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London Deploys Cycle Superhighways Despite "Old Men In Limos"
dkatana writes: London's mayor Boris Johnson had to fight its way through stiff resistance to the new Cycle Superhighways to see his vision of a cycling capital become reality.
Detractors included the Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA), which threatened legal action, but ultimately backed away when it became apparent that a judicial review of TfL's plans would simply delay rather than stop the new routes. Property firm Canary Wharf Group had also been vocal, producing an anonymous briefing (which it later acknowledged) that called the planned route "extremely damaging for London." An unnamed borough was threatened with powers to seize control of their roads if cycle superhighways were blocked.
Now the two new segregated bike paths will crisscross the city and open up speedy, safe cycling that will ease pollution and traffic for everyone, non-cyclists, too, Boris Johnson says.
Detractors included the Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA), which threatened legal action, but ultimately backed away when it became apparent that a judicial review of TfL's plans would simply delay rather than stop the new routes. Property firm Canary Wharf Group had also been vocal, producing an anonymous briefing (which it later acknowledged) that called the planned route "extremely damaging for London." An unnamed borough was threatened with powers to seize control of their roads if cycle superhighways were blocked.
Now the two new segregated bike paths will crisscross the city and open up speedy, safe cycling that will ease pollution and traffic for everyone, non-cyclists, too, Boris Johnson says.
What the fuck is the summary trying to say?
Why is London's mayor incorrectly referred to as an "its" in the first half of the sentence, but as "his" later on in the sentence?
What the fuck?
Super-Cycling Super-Crash
I drive on heavily congested roads for about 12 miles. My car says I average 22 mph....
If there was a bicycle highway that was uninterrupted for this distance, I could save stress by riding a bike rather than a car, with little cost in time.
The article states that the London Taxi Drivers Association and a couple of other groups are against the bike lanes because they believe the bike lanes will increase congestion - yet the article also states that the bike lanes are entirely or almost entirely segregated from normal car traffic. I just don't see how those two things meet up. The real reason is obvious: that more people riding bikes means fewer people taking taxis and other forms of paid transportation, but they could have at least come up with a better argument.
They appear to have be creating these segregated lanes by halving the size of existing streets.
London is crowded. There is not a whole lot of room to build infrastructure. You can't move the buildings back 3 meters to make room for a bike lane, you have to make the existing street narrower.
If you halve the size of a busy street, you will absolutely increase congestion.
I figure the taxi drivers see 'anything' as a threat and thus oppose it.
Still, looking at the graphic, they're turning a space that could be a 4 lane road into 2.
Still, more bicycles SHOULD equate to more taxi rides - more people ditch their cars for bicycles 'except' for xyz, which then logically leads to more cab rides.
Self driving cars should be what they're really worried about.
I don't read AC A human right
To take my motorcycle on this cycle superhighway. :D
Middle-Aged Men In Lycra?
If you don't believe me, wait until next winter.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Of course the plan includes building locker rooms for all those people who will now get to the office covered in sweat, rain, snow and whatnot.
Otherwise it's the entire office that will smell like a locker room.
lucm, indeed.
This concept is referred to in the headline with a direct quote, and yet it's not in the article or the summary. Where are these old men in limos? Did the submitter or editor just invent this quote out of thin air to provide support to a fictitious argument that nobody is making?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why not go further?
Why not add some raised cycle and walkways around the city?
There are plenty of ways you can add some nice raised paths around cities, including covering them up with some nice foliage to green it up a bit.
This would also benefit a place like London since, you know, busy roads.
Adding more safe paths for tourists would also make people more likely to come back if it means they can get around the city without coming up against many traffic lights at all.
Getting them off the same level should be a pretty huge aim to be honest. Traffic lights are a pain in the ass for both pedestrians and cars. (in regards to people crossing, not the necessary traffic management of criss-crossing roads)
Raised paths are far easier to make than raised roads. Plus, raised paths create a far better view of the city.
I remember seeing some old bridge in a city in the US, forgot which, it was an old unused bridge for a while.
It got tidied up and re-purposed as a walkway, raised garden in it. Looked amazing.
Little things like this can make a city so much better to move around in.
London already is a fairly green place as it is, but can't hurt to have more. More so if it increases flow of people through the city.
Walkways just seem to take a lower priority when it comes to city planning. It is all roads roads and plots for buildings. Poor planning in my opinion.
Human traffic is just as important as vehicular traffic. More important I'd say.
Split them up. As much as you can.
and the City blatantly told us this wasn't about bikers at all, but about narrowing the roads to increase parking and force drivers to slow down.
I expect to ride on the center of the rightmost, non-parking available lane
A couple weeks ago, a cop gave me a hard time for riding my bike in the right half of a street's only through lane when the lane to my right was marked right turn only. "Get over to the right or use the sidewalk." Do you expect to go straight in right turn only lanes?
I did read through the whole tread and I am astounded that so many readers spell doom and gloom for a city that introduces proper bike infrastructure. Distorted reality, eh...
I have news for you. Let's take the obvious case - the Netherlands. Do you believe the countries exists? Yes? OK, so how come it has not collapsed to the bottom of the economic ladder if businesses cannot deliver their goods, customers cannot go to shops and employees cannot reach their work [all those are claims I found in the tread]? Reality check : FAIL!
I live in A'dam and work in Delft [bike-train-bike]. I have regular visits for business, medical and personal reasons to Maastricht, Leiden, Njimegen, Eindhoven, Hilversum and Leeuwarden. Check google maps to see what this means. Never owned a car. Never needed a car except when I shop furniture or tons of materials and tools for home renovation [but that can be delivered by the retailer, I can rent a car for a day or ask a friend with a car to help]. Trains and bikes can get you everywhere in this country and I do mean everywhere. You can go between cities [separated bike lanes that go usually through nice scenery double the road network].
What do I win and what society wins:
No costs for a car
1.5 hrs per working day reading books/magazines and meeting people in the train. Nice, clean trains that are used by all segments of society [so you don't have reasons for the old idiotic Clarkson retort that public transport is used only by junkies who will puke on you]. In fact traveling in the morning to the work you meet all the students that go to Leiden and Delft [university centers]. Did I mention the females are more in the NL than the males and the gays are more than the lesbians [there is a shortage of men here]? Hell, for the last nuclear summit in NL where Obama landed with the plane, shook hands with the king and then immediately disappeared in a helicopter [escorted by 2 others and hordes of bikes and cars] - btw, most dutch thought that was ridiculously paranoid, unnecessary and plain rude - the prime minister of Belgium took the train [high-speed line Amsterdam - Brussels - Paris].
No need for cardio in the gym so I can focus on power training. When I stopped going to the gym for 6 months after I started again the only exercise I could more of compare to before the break was legs [so it helps the power training too]. Because the infrastructure allows me to ride the bike as an exercise as well - very fast with rapid acceleration and braking.
General health benefits for all cyclists [to mention again those mythical [for /. ers] creatures, called women - any idea how riding a bicycle shapes women's legs. No? Thought so...]. Contemplate what this means on a country scale - MASSIVE saving due to healthier population [lower health cots, higher productivity ect.]
Environmental benefits [no need to elaborate I hope]
Convenience. Going out in Amsterdam with a car is idiotic [OK, if you go to the opera with 10 000 euros worth of clothing and a hair-do for 500 you might need a car but I am talking about the 99% here]. It takes me 10-15 min on the bike to go to the hearth of downtown, no need to pay huge costs for parking [if you find available place that is], you can drink [or smoke] and can go back home at any moment in the night independent from any transport.
Issues:
Cyclist can be nasty and sometimes dangerous on the road - just like everyone else. No surprises here. To claim that somehow there are more asses among them than the rest of the population is moronic at best [I saw that "argument" here as well]
What else? Oh, yes - when you arrive at work you stink of sweat [I see this retort often here]. Actually no. Really, really NO. With good hygiene [and diet!!] your smell is barely noticeable and with enough exercise you can bike with decent speed without breaking a sweat. Besides, at work we have this amazing thing, it's called "running hot water" and "a shower". Check it out!
Less space for ca
If they're too young to ride there are lots of options for the parents to bring them along on a bike (via trailer, bakfiets, or whatever).
I shopped for trailers designed for carrying children, and the one I found had a maximum weight of 50 pounds or 22 kg per child. This leaves a gap between when a child becomes too heavy to carry safely in the trailer and when the parent deems the child mature enough to negotiate city streets on a bicycle. I had to look up "bakfiets" and it's apparently Dutch for a freight bicycle, which I've never seen in operation in my home town despite a growing cyclist presence. How large of a child can be carried in one?
Small addendum - the bike lanes can [and are] used by senior citizens in those nice little cars that can only go 40km/hr or so. Old folks needs motorized transport sometimes. Would you prefer them to ride regular car and endanger themselves and the others [you know they are more dangerous than the young drivers]?
Oh, and the lanes are used by small motor bikes [again if you have some health issue that prevents you from cycling]. The pizza delivery guys use them too [those people are in fact the most dangerous participators of the traffic and their behavior should be sanctioned] Electrical motor assisted bikes are on the raise too...those are better since they don't make noise.
Or do what a lot of cyclists do: bus or drive during bad weather.
Buses where I live take nights, Saturday evenings, Sundays, and major holidays off. (Source: fwcitilink.com) Bad weather on a Sunday means you now have to pay for driving lessons (thousands of dollars if your state has adopted mandatory supervised driving), a car (thousands of dollars), parking, fuel, and insurance.
There's noting magical about cycling that makes you sweat more.
Other than the alternative being a car with an air conditioner in 90+ degree F (32+ degree C) weather.
I'm a Londoner, not a big fan of Boris, the product of extreme privilege.
However the air is polluted in London [point a], many parts are medieval, twisty and narrow [point b], many journeys are a couple of miles [point c] and it's pretty flat in the centre [point d]. It's not flat in Hampstead, Muswell Hill or many places at the edges. So, as they say, two wheels good. People are getting killed by tipper trucks and we need this to encourage people onto cycles.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Their cycling super highway, and by 'their'm I mean the next armada of usurper class immigrants.
Cyclists usually don't don't follow the laws, not to mention there reallt isn't much room for them because of all the cars. Streets were made for cars. Every single accident or close call I've seen between a bicycle and a car was the cyclists's fault. Get bikes off the street and make our streets safe again.
Make more. It's needed. Hell, make more pedestrian ways that are wide enough to walk with a bike beside and NOT hack the shins of other pedestrians.
NOTE: I won't pull the bike in closer to me because I'm not going to risk barking my shins on the pedals because you don't want to move aside a bit further. I would be occupying much less space if I were cycling the bike, but, no, YOU demand I get off and walk with it, so I've met you already far more than half way. The VERY LEAST you could do is move aside for my bike beside me.
It ought to be possible to take your bike to where you need to go (at least to the same extent as you can a car up to a disabled buggy) and if you leave your bike somewhere, it needs to be protected from theft or damage. If not so protected, it needs to be close enough that the bike isn't long out of sight or possession of the owner.
If you can't use your bike to go from your desired A to B and leave your bike safely, then cycling is no more acceptable than public transport. And if it's less secure and more likely to be stolen or damaged, it's LESS acceptable. Only if it manages to be both as convenient and as secure would it be considered as an equal choice and equally provided for.
After 200 years of waiting, we can revenge the battle of the nest, and Copenhagenize London!
Top Gear pointed out how useless Boris' bus lanes are by showing that they aren't actually used. And they aren't. They carry virtually no buses. They freed up all this capacity for buses, and then forgot to use it. Whoops! Actually, it's worse; they freed up all this capacity for buses, and then forgot, no one wants to use them!
I hope this is different. I hope these cycle lanes are filled up all the time. But if they aren't, what will you say next?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fortunately car drivers are also trained to keep at least a meter distance when passing a cyclist. It seems that the problem in the US is that automobilists pass too closely
It's likewise the law where I live (a US state) that motorists must keep a yard distance (.91 m) when passing a cyclist.
because of that, cyclist claim the whole lane out of self-defense.
I take the lane when there isn't room in the right through lane for one SUV, 0.91 m of clearance, and one bicycle.
My results differed. Laying the bike down didn't work for me; I still got a full cycle of red: green for cross traffic, then green arrow for oncoming left turning traffic, then green for cross traffic.
Please use the proper name: Torchwood Tower!
Your Awesome!
*wink*
Do I need to supply two or three items of "dramatic licence" per episode to make my point or are you just pretending to be stupid for laughs?
What a deluded little puppy you are. Pity I neither have a bridge to sell you or are dishonest enough to do so.
It's going to be really funny when the people who created this get all mad that cyclists are not actually using these new bike paths. There are some videos on youtube where this has already happened in other countries.
London is old. Adding new lanes sounds like an incredible pain.