CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
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ibikelondon blog (@markbikeslondon)
25/03/2013 11:27
Getting great, insightful comments on my blog. Does ANYONE on a bike like road narrowing schemes? Street designers?
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http://ibikelondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/busting-myth-that-road-narrowing.html
I agree. Using cyclists or pedestrians as speed bumps is disgusting.
I have to admit that I'm coming round to that belief - that often cyclists are used as mobile traffic calming...
Just need to ride through Leith Links to see how awful road narrowings are. Or along Musselburgh race course. Or the top of Mountcastle Drive North. Or or or. They're horrible.
Just need to ride through Leith Links to see how awful road narrowings are.
Leith Links is a perfect demonstration of half-baked council thinking. It has wide buildouts, with cyclist cut-throughs, with car parking immediately on either side of the cut-throughs meaning they are permanently blocked.
Ridiculous, but at least some jobsworth got to tick the "building facilities for pesky cyclists" box on the form when they designed* the layout.
* I'm assuming it was designed. Or perhaps they just gave the chimps at the zoo some lego bricks and asked them to come up with the arrangement of buildouts.
My personal pet-hate narrowing is Murieston Crescent, which is part of the Roseburn - Russell Road - Dalry Road rat run. If you are coming from the path from Telfer Subway and want to turn right off Dalry Road into Murieston towards Russell Road, you find oncoming traffic in the middle of the road thanks to the buildouts.
Going in the opposite direction, it completely blocks any filtering (in conjunction with parked cars and the communal bins and the lorry-proof bollards). In the evening there's usually a queue half way back to the railway bridge and it's quickest and safest to hop off the bike, push up the pavement and back onto Gorgie Road.
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Richard Mann (@ParadiseOxford)
26/03/2013 11:34
@CyclingEdin @markbikeslondon Trick is to do it just right, so cyclists affect the traffic behind them *unaware* that they are doing so
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"Going in the opposite direction, it completely blocks any filtering"
When i do this route, it is almost always with kids and/or trailer. the design described above, plus the dodgy road surface, means that I too am in the middle of the road, with taxis etc behind me....not nice, as I tend to be moving slow (albeit also usually on low traffic days). but yes, definitely one where i feel like a moving traffic calming feature. An effective one though!
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Ely Cycling Campaign (@ElyCycle)
26/03/2013 11:45
@CyclingEdin @markbikeslondon we've been explicitly told that the cyclists are part of the speed restriction on a narrow 20mph section
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"Leith Links is a perfect demonstration of half-baked council thinking. It has wide buildouts, with cyclist cut-throughs, with car parking immediately on either side of the cut-throughs meaning they are permanently blocked."
What makes it worse is that not all of the build-outs do actually have cyclist cut-outs, and some that do, even worse than having no controls on parking on either side, actually have marked spaces for on-street bins!
"If you are coming from the path from Telfer Subway and want to turn right off Dalry Road into Murieston towards Russell Road, you find oncoming traffic in the middle of the road thanks to the buildouts"
I dont disagree.....but the council will say its unintended consequences of the buildouts being placed there to stop numpties parking all over the corner and hence putting pedestrians (particularly children) in danger.
But again, its really down to building infrastructure in isolation - as you put it "ticking the box" on the design form.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned McDonald Road yet. Some 'quality' buildouts there. Some with, and some without cycle cut-throughs. Can't decide which is more dangerous, frustrated drivers tailgating me, or overtaking at speed after a cut through, indignant that I am first and not held up by oncoming traffic...
It's daft, because there's an easy way to narrow the road - just put a cycle track along it. Add in bollards so people can't park on it and job done. You don't need a rolling 'speed bump' to keep speeds down - narrowing the lanes and taking the white line down the middle away will do that for you and the cars can slow down *each other* while the bikes whizz by unimpeded
"It's daft, because there's an easy way to narrow the road - just put a cycle track along it. Add in bollards so people can't park on it and job done"
Excpet build-outs are often justified as creating good crossing points for pedestrians - can't claim the same thing if it's a cycle lane...
there's an easy way to narrow the road - just put a cycle track along it.
Aye, but WHERE WILL I PARK MY CAR???!!!! (Not me literally, I don't own one. This is what Hamish McBloggs would say though).
I noticed yesterday that they have put temporary "tall" bollards along Princes Street going west, to keep traffic off the tram tracks. That's how easy it is to create a segregated cycle lane...
It all just proves how completely unsuitable cars are as urban transport.
There are four "waists" along Roseburn Street on my way home. There's room enough for cars and cycles on this street, then when you get to this jutting piece of pavement, you lose that space, and the road feels unsafe.
If the road already has parking and is wide, then you can still have parking and a track: http://www.copenhagenize.com/2013/03/the-arrogance-of-space.html
Slower speeds should make crossing easier for pedestrians, but if people really want to help pedestrians, then give them a proper pelican or zebra crossing, not just somewhere to stand while they contemplate launching themselves into traffic ...
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