Millions of new money for cycling infrastructure in Manchester could make roads LESS safe, warns cycle club

I would love to see the planners cycle up or down Ashton Old Road in rush hour. They wouldn't be able to use the cycle lanes that were put in with the last investment because nobody pays attention to them!

Since when does 'driver education' work, IT NEVER HAS.

Pre legislation (and post), did it work with drink driving, seat belts, mobile phone use ... NO .

Drivers only behave when there is a high risk of being caught or they risk losing their license.

The situation has worsened since local councils turned speed/traffic light cameras off and traffic police lost countless staff.

Education does f*** all, heavy fines/bans and a high risk of being caught WILL change behaviour !

I think a presumed liability, a minimum passing distance for motor vehicles and accompanying advertising would be a much cheaper option to making our roads a better place for cyclist and pedestrians. But there again that would offend motorist wouldn't it.

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Yes, there's some money from government, and it's welcome, but it's nowhere near enough, and it's not good enough to allocate money to some parts of the country only. The sums are minuscule compared to those spent for vehicles.

Agreed. Bear in mind this is the week after he announced 15 BILLION pounds for roads.

So £214 million split between 8 cities over 3 years is, by comparison, bugger all. But it sounds good so I guess that's what's important...

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“In government, we’re putting the money down. Now we need the public and local authorities to jump on their bikes and get us to the finish line.”

I'm sure this comment from Clegg is meant well, but it is highly irritating.

1. Yes, there's some money from government, and it's welcome, but it's nowhere near enough, and it's not good enough to allocate money to some parts of the country only. The sums are minuscule compared to those spent for vehicles.

2. We're dealing with decades of under-investment, and crap quality infrastructure. It's difficult to understate how low a base we're starting from. A cycle network is going to take years/decades and lots of money to develop.

This attitude - 'we've done our bit, now it's up to the rest of you' - it's utterly misguided. It's ridiculous.

3. Get us to the finish line, Nick? He makes it sound like he's organising an office outing, and all the arrangements will have been made by next Tuesday.

Britain can become a cycling nation, but it will need years of hard work, and a lot more investment than currently planned. Spare us these facile and blasé comments.

There is a desperate need for good quality infrastructure in this country, why is it that we manage to waste so much public money on crap? We need to learn from best international practice, not just because safe infrastructure is better for everyone, but also because it works out cheaper, too!

I have talked to Dutch traffic engineers who struggle to understand how in the UK we manage to make bad infrastructure so expensive. The tiny amount of money we do spend is largely wasted through incompetence.

We certainly don't need another TV road safety campaign, these things are pointless. What we need is better infrastructure and better laws which are then enforced.

Dutch style infrastructure only works because it has the backing of the law. Due to the law, people are better educated (generally) about what to do around bikes.

Education can work, good example are the Next vehicles I've encountered over the few weeks. Congratulations to Next, their drivers back off, give space and time to the cyclist. Only pass when it is clearly safe to do so with plenty of space. Just wish you could teach the idiot in the Celica in Ilkey yesterday, who thought it was perfectly acceptable to pass infront of a blues and twos ambulance. To do and emergency stop and nearly collected me in has boot.

There is little doubt that typical, shit-grade, sub-standard infrastructure like painted, narrow*, on-road cycle lanes encourage drivers to drive closer to cyclists than if no cycle lane were present.
Narrow means less than 2.0 metres wide.

Pinch-points, intended to prevent overtaking, merely encourage some motorists to attempt to squeeze-past cyclists.
If one takes primary, then one is likely to be berated for not using the cycle lane.

So, either it's fully segregated physically and high quality infrastructure**, built to Dutch best practice that's safe and suitable for unaccompanied seven year-old children, or please don't bother.

High-quality means:
Planned, designed etc. by people who want to use it daily.
Not shared with pedestrians or motor-vehicles (saving for inspection, maintenance and construction). See: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/11/shared-use-paths-create-con...
A high quality smooth surface for speed
Cycle infrastructure that caters for non-standard bicycles and tricycles. Cargo bikes, tandems, hand-cycles, trailers, recumbents, bikes with panniers (yes I've encountered cycle infrastructure impassable with panniers, at least I could take off the panniers).
An integrated network built for cyclists that broadly mimics the road-network that usefully goes to places (not discontinuous pieces in haphazard fashion that often go nowhere in particular, and are as well-planned and continuous as a spoonful of spaghetti spread-out on the floor).
And pretty-well most of the other features that the Dutch cyclist enjoys.
See David Hembrow's website for details.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/

What we don't need (small selection):
Dutch-Style cycling infrastructure (this is the type of interpreted abomination inflicted on cyclists by people who don't actually cycle)
Cycle routes with flights of steps. http://is.gd/lY2sCQ
Crap cycle facilities, see: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the-month/index.htm

A national tv campaign highlighting how drivers should behave around cyclists would be preferable to building any more piecemeal rubbish little bits of cycle path, with those concrete tiles at the end that turn slippy in cold weather....