Cycle lanes in New Towns

On 4 Apr 2005 09:27:43 -0700, "MartinM" <[email hidden]> wrote
in message <[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

I was amazed to see that Stevenage still has an well maintained and
extensive, if unsigned and at times glass strewn, network of off street
cycle paths. I have heard that the ones in Milton Keynes are awful.
Was/is this a common feature of new towns?

Yes it was, thankfully it is no longer. The problem is that the
boulevard stylee layout led to vast windswept areas and meant that
distances were often longer, making cycling a less attractive
proposition in the first place, and adding the vandaldromes and
underpasses made walking and cycling even less attractive.
Fundamentally the new towns were designed around the car.

John Franklin's comments on the Milton Keynes redways are equally
applicable to all these types of layout, as far as I can tell.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

MartinM said:

I was amazed to see that Stevenage still has an well maintained and
extensive, if unsigned and at times glass strewn, network of off street
cycle paths. I have heard that the ones in Milton Keynes are awful.
Was/is this a common feature of new towns?

Peterborough is riddled with the things. Some are not 100% bad; in some
places there are traffic lights with bike sensors to get you across the
ubiquitous dcs. In the main, however, they are the usual glass covered
ride of terror through muggers' paradise.

What I noticed about Stevenage was how insular it was, the only road
signs of any significance pointed to other bits of Stevenage, and the
outlying lanes to The Real World were mostly overlooked (or in some
cases blocked with bollards). It was the first UK New Town IIRC in 1946
and spawned, along with its contempories, New Town neuroses which they
tried to correct by adding loads of amenities when they realised people
wanted to do more than drive to their mums/the shops. The cycle lanes
in the centre seemed a bit more used, the ones on the periphary seemed
to be mostly parents with kids on small bikes.

MartinM said:

What I noticed about Stevenage was how insular it was, the only road
signs of any significance pointed to other bits of Stevenage

Those are local signs for local people. There's nothing for you
there.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Just zis Guy said:

MartinM said:

What I noticed about Stevenage was how insular it was, the only road
signs of any significance pointed to other bits of Stevenage

Those are local signs for local people. There's nothing for you
there.

"You'll never leave"

my aunt has lived there (fortunately sufficiently distant that we no
longer need to visit) for about 20 years. Until about 2 years ago when
she found driving difficult she had no idea where the railway station
was. Another thing about a lot of those towns is that the bus station
is in the town centre nowhere near the train one.