Cycle Infrastructure

This video appeared on Cyclelicio.us a few days ago. It shows that you’re far, far "safer" to take the lane on a dual carriageway than to ride along the hard shoulder. In so doing, the overtaking traffic gives you a much wider berth than if you’ve already marginalised yourself to the edge of the...
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It never ceases to amaze me the number of people I see riding around town on crazily shoddy mountain bike wannabe BSOs. Or probably even worse, the real deal - £2,000 worth of carbon, knobbly tyres and suspension travel to deal with roads that are for the most part smooth as Liv Tyler’s complexion....
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One you do something about straight away. The other isn’t a real problem - you’re ony inconveniencing a bunch of sandal-wearing weirdos and grown men who want to dress like children’s TV presenters. On a 10-minute trip, a cyclist has to swerve around a vehicle blocking their lane more than 60 percent of the time, according...
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… of The Netherlands! No, really. Well, sort of - have a look at this video that came via EcoVelo and Amsterdamize : Compare the main interviewee’s attitude to the typical person where you live: "Perhaps you’ll need a cargo bike yourself one day" "No! Never! No, really. No, no, no. I’ll have two children at most and they...
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No, I’m not talking about the kind of segregation that creates second-class citizens , and makes people sit at the back of the bus - that’s not a Good Thing at all. No, what I mean is having decent, direct routes for bikes that keep them out of the way of eejits people driving motorised...
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I really, really like the Superhighway Manifesto of the London Cycling Campaign that I posted about at the weekend. The trouble is, the odds are that the people in overall charge of traffic & transport in your (my) local authority don’t actually ride a bike as an everyday mode of transport. So the fine...
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Actually this is Oxford Circus. Until now, it’s been a victim of the "keep the people away from the cars by fencing them in" logic that traffic planners love. You know the sort of thing - put fences between the people and the cars, so the drivers feel that it’s "safe" to drive faster than...
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We took a walk around the retail end of Ashington today at lunch time to see how the businesses were doing, and what they were facing in terms of competition from the new Cylon Mothership Asda-Walmart store that opened this Monday. Passing through the bus station, I saw these: What are these? Well, look...
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Here’s a curious thing in British law - at road junctions, pedestrians have right of way over all other road users. No, really - click on the picture to go to the Highway Code pages about this. Anyway, over the last few months, I’ve started acting as if this were true. When cars are approaching...
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This is something that’s definitely close to my heart - as someone who was on the slide towards middle-aged spread, but is now very much reformed, I’m a bit like the people you know who’ve given up smoking. There’s none so zealous in the anti-smoking brigade as the reformed smokers! Anyway, take a look at...
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