It’s The Stupid Infrastructure
One of the chapters from Beauty And The Bike that really got me was the section titled, "It’s The Infrastructure, Stupid" , in a parody (or according to Wikipedia, a snowclone - there’s a new phrase) of Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan thing from 1992.
Frankly, I think the phrase could be rearranged to better explain the low cycling rate in the UK:
It’s The Stupid Infrastructure
Allow me to demonstrate . . .
What we have is schemes that can only be described as total bollards:
Pointless parking, making sure that although a bike gets the direct route through the traffic calming, the rider will be forced to swerve into the path of oncoming vehicles:
Kafka-esque road markings:
Nice, level routes that eliminate the risk of having a wheel bounce off the kerb to catapult the rider face-down onto the pavement when they transition from on-road to off-road segregated routes (oh, and check out the width of this off-road route!):
We have utterly useless vestigial bike lanes that’re only ten metres long:
Cycle routes designed to slow you down through junctions (because stopping and starting on a bike is just what makes cycling so damned attractive, isn’t it?)
. . . or that make it absolutely bloody clear who’s important on the road (drivers):
We have bike off-road bike lanes that cross roads . . . and back again for no apparent reason . . .
Bike lanes that just end when you get to tricky junctions (i.e. where you might actually appreciate something to indicate to drivers that you have a right to be there):
Where the road narrows, and there’s a potential pinch-point, it’s the bike lane that narrows , rather than the main carriageway - we wouldn’t want drivers to think about slowing down, would we? And if they get closer to the bike, well they probably won’t actually hit it:
And if you live in That London, you have your Cycle Super highways - can you imagine a motorway being built along these lines?:
I guess we can take heart though - people try their best in other parts of Europe too . . . and yet somehow get it wrong. Take a look at this video from David Hembrow , comparing Dutch practicality with German inefficiency:
Agreed. The UK does manage to come up with some surreal notions of ‘infrastructure’. OTOH, you could argue against infrastructure on the same basis as E-Bikes: if we’re running out of energy it’s waste of time. We’ll soon have the whole road again when the cars grind to a halt.
I think David is being a bit unfair: we have crappy infrastructure in Germany (Or I wouldn’t have material for my blog)but we have a lot of very good infrastructure as well. And while in the NL I hit a few dodgy bike lanes.
[...] It’s the infrastructure, stupid. [...]