Police stop cyclist on M25 – and then find same rider on M1

Many people have to use dual-carriageways. Some live on them and can only leave home by using them. They are part of the highways and byways that everyone has a right to use. They might be dangerous but it is impossible to ban people walking and cycling on them.

You may have misunderstood me ooldbaker, I am (with tounge in cheek) suggesting that if riding on crappy dual carriageways is permitted (deemed to be safe ?) then surely cycling on a seperate lane like a hard shoulder should be safer and hence permitted.

For a second there I thought you were suggesting that if a motorway is inherently unsafe then perhaps any road with comparable speeds is unsafe.

EK Spinner wrote:

You may have misunderstood me ooldbaker, I am (with tounge in cheek) suggesting that if riding on crappy dual carriageways is permitted (deemed to be safe ?) then surely cycling on a seperate lane like a hard shoulder should be safer and hence permitted.

That's one way of looking at it - the other way of looking at it is - if motorway speeds are so dangerous that cycling in the hard shoulder needs to banned, why do we permit the same speeds and almost the same speeds on roads have far few safety features and that often have to be used by cyclists and pedestrians?

But yes, I am frequently perplexed by the outrage, when cycling on the hard shoulder of a motorway is probably safer than most cycle lanes.

Obviously there won't be figures for the safety for cycling on hard shoulders but you wouldn't get me to try it even if it was legal. The only time I ever got onto the hard shoulder was about 30 - 40 years ago on a fairly quiet M6 (in heavy snow) It was still extremely scary with a steady stream of 40 tonne lorries going 6 feet away from me at nearly 60mph.

I would not feel safe stuck in a car on the hard shoulder let alone on a bike.

Also how would you pass an intersection safely? 

I avoid dual-carriageways whenever I can but motorways are another level.

Why does our system not routinely build proper cycling provision along the route of motorways and major A roads, so that there's no reason to cycle along them in the first place?

I thnk they are required to do just that mdavidford, (at least roughly along the route) when constructing new routes or particular large upgrades but of course they pay lip service to these requirements and either stick us on poorly maintained back roads or call a footpath a shared use path. and of course they will only be on the upgraded area and not joined up (a bit like the thinking)

Must have been a host of severed roads and rights of way that the motorway's construction so saveagely and narrowmindedly cut off making them useless cul-de-sacs.  

along with a host of bridges and underpasses that cross the Mway to maintaain access between all sorts of places and make sure that nobody gets isolated.

I think this is more likely to be someone using a phone or satnav without seting it up properly, or without the knowledge of the the colour scheme of road signs.

Or just following the route they know

Not arguing about why they were there, but:

EK Spinner wrote:

along with a host of bridges and underpasses that cross the Mway to maintaain access between all sorts of places and make sure that nobody gets isolated.

Depending on location it's often more "a few" or "a handful" than "a host".  Railways / motorways making access across their route a pain is definitely a thing.  Even if the worst of this may be "historic" (but see UK's HS2).  Also when you say "bridges" quite often we have ones which are not convenient - or even usuable - by bikes or wheelchair users etc.  "Grade separation" shouldn't mean just "get the people out of the way".  Again it's too easy to think in "main road / route" terms and forget that for local transport we need to consider networks rather than just a line.

No route to get where they need to go quickly and safely is probably a possibility too. 

Patrick9-32 wrote:

No route to get where they need to go quickly and safely is probably a possibility too. 

Motorways are usually the most direct route from A to B, if A and B are quite some distance apart.

And I wonder if it would be quicker to ride round on the hard shoulder of the M25 than to ride across London?

All of these motorways were built decades ago and assuming that nobody would be riding a bike by now (shouldn't we have jetpacks or flying cars, anyway?), and so nobody thought to put in direct long distance provision for anyone not driving a car.

brooksby wrote:

Patrick9-32 wrote:

No route to get where they need to go quickly and safely is probably a possibility too. 

Motorways are usually the most direct route from A to B, if A and B are quite some distance apart.

And I wonder if it would be quicker to ride round on the hard shoulder of the M25 than to ride across London?

All of these motorways were built decades ago and assuming that nobody would be riding a bike by now (shouldn't we have jetpacks or flying cars, anyway?), and so nobody thought to put in direct long distance provision for anyone not driving a car.

The M25 goes around London and it'd definitely be quicker to cycle across the city instead as it's a much shorter distance. 

OldRidgeback wrote:

brooksby wrote:

Patrick9-32 wrote:

No route to get where they need to go quickly and safely is probably a possibility too. 

Motorways are usually the most direct route from A to B, if A and B are quite some distance apart.

And I wonder if it would be quicker to ride round on the hard shoulder of the M25 than to ride across London?

All of these motorways were built decades ago and assuming that nobody would be riding a bike by now (shouldn't we have jetpacks or flying cars, anyway?), and so nobody thought to put in direct long distance provision for anyone not driving a car.

The M25 goes around London and it'd definitely be quicker to cycle across the city instead as it's a much shorter distance. 

Shorter, obviously, but I wonder about quicker...

(full disclosure: I've never driven on the M25).

brooksby wrote:

 

Shorter, obviously, but I wonder about quicker...

(full disclosure: I've never driven on the M25).

If the m25 were a perfect circle, the route around would be 1.57x the distance for the route straight across. Of course the ring road would not be a perfect sircle and the road through would not be a straight line either.

When I cycled to the bike show at doscklands, the first 50km (outside the m25) took 2 hours, the next 50km (inside) took 2.5 hours.

So speed through london (staines to canary wharf) was 20km/h and speed outside was 25kmh. But we assume the cycle path beside the motorway would be less interupted than regular roads, so maybe average spped migh go up to 28kmh. Don't think I could hold 30kmh consistently for 2 hours. so going through would likely take less time.

M25, probably was in a hurry so took the bike.
M1, not sure.