Cycle routes “painted on our pavements” blamed as campaigner calls for crackdown on “30mph” illegal e-bikes “before someone is killed”

Hmm... one narrow "lane" for walking AND cycling (and looks like further on they've put some traffic signage in it) - plus presumably some kind of footway on the other side? 4 wide lanes for motor traffic?

Clearly they've got this the wrong way round. This is more like a motorway. They should get rid of the vulnerable road user space entirely and give it over to driving (for everyone's safety!). Who would want to do anything but drive there?

Ahem, that would actually be two through lanes for the city traffic and two lanes that filter right onto Owlerton Green. This is a major junction on the A61 in Hillsborough which is regularly heavily congested and warrants the two lane right filter.
As can be seen from the photograph it is not always high density traffic, but can get really busy during rush(?) hours. I drive this route daily, either one way or the other and will affirm that it's nothing like a motorway at all: a bit of hyperbole slipping in there, perhaps?
Bearing in mind that this is the main arterial route from the north into and out of the city which has a high density of cycle traffic during peak times, with no obvious detour available at this junction; it beggars the question as to where the vulnerable road users should go if the whole space is given over to motor traffic.
The only option then would be to build a pedestrian/cycle tunnel under the junction. That would cost millions and with the River Don running alongside, risking flooding if there's a bit of rain.
It really is difficult to see an answer to this particular bottleneck short of asking the fast food outlets and Swann Morton (just to the right of this picture) to relocate.

That was indeed my point - and you've confirmed that indeed it is also a *route* for cycling.

It's clear that a *choice* was already made here - space for driving, fudge the active travel. Now in the UK "we are where we are" eg. we already have plenty of motorists and very few cyclists, (so "obviously we need space for drivers here") but even if we were starting from square one that is exactly what this layout would lead to.

I don't have an answer to the particular situation. And it's really difficult to see answers almost everywhere. Whenever change is proposed it's almost impossible to get beyond "but we have 10000 cars per hour at busy times / n parking spaces - any change *must* provide at least that capacity!"

Well - not if we've decided that we need less motoring or more active travel...

It's not always a zero sum game (perhaps? ) but there's a fundamental limit to "something for nothing" change. Because motoring is so space-intensive and for people to choose it active travel needs to be attractive *relative* to driving.

Again no idea of the particular here but other places seem to have sometimes squared the circle by thinking in terms of different *networks* for different modes. (eg. Amsterdam (like some other cities) has "home networks" for different modes - Hoofdnet and Plusnet - some info in video here; more on "unbundling" here).

These may in fact sometimes share the same "corridor of space" but are conceptually separate. Perhaps that may help thinking eg. rather than "and now we've got to squeeze in cyclists everywhere also"?

On the other hand if (big if) we really do see the need for change in the UK we won't be able to have "High streets" which are de- facto motor through routes, and we may have to reduce motor vehicle capacity in "places" to make space for active travel.

Is it really about the bikes, or is it actually about the people riding them? 

Both. The ones I see singly look like proper crims to me, so nailing them with the drugs on them would be a good thing. The ones in gangs zooming up and down on illegal motorbikes are probably a different issue- just confiscating the bikes would be good enough for a start. They'll then be looking out for illegal bikes to steal and they can begin fighting it out among themselves- just get on with confiscating the bikes!

karlssberg wrote:

I think that all this anti bike/ebike sentiment is born out of kids being jerks - who happen to be riding a bike.

Well, kids are going to test boundaries - and copy adult behaviours we don't esteem also!

I do wonder if there's a correlation between not providing safe independent mobility for kids and some of this. There are lots of other reasons for this but children in the Netherlands have often been rated as some of the happiest.

karlssberg wrote:

Taking away their bikes doesn't magically cure their behaviour.

I think we should try this though - but as an exemplary thing we should start with taking away *adults' cars* when *they* misbehave.

I use to encounter e bikes all the time on the Cambridge Guided Busway all the time, some of them illegally modified.  As long as they weren't ridden wrecklessy (which I never saw) I'd rather have folk on a illegal e'bike than potentially knocking me down in a car.  The closest I got to wreckless was when I was getting drafted at about 19-20mph and an e bike shot by (maybe doing 25mph the drafter jumped in to the e'bike's draft.  The drafter lasted about a minute or less before 'blowing up' so much so that they couldn't jump back into my steady draft.  The illegal ebike did me a favour 

It'll just be a partial view though as people simply don't see all the drivers of motor vehicles "chancing it" or parking illegally, never mind the uninsured / out-of-MOT / illegally modified ones...

Well yes, but that doesn't mitigate the essential flaw in her argument which seems to be that the people on illegal electric motorbikes are using the shared used spaces and pavement cycle lanes and making those spaces more dangerous without considering that they would be using the pavements and shared spaces anyway whether there were cycle lanes or not. If anything one could make an argument that they are more likely to use cycle lanes if they are there, giving pedestrians at least some indication of where they might be riding, and if they weren't they would just use the pavement anyway.

Rendel Harris wrote:

they would be using the pavements and shared spaces anyway whether there were cycle lanes or not. 

if they weren't they would just use the pavement anyway.

Some of them might. But they're not a homogeneous group of people who will all behave the same. There will be those who are only in those spaces because 'bikes are allowed there'.

Rendel Harris wrote:

the essential flaw in her argument

Even if true, it's not an essential flaw in the argument, because the whole thing about shared spaces was merely an aside to the argument.

Indeed. The shared path (TPT) near me is more hazardous than the road because of the multitudes of dogs. It's treated like a park with dogs off lead, chasing balls, sticks, etc. Even a dog on a lead is a problem when the lead is 10m long.

Sadly same experience here with TPT local to me. It has recently been modernised (widened, with dirt replaced with asphalt) to create an off-road commuter into the town which, I swear has made the issue with inconsiderate dog walkers become even bigger since it no longer turns muddy with massive puddles after rain, many more people are now coming there to walk their dogs. 

Absolutely.  Even with everyone behaving as they should there isn't enough room for everyone to be able to keep moving.

With the route in the picture they're probably better off taking away one of the lanes on the road and giving it over to proper pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.

Can you clarify whether it is self-drive cars that have caused the deaths please?

Or should you have written motorists?