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Live blog: Video – cat fires bow and arrow while cycling, London Assembly Member wants motorcyclists to be allowed on Cycle Superhighways + more

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Laudable effort. Will a full review of the bike be following?
By their very nature the dockless bike schemes will result in bikes being parked in stupid places. The user has little incentive to find the correct place to park it. More so if they are tourists with a cruise liner to catch and only 3 hours to explore. So, if the operation can't be made to fit within the councils required operating method, then it should be removed. I'm pretty sure another operator will come in and propose a system acceptable to the council if they believe they can make money. I strongly suspect that the current operators can only make money by tacitly allowing bikes to be left where the tourist money wants to leave them, so time to rethink the financial model me thinks!
@bikercub "If they are good enough to be supporting the Groupama-FDJ United World TourCycling team, we should be looking at them as a contender." No, that only means that they paid enough to become a sponsor. Let's put the "pros use better stuff" myth to sleep, finally. And by the way, the trickiest part of a GPS computer is not data collection - that can be done by absolutely all of them. The hard part is the general user interface and turn-by-turn navigation, none of which really matters for a pro cyclist - and that brings us back to why any GPS computer could be good enough for just about any pro cyclist.
@mdavidford Absolutely, I am assuming that the OP means those lanes where it's so tight it's actually impossible for a cyclist to get through if there is a large vehicle, obviously if they can squeeze by each other nobody needs to go back.
You are quite correct about uniform signage. However this seems to be a fairly atypical set up. Having experience and knowledge of it would in theory make mistakes less likely. Part of my job involved writing operating and maintenance procedures for food manufacturing machinery. I quickly learnt that people need to be given direct, simple, non-conflicting, non-ambiguous instructions. If it is possible to make mistakes, then they will be made. The best of of avoiding a mistake is to design flaws out of the system.
I do not in anyway support the Daily Telegraph's continually mad anti-cycling journalism but, it must be said, that this particular section of cycle lane on King Street in Hammersmith has been an absolute disaster ever since it re-opened. It certainly wasn't perfect for cyclists before but ever since they remodelled the cycle lane to run as a two way lane on one side of the road it has become much much more dangerous and confusing for pedestrians, drivers, motorcyclists and cyclists alike. I'm not saying that all cycling infrastructure is badly designed but, on my 12 mile commute from home in South London to work at the West end of King Street, this cycleway is where I feel most unsafe. It's not an inditement on active travel but it should be a lesson in planning because it's been closed on 5 or 6 occasions since to be remodelled to correct issues that should've been obvious before it opened. I have been using this road to get to work since long before the re-modelling and it has definitely, in my opinion, worsened not just the safety of cyclists but also the relationship between drivers and cyclists in this area.
In principle, it shouldn't matter if you're familiar with a particular junction - that's precisely why we have (relatively) uniform signage across the country (I had this from a driver recently - Him: sorry, I don't know the area. Me: but a no entry sign is the same everywhere...). But in practice in a busy environment like this, simply adding another sign saying look out for cyclists is limited help. I don't love cycling on contraflows / a two way cyclelane on a one way street for that reason. In fact there's a crossing I don't love as a pedestrian which is look right (bikes) look left (bikes) look right (cars), island, catch breath, look left (cars), look left (bikes). (Yes, you could wait for a green man, but then it's still look everywhere (Deliveroo)).
I'm not familiar with Jeremy Vine's favourite cycle lane. However I do have sympathy with drivers if they have to deal with "Look both ways for cyclists" as well as "One Way" and "No Entry" signs. Especially if the driver is not familiar with the junction.
@mitsky Alas for a second there I was awarding the motorist in the window there points for wearing hi-vis in their car, then I realised they were also wearing a motoring helmet...
While I understand it in context, I quite liked this to conclude a bike light review: "it’s a reliable set for the price, so long as you aren’t looking to ride in the dark"
7 thoughts on “Live blog: Video – cat fires bow and arrow while cycling, London Assembly Member wants motorcyclists to be allowed on Cycle Superhighways + more”
Box Hill one way?
Box Hill one way?
Downhill I hope! Who needs all that huffing and puffing and nasty uphill pedalling on a bank holiday!
pockstone wrote:
Nope. Uphill only according to CW:
For 2018, the road will be one-way – with no vehicles allowed to descend the Zig Zag towards Old London Road – from Friday March 30 until Monday April 2.
http://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/box-hill-goes-one-way-easter-last-years-trial-deemed-success-373853#shV2QuR8gkWVzrVT.99
As it happens, motorcyclists
As it happens, motorcyclists can already use much of the cycle superhighways in London due to their poor design.
Where it is just blue paint on the road, it has no legal standing, as described by the copper in the tragic case of Brian Dorling. He summarised that they were nothing more than a “blue strip of paint”: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/mother-watches-in-horror-as-cctv-of-her-daughters-boris-bike-death-is-played-to-court-8883576.html
Driving on the cycle superhighways only contrevenes road rules when there is an unbroken line dividing the road and the carriageway – where it forms a ‘compulsary’ cycle lane. It is also legal to drive on cycle lanes where your path is obstructed if they are made up of a broken line*.
But it’s not like Kurten to not know his stuff is it..?
*I’m sure someone with greater technical knowledge and a zeal for pedantry will pull me up on this, but I’ve described some of the essence of faults that the cycle lanes have.
As someone who rides bikes
As someone who rides bikes both motorised and not, that is a monumentaly stupid idea. How about opening all the bus lanes to motorbikes. That will help much more than having some prat on a 1200GS mixing with cyclists. Those lanes are designed for bicycles and as such would be totaly unsutable to motorbikes, as anyone who has been anywhere near a diliveroo rider will atest.
“improve safety for
“improve safety for motorcycles if they could use Cycle Superhighways at less busy times of the day outside rush hours, when there are hardly any bicycles on them, and they lie dormant and empty.”
Dormant and empty; just like his head. Who could have imagined a UKIPer being uninformed, ignorant and stupid?
So if he’s suggesting that
So if he’s suggesting that motorcyclists use the cycle lanes at less busy times of day, then surely the ‘normal’ lanes will also be less busy, so motorcyclists will be in less danger anyway.
Have I missed something here?
grumpyoldcyclist wrote:
Idiot says idiotic thing