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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure
Cycle Network
(360 posts)-
Posted 10 years ago #
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Simon said: My central point is network first, and then a separation of functions. Nobody has said anything against this. All of the criticism has been directed at me personally, or at the way I have tried to present my case.
I'll say again "I think I expressed some serious scepticism about the idea. I said that there was a real risk that we would get chalk and then paint and then nothing more. You pointed out to me that someone else had already made that point. Gembo, I think. I can't be bothered to go back and check."
Later, Morningsider said: In addition, the network based approach has a five to ten year timescale attached, not the instant timescale you keep mentioning.
Simon said: Fair point.
Morningsider further said: The network is principally a tool to be used by the authority to prioritise investment in cycle infrastructure. It isn't (in the short term at least) really for public consumption.
Simon said: Okay.
Having accepted those points from Morningsider, you've effectively refuted your own argument.
You also seem confused about intellectual property rights. You can copyright a physical product - your particular map, although having publicly sourced the content, I think you'd struggle to enforce that. But you can't copyright the idea of putting coloured lines on a map. You also can't copyright the name "compass colours". You'd have to register that as a trade mark. Even if you could copyright ideas, you wouldn't be able to claim that one. The idea of differentiating routes by colours is ancient. I'm old enough to remember St Elsewhere and how cool it was that the routes to different departments in the hospital were marked by coloured lines on the floor.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Simon - I have read Cycling: The Way Ahead for Towns and Cities. You are selective in your quotes from it - the quote in your last response to me being a prime example. The quote looks like clear support for your assertion that the document only deals with cycle network planning. However.the preceding section deals with actions that can be taken without a cycle network plan, you can't just dismiss this because you don't like it.
Many, but not all, of the actions listed in the table that can be adopted automatically require legal processes to be gone through - reducing speed limits, creating bus/bike lanes, altering one-way streets, changes to on-street parking, pedestrianisation and so on. I have explained this before. The "automatically adopted" bit is really aimed at getting local authorities to automatically consider including bikes when undertaking such works - not that such things will happen automatically on some given date.
I'm not going to "refute" the idea of a local authority developing a cycle network plan and then slowly developing that network. I think this is a decent idea, one which Edinburgh has already adopted in its Active Travel Action Plan.
What I'm happy to "refute" is the idea that an individual can rock up to a Council, which has well developed plans for cycling, with a few lines on a google map and that this will ever be taken forward as some sort of cycling network.
I also think you misunderstand cycle campaigning - its a team game. There really isn't a place for divas or superstars - you want to protect your intellectual property rights, fair enough, but don't expect any support from the real stars, who are happy to give time, money and commitment to the ongoing grind that is successful cycle campaigning - without any personal recognition or recompense.
Posted 10 years ago # -
As Tilly would say, Just got poned!!!
Posted 10 years ago # -
"the ongoing grind that is successful cycle campaigning"
To be fair to Mr Parker, he did leaven the mix of the ongoing grind. Man cannot live by dropped kerbs alone, and I shall miss this thread. The image of the City of Edinburgh Cooncil as a South Pacific cargo cult (wooden headphones - genius!) is one that should last me a while.
Posted 10 years ago # -
I'm conscious of this:
http://www.cyclelifestyle.co.uk/london-cycle-map
and despite the prettiness of it and the friendly similarity to other maps, I'm still bemused by how to use Simon's earlier work. What is a map like that actually telling me? What is it helping me to do? Coloured lines don't help if you don't know the lay of the land well enough not to have to stop at every junction to look at the map.
Since I was cycling in That London last week, I had to plan how to get from A to B.
1) OpenCycleMap told me where the cycle routes were, which roads were one-way, and where the little cut-throughs existed.
2) Streetview told me what junctions were tricky.I spent two or three hours on (1) and (2).
3) I made up my own route, based partly on previous experience and partly on seat-of-the-pants riding on the day. It turns out I'm slightly better at that style of ad hoc navigating than I think I am.
4) I programmed my routes into my GPS for me to follow (exactly, or approximately).I could have used cyclestreets.net perhaps, but I wanted to be able to use the bits of London routes that I already knew. I was also doing some fairly specific and time-limited journeys, with the exception of a dash from Shadwell back to to King's Cross, for which I followed a handy guide (Tulyar, as it happened).
In my opinion the Inner Tube map is well conceived because it restricts its information to routes that you can follow more or less without having to think. It's like coming off a motorway and navigating through a town to get to another motorway. As soon as you have to think how to use a route, or to get from one to another, either the map becomes cluttered with 'recommended routes' or you put signs everywhere so that people can work it out for themselves on the day.
Posted 10 years ago # -
Posted 10 years ago #
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"
The most prevalent view was that isolated cycle facilities may get all the kudos, but it was the lack of connections between these facilities that was the cause of the greatest frustration.
"
Sounds like George St...
Posted 10 years ago # -
Or the NEPN.
Posted 10 years ago # -
"
Lisboa Horizontal is a project proposal for a logical network of flat cycling tracks for the city of Lisbon. We propose safe and secure cycling tracks with a maximal inclination of 4%, visible in the streets, connecting the principal areas of Lisbon, following the logic of the metro lines.
"
Posted 9 years ago # -
A modest but very nice addition to the shared use path network has been added at the eastern end of Portobello Park and Golf Course, providing a safe and pleasant route top school for pupils attending the new Portobello High School, and also for dig walkers, joggers and cyclists. It links up with the route across Milton Road towards the Bingham section of the Innocent east west link, and northwards to the footbridge over the East Coast main line and A1, thence to Portobello proper.
I paid a brief visit by bike this afternoon while surveying the newly completed school. Very pleasant it was too: nice and wide for the most part, great surfaces, well designed. I was also very encouraged by the large number of bikes locked up in the bike parking at the school: looks like they may need more bike parking! Less encouraging was the very full car park: presumably mostly cars driven by teaching staff... Speaking of which, the path crosses the entrance to this car park, which is less than ideal frankly and a recipe for future conflict or collisions.
Overall though, great to see and perfect for a sunny, crisp afternoon.
Posted 8 years ago # -
Still going -
Posted 6 years ago # -
Still making no sense to me
Posted 6 years ago # -
Posted 6 years ago #
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Big paint blobs on the road and coloured lollipops atop poles, with lots of different numbers, for use after reading the "how to use this map" section.
Posted 6 years ago # -
Which is fine, but there seems to an underlying conceit that these measures would make existing traffic disappear.
Posted 6 years ago # -
before my time - but that was a wild read.
Given Simon stomped off in the cream puff, does it mean there's a dormant acct somewhere full of unclaimed royalties that we can use to pay for PY buns?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Grrr - I was actually trying to get some work done this morning! Now wasted ages skimming through possibly CCEs maddest thread.
Posted 11 months ago # -
how did we end up back here?!
(also, I had forgotten it was all my fault).
Posted 11 months ago # -
It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience. (Albert Einstein)
Rule 3 should be that anyone mentioning or even posting in this thread has to preface their post with some random and allegedly relevant quotation from history.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Must have missed this at the time, what a goldmine this forum is!
Posted 11 months ago # -
I still wonder if he was trying to crowdfund part of a PhD thesis or something.
Thing is, we've had eight or nine years since this remarkable discussion and I wonder whether the wayfinding element of Simon's Amazing Map would actually work now with one's phone stuck on the handlebars (whether or not the traffic was amenable). And, I further wonder whether the long fought for CCWEL follows any of his predictions. We sure don't have much else!
Posted 11 months ago # -
I think my fav quotes are:
First place: I'm sorry, but I've gone from thinking this is a great idea to thinking it is completely ludicrous.
Close second: This thread reads like the script of a Turing test on a very good chatbot written by a bicyclist.
Commendable third: It looks mostly like a map of Edinburgh's main roads.
Are these royalties in the room with us now?
Posted 11 months ago # -
Well this was unhinged. I wonder if there really is a Tilly dishing out 'ponage'
Posted 11 months ago # -
This thread is a depressing reminder of how little progress has been made on Edinburgh’s infrastructure in the last 9 years
Posted 11 months ago # -
Stop being horrid about my uncle
Posted 11 months ago # -
It looks like the next year or so will be quite exciting for cycling in Edinburgh - with plans for George Street and the cross city cycle route being developed.
- Morningsider, 9 years agoWe got a bit of circuitous, compromised and discontinuous cross-city cycle route and they haven’t even started to build anything on George St
Posted 11 months ago # -
Utterly rule 2 depressing. I was a lot more positive 9 years ago. But the climate emergency has emphasised the need for rapid structural change - incremental improvements are not enough.
And yet NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING!
Posted 11 months ago # -
“haven’t even started to build anything on George St”
I was hearing today, ‘reliable’ (non CEC) sources that it won’t happen - money.
Posted 11 months ago # -
"...it won’t happen..."
Is that why the safe-ish right-turn ASL box from Charlotte Square into George Street has disappeared and the new bike lane doesn't have an obvious splitter?
Posted 7 months ago #
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