CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Bax's description of himself 'catching up' is amusing because that's exactly what drivers do with speed bumps and speed cameras.
I have to get two buses into work, with a change. If the first bus is running late, I have to run along Princes St (on foot) to catch up.
Which is unfortunate, because that's exactly what drivers do with speed bumps and speed cameras?
Nup. Drivers tend not to park, exit their vehicle, run along the pavement then get in a different car in order to 'make up' time 'lost' when slowing down for speed bumps.
Yes, it does seem quite hard to compare speeding with cycling around obstacles (or even with bus riding).
Take this for example, from my wife's commute (courtesy chdot on an adjacent thread):
It's easy to say this is exactly equivalent to speeding drivers going into a park to avoid a speed bump, after all these are infrastructure features with almost identical intent.
Although I disagree I do find it quite hard to articulate a solid reason why.
I thought about falling back on the observation that cyclists on NEPN are basically never speeding (breaking a law on maximum speed) but I don't think that's sufficient, because we still criticise drivers who technically keep to the speed limit but are razzing over traffic calming features to do so, right?
in order to 'make up' time 'lost' when slowing down for speed bumps
As an aside, it's funny that you've quoted those two terms as though you find them suspect. Time *is* lost - that's the whole reason and purpose of the existence of features which slow people down.
And that time can certainly be made up, a banal example is that if I have to wait for a few unexpected seconds to queue through the Waverley ticket barrier but I can then run along the platform.
Or perhaps more usefully, if I get held up for just under 2 minutes (a full turn of the lights) at the junction beside Ocean Terminal, I can ride faster than I otherwise would to get to the station if I'd hit it on green. Is this not pretty prosaic?
We could open and shut the gates and use a speed gun (or stopwatch) at the bottom of the hill where the path narrows. That would tell us what the actual effect is?
I can't buy this concern with losing time because of some chicanes when on a shared use path.
I expect to defer, and do without exception, to a pedestrian on shared paths, in the same way as I expect motorised vehicles to defer to me when I'm on the roads (not that that deference happens much).
If saving seconds on the commute is all important, I reckon there's some hard-going going on, in which case ... if you're travelling at road speeds, travel on the roads.
I get pissed off at drivers who perform ridiculous manoeuvres, to my endaangerment, for the sake of a pointless few seconds saved. Isn't complaining about the loss of a few seconds displaying the very same mindset as those car drivers?
Regarding the chicane encouraging faster speeds after it's been negotiated? I don't buy that either, not in the slightest. The chicane's been left open a couple of times since installation. I've witnessed a number of cyclists going at 25mph+ through the gap, some whilst freewheeling. Many cyclists will use the lovely smooth tarmac to get a belting speed up.
It's a shared path ... it has to be, because of the narrow western end of it. Why would any cyclist want to intimidate pedestrians, given the sh!t we have to put up with on the roads?
Heading to royal high tomorrow pm, might need to check this stuff out.
@Dave I'm just tweezering what was tweezered upthread:
'to "make up" the imagined "lost average"'
Time is only lost if one is going at one's absolute maximal sustainable/attainable pace prior to and immediately after slowing down for the obstacle/impediment/ameliorator, where even the slight recovery offered by slowing down slightly is either not enough to allow a temporary increase in pace to make up the time or where the extra effort to re-accelerate to top speed wipes out the earlier effort-reduction. Occasionally, when overtaking by a straining barely-able-to-overtake-but-overtakes-anyway person on the NEPN on the way home, even when I'm slowing down for other path-users when they are not, without going what I would feel to be unnecessarily fast in between, I still find myself reaching Lindsay Road or Sandport Place at exactly the same time as them.
"It's easy to say this is exactly equivalent to speeding drivers going into a park to avoid a speed bump, after all these are infrastructure features with almost identical intent.
Although I disagree I do find it quite hard to articulate a solid reason why."
@DaveC I would agree with you and I think it's to do with the traffic calming measures in question. If I remember correctly this chicane has a gap of 1.1m. Which is about 45% of the absolute minimum and 30% of recommended. If the same was applied to a speedbump I would end up being about a foot high. If the chicane was installed correctly it would remove most if not all of the need to bypass it.
But people would still bypass it, I think, just because the gate would need to be effectively not there before it was easier to go through it than around it. So why is this not a moral panic situation comparable to the "Barnton Gates"?
15mph was an optimistic figure for the gate, at least on a recumbent. I rode in from the west this morning and managed it at a more prosaic 10mph. Certainly glad there wasn't anyone else about, as there's no way I could really negotiate it while giving way (it's far too tight for my low speed control on that bike - push through or fall off, or seriously mangle the paintwork).
I was reflecting today that a simple ghetto solution to the Barnton gate would be to form a desire line to the north side (between original pavement and new path), short-circuiting the gates. That would reduce the head-on chicken ramming speed aspect of the current arrangement.
Can't really do anything with video at work, but I took some screengrabs with paint while chomping lunch.
You can see that it is very tight, but it is rideable. I had to use the extreme oncoming side of the path from about 30 feet behind and I end up coming out heading straight for the first boulder. Much easier by road bike!
From the pic above to the brown bin is an obvious desire line?
Today is the first time I've looked at this thread. the subject never appealed as I had never been this way before.
Well, as luck would have it, I've been through here 3 times in three days. I never had the pleasure of using the old set-up, so this was viewed as if it had been here for a while.
My thoughts (heading east) were:
Oh, look at the big houses!
Is that a gate or a chicane?
Doesn't J K Rowling live around here, somewhere?
@Coxy, setting aside the chicane gate discussed here, the old one was the same for all intents and purposes, except there's now stud lighting.
It's wider now but it was previously wide enough to pass people comfortably anyway, and it was previously smooth, whereas now they've dug trenches across it, but you can ride them on thin slicks anyway, so not really an issue of note IMO.
Source: my commute for many years (but not for a few years now)
" If the chicane was installed correctly it would remove most if not all of the need to bypass"
But it would still push everyone into a more constricted space. Which is bonkers.
Well, that's what we do with traffic calming outside schools. Isn't it the argument of drunken speeding drivers to say we don't want traffic safety measures? :P
Dave - I've used this for 3 years now and I'm ambivalent about the chicane which appeared some weeks after completion of the path upgrade. I think your comments are interesting. The chicane is fitted in the wrong sequence taking account of the hill and the bend. If they were the other way round, cyclists coming downhill would really have to slow down to get through (surely that's the purpose?)and uphill (easterly) cyclists would be able to stay on the L/H side of the track...a bit of a duhhh situation. In all honestly its what's needed here with more traffic, up to now you could take the path downhill at max speed risking a serious collision with cyclists/ pedestrians. J K Rowling lives in south Edinburgh, but a certain tyres & exhuast tycoon lives on this stretch. However, I hope the powers that be do not get overzealous with these chicanes,free movement on paths is to be valued.
JK Rowling used to live in south edin. Moved out that aways.
(Tactiles)
"
in the wrong direction! (they are at least of the correct profile!) This was a mistake by the contractor and had already been picked up by our design /delivery team. Snagging work is due to take place in the next 1-2 weeks and this will include converting two of the rumble strips at the west end to humps as they are completely ineffective as laid. We are under a lot of pressure from residents there to tackle excess speeding from cyclists and we have needed their cooperation in order to undertake the path improvement works and to have the path adopted for maintenance by the Council.
Re. the chicanes gates these will be having reflective strips and reflective route signs added to them.
"
We are under a lot of pressure from residents there to tackle excess speeding from cyclists
I wonder what constitutes "excess" and "speeding", beyond one person (or group of persons') subjective view.
I'd like to then apply that same logic to roads.
Did they do any surveys/research on the reality of 'excess speeding'?
Doubtless there is some - maybe lots - but I'd be fascinated to know how (if) they assess the situation beyond simply 'residents demand'.
'Residents' demand'
It depends who the residents in question are of course......
I also wonder if they are implying that normal speeding is allowed (If speeding is even possible on a bike).
I'm also curious what they have planned in the way of DDA compliant speedbumps which are still capable of slowing cycle traffic.
"converting two of the rumble strips at the west end to humps"
Don't like the sound of 'humps', might need to rethink my commuter, BMX next time?
Barnton Avenue's surface water was visibly evaporating immediately after the thunderings this afternoon.
Chicane very wide compared to most others.
Tactiles very tramliney in the wet.
Path nice and dry after the drainage-work.
Rumblestrips (didn't realise there were quite so many sets at the west end) barely noticeable on the left-hand-side-going-north-west but much rumblier coming back through, so not so useful for encouraging downhillers to slow down but very emphatic for people heading into town that perhaps haven't noticed they're in a narrow channel with lots of gates and nooks and corners.
Camera lens not angled correctly.
To and from clips placed side-by-side.
So -
No peds (at that time) and all sorts of weirdery at both ends.
Some tweaking going on with the middle rumble strip. Signs warning of traffic control ahead/cyclists dismount are placed on the path. Path either side of rumble strip blocked off with barriers and a detour over the pebbles required.
The advantages of having a hard-tail ;)
Could they be adding in another chicane??
2 close calls at the current chicane this morning where cyclists in front of me started to go through when 2 cyclists came down the hill.... could have been carnage lol
Boyfriend (stereotypical speed-merchant lycra lout type) went through here the other day and was impressed, he didn't think that either the chicane or the rumble strips were bad things.
So long as they aren't set any closer than the current one, another half-dozen sets of chicanes would probably reduce speeds a little bit between the end of the road and the narrow path?
Can't remember which day it was last week, but I did cause someone riding uphill to stop and unclip for me on the way down.
I thought to myself that it was just a coincidence at the time (path's not that busy) but perhaps it's like one of those things where you always arrive at a parked car at the same time as the guy driving the other way?
"another half-dozen sets of chicanes"
:-o
On way through this evening they appear to have now simply started relaying that central rumble strip (AKA three rows of cobbles). Not possible to tell if they are making them more (or less) prominent or simply fixing some kind of defect (though I never saw any particular issue with that strip as opposed to the others).
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