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.
"Britain is now one of the most backward cycling nations in Europe – but neither TfL, the CTC, Carlton Reid, the London Cycling Campaign, or the Green Party is at all interested in the example set by those countries and cities which have reversed car dependency and raised cycling’s modal share to a significant degree."
http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.com/2010/11/reflections-on-latest-tfl-cycling.html
He has some fair points but nor will it ever be achieved by segregated cycle lanes. Ignoring the money, there simply isn't space for segregated lanes in large parts of the city which means that many people who want to ride in Edinburgh (for example) would have to share the road at probably even greater annoyance of drivers since we now have our own lanes.
Look at Laidback's experiences last month even in an actual model cycling city when cars and bikes have to share the space the bikes are treated at best as second class road users. I've never been to either Amsterdam or Copenhagen so i'm unsure of how they managed to find the space to build the cycle lanes but my gut says they were never as densely packed as Edinburgh.
Riding in the rush hour and in evening was great fun if done carefully. However I had to ride to outside of path to get around the slow moving fietsers. This brought me into the scooter and car zone on edge of the painted path edge - just like at home. Dutch cars though do not like seeing pedal power out of its alloted space even if matching traffic speed and would pass close. In fact the average cyclist really cycles too close to everything in the city centre and there is no margin of error. Their open top 'City Sightseeing' tour overtakes cyclists as if they weren't there. The message is 'know your place' with the 'silver lining' being that cars are held responsible for accidents.
I maybe have seemed too negative in my Amsterdam crit.
The whole thing about cycling there is it's conformist and formalised with more path space as you move further out. As in Edinburgh the old centre has to share space and Dutch driver are not aggressive - just that they expect you to keep to your zone. There was one street near station which was solid bikes and scooters in both directions - felt like Bejing in the old days (not that I've been there).
I saw a mum with two kids on her back to front tandem getting overtaken closely but there was no aggressive reaction - in Amsterdam people accept that you'll be mudguard to mudguard.
If a Dutch person wants to go somewhere quickly I suppose they have multi-modal transport. Unlike Edinburgh one ticket does it all - trams, metro/light rail, buses.
ie - If we had run the commuter challenge in Amsterdam bikes would not have been first on almost every leg!
I think the attitude between road users seems better which means that space encroachment doesn't flare up.
Recombodna could add lots more I'm sure...
Finally this could never happen in NL. Bike routes are improved year to year rather than disrupted.
Removed cycle lane in Glasgow
With a bit of imagination, and the view that the internal combustion engine doesn't necessarily need to take precedence, there is room for segregated cyclepaths. Take the quality bike corridor from Kings Buildings to the Meadows - is there any real reason why this could not be made one way for cars and the other half of the road segregated and given over to cycles? Say you made it northbound only, then southbound cars would only need to head one block to the east through one of the frequent east-west roads to be able to go south.
I'd agree with the sentiment that segregated lanes help encourage mass participation, but they don't fit on every street, even on the continent, so at some point you'll need to cycle on the road with the rest of the traffic, and then you do want drivers to have taken on board all the education from TfL, Carlton Reid, hey maybe even the highway code.
The whole thing about cycling there is it's conformist and formalised with more path space as you move further out.
I meant 'out of the city centre'...
The one thing that I noticed cycling through Belgium into Netherlands is that bike paths and lanes
are never parked on!
So despite variance in type, width and surface you would never have to squeeze through someone using it as parking space.
What an odd rant. I don't think anyone would argue that segregated cycleways wouldn't encourage more cycling but as discussed here, changing driver behaviour probably becomes even more important if you don't want legions of new cyclists to get crushed at every side street. And if you don't want even more aggression towards cyclists on those streets which inevitably do not have segregated lanes.
I like the poster campaigns. It brings cycling into the mainstream rather than making it like some sort of brown paper bag thing which one can only find in dedicated newsagents.
disregards the views of the overwhelming majority who don’t cycle and don’t wish to cycle in road traffic,
Posters are a bit like that. Do they change behaviour...? Not sure. 'Think bike' one is part of the campaign to 'raise awareness' of all two wheeled road users and has been a successful line (ie many people can remember it). Of course all bikes are nuisance for drivers as they sometimes have to use brakes, change gear (!). The bike is shown by itself which is statistically correct but showing it as an occasional hazard surrounded by the norm of cars (Think bike - think obstacle). In London I did actually see several bikes at once.
Someone asked me 'do I feel vulnerable' on my reclining bike. I said I feel vulnerable on any bike.
(I don't feel that vulnerable ... when riding on an 'ordinary bike' drivers give you less room for a start and I have to spend my time looking over shoulder and glaring. 'Anti-social' reclined riding merely stops them getting to next red light first. Driving schools should cover how to overtake a bike safely - but do they?
I was taught about looking out for cyclists and giving them space by my driving instructor. Then again he also told me that a car was a lethal weapon, like a loaded gun, and should be driven with care. He also taught me to anticipate and to look, not at what was immediately going on in front of you, but if you could see about five cars ahead. To treat other car drivers as complete imbeciles and never, ever, underestimate their stupidity. He was a one-off. Much of his advice has stuck and is also very useful when translated to bike riding. "What is the most important road sign?" he asked one day... whilst I racked my brains ...the one you just passed, which was? I think overall summing it up you need to be awake and alert at all times.
I can understand why people don't cycle so much in the UK. The climate is crap mostly and the roads are crap mostly. Car drivers are scary.
Even though driving standards are supposedly some of the best in the world but there are just too many cars. I began cycling many years ago and have noticed a year on year rise in car usage, and I would also be slightly concerned if I were starting to use a bike today.
It is not only poor infrastructure and accommodation for bikes and cycling, overall there has also been a total erosion of consideration for that other main user of highways and byeways, namely the pedestrian. Walking around Edinburgh is not a joyful or pleasurable experience at all, the whole place runs on car drivers and their needs. On the whole I find it less frustrating being a cyclist in Edinburgh than being a pedestrian, traffic lights being my biggest bug bear as a pedestrian. Pedestrian/pelican crossings all over the place as well as lights at junctions, no islands in the middle of the roads at junctions or otherwise, stuff of nightmares.
Fear is possibly the biggest factor in people not getting onto bikes. The H&S brigade have gone too far and made it into a REALLY dangerous past-time/hobby. Cycling is no longer promoted at schools by and large. All of the above are contributory factors to bike use not picking up more.
Personally I also find using public transport, particularly the buses, time consuming, unsatisfactory, and unpleasant for any number of reasons, that I would just rather not share the space with some of the other passengers and that is a VERY good reason for using a bike for me.
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