Stop Start - The Weak Link
There are actually some great facilities for cycling around here. They connect up useful places that people would want to travel to or from. They have great smooth surfaces, and they’re wide enough for two-way traffic.
Almost universally though, they have the stop-start problem:
These two examples are from National Cycle Route 72 as it crosses Welbeck Road in Walker. It’s the first example of a modern cycle route that I used, and compared with the way cycle routes used to be it’s just superb. Actually, it’s pretty superb without bothering to compare it with the way things used to be. When I’m heading to my various clients in Walker, it’s the route I use.
But this stop-start thing. Every time there’s a road that crosses it, there are these chicanes to deal with (they stop the local yoofs from driving cars up the cycle route), and then a road to cross. A road where the traffic has priority.
I’m picking on this route as an example - there are many others that have the same problem.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and these weak links re-enforce the message that cars have priority. I’d like to believe that when this problem is fixed, and bikes get priority, on segregated routes that the people will spontaneously rise up and take to their bikes in a славный виток (glorious revolution).
Yeah, right.
This whole issue is a whole lot more complex than just the infrastructure. But there’s a finite list of things to be fixed before people do start riding in preference to driving. And if we address them one at a time, eventually we’ll have done them all.
And then maybe we can have our revolution.
We have these as well… and I agree that they send the wrong message… Of course, there is a very real danger in people accidentally driving down these bicycle paths, after all I just saw a car driving down the Burke Gilman trail late one night last week. It’s a very dangerous situation when that sort of thing happens.
In other local Seattle news, there is a big problem with these kinds of car vs. trail crossings along Lake Washington in a section called Lake Forest Park. In that area, the trail is offset only one house/lot from the Lake, and so the trail literally goes through peoples back yards and ACROSS their driveways. The local residents all HATE the trail users. And they’ve attempted to pass local laws requiring trail users to come to a FULL STOP at all drive way crossings. They’ve even gone to the lengths of paying their police officers over time pay to sit on the weekend and ticket cyclists who don’t come to a full stop and place one foot on the ground.
Mind you, these are not STREETS, these are drive ways… these are entrances to single family homes.
It’s really unfortunate that it’s devolved to this level… but it’s become quite a feud at this point. Not sure that it can ever be resolved.
Yes, cycled this route on the C2C. Whilst I appreciate the need to keep the local nuts in their cars off the cycle routes, the continual stop/start is a real problem, and often difficult to get past two sets of chicanes and a road with a fully loaded bike.
What’s wrong with bollards?
“Several nice segregated bike lanes a network does not make”
“There are actually some great facilities for cycling around here. They connect up useful places that people would want to travel to or from. They have great smooth surfaces, and they’re wide enough for two-way traffic.”
I believe they’re called “Roads”.
Oh I hate those. Nothing says cyclists are second class citizens more strongly than this sort of cr*p. If they don’t want the yoof to drive on them then they should patrol it properly, not make it irritatingly unusable for the very people it was built for. Grrr.
Driving is more stressful than cycling, so perhaps cars SHOULD be given priority at these intersections….