The End of the 'Punishment Pass'?
Discussion
It's not true that roads were built for cars, that's just utter rubbish. However, what is true is thanks to a lack of viable alternatives to cars being provided, the roads have ended up being used by far too many cars, to the point that in daytime they have become almost unfit for purpose.
Just about everywhere else in Europe began dealing with this a long time ago and just about everywhere else is able to provide a clean, reliable alternative, and also provide cycle paths and tracks that work and that people use. Everywhere else in Europe also suffers from too many cars but at least over there when the cars are stationary other people, particularly cyclists, are able to move and sometimes in quite big numbers. Here when the roads are gridlocked nothing moves.
There's no magic to building and providing alternatives, it just requires the will. The Dutch even didn't have it until as late as the 1970s. The money is already there, but at the moment we're still choosing to waste it. In terms of weather, terrain and space, we're a typical European country.
Just about everywhere else in Europe began dealing with this a long time ago and just about everywhere else is able to provide a clean, reliable alternative, and also provide cycle paths and tracks that work and that people use. Everywhere else in Europe also suffers from too many cars but at least over there when the cars are stationary other people, particularly cyclists, are able to move and sometimes in quite big numbers. Here when the roads are gridlocked nothing moves.
There's no magic to building and providing alternatives, it just requires the will. The Dutch even didn't have it until as late as the 1970s. The money is already there, but at the moment we're still choosing to waste it. In terms of weather, terrain and space, we're a typical European country.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Then why aren't they wide enough to accommodate road side parking?Have a look here,
http://london1868.com/
How many of those roads were built for cars? You'll find similar maps for most towns and cities in the UK.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
Are you sure you're sure? Maybe it's me but I detect a shred of doubt there that pretty much the whole of continental Europe is evidence enough for youRe cars, ignore history if you will, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/...
and there's even a book about it https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/... called 'Roads Were Not Built For Cars'
.Obviously and predominantly roads now are built for commercial vehicles, because if there were built solely or predominantly for cars, signage, trees, road widths etc etc would make roads unusable for those large commercial vehicles.
Then we have those things called pavements, and if you doubt they form part of the road you need to check your highway code. Clearly where pavements are present they take more than 1% of space.
There are statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
A quick scan through tells me that cars form 79% of traffic (not 99%), 64% of personal trips are made by car (a long way from 99%), and so on.
Roads are built "for" everyone. Fact.
What I do think though is that as car users we take far too much of the infrastructure for ourselves (particularly when you include the parking of cars on the road), I think other types of road users are robbed of their fair share without recompense, and I do think that successive govts have done all they can to ensure there are the maximum numbers of cars on the roads so they can blame us and tax us.
It's time we moved on and got up to date. We can't carry on like we are and the sooner we realise (and we will be made to realise eventually, both govts and road users) the better and fairer it will be for all.
Edited by heebeegeetee on Sunday 30th October 08:03
heebeegeetee said:
There's no magic to building and providing alternatives, it just requires the will. The Dutch even didn't have it until as late as the 1970s. The money is already there, but at the moment we're still choosing to waste it. In terms of weather, terrain and space, we're a typical European country.
Because our country is run by f
ktards.Devil2575 said:
Because our country is run by fktards.
Can't argue with that. ktards.Anyway, re the book I quoted above, I found this interview interesting and have posted an excerpt
>>Why do you think the book got such a strong response on Kickstarter? Was any particular type of person interested?
I wanted it always to be not an anti-motoring book. The person who did the foreword is the head of the British equivalent of the AAA. I didn’t want it to be just a cycling book.
It is a polemical book, obviously. And it does stress to motorists that, you may hate cyclists, but they actually are responsible both for the roads you’re driving on, and also for the automobiles themselves. The technology that you’re driving comes from cyclists, too. The DNA of a car is much stronger from bicycles than it is from horse and carts, for instance.
I think an awful lot of motorists, when I get feedback on social media and I get kickback, say, "Oh, you’re saying the roads are just for cyclists." It’s not that at all. But it does say we have to share roads. And that is something that clearly is anathema to an awful lot of motorists, who, they see a cyclist on the road and they really, really despise the fact that a cyclist is there.
If I can do one little thing to show motorists that actually we’ve got a shared history here, that we’re not two tribes, we’re the same people, we want the same roads, let’s just live together. That’s kind of the message for the book. But that’s quite radical. You say, “Share a road,” and to some motorists that’s an incredibly aggressive message.
What were the surprises you found during the course of your research?
I thought the book would be about equal rights for motorists and cyclists, let’s live together, blah blah blah. And then I discovered how many of the people and automobile brands had bona fide yet hidden bicycle backstories. So GMC, the archetypal truck/SUV brand in America, you go in their corporate history, it starts about 1902, talking about the Grabowski brothers -- and yet never mentions that the Grabowski Brothers had a bicycle business, which is where they got their money to create the motoring business.
And then you can go to almost all the motoring companies—Chevrolet, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, I’ve got a list of 65, and I’m still discovering other ones, they’ve got a bicycle backstory too.
You really wouldn’t have motoring, you wouldn’t have automobiles, in the shape, the style, the speed of acceptance, you wouldn’t have any of that, I argue, if it weren’t for cyclists. Because those cyclists are the ones who morphed into the motoring promoters. And if it hadn’t been for the motoring promoters, probably trams would be our mode of transport right now.
Everyone in the 1890s assumed that would be the case. The future was trains and trams and bicycles. And all of the legislators, all of the bureaucrats, both in the U.S. and the U.K., were basing their extrapolations of the future on streetcars for cities, and trains for everywhere else.
Then there was a tiny, tiny, tiny clique, really a handful, of people, who had a different idea. They thought, if we modify our bicycles, and put this on and this on and this on, and do what we used to do on bicycles on these new four-wheeled things, we’ll create that future.
It was those cyclists who promoted motoring. There wasn’t a cutoff where all of the automotive pioneers ditched their bicycles. It really wasn’t like that. Ford was still cycling in his seventies on a very lightweight English roadster. Every evening he would go out on his bicycle.
So it’s a very different history than the one we know.
We look at history with filters. And we’ve filtered out all the cycling stuff, just ignored it. And we just start with a clean sheet of paper, there’s Karl Benz, there’s Henry Ford. And then we actually ignore the iceberg, we ignore the cyclists underneath who actually created motoring.
You write about how the ideal of personal freedom that has come to be represented by the automobile is a direct historical descendent of an ideal that came from the bicycle.
For sure. For motoring to take off, you had to have a bunch of people who were happy to be off in the sticks mending stuff. Because the first cars weren’t terribly reliable. Who were the bunch of people who were comfortable being off in the sticks mending stuff? The bicyclists.
History is important. You’ve got to know where people have come from. What are their influences? They didn’t create motoring from scratch. They had models to look at. So if we know how important the bicycle was to the automobile, and how important cyclists were to roads, that might give us a fresh understanding of how maybe roads should be shared by all. Because they wouldn’t exist in that form if it hadn’t been for those pushy cyclists in the 1890s.<<
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/12/the-secret-...
TheLuke said:
I never have a problem overtaking cyclists close and surprisingly I never knock them off.
I just hope you leave room if there is a sudden change in direction, I've recently done my Motorcycle Theory test (and I passed my Mod 1 this week, hurrah for me) and it states to give enough room. Same as cars to motorcyclists, and cyclists, as they are more vunarable to pot holes, wind gusts, people opening doors on them without looking, etc etc.It's not hard to do, you either wait a few seconds and pass when their is enough space, or you pass immediately if their is enough space and it's safe, as I do in my car.
Edited by Harji on Sunday 30th October 15:33
Edited by Harji on Sunday 30th October 15:34
WinstonWolf said:
The A1 was originally designed for Roman foot soldiers...
Roads are for everyone, just learn to share. No vehicle type has priority over any other.
You're not wrong, roads are intended for everyone to use, but what cmoose is saying is that a lot of roads aren't designed with bikes in mind, which is true. The two statements are correct, but vastly different. A lot of the roads we use today, unless they're very recent new roads, have had no provision for bicycles built into them by design. If you were given a blank sheet of paper & allowed to design a town from scratch with provision for adequate & safe cycle paths as well as roads for all types of motorised transport then the town would look vastly different to anything we currently have & probably a million miles from anything we can create by removing car parking & painting a poorly thought out cycle lane in.Roads are for everyone, just learn to share. No vehicle type has priority over any other.
PHmember said:
WinstonWolf said:
The A1 was originally designed for Roman foot soldiers...
Roads are for everyone, just learn to share. No vehicle type has priority over any other.
You're not wrong, roads are intended for everyone to use, but what cmoose is saying is that a lot of roads aren't designed with bikes in mind, which is true. The two statements are correct, but vastly different. A lot of the roads we use today, unless they're very recent new roads, have had no provision for bicycles built into them by design. If you were given a blank sheet of paper & allowed to design a town from scratch with provision for adequate & safe cycle paths as well as roads for all types of motorised transport then the town would look vastly different to anything we currently have & probably a million miles from anything we can create by removing car parking & painting a poorly thought out cycle lane in.Roads are for everyone, just learn to share. No vehicle type has priority over any other.
Edited by SteveSteveson on Sunday 30th October 09:32
PHmember said:
You're not wrong, roads are intended for everyone to use, but what cmoose is saying is that a lot of roads aren't designed with bikes in mind, which is true. The two statements are correct, but vastly different. A lot of the roads we use today, unless they're very recent new roads, have had no provision for bicycles built into them by design. If you were given a blank sheet of paper & allowed to design a town from scratch with provision for adequate & safe cycle paths as well as roads for all types of motorised transport then the town would look vastly different to anything we currently have & probably a million miles from anything we can create by removing car parking & painting a poorly thought out cycle lane in.
We do not do anything in a joined up way in the UK and roads is just one example. The roads we have were not designed for bikes to be ridden as they are now. So the answer that is being given now is to take space from cars and lorries to give over to bikes.Cyclists rejoice at this but it sets other road users against them. Right or wrong it is a fact that the cycle super highway in London is underused except for peak times, yet the traffic has seen its space restricted to placate the vociferous lobbyists.
It is difficult to undo London or established cities, yet new homes are built with no provision for cycles, why not mandate that change as a start? HS2, why not if we are going to screw up any area do it properly. build a road, rail and cycle corridor at the same time? Perhaps people would see it differently then as we would all get something.
Holland is a great example of they way cycles have dedicated paths which people use, nothing gauls me more than cycle paths, paid for by the tax payers, being ignored as the cyclists don't want to stop at junctions.
SteveSteveson said:
What cmoose is saying is there is more cars than bicycles, so cyclists should accept that they should have no rights to space on the road. The road layout we have in the UK was predominantly designed with cyclists and other road users in mind. With the exception of motorways and duel carriage ways the roads in the U.K. were designed for a much smaller number of much slower cars so cycle lanes and segregated lanes were not needed. If anything if you are going to go on historical precedent and intended design cars need to slow down and give more space. Cmoose's argument is just that of a bully "there is more of us and we are bigger so move out of our way" which is what makes it so stupid.
Cars are travelling slower now than before with NSL dual carriageways becoming 50's etc, yesterday I came across a line of slow moving traffic I worked my to the front there was a group of 20 or so cyclists across the lane as I went to pass (on my motorbike) some started waving their arms gesturing I was too close I had to laugh because if they weren't across the whole lane then I wouldn't be to close.Edited by SteveSteveson on Sunday 30th October 09:32
Every situation is different so it will always be a judgement call, there will always be good & bad cyclists/drivers.
Also cyclists when you go squeezing down the inside of cars that's also a marker to some car drivers that that's all the room you need so cyclists have to think about their actions as well.
Edited by ZX10R NIN on Sunday 30th October 10:21
WinstonWolf said:
Roads are for everyone, cars have to pay to use them... I'm sorry but bicycles make sense for more journeys than they are currently used for. Councils are doing their darnedest to discourage car use, it's you who are deluded.
If people took to their bikes more there would be more room for journeys that *actually* need a car.
Actually the best combination is a Scooter/Motorbike that's why you see them all over the world especially in scooter form, I still say those cycling should have to wear helmets & those over 17 should have insurance especially when it's only £25.00 per year to get cover.If people took to their bikes more there would be more room for journeys that *actually* need a car.
SteveSteveson said:
The road layout we have in the UK was predominantly designed with cyclists and other road users in mind.
No, it absolutely was not. In the 30s there was a massive explosion in car ownership - not pushbikes. Most roads were built after this expansion in car ownership in pre-war Britain. If any other factor was taken into account it was the safety of pedestrians who were dying in their thousands due their 'folly' of stepping out in front of cars and getting killed.popeyewhite said:
SteveSteveson said:
The road layout we have in the UK was predominantly designed with cyclists and other road users in mind.
No, it absolutely was not. In the 30s there was a massive explosion in car ownership - not pushbikes. Most roads were built after this expansion in car ownership in pre-war Britain. If any other factor was taken into account it was the safety of pedestrians who were dying in their thousands due their 'folly' of stepping out in front of cars and getting killed.popeyewhite said:
SteveSteveson said:
The road layout we have in the UK was predominantly designed with cyclists and other road users in mind.
No, it absolutely was not. In the 30s there was a massive explosion in car ownership - not pushbikes. Most roads were built after this expansion in car ownership in pre-war Britain. If any other factor was taken into account it was the safety of pedestrians who were dying in their thousands due their 'folly' of stepping out in front of cars and getting killed.Also the explosion in car ownership was in the 1950s not the 30s.
Edited by Devil2575 on Sunday 30th October 12:15
Devil2575 said:
No, this is wrong. Most roads were there before cars. They may have been surfaced when cars became more common but the road was there before.
Surfaced, widened, given drainage, lighting (in some instances) pavements (same again), markings etc etc. They were cart tracks beforehand mostly (called turnpike roads), and unrecognisable as what we call roads today. There were only 2000miles of Roman roads in the UK, and although they were often paved and had drainage a lot of them are no longer in use.Devil2575 said:
Also the explosion in car ownership was in the 1950s not the 30s.
The 1934 Road Traffic Act was the legislation that introduced the speed limit. Just prior to that (1931) the original Morris minor went on sale at £100, putting the easily within the grasp of the middle-classes. Others cars went on sale during this era. The new speed limit was introduced specifically because of the increase in cars in that time. Obviously the lawmakers got it wrong as there were no extra cars on the road, in fact that wasn't to happen for another 20 years according to you.Anyway the point is that roads in this country were not, and never have been until very recently, designed or re-designed with pushbikes in mind.
If you can't drive safely near bikes, pedestrians, animals, houses, lakes and all the other things on or near roads, then take the bus.
Stop trotting out some feeble argument about many more of something allows dangerous incompetence to be acceptable.
Fines and points should not be the only deterrent to driving like an asshat. Competent, sane drivers should also aim to not put others in danger and not want to live the rest of their lives with even an accidental death on their conscious.
Yes, there are some cyclists who ride like idiots. So what? Why descend to their level? They will most likely just hurt or kill themselves.
Stop trotting out some feeble argument about many more of something allows dangerous incompetence to be acceptable.
Fines and points should not be the only deterrent to driving like an asshat. Competent, sane drivers should also aim to not put others in danger and not want to live the rest of their lives with even an accidental death on their conscious.
Yes, there are some cyclists who ride like idiots. So what? Why descend to their level? They will most likely just hurt or kill themselves.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
If I was addressing your points then I would have quoted your post. I have no interest in discussing cycling infrastructure.As I haven't quoted you, commonly accepted forum protocol is that I am addressing the general theme of the thread rather than your specific post.
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