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.
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Had a good conversation with Dublin City Council management today about how they can use the new national funding for cycling and walking staff that was announced two weeks ago.
The Council is aiming to hire *55* new staff to advance active travel works.
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Cant read that murun as reach want my cookies BUT please tell me it is not cyclists suing the council over segregated lanes. Please say just trams
Dude cycled into an expanded pavement thinking it was a lane, crashed into some kerb stuff and bled his neb.
Top Tip for Leith Walk: ride in the road. Well that was the top tip before the trams. May not be possible to cycle safely any more.
Pour vous gembo - there are a couple of pictures in the article, and it does seem to have been quite a farcility on a filthy night
An Edinburgh cyclist has threatened to sue Edinburgh Council after sustaining painful injuries when he collided with "Spaces for People" infrastructure.
Lachlan Will, 21, was left dazed and bloodied last Friday after his bike smashed into a so-called "orca" bollard while trying to manoeuvre into, what he believed to be, a segregated cycle lane.
According to the council, the lane was actually a widened footpath - which has been rolled out as part of the "Space for People" initiative - but the local authority had failed to remove the cycle sign on the road.
Recalling the frightening incident, Lachlan said: "I just came up Leith Street and past the bus stop to what I thought was a segregated cycle lane a few metres ahead of me.”
The next thing the 21-year-old knew, he had hit the pavement. He explained that while he saw the orange posts he did not see the grey and white blocks at ground level, adding “that’s what I actually hit”.
He continued: “I went over the handlebars and landed pretty much face first, luckily I was wearing a helmet because it’s got a pretty big dent in it.
“I hadn’t realised the full scale of it. I don’t think I passed out but all I remember is waking up on the road with two people standing above me. I stood up and realised my face was just dripping with blood.
“I ended up having to get help in McDonald's on St Andrew Square because there is nowhere else that’s open and I couldn’t think where else to go to get help.
"I felt so bad for the people working, I had to pry open the sliding doors and had blood down all down me, it must have been such a sight.”
A police officer, who happened to be near the scene when the incident happened, then had to help the shaken cyclist find his glasses before giving him a plaster for the wound on his nose.
The frontline care worker was initially hesitant to go to the hospital, aware of the risks it posed amid the pandemic.
He said: “My friends suggested I went to A&E but I phoned NHS 24 first because I’m a care worker, so didn’t want to go if I could avoid it.
Adding that “it was not a decision that I wanted to take lightly”, Lachlan continued: “I ended up having to go to the Royal Infirmary and the doctor glued the cut on the bridge of my nose and gave me a leaflet for a suspected broken nose."
Lachlan, who is an experienced cyclist and motorcyclist, insists this could happen again if it’s not fixed, warning that his injuries could have been much worse.
“There certainly wasn’t any signage, all there is was a massive bike sign where the blocks were", he said.
The essential worker is now looking to sue the council after incurring damages in the accident.
He explained: “I will have to get new glasses and a new helmet because my one is done and I’m not going to risk wearing it again. If I had gone to A&E and contracted Covid I also wouldn’t have been able to go back to work, it could have gone a lot of different ways."
Roz Boynton, specialist cycling Solicitor at Cycle Law Scotland, commented: “We are concerned at the number of incidents where cyclists are being injured following a collision with these orcas.
"The ‘Spaces for People’ programme enabled these semi-segregated lanes to be created, but from what I have seen on the ground, the design and layout in places leaves a lot to be desired and presents a serious hazard to cyclists, especially when it’s dark and raining.”
A Council spokesperson said: “The area pictured is a widened footpath introduced as part of Spaces for People, providing more room for people to physically distance and to cross the road safely.
“While there is a bollard in place at the end of this area to emphasise that it is not an open-ended lane, we will be amending the road markings to further highlight this.”
Too slow.
Better he collided with an orca, than a 25 tonne tipper lorry though, innit?
Thanks, sorry he came off. He appears to have made a mistake?
Work has started on Lanark Road
At ~10:30 this morning there was around 100m of painted cycle lane westbound in the vicinity of Redhall Bank Road, and a lot of "no parking" cones along both sides of the road up to about the same area, presumably to keep the road clear to allow works to proceed. Nothing further west, certainly nothing anywhere near the nursery. The works that were going on in the vicinity of the Gillespie Road junction the other week were clearly nowt to do with SfP.
@ejstubbs, see my Match report. The tower. Nursery at Gillespies has painted cycle lane with floating parking. To the right of the lane
Three pictures in that article but none show what it looked like from the direction he was cycling...
@ejstubbs saw this tweet mentioning Lanark Road at the nursery, asking how to get kids safely into a parked car... (via the nearside door surely?) https://twitter.com/rachaelbicknell/status/1354474972949970945
@boothym: that tweet is six days old. Has the world (or Lanark Road) collapsed since then?
Yes by the door near the kerb. The cyclist will wait
@boothym: That's odd, I certainly don't recall seeing that when I passed this morning. Would need to check the camera to see how I might have missed it.
As for how you get kids into the car: it looks exactly the same as the parking bays on Comiston Road and I'm not aware of any incidents having occurred between cyclists and car passengers at any of those since they were put in. I find it bizarre how people seem to want to portray all cyclists as uncaring, murderous speed freaks.
@Stickman: The CEC tweet that you referenced saying work has started was sent today. Why would they wait six days to announce that work has started?
Is that nursery on the uphill side of Lanark Road? In which case, if my experience is anything to go by, any cyclist will be knackered after coming up the hill past Dovecot Park and won't be capable of any speed, murderous or otherwise.
Not one of the arguments used against SfP cycle lanes has been proven following their installation:
No bus passenger has been hit by a cyclist going over a bus boarder/bus stop bypass
No driver exiting their driveway has hit a cyclist.
No cyclist has hit anyone exiting a car parked adjacent to a cycle lane.
No disabled person has been marooned in their home.
No-one has provided any evidence that a business has folded due to a cycle lane.
No bus operator has asked for a lane to be removed due to the impact it is having on journey times.
The continued arguments for consultation, engagement and road safety audits are becoming increasingly threadbare. The Council should (hopefully) feel increasingly confident just to send these "campaigners" packing. The much requested "evidence" is there for all to see. These things work.
(Yes, I know it is all about the parking - but at least make them argue that they are against these interventions simply because they are lazy b's).
@aken, no the other one wit( the tower up at Gillespies X road. You have time to brake before u hut the opened car door
@Morningsider quite a contrast with the response and outcome of the warnings over tram line/cycle interaction.
No bus operator has asked for a lane to be removed due to the impact it is having on journey times
Now. A council officer told me the opposite in respect of Old Dalkeith Road northbound. How might we check?
@Morningsider: No bus operator has asked for a lane to be removed due to the impact it is having on journey times.
I thought I read (on here - maybe IWRATS?) that Lothian Buses had asked for the northbound lane on Old Dalkeith Road to be removed for this very reason?
And - although it's not a cycle lane per se, but it is an SfP initiative - I understood that the removal of the southbound Braid Road closure was stated to have been at the request of Lothian Buses because of the delays they claim to be experiencing on Comiston Road. (Which is at least a tacit admission that the best argument that people can come up with for re-opening Braid Road is that it is a useful rat-run between Morningside Clock and Greenbank.)
@IWRATS - had forgotten about that one. To be fair to LB, it was mostly in an existing bus lane.
EDIT - @ejstubbs: you are right, but any delay has not been caused by the cycle lanes. I suppose the Council needs to make the odd strategic withdrawal to protect the integrity of the whole SfP programme. Not that I would want them to, but politics is in play here.
@Morningsider
Indeed. In the consultation for the original pre-pandemic full-build scheme I begged them not to take that bus lane out. It was always going to be incendiary.
@gembo: no the other one wit( the tower up at Gillespies X road
As I realised when I passed that way again this morning (I knew it as a Cranley Nursery - I never noticed the tower until today!) The reason I didn't spot the parking bays yesterday was that I was looking for them outside the nursery opposite the golf club - then, when I was approaching the Gillespie Road junction I was concentrating on turning left towards Spylaw/Colinton. (Doesn't explain why it apparently took CEC six days after work had clearly started to tweet that work was starting.)
It is the same as the parking bays on Comiston Road (which, as Morningsider says, have so far been issue-free). I assume the double lines on the inside of the bay are to provide a tiny bit of "door zone" space in case motorised passengers fail to look before starting to disembark.
This morning the workies on Lanark Road were burning off the white lane dividers on the eastbound side.
The westbound cycle lane currently doesn't start until after Redhall View. Is it planned to be like that permanently because the army has an absolute need to dump park all those cars on the main road here:
exactly where there's a sneaky little steeper bit just as a cyclist would be trying to make progress away from the lights and would maybe prefer not to get squeezed by impatient drivists and/or doored by a careless squaddy in the process?
Lothian Buses feedback also got the Great Junction Street pavement expansion removed. They were in the bus lanes but the ones there are so patchy I'm surprised it made that much difference.
Something interesting I read on Twitter the other day, possibly misremembered) - "all parking is floating, you're just used to it being pedestrians".
@Rob
Just snorted on my laptop.
@Rob - that was me.
@Morningsider hah, that explains why I couldn't find it on Twitter. Apologies.
@ejstubbs, you're right that Braid Road reopening is at the request of Lothian Buses. Annoyingly it's not the traffic volume per se that's the problem apparently, it's apparently the number of rat-runners coming out of side streets in the lower part of Comiston Road (Comiston Place, Comiston Terrace, Braid Crescent, etc) causing chaos by turning left/right. If they just stuck to the main roads then it wouldn't be an issue.
They could have solved this by restoring the original Quiet Route modal filters on Cluny Drive and the northern part of Braid Road which would also have made the Quiet Route more effective. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@pringlis frustrating. More rolling back when we should be rolling forwards. Try then modify doesn't always mean undoing things!
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