CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 14years 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 mentioned ages ago that I had this idea of a trailer 'chase-cam' to ridicule the bad bits of the QBC. Not quite there yet, but I do have some sample footage from the new Contour which I've stuck up as a test:
| [+] Embed the video | Video Download | Get the Flash Video |
63 vehicles parked on the road in just 1.7 miles... depressing! (I didn't count vehicles parked in bays with a cycle lane painted around them, since I figure that's OK).
Available in 720p if you click through.
Make sure you CC a copy of it to Helen "swathes of bike lanes" Martin of the Chipwrapper. She'll want 63 x £30 spot fines for every time you strayed out of your lane to pass an obstruction get in her way.
Are you faster than the cars at one point?
I hope so, in fact I also defeated that pizza delivery moped which is always a special achievement.
It takes ~25-30 minutes to drive to work but less than 20 mins to cycle so one must be going faster on the whole.
@kaputnik, to be fair 63 was the total on both sides, so the average cyclist would only owe £945 in fines each time they used the QBC. Helen's clearly on to something.
Dutch cycling: because the cycle path is better than the road.
UK cycling: because the road is better than the cycle path.
The video is useful to show the number of cars parked on the 'cycle path'. You're a pretty fast cyclist (a lot faster than me!). There are people who cycle slower than me though. I think a more important video might be one of a slower person - then a lot of a cars will be overtaking, and the problem of cars blocking the bike lane becomes a lot more daunting, if that makes sense?
The only concession to cyclists apart from ASLs is a few short sections of lane - out from the kerb and right in the middle of the dooring zone. Some bad driving in evidence and did you hit every red light?
What I really want to do is stop behind every obstruction and wait to pull out again - rather than ignoring the QBC which is a poor way to emphasise its shortcomings.
Need to master the tripod / trailer setup though, as it's much more powerful in 'follow cam' mode :)
"... as it's much more powerful in 'follow cam' mode :)"
I rigged up a big pole sticking off the back of my bike a while back and it's like a computer game the way it follows you. When the trailer is built I am DEFINITELY putting a tripod in there to film its maiden voyage.
I don't understand. How can this facility be so bad in "Scotland's cycling friendly capital city"?
Wait...what? I'm hoping that's a joke. Is that advert for REAL?
notice the nobbly tyres - at least they're realistic about the road surfaces!
It's true: when you look across all the capital cities in Scotland, Edinburgh is the most cycle friendly.
Some bad driving in evidence
and surprise surprise I noticed a car and the Hua Xing red van both parked on double yellow lines blocking the cycle lane at the notorious Hua Xing supermarket.
and did you hit every red light?
I cycle much more slowly (is that video not several times real speed?!) and I often get a "Red Wave" when I use the LQBC - every light turns to red as I cycle up to it.
Please tell me that advert is some sort of photoshoppists joke?!
It's bad enough to have to put up with things the way they are without this sort of greenwash being foisted upon us to try and put the council in a better light, despite it's countless failings with regards to cycling.
It is greenwash but in a sense it is true. Horrible though it is to consider, it IS the most cycle friendly city in Scotland. The council can sit back, smug that their "initiatives" are definitely working, secure in the knowledge that everywhere else has even fewer cyclists and that is not likely to change anytime soon.
No joke, I'm afraid. The advert's on the back of a supplement to this month's Transport Times which covers the shortlisted entries for 2012's national transport awards.
Turn to page 14 and the Achievements in Cycling award category, and there's Edinburgh's Active Travel Action Plan. It's up against Cardiff's Bike It programme, Glasgow's Cycling in Glasgow project, Lancashire, Ealing, Nottingham, Sheffield, TfL, and Vale of Glamorgan Councils.
When you look through what each of the entries has done, it's not exactly mindblowing - TfL is for installing cycle parking, Glamorgan's is for one 2.7km off road path, Sheffield has a scheme to allow people to borrow bikes in order to encourage commuting, Lancs has converted 14km old railway lines to bike paths, Caridff and Ealing are about training. Edinburgh looks pretty good compared to these.
The Glasgow entry is for a couple of segregated cycle routes Connect 2 in the west end/city centre and Smart Choices, Smarter Places from the city centre to the Commonwealth Games facilities and some signing. It says here both schemes "feature an adaptation of the 'Copenhagen style' cycleway, with a physically separated lane for two-way cyle traffic. Junctions give cyclists priority where possible." (I don't know this facility, but I assume that "where possible" is the key element of that sentence...)
Just in case you haven't seen the leaflet yet... We're officially the self-proclaimed cycle-friendliest capital city in Scotland.
Just noticed that the graphic designer has been sloppy and flipped the bike image over - putting chainrings and QR on the wrong side of the bike.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!
@K For the hard of computing (ie, me), where do you find the jpg address on Flickr to post the image on here?
@PS - depends, it would usually have to be your own image to generate the relevant BBcode and thumbnail for you.
But it would be found under "share" then "grab the HTML/BBcode", it would depend on how image owner has set up permissions.
I had a bad case of 'red wave' along Princes St on Sunday enroute to the gold postbox. not impressed.
Chase-cam looks good, Dave. I get about the same perspective and field of view from my stratospherically tall enduro motorbicycle.
You just need a catchy ident for it.
"Woah! How about that for a road video, cyclist fans! Live, all Dave, all night. We know what you need, only right here, on Dave TV!"
@kaps
The leaflet you post has been cunningly altered tho? yes.
Not a big fan of magnatom's style, this one is quite good and informative as a compare-and-contrast to QBC:
http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->
| [+] Embed the video | Glasgow 2014 - Cycling infrastructure" target="_blank">Video Download | Get the Flash Video |
I'd prefer to be able to hear Dave on the Brompton because he looks like he is talking about the road.
Even these guys didn't follow the mad bit on London Rd at around 9 mins. I think you're meant to go left, round St Andrew's Sq and then onto the Saltmarket.
Access to/from the other side of the road baffles me particularly on the other section they built in Berkley St.
Apparently due to open officially a week on Friday.
Presume this will be finished -
Magantom needs to have a word with his Brompton-riding mate. No excuse for running through the ASL like he does. Why do people do this?
Otherwise it was interesting to see the segregated lanes...
The Uni work was due to be finished in mid-September. We've been keeping an eye on the announced finish date every time we pass by and they seem to keep missing their deadlines.
I'm really curious about what's been done at that junction, the KB traffic lights at Mayfield Rd / West Mains Rd. They've widened the pavements. While this might be sensible for the pedestrians, of which there can be a great many at once, I worry that they've taken away all the bit of road used by bicycles heading north into town. And at the same time, from the widened pavement at the corner, there's a sort of a launch ramp going down onto the QBC lane. With nothing to indicate how a bicycle might have got onto that widened pavement in the first place. I'm worried that their idea of a cycle crossing from the KB campus is that people will sedately walk their bikes across the road, then mount them on the pavement and ride down the launch ramp onto the QBC. Instead of just cycling out of the campus gate straight onto the road, which is what they will do. At which point they'll be competing with buses and cars for a much reduced width of road which isn't wide enough for both of them. It looks bizarre and potentially quite dangerous.
And my neighbours have been exclaiming "and how are the buses going to get round the corner?" and tutting about council incompetence.
I believe the plan is for a toucan crossing, and the council were made aware at the consultation stage that they were engineering in conflict with pedestrians.
KB cycle traffic arriving from the north will be directed onto the nearside pavement to await the shared crossing phase, then cross diagonally on to the campus.
I'm not sure how cycle traffic exiting the campus is to work for the other cardinal points, but northbound traffic does appear to be expected to share the corner of the pavement, then use the launch ramp. I suspect that the more likely approach will be another, less steep, diagonal to just join the main carriage cycling through the pedestrians.
Of course, this may simply be a half way house, to having two dedicated phases, one for pedestrians and one for cyclists.
Have a link to cyclist's desire lines in other places...
Robert
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