CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

Direct Action 6pm Wednesday 23rd (Lanark Road Ride): and subsequent developments

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  1. LaidBack
    Member

    ICE Adventure Red 26 hardtail

    Posted 10 months ago #
  2. gembo
    Member

    The very fella

    Posted 10 months ago #
  3. neddie
    Member

    No mudguards. Obviously not from round here

    Posted 10 months ago #
  4. LaidBack
    Member

    From Portobello I think :-)

    Some riders don't like mudguards it seems. No off the shelf items for the big front wheels built at Bicycle Works. Conventionally recumbent trikes run 20" wheels at front but slow trend maybe from Maria Leijerstam (She cycled her Full Fat ICE to South Pole in 2013).

    Posted 10 months ago #
  5. chdot
    Admin

  6. Frenchy
    Member

    That reminds me...am I right that many of the lane defenders which were removed for the resurfacing work have still never been put back in?

    Posted 7 months ago #
  7. gembo
    Member

    No I think they are almost all back now @Frenchy. Working well save the odd taxi etc.

    Posted 7 months ago #
  8. fimm
    Member

    Cycled down the Lanark Road lanes yesterday, for the first time in over a year. I can confirm that the bollards are all back, and I had no issues with cars parked where they shouldn't be, but ouch, the lanes are still bumpy as anything. And it felt that they were narrower in one or two places? That might just be me, of course, as it has been a while since I've ridden them.

    Posted 6 months ago #
  9. ejstubbs
    Member

    it felt that they were narrower in one or two places

    Not helped IMO by the somewhat haphazard placing of the bollards. There is one stretch of parking (by the park, heading out of town) where the bollards have been installed between the two lines marking the boundary between the parking spaces and the cycle lane, which I believe is as it should be. At every other parking location the bollards have been installed within the cycle lane, with the two white lines on the parking side.

    I had been under the fond impression that the two white lines were intended to ensure that a modicum of space would exist between parked vehicles and the cycle lane. But with the bollards wholly within the cycle lane, many drivers seem to like parking as close as possible to the cycle lane, very often straddling the white line on "their" side.

    A similar problem with the bollards being installed within the cycle lane exists where there are no parking spaces. I'm pretty sure I've seen elsewhere (maybe Comiston Road?) that the bollards were installed on the white line. Putting them in the cycle lane just feels like a perpetuation of the "we can't possibly be seen to be taking too much space away from motor vehicles" attitude.

    It's only four or five inches I'm quibbling about, if that (though more in the parking spaces instances), but that's a much larger proportion of the width of a cycle lane than it is of the remainder of the road*. And the likely outcome of a cyclist hitting a bollard is much worse than a motor vehicle - we're basically talking the difference between a scratch on some paint work vs physical injury, or even worse if the cyclist falls in to the main part of the carriageway as a result.

    * Then again, many drivers seem to have a very poor awareness of the size of their vehicle, typically erring towards it being bigger than it actually is - sometimes almost comically so. I have a theory the that over-estimation of the size of ones vehicle grows exponentially with the actual size of said vehicle, with the result that some people who drive unreasonably large SUVs seem to think that they need more room than a bus or HGV.

    Posted 6 months ago #
  10. fimm
    Member

    many drivers seem to like parking as close as possible to the cycle lane, very often straddling the white line on "their" side.

    One of the first cars I encountered, up by the nursery, was parked as far as possible into the cycle lane. My have been incompetence, of course....
    ...many drivers seem to have a very poor awareness of the size of their vehicle, typically erring towards it being bigger than it actually is - sometimes almost comically so...

    I've had this problem when driving, and yes it is worse if your hire car is some massive horrible thing that they've "upgraded" you to, which made my husband happy (but not me).

    Posted 6 months ago #
  11. gembo
    Member

    The path is wider at the top heading east. It narrows and gets bumpier on the steepest section then widens out again. I think this mirrors the actual road widths.

    We had one white van parked on double yellows in the lane today and then another white van parked on the pavement.

    I have been up and down it countless times without issue. It should be celebrated for the imperfect thing it is - unless you are disgruntled about having to park in your drive rather than on the street outside your house which you don’t own

    Posted 6 months ago #
  12. Dave
    Member

    I've often thought it would make an interesting case study (at least interesting to road layout geeks) because there doesn't seem to be much method in how the lanes are laid out at all.

    When you get to the end of the uber bus stop going downhill (alongside the golf course) they've made the lane so narrow that it makes me sweat to get the trailer through the first slot between kerb and bollard. But the lane for cars is very wide. On the uphill side the cars have a less generous allocation and the bike lane is more than double the width of the downhill side.

    Some bus stops cast a 'shadow' forward that leaves missing bollards where drivers then park. But the stop with the closest bollards to it only has a couple of metres clearance and the buses use it just fine. etc. etc.

    Posted 6 months ago #
  13. Frenchy
    Member

    @gembo and @fimm - I went up Lanark Road again the other day. The two spots where I thought bollards are missing are:

    The parking bay at the very top of the hill, next to Cranley nursery

    The parking bay outside the nursery near Dovecot Park

    From Streetview it looks like these two spots have never actually had bollards - does anyone know if that is due to the nurseries?

    Posted 6 months ago #
  14. Dave
    Member

    Yes, I'd struggle to get you a reference but I think they almost immediately removed the bollards outside the nursery if they were even there (at this time we were clients of the nursery).

    I didn't really understand the logic, as it implies acceptance that floating parking is more dangerous (than simply parking on a narrow road with the same traffic clearance) but then it makes the "oh no! A cyclist might pass my car on the inside" factor /worse/ as you've removed what was previously some margin for error

    Posted 6 months ago #
  15. Frenchy
    Member

    Ta!

    Posted 6 months ago #
  16. Dave
    Member

    I spent a few minutes looking through my backlog of video files, and I'm not sure there were ever bollards at Lanark Rd nursery. I've got video from before any bollards were fitted at all (but the lanes and floating parking were painted in) and then videos with bollards as you see them today. If there were bollards they must have been very fleeting.

    A better question would be why they didn't standardise the bollards at resurfacing, given that the nursery business has closed down permanently

    Posted 6 months ago #

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