Please give the live blog a few seconds to load. You may need to refresh the page if it’s unusually slow.
Live blog: Tory MP accepts constituent’s bike ride invitation after THAT tweet, bigger HGVs for London? + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond
Tue, Aug 21, 2018 13:50
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £2.49. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
13 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
mdavidford 3 minutes ago
Quite right - maybe one of these pedestrians, eh?
Didsbury 11 minutes ago
I'd still suggest rising bollards (or spikes) when the green light turns to amber would be the solution for curbing the riskier drivers at many of the most dangerous junctions, such as this one in Birmingham.
kil0ran 15 minutes ago
Fit a dropper. Even 40mm of travel is enough to give you more flexibility on the bike and also get your weight further back on descents. It'll help on the road too - just ask Matej Mohoric. Available drop will be frame dependent of course and you'll need to have one of those old fashioned round seat tubes but the improvement in descending confidence and therefore speed will far outweigh the loss of an aero post. There's even the option to add suspension with some droppers
Mr Blackbird 23 minutes ago
Re the active travel commissioner role. I suggest going a step further and offering it to somebody who drives everywhere in either a huge SUV or customised Subaru, takes part in no physical activity, walks less than 200 steps per day and has at least one conviction for causing injury or worse to a cyclist as a result of dangerous driving. This will give a balanced and fair view on active travel issues.
the infamous grouse 38 minutes ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c63elww8djj1o
mdavidford 55 minutes ago
@chrisonabike Shouldn't that be 'most first "look with their phones"'?
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@Rome73 don't forget being a constant existential threat to pedestrians - whilst cycling on the road at lower speeds than motorists. Plus startling people by appearing "out of nowhere" while as inconspicuous as a lighthouse. (TBF many / most first "look with their ears", and cyclists on cycles neither sound nor indeed look like motor vehicles).
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@Accessibility for all yup - driving around a heavily built-up area (which has great public and active travel networks) shouldn't be seen as a status-enhancing activity, but boorish posing and/or a stupid thing to do.
Bungle_52 2 hours ago
@saw442000 I too use another part of the cycle path, the bit from Bishops Cleeve to Cheltenham. The usage of this bit steadily increased over the summer but is tailing off a little now in the bad weather. By no means perfect, you get kicked out into the road at both ends, but a vast improvement over using the road. People moaned about it when it was being built and said it wouldn't be used and the road would be made too narrow. I haven't seen any problems due to the width of the road even with busses passing each other. You would have to be an extremely poor driver to have any trouble with it. I also use the bit from Cheltenham to Gloucester and it is possible to keep on a cycle path or shared use path nearly all the way from Bishops Cleeve if you are willing to take a few detours and slow down for pedestrians on the many shared use sections. Oh and avoid the many parked cars. They are currentlyworking on the last bit into Gloucester which has always been an absolute nightmare. We'll see what it's like when the work is completed. I suspect that, like the rest of the route, a long time will be spent waiting at traffic lights. As far as this bit is concerned I have no knowledge of the area but looking at the map it is going to be quite difficult to find a suitable route through Gloucester. The alternative along Bristol road will mean breathing in a lot of traffic fumes I suspect and at least this proposal keeps you in relatively low traffic volumes even if it does meander around a bit. One of the problems I have with the route from Bishops Cleeve is a long up hill section to a railway bridge. This involves heavy breathing for me and I don't like breathing in the fumes from the vehicles speeding up the hill only a meter away. The speed limit is 40mph but few stick to it outside of rush hour when it's nose to tail. More info and local comment in the two links below. You will see one of the comments talking about the surface used causing high tyre wear. This has certainly been my experience. I asked about it at one of the public sessions they had and was told the surface was chosen to stop slipping if it ever became icy. I suppose you can't have it both ways. https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/absolute-joke-gloucester-cycle-path-11211404 https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/cycle-path-plans-spark-parking-11127298
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
@saw442000 Re building cycle infra that is far less convenient than the direct route / reinventing the wheel / putting isolated infra "where we can". I think you've correctly described how "supporting cycling" work in the UK, yes. As to why - sensitivity to the complaints about "*my* parking space (on the public road) is gone" / "I had to walk 15m further from the car" / "now I actually have to pay attention when driving". Also politicians who either think the same or see mileage in echoing that. Then the facts on the ground: most of our transport networks have now given the direct route and the bulk of the space over to motoring. So often any change is "motoring's loss". Funding systems where active travel is essentially on the sporadic lottery model. Plus without much feedback to check councils making it up or just building the same old rubbish (though Active Travel England have been working on that)
13 thoughts on “Live blog: Tory MP accepts constituent’s bike ride invitation after THAT tweet, bigger HGVs for London? + more”
So flexible articulated
So flexible articulated lorries? I’m sure they won’t have any blind spots at all. If we’re lucky, they’ll put a yellow “cyclists don’t go anywhere near this vehicle” sticker on the back.
That Rock Bar is quite simply the most pointless thing I’ve seen in ages. Couldn’t you just drink the same weight of water and carry the weight in your stomach? Wear a backpack? Reduce tyre pressure?
As has been demonstrated time
As has been demonstrated time and again, TfL is run by a bunch of idiots who are not fit for purpose.
zanf wrote:
Or are benefiting from a powerful transport lobby, which is not benefiting the people they represent.
Breathing in all those fumes must be affecting decisions they’re making.
You couldn’t make it up
As has been demonstrated time
[removed as double posted for some reason]
zanf wrote:
Can’t be repeated often enough!
That rock bar looks like a
That rock bar looks like a liability. Handling would go to pieces.
Just as an aside, I was in
Just as an aside, I was in Cornwall for a week long break with the family a couple of weeks ago. There were plenty of people on the beaches we went to. In fact, Cornwall is chock-a-block with tourists right now and the beaches are crowded. Of note is that many were doing active sports and as you can probably guess, surfing is uppermost amongst those.
There were quite a few cyclists. But although we took our bikes, we hardly used them. Keen cyclists though we are, the thought of riding some of those twistry and narrow country roads along which the locals race in their cars didn’t seem very appealing.
Is it usual for the riders on
Is it usual for the riders on a LCC Protest ride to ignore pedestrian crossings?
Bowks wrote:
I’m desperately hoping there was a police officer out of sight waving them through. Otherwise this footage looks pretty awful for cyclists – those pedestrians were completely ignored!
Oooh, I’ve got some stories
Oooh, I’ve got some stories for Cycling UK 🙂 Got a letter this week from the Met, they won’t be investigating the taxi that hit me then made off… Even though I caught up, stopped him and took pictures, etc. As I was calling the police because he was refusing to give details, he tried to beat a hasty retreat and smashed into the taxi behind him. That karma cheered me right up. He gave his details to the other taxi driver, but still refused to give me his details.
The rock bar isn’t a very
The rock bar isn’t a very smart idea. Placing extra weight on the bars won’t help high speed handling. I discovered this the hard way on a descent on my heavily laden bike while cycling in the Picos in Spain. Luckily the shimmy I experienced was a lazy fishtail type rather than a bar slapper.
It hasn’t been well thought through. Its designer appears to have no understanding of the importance of correct weight distribution on a bicycle and how this affects handling. Don’t buy one. Use saddlebags with the weight low down or use a diver’s weight belt instead.
That Rock Bar looks just the
That Rock Bar looks just the thing for balancing the weight of my daughter’s rear-mounted bike seat and making the bike a bit less wheelie-prone when I’m wheeling it around.
I got left-hooked by a Tesco
I got left-hooked by a Tesco delivery lorry earlier this year.
Police response was to be that because he didn’t hit me, even though I might have had to slow down a bit to avoid a collision, they weren’t going to take any action.
Tesco were initially sympathetic, but rapidly descended into various excuses of inability to view the video footage, despite various attempts to post it for them, and then just stopped replying all together!
Anyone from Road.cc want to post it for me?