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Andrew Fisher's avatar

I'm a cyclist and it can be indeed a great way to travel. I also used to work in road traffic for TfL However this comparison between London and European cities is just doesn't work - or at least most of the commentators just don't see the very important detailed differences, although these ought to be quite obvious. Most European cities are much smaller than London and the distances more suitable for cycling. Also, many main roads there are much wider. It isn't really a problem to put in cycle lanes if you have wide boulevards; you can plant trees, have car parking spaces, bus lanes, pleasant footways and cycleways and still provide plenty of room for traffic. But this is not what we have in London. We have also often removed bus lanes to provide cycle lanes, which is ironically a profoundly anti-public transport policy. Buses are the vehicles most affected by road traffic congestion because of course they can't just go another way round. So we are usually down to one motor traffic lane in each direction. This means the emergency vehicles as well as buses have to mix it up all the time with a stream of barely moving traffic. Cars get given a bad rap but most the traffic in inner London isn't comprised mainly of private cars. What about all the taxis and delivery vehicles people depend on all the more as private car use is discouraged so much? (albeit in my view rightly). How do they get around? With difficulty and very slowly is the the answer! This by the way increases cost for everybody.

The other factor that is rarely commented on is that we use traffic signals very differently in Britain from most other countries. In most European countries turning traffic is expected to give way, so that you can often have just a simple two signal stage arrangement at many main junctions, say north south and east-west. By contrast in Britain we separately signal every single traffic, cycle and pedestrian movement. This creates a great deal of what the traffic engineers call 'lost time' caused by the cumulation of the necessary safety period time between different traffic signal stages. The more stages at the junction the less efficiently it operates. (The only exception to this is the common give way to oncoming traffic arrangement for right turns). Installing segregated cycle lane, especially on one side of the road, means very complicated traffic signal junctions and even more wasted time, frustration and delay for all road users. You can see this clearly on most of the cycle superhighways and this leads to cyclists often disobeying red signals when there is absolutely nothing moving at the junction. This isn't the mark of a well designed an engineered system.

In the London and UK context, it would generally make much more sense for cyclists to use bus lanes on main roads with bus stops wherever possible inset by a couple of meters to allow cyclists overtake safely within the bus lanes when buses are stopping. This would actually take up much less room and would be just as safe. Let's also be clear that there is no such thing as absolute safety and however much cycling infrastructure you put in cyclists still after cross other traffic and pedestrian movements from time to time.

I can't see much hope about making a wholesale change to our traffic signalling regime unfortunately, - the changeover would be too confusing and disruptive. However it is something that the Europeans do better than we do!

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Kathleen Lowrey's avatar

And yet learning this about you gives me a strong urge to unsubscribe.

It is not the bicycle. It’s the Lycra. Dutch people dress normally on bikes. People riding bikes in clothes are all decent and jolly and include on occasion the delightful and charming me in their ranks

Cyclists in Lycra: assholes. It is what it is.

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