CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
"Proper segregation here for a short length would have been a properly considered solution"
Especially as there is LOTS of room AND the pavement used to continue onto the path.
IF speed on the road is the problem that's where the speed reduction measures should be - BIG 'Cyclists Slow Down' might be enough, followed by LARGE 'Shared Use Path' signs.
We can use Strava data as a proxy for actually measuring cyclist speeds, although naturally it will tend to exaggerate speeds versus the cycling population.
Going west-bound, between the chicane and the open road on the far side, 93% of cyclists travelled at less than 20mph while the 85th percentile is around 19mph (month to date).
For the all-time data the 85th percentile is higher at just over 20mph. The sample size is over 1100 cyclists but most will have passed on the pre-renovation path which didn't have speed bumps and chicanes.
@DDF - the council was quick to dismiss (~18?) formal objections to the dangerous parking proposals on the QBC.
Did they receive this many written objections to the plan to improve the Barton path?
What evidence was used to establish that cyclists are objectively going too fast, rather than just dismissing this saying "there may be some increase in speed, but this is expected to be minor and doesn't detract from the overall attractiveness of the route"?
The council pays lip service to cycling but treatment is far from even-handed.
20mph probably does look pretty fast for a small object passing with in a couple of meters. 20mph for a car looks pretty slow because the passing distance is greater and the object (being much larger) takes longer to pass. Its all relative.
As above segregation would have been a much more sensible option. I presume the council aren't proposing disposing of pavements on the new 20mph routes.
@wingpig OK, thanks, now I know of crashes caused by bollards and by chicanes!!
As you can see from my earlier post I anyway don't like either and think they rarely are a solution.
"I anyway don't like either and think they rarely are a solution."
There are places where something is necessary to prevent vehicle access.
'We' have 'won' the argument about the 'need' for super restrictive access 'to prevent motorbikes'.
But I think that was more to do with discrimination legislation than 'cycle campaigning'!
Though obviously cyclists, pedestrians, wheelchair users etc. should work together as much as possible - particularly on 'reallocating roadspace' and vehicle speeds.
How many collisions have there been on this path? Whose fault were they?
Does the council have any data on this that prompted the instalation of a chicane?
So many questions - but so few answers!
"So many questions - but so few answers!"
You forgot -
Were dogs involved?
On one hand northbound cyclists are going down a hill. If the far end is up another hill, then of course cyclists are going to (want to) go faster.
On the other hand, people walk at 3 or 4mph. An efficient cyclist going by at 20mph is quite a big difference in speed and, personally, not one I would care to practice in that close proximity nor experience on foot.
I would love to take the Roseburn Path and knock out the Crewe Toll-Leith stretch at 35mph. But I'd never dare: in daylight there would be pedestrians and at night there would be animals.
provide proper segregated cycling facilities along the length of the A90
If CEC was serious about cycling as transport, then they'd be working toward this, but I fear it is unlikely they have the vision.
The current round the houses assault course is fine for leisure and those with time on their hands.
I haven't witnessed the new Barnton gate arrangement yet, as I've been back cycling on the A90 both ways since late April, when the sun remains high enough in the sky at rush hours to avoid the worst of inattentive motorist peril.
There's plenty room for a dedicated cycleway.
Get to it, CEC !
"excess speeding"
What is "acceptable speeding"?
Surely providing a pavement at the side of the path would have not only solved the majority of the issue but would have done away with the (perceived) need for most of the rumble strips and certainly the chicane? Would there have been much difference in cost, bearing in mind that the lack of need to install rumble strips would have lowered the cost of that part of the job?
Providing a pavement at the side of the path would probably have principally defined the path as a cycleway, when some (vociferous?) locals see it as a dog exercising route, that those pesky cyclists also happen to use, on sufferance.
They want to feel free to let the dog off the leash. Its a wee bit of countryside.
"They want to feel free to let the dog off the leash. Its a wee bit of countryside."
Maybe they should use the massive areas of grass on both sides of the path...
They want to feel free to let the dog off the leash. Its a wee bit of countryside.
They do that round those parts.
For instance, further on, near Cramond Brig, the route is on what is technically a road, albeit very quiet. I crashed into a dog (off the lead of course) at the bottom of the hill there, despite braking as hard as I could. Silly mutt of course ran out in front of me, as dogs are want to do. The dog yelped, either with fright, pain, or both. Otherwise seemed to be okay, but owner had such a dark expression on her face she may have been plotting pre-meditated murder.
Went this way yesterday on extended commute. Decided to blog a little bit of headcam footage: http://mccraw.co.uk/barnton-cycle-path-manufactured-conflict/
@ Dave - nice summary of the whole of this thread!
AND you got lucky with that photo - showing how much pedestrians are being disadvantaged - forced onto the road to face oncoming speeding cyclists!!
A few seconds stopped those three meeting IN the chicane.
Previous posters here don't seem to have actually come across many walkers!
There are a few school children and parents in the morning (and I assume in the afternoon). Of an evening there are occasional walkers but more cycles than walkers I'd hazard a guess at commuting times.
I saw that young council surveyor? lastnight looking at the work near the west end of this path. This was the same chap canvasing options for the A90 stretch adjacent to the dual carrageway.
Musing over Dave's full pic.
I do wonder if the owners of the last house may have successfully petitioned for the boulders / chicane situation, as it means they can now drive casually in and out of their driveway without having to edge out gingerly.
"forced into the road" ... it's a dead end with very few cars ... it's less of a road than your average supermarket car park.
There's no reason for cyclists to EVER meet anyone IN the chicane. When I'm cycling on the roads, I expect to be deferred to by cars, as I'm more vulnerable. On shared spaces, I defer to pedestrians, as they're more vulnerable.
Any pedestrians prior/in/after the chicane are a long time visible to anyone else approaching the chicane ... and so no idea why the cyclist in front had to approach the chicane at such a high speed. Could he not see them? Was he just trying to make a point? Is it, in the words of so many anti-cyclist commentators re Haymarket videos, a manufactured situation?
I suspect the latter.
If any cyclist wants to travel at road speeds ... don't do so on shared paths. It doesn't do any of us any favours.
If the best defence of the infrastructure is that it's OK so long as everybody is extremely courteous, IMO that's exactly my point. There are 70 million potential bike owners in the UK and not all of them are Mother Teresa.
It's simply a statement of fact that pedestrians now have to walk on the road from the chicane to the pavement - it used to be possible to walk from the pavement directly onto the path, and the council have spent a truckload of cash blocking that option off and ensuring that cyclists and peds are now head-on.
Pointing this out is not a value position. Consider manufactured pinch points where islands on the road crush cyclists and traffic together. To paraphrase you, "there's no reason for drivers EVER to meet a cyclist BESIDE the traffic island", but we still ruled out moving to Penicuik because I thought the road was fatally dangerous.
The rider is a stranger (maybe I should have made that clear) and had no idea he was being filmed. In fact I bothered to keep this footage purely because I had managed to capture a bike-ped interaction that was 'clean'. If you prefer to think he knew he was being filmed and decided to put on a show, I guess that's up to you :)
What they would probably have been better doing is keeping the narrower bit of the path as a branch for pedestrians, with a tight, though not so tight you couldn't get a wheelchair or pram around it, chicane, to keep cyclists out of it. That would leave the new, wider opening onto the path for cyclists and they would merge further down the hill. That would create a good pinch point by which time the bike should have built up a nice bit of speed for when they meet the school kids. Better?
That would deal with the "conflict" at that chicane but wouldn't deal with speed. And I have to say that many of the people who cycle those paths between NEPN and the bridge do so at speeds that are inappropriate to quite narrow shared paths. Not being shared paths would, of course, help although only with pedestrians. These guys are the BMWs of the bike paths - they want to travel as quickly as possible, have an unjustified faith in their control and expertise and will take chances and force other people out the way to overtake dangerously if they feel their progress is being impeded.
These guys are the BMWs of the bike paths
The bike path warriors bug me, too.
I use these paths on occasion but I don't expect to floor it.
And yet when I am flooring it daily on the arterial roads, there are so few cyclists around, you can feel more exposed as a result.
No excuse for the tokenist infrastructure, though.
@Insto - agreed. They could simply have installed a single right-angle railing in front of the old path so that it was less convenient than to ride on the bike side (then no hassle for prams or wheelchairs at all).
I don't know what the solution is to actually prevent crap cycling, which nobody can deny is going on everywhere, probably at exactly the same rate as dodgy driving (since the people doing it are basically the same group of people).
A huge amount of money and energy has been poured into this problem with cars over the last hundred years and looking out of our office window for a few moments shows it's completely unsuccessful.
But whatever the solution is, these infrastucture "features" don't even moderate speed (significantly), so it's not like they are making the best of a bad situation by disadvantaging everyone in exchange for keeping bad cyclists away - they're actually worse than useless.
Never mind, it's not like other improvements in the city are impossible because of a lack of money...
"
There's no reason for cyclists to EVER meet anyone IN the chicane. When I'm cycling on the roads, I expect to be deferred to by cars, as I'm more vulnerable. On shared spaces, I defer to pedestrians, as they're more vulnerable.
"
I was perhaps overstating the case by saying that if the pedestrians had arrived a few seconds later they would have been in the chicane with the cyclist.
I hope the cyclist would have given way - but the pedestrians might have felt it wise to hold back 'just in case'.
BUT my point (stated in more detail elsewhere in the thread) is that they shouldn't be anywhere near any 'cyclist slowing infrastructure'. They should be walking on a short section of path ending on the existing pavement. The council decided not to allow that.
The council decided not to allow that.
i'm sticking with the "last house on the right" theory
that's who put the council 'under pressure'
its a big win for them, they can swing out of their drive now without looking
"
I can confirm that the chicane was installed as a speed control measure for cyclists on approach to, and through, the new widened shared use path. Pedestrians feel vulnerable when cyclists pass at speed and the gradient of Barnton Avenue encourages higher speeds. Chicanes are used widely across the UK and Edinburgh Council has installed them at various locations. We have received support from local people for several recent installations.
This chicane was designed in accordance with Cycle by Design (Transport Scotland 2010), Section 6.5.2, and Figure 6.14 which includes a 3.0m gap between barriers. Reflective stickers are also provided on the main posts.
On-site observations at Barnton Avenue have shown that the current arrangement is well negotiated by cyclists whilst slowing down their speeds on approach to and through the chicane. The behaviour and mix of cyclists and pedestrians through the chicane is good and the space between barriers is considered appropriate.
The path alignment was switched to better accommodate cyclists heading westbound down Barnton Avenue who previously had to cycle on the eastbound lane to reach the path. There had been reports of conflicts arising with cyclists travelling on the wrong lane and vehicles manoeuvring at the end of Barnton Avenue.
"
No explanation of why pedestrians have to go through the chicane at all.
Also I don't understand this -
"
who previously had to cycle on the eastbound lane to reach the path. There had been reports of conflicts arising with cyclists travelling on the wrong lane
"
"lane"?
There had been reports of conflicts arising with cyclists travelling on the wrong lane and vehicles manoeuvring at the end of Barnton Avenue
ie. get them well away from the front of my driveway
"Pedestrians feel vulnerable when cyclists pass at speed and the gradient of Barnton Avenue encourages higher speeds"..
I wish the council was as thoughtful, sensitive and responsive to :
"Pedestrians feel vulnerable when motor vehicles pass at speed and the road design of xxx (pick your favourite) Avenue encourages higher speeds in motor vehicles"
"Cyclists feel vulnerable when motor vehicles pass at speed and the road design of xxx (pick your favourite) Avenue encourages higher speeds in motor vehicles".
Also I don't understand this -
"
who previously had to cycle on the eastbound lane to reach the path. There had been reports of conflicts arising with cyclists travelling on the wrong lane
"
"lane"?
I assume they mean the "right hand side of the road". (Right hand if you're headed west.)
Having said that, if cars are "manoeuvring at the end of Barnton Avenue", they're almost certainly going to be using both lanes of the road - i.e. crossing the white line to make a turn.
PPS In my old street, I complained about double parking forcing cyclists to blindly cycle on the wrong side of the road (blindly because there was a bend). Police/council did SFA about that.
(Presumably, either because it was "only cyclists" or because it wasn't as posh as Barnton.)
gibbo ... there's a number of traffic reducing measures in Clermiston; I'm guessing it must also be posher than where you used to live? Or was your comment about council inaction because of lack of poshness simply facetious?
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