproof backpacks? More money! Who cares if it's covered in the blood of the innocent? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, school kids, what are those to people who they don't affect?

I mean, man's got a point.  He has had to walk there because there's too much traffic to drive.  And it's all happened over his lifetime - there never used to be any LTNs or cycle lanes or worries about emission zones.  Ergo...

chrisonatrike wrote:

 And it's all happened over his lifetime - there never used to be any LTNs or cycle lanes or worries about emission zones.  Ergo...

Ergo.... he is to blame? Things were much better before he was born....

It's difficult to tell whether he's come up with this nonsense himself or whether he's been groomed in to believing it.

IanMK wrote:

It's difficult to tell whether he's come up with this nonsense himself or whether he's been groomed in to believing it.

We've all been groomed!  "Normal" is ... normal, right?  Driving everywhere (and parking almost anywhere) is entirely normal for most of the UK.  As is waiting ages to cross the road etc...

I hope he's right to be concerned - otherwise there will be no change!  Even for the most minimal transformation of our streets to occur some people are going to have to change their behaviour.  They are very unlikely to do this willingly and certainly won't do so spontaneously - otherwise it would have happened.

Obviously I have a radically different view from this chap of what is happening, the way we should go etc.  I think these changes will have positive effects that he's not dreamed of.  I think change is possible, not a pipe dream.  I do so mostly because I've seen it for myself though.

A picture of that would be brilliant to add to the dictionary definition of "irony". 

Like yourself, I haven't been in Central in a while but they worked well and I don't know of any security issues. I used to leave my bike there while I was driving trains and my bikes were always there when I came back. They have very similar set up at Waverley and, again, I know of no security issues (I have never left a bike there). Both locations do seem to suffer from a large number of bikes parked there years ago and still not claimed...
Queen Street station does not have those same bike racks but it has recently opened up indoor bike storage which seems well used and staff do checks. (This is in addition to the outdoor bike racks at both sides of the station). I know of a couple of my colleagues who had bikes stolen from outside of Queen Street a few years and I met someone recently whose bike has gone missing unfortunately but it seems rare. The issue with the indoor bike storage though is it is only open between 7am and 10pm. I guess this suits most people - unless you miss your train and arrive back after 10!
Given that I'm the only daily cyclist working there - there are 3/4 other occasional cyclists - I just stash my bike in the bothy and no one bothers.

As this cannot be policed, the sign seems more of an informative nature. Succes depending on many factors, including the quality of the long stay cycle parking facilities. Based on that a civil-minded person like me might respect these signs.
 

marmotte27 wrote:

As this cannot be policed, the sign seems more of an informative nature. Succes depending on many factors, including the qualitiy of the long stay cycle parking facilities. Based on that a civil-minded person like me might respect these signs.

I'd go find the long-term parking if I saw a sign like that. If it's intended for cyclists to pop into shops, then I wouldn't want to prevent them doing that if there's a good alternative fro me that's more suitable.

Didn't we have an example of a short-stay bike rack in yesterday's news?