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.
I trust all you guys and your instincts, but I push rather than cycle, and prefer to hug the side where possible. I'm not terribly keen on having people cycling hold on and force me to walk around them if I'm not sure how stable they are/ how quickly they will push off.
Of course, I don't commute, I usually have kids with me, and am generally more nervous than the rest of you. I'd like to think I wouldn't get angry, but I do find the aqueduct stressful.
Well I suppose it’s a akin to how some cyclists don’t like other cyclists miss using the pedestrian crossing when on their bike, some people are sticklers for rules irrespective of how arbitrary the rule may or may not be, or how enforceable it is.
I think traffic lights on the canal would be better, I tend to avoid using the canal very often as find it a bit narrow when crossing, if I see someone else coming I push, not because of the rules per say but because my handle bars are too wide ( my Evans lithium is a bit of a pup, widest bars I have seen, keep meaning to replace it with a galaxy but every time I see one its sold or the wrong height) or maybe I am just not that skilful.
To be a pedestrian on the canal may be like being a cyclist on the road.
As a regular barge skipper it does worry me when folk cycle over the bouncy cobbles on aqueducts. A wide body barge has less than 1 foot clearance either side, weighs about 20 tonnes & has the stopping distance of an oil tanker. The view forwards isn't the best. If anyone happens to go into the water just in front there isn't a great deal that could be done to save them from being squished. The good news is the desperately low speed we travel at - the bad news is that holiday barges, which are at least narrower, inevitably travel faster than they should be.
"I'm not terribly keen on having people cycling hold on and force me to walk around them if I'm not sure how stable they are/ how quickly they will push off."
I understand your nervousness, but
"force me to walk around them" - just in the same way as they would if they were pushing and taking up more room than if they were leaning on railings??
"how quickly they will push off" - why does that matter if you have passed them?
To be a pedestrian on the canal may be like being a cyclist on the road.
Everyone on a bike should think of that when on the towpath. I think any reference to the towpath as a 'commuting route' should be excised from the literature. It's only just over a metre wide in places. It's a leisure route. Its use for commuting also removes the incentive to make any of the horrible roads round there any better for cyclists.
"force me to walk around them" - just in the same way as they would if they were pushing and taking up more room than if they were leaning on railings??"
But their strategy forces me to be the one who goes by, instead of the one who hugs.,
"how quickly they will push off" - why does that matter if you have passed them?"
what if they mis-judge the length of my bike? what if they're in a rush (as one gets the sense the cyclist is) and bodges it - it will be me that ends up in the canal, not them.
"But their strategy forces me to be the one who goes by, instead of the one who hugs."
Ah, that one!
Always something of a 'who blinks first' gamble.
Perhaps there should be an etiquette of those traveling east ('should' be on left) lean??
@chdot, I think the etiquette you mention is pretty much what happens in practce.
I very much like your proposed signs along the lines of "The aqueduct may be dangerous...pedestrians have priority", because it would, as you say, instantly defuse much of the current negativity.
Interestingly, the main gripe of the grumpy chap is precisely that the sign says cyclists should walk. One day he said to me 'you wouldn't go in somewhere with a sign that says Danger 20,000 Volts would you?', but wasn't receptive to my counter point that every time you see a sign in Tesco saying 'Buy one get one free' it doesn't mean you have to buy one.
A pair of racing-turnips whizzing two abreast around the corner from the Milton Link path under the underpass, who would have more nastily surprised the old lady walking north if she'd been ten feet further ahead.
My feeling is that actually the aquaduct works very well, and the biggest failure are the dismount signs.
I found when I started cycling it with 2 boys on the bike, I did tend to get up and push the bike, But actually quickly concluded it was actually easier on the bike/
In my experience everyone slows down for passing and most people are keen to stop rather than keep going.
I've only crossed the acquduct once by bike and hated it, probably because I don't like heights. Trying to balance staying away from the fence (eek! huge drop!) with staying away from the water (eek! water!) while negotiating my way past oncoming bikes and walkers was unpleasant. That was pushing my bike; for me riding would have been even worse.
Never again, if I can help it.
There is no way I would ever ride across it with kids in bike seats. Can't even imagine watching someone do it.
Is this just because I know that given my weight and height, if the bike went it, I would struggle to lift it out with kids on board? Maybe easier if the combined weight of child and bike doesn't approach 3/4 my own weight?
Hmm, when I first went across it I found it scary, but I acclimatised. If you do not like heights it is not for you. There are several routes round it. A pity sainsburys long stone did not construct the bridge that was spoken of as then there would have been a safer route avoiding the Lanark road through the park at longstone from the WoL Path near the visitors centre.
> If you do not like heights it is not for you.
I detest heights, but strangely enough I feel more comfortable riding across the aqueduct than I do walking. I don't get the vertigo feeling at all cycling that I do walking, very strange.
Couple of plums this morning. First the mountain bike riding chap who decided to ride across the pedestrian crossing (i.e. pavement to pavement, not on the road) after the lights had changed to green for the traffic on Balgreen Road by the Skate park, circa 8:50am. A very risky manoeuvre IMHO. Second was the chap cycling obliviously along Grange Loan from Whitehouse Terrace towards the corner with Blackford Avenue circa 9.10am. If you're going to be turning off the main road to continue along Grange Loan, it would be really helpful to those other road users behind you if you indicated your intentions. In that way they could make the decision that it would be safe to overtake you rather than having to slow down and hang back to let you go round the corner, which you then didn't.
Went along the NEPN this morning. Three vans near Coltbridge/ravelston Dykes blocking the path.
Cyclists going along quite fast around pedestrians. Particularly unimpressed by one older male cyclist who was mocking a pedestrian who asked him to take care and go slower.
Unnecessary and unhelpful.
@SRD The vans are a danger themselves.. to lampposts!!
On the ride home yesterday I noticed the bent, mangled stump of one just by Ravelston Dykes / Coltbridge.
Presume it was the light's fault for not wearing hi-viz and being unlit :-)
Yesterday, I was heading towards George Square when I was stopped by two chaps in hi-vis who told me to dismount and use the pavement as they were taking down the festival stuff from George Square so had some forklifts.
Whilst this was probably sensible enough advice, they had not stopped the car that I was following. On having a chat he did state that the road hadn't been closed. After a moment looking at the situation, I said that I would proceed with caution, waited for one forklift to do it's thing and carried on.
Tbh, I didn't like the way I was "asked" so probably did it to spite them.
'Too-important-to-wait' guy on a shiny new white Specialized MTB who decided to run 4 reds. In rush-hour traffic.
Waiting at the ASL at Meadowbank Terrace I was concious of another rider coming up from behind - Mr Specialized track stand/wibbled his way firstly towards my front wheel ('WTF' said my incredulous stare). Then he wibbled in front of me...then he wibbled some more...then a little bit more...until...he'd jumped the red light and was off down the bus lane towards Jocks Lodge...
Catching and overtaking him about 5 seconds later, I was astounded to see Mr Specialized roll right past me as I waited at the red light at Jock's Lodge...cos the green man is really a green for bikes, right, and the traffic at Jock's Lodge in rush-hour is pretty light, yeah?
Mr Specialized trundled onwards and duly sailed through the ped crossing on red at Morrisons and turniped off towards King's Road. At least here the traffic possessed sufficient life-terminating potential to make him stop. A few feet ahead of the ASL.
Mr Spesh wasn't done yet. He then turniped his way through the red at Quickfit in Porty AND the lights at Bath Street (...cos it's not a busy sorta junction...).
Mentally I flipped a coin as to whether I was going to have words with Mr Spesh deciding in the end it wasn't worth the aggro. Instead I scorched past him while looking as nonchalant as one can while putting in an 'eyeballs out' effort.
If per chance you're reading this, I was the guy on the black cross bike who kept going past you. Jumping all those reds didn't exactly make your journey any faster, did it? Had I a Go-Pro with footage of your escapade, I'd have shopped you to the cops myself.
Mr spesh sounds like he might have been Mr Pished?
Finally worked out why some people jump the red at the Evans shop junction and cycle the wrong way up a one way street. About half way up there is an archway that takes you through towards the cameo. Some of them however continue on pavement/road until Lothian road.
@Gembo - quite possibly. It had, fleetingly, crossed my mind and deterred me from making comment. Is there any point? Mrs Mandopicker finds it hard to understand why RLJ-ers get my goat...
A couple of oblivious cyclists yesterday. In the morning a stationary man on a bike pushed off and wobbled out onto the canal towpath just beyond Harrison Park and in the evening a women bumbled onto NMW from the bottom of Chalmers Street. Had either of them looked, they should have seen me approaching at a reasonable speed so I'd like to think that they would have given way instead of leaving me to take evasive action. I had a brief word with the man.
@mandopicker - I will heckle a RLJ after the third instance as I believe they are taking the piss. Anyone can jump two red lights but a third is having a laff. Drunks I leave alone.
"but a third is having a laff lifestyle choice'
@chdot, nice point, one person's having a laff is another person's lifestyle choice. Some people make poor choices no matter how liberal the observer may be. A smaller number of people only ever seem to be able to make poor choices? That might be too misanthropic for a Saturday morning.
"Some people make poor choices no matter how liberal the observer may be. A smaller number of people only ever seem to be able to make poor choices?"
The gembo philosophy lesson?
Of course making the same sort of choice - with the same sort of 'bad' outcome - repeatedly, would seem to most rational observers to be a bad idea.
Then there are choices made that are contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy - like cycling for transport.
I'm not defending RLJing.
Perhaps 'the problem' is that it doesn't appear to be a 'bad choice' until the final time...
The RLJ is only a bad choice for that person if he comes to a junction where he meets a similar person RLJing the other way.??
The collateral damage of RLJing can feel palpable. Two days last week tempers seemed high. Two other days everyone nicely nicely with each other the fifth day was English bank holiday quiet.
One of the side issues is the fury that people seem one degree away from, stoked up by EEN etc some days of the week. Edinburgh can seem quite an uptight place at times.
The guy yesterday on Palmerston Place who jumped off the kerb, between a row of parked cars, on his mountain bike in front of my car. I emergency stopped in time and sounded the horn. He gave me the finger and then repeated it again as I passed him.
Later on he caught up, gave me the finger again, cycled in to oncoming traffic and through a red light.
Idiot.
Mr impatient who was bing-bing-bing-ing my family out of his way along Portobello Prom at midday yesterday. With one in the pram and one on a balance bike at one of the particularly congested and narrow points, it does take a certain amount of time to get out of the way.
As Mr impatient has been cycling for 50 years, he really should know better.
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