If you had 5m to spend

POHB said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

- Cycle training schemes - adult and child.

- Many Sheffield stands all through the city centre and shopping areas,
distributed in, say, pairs or fours every hundred yards or so, for
short-term parking. Preferably covered. In keeping with the area.

- Long-term secure cycle parking facilities at transport interchanges;
bike lockers (both lockers to wheel bikes into and secure, and small
lockers for personal kit). There are logistical problems with these
things - can be used as shelters for the homeless, etc - that need to be
addressed.

- TV/advertising campaigns to promote cycling and warn motorists of the
dangers they inflict, informing them that cyclists are often going
really quite fast, that they sometimes filter down queues on both the
inside and the outside, that you cannot waive someone else's right of
way, that cyclists have a right to be on the road and don't need to use
cycle{paths,ways,tracks} if they don't want, etc. [1]

- Education for councillors and traffic engineers so that they don't
impose daft schemes, like closing off roads that then require a 1/2 mile
diversion when it would be perfectly safe to have a bike bypass of the
blocked end of "fake" one-way streets, etc.

- Enforcement of traffic law, particularly illegal parking and
obstruction of what cycle lanes exist.

R.

[1] This is a bit of a gut reaction, and I don't have any empirical data
to suggest that advertising campaigns [2] have any effect. If they do
have a beneficial effect, that's great. If they don't, then I'll
retract this suggestion.

[2] Such as the "Think once, think twice, think bike" motorcycle
campaign of the 70s.

POHB said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

Provision of professional cycle training for nearly 150,000 children.

John B
http://www.hampshirecycletraining.org.uk/

POHB said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

bribe the police to create a state of fear among car drivers, where bad
driving / getting in my way / driving a stereotyped nobmobile is an
imprisonable offence.

"POHB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

I'd have cycle paths on stilts covered like long market garden cloches with
a fan assisted back wind going along routes like the Tube system.

--
Simon Mason
http://www.simonmason.karoo.net

POHB said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

I'd buy a really bloody good bike.

Oh, you mean cycling for everybody!

In that case I'd treat everyone to a Sterling House special.

Colin

"POHB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

I'd remove all red lights, make pavements a shared territory etc etc ...

🙂

I submit that on or about Fri, 30 Sep 2005 09:56:09 +0100, the person
known to the court as "POHB" <[email hidden]> made a
statement (<[email hidden]> in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Quoted message said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

Subsidise bikes and training. Easy.

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

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

another thought:

5000-9000 nice bikes for people in my town, so the fantasy bikes bought
for me dont stand out or attract tealeaves.

communal shower facilities and secure parking in major work areas (town
centres etc) where people claim they cant cycle because they cant change.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Phil Clarke said:

communal shower facilities

Very broad minded group this is :-))

--
T h e - e x t e n d e r ! ! ! !

"POHB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

I'd pay to have quite a few cycle lanes removed. There is one redtop lane
on my commute which glistens with broken glass and I seem to avoid it by
riding just outside it, but it would be much easier if the whole width was
just normal road so glass cannot accumulate.

Adrian Boliston said:

I'd pay to have quite a few cycle lanes removed. There is one redtop lane
on my commute which glistens with broken glass and I seem to avoid it by
riding just outside it, but it would be much easier if the whole width was
just normal road so glass cannot accumulate.

Yours must be the only cycle lane in the country that isn't driven in by
cars. :-)

R>

in message <[email hidden]>, POHB

(') said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

Bridges over, or underpasses under, the main trunk road. Currently we're
not allowed to signpost as a cycle route any route which crosses the A75
except at an over/underpass (of which there are four in eighty miles)
because the A75 is not thought by the authorities safe for cyclists to
use or cross (and for nervous cyclists this is fair enough).

Mind you, of course, £5m would not buy many such bridges.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; making jokes about dyslexia isn't big, it isn't clever and
;; it isn't furry.

JohnB said:

Quoted message said:

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

Provision of professional cycle training for nearly 150,000 children.

I was going to say provision of professional cycle training for over
75,000 children.

£20 per hour

10 x 2 hour lessons

2 instructors train 12 children for £800: 75,000 for £5,000,000

Living in Oxford means that provision for cycling is very good and
there are a lot of cyclists, the problems are more the people who use
the roads, so if it were possible with 5m I would firstly have all BMW
drivers banned or at least re-educated into not being arrogant idiots
(there's something worrying about the proportion of BMW drivers I've
had more or less attack me on my bike with their cars). Secondly do
something about the multitude of bus drivers who like to play
squash-the-bike and finally introduce some sort of more legally
enforceable cycling test to sort out the idiot cyclists...

[email hidden] wrote:
| Living in Oxford means that provision for cycling is very good ...

Which Oxford is that, then? Surely it's not the one that has NCN 5
interrupted by fully grown trees at intervals of about twenty yards,
or the poles of traffic signals in the middle of NCN 51? It won't
be the home of the narrowest cycle lane in Britain will it? Oh, you
must mean the Oxford in Stoke on Trent, mustn't you?

Geraint Jones said:

[email hidden] wrote:
| Living in Oxford means that provision for cycling is very good ...

Which Oxford is that, then? Surely it's not the one that has NCN 5
interrupted by fully grown trees at intervals of about twenty yards,
or the poles of traffic signals in the middle of NCN 51? It won't
be the home of the narrowest cycle lane in Britain will it? Oh, you
must mean the Oxford in Stoke on Trent, mustn't you?

It's the Oxford that positively encourages non-tradition bicycles such
as recumbents, of course:

http://www.17beechroad.freeserve.co.uk/WarringtonCycleCampaign/facility-of-the-month/May2003.htm

R.

"POHB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

Advertising blitz on public about how cyclists are legitimate road users and
do NOT have to use farcilities.
Advertising blitz on health benefits of cycling.
Advertising blitz on how cycling is fun.
Advertising blitz on how cycling can be a serious alternative transport
choice for many a journey.
Advertising blitz on legal system to show how motorists who kill & injure
isn't a victimless crime or always "just an accident"
Remove farcilities.
Cycle training for adults & kids alike.

Hmmm... may need more than £5m ;-)

Cheers, helen s

Adrian Boliston said:

"POHB" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"wafflycat" wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Towns get £5m to start cycle revolution"

One can only hope it isn't spent on white paint...

So how would you folks spend 5m on improving cycling in your area?

I'd pay to have quite a few cycle lanes removed. There is one redtop lane
on my commute which glistens with broken glass and I seem to avoid it by
riding just outside it, but it would be much easier if the whole width was
just normal road so glass cannot accumulate.

Or at least pay for some road-sweepers to keep the roads free of glass 😉

Richard <[email hidden]> wrote:
| Geraint Jones wrote:
| > [email hidden] wrote:
| > | Living in Oxford means that provision for cycling is very good ...
| >
| > Which Oxford is that, then? Surely it's not the one that has NCN 5
| > interrupted by fully grown trees at intervals of about twenty yards,
| > or the poles of traffic signals in the middle of NCN 51? It won't
| > be the home of the narrowest cycle lane in Britain will it? Oh, you
| > must mean the Oxford in Stoke on Trent, mustn't you?
|
| It's the Oxford that positively encourages non-tradition bicycles such
| as recumbents, of course:
|
| http://www.17beechroad.freeserve.co.uk/WarringtonCycleCampaign/facility-of-the-month/May2003.htm

That picture fails to show that there is parallel to that cycle track
an on-road advisory cycle lane coming (southwards) towards you where
the car is in the picture, which narrows slightly and then stops abruptly
at the sunlit lamp-post (lit by the sunset along Keble Road) depositing
you into a storm drain on the inside of a right-hand bend. I wouldn't
mind so much, but the road was specially widened at that corner at the
time that the lane was put in, so the storm drain is unexpectedly several
feet away from the side of the road. It doesn't help that the corner has
a high-friction coating which was glued on to a surface that is permanently
wet, and is coming off in flakes about a foot across.

I think that my current favourite Oxford facility is too dangerous to
photograph or measure. There are on-road mandatory lanes on both sides
of Headington Hill where the slope of the road cuts a few feet into the
hill and the road is enclosed by stone walls some ten feet high supporting
the footway alongside. The posts for the street-lamps, however, stand in
the roadway, and in particular in the cycle lane, and are diamonded out
by white lines leaving about a foot or so of width at most. They're quite
intimidating when you're being passed by one of the London coaches.