The joy of British bike lanes in autumn — leaves and puddles aplenty; Daily Mail columnist calls LTN supporters "Traffic Taliban"; Who's seen the worst bike rack?; Don't talk to Thomas De Gendt about Elon Musk; S-1; Friday fun + more on the live blog

Given this discussion, I thought I'd take a pic of the Crystal Palace bike parking before this Saturday's match with a few more bikes there. Still, at least we won

Bus driver sacked after ped crossing fail

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-63437689

(initial report mentioned here 2 or 3 days ago)

the daily Mail is so pathetic. The bad news is so many people believe the lies and moronic stuff it prints - whether it's idiotic lies about the EU or made up stuff about the Labour Party, or hateful ignorance about migrants and cyclists. It's a truly hideous entity. But one that so many morons take seriously. 

Pre-Covid, my workplace designated an unused room as the "bike room" and installed one of those wheel-bender racks in it. The thing is, there's no good way to get from that room to the shower (singular). I'm also the only person who commutes by bike regularly, so that bike room goes unused.

The school I work in installed wheelbenders.
When we didn't like those they made a lovely covered bike rack. It's shaped like a football goal, is open at the front and is in the playground where kids play football!
Then they added insult to injury; the Sheffield Stands in it turned out to be attached to the ground by a few short bolts so they fell over. The school's response... replace them with more wheelbenders.

This was my response.
Rack from Amazon.
Ten minutes with a power drill.
Nobody has told me I can't, so I assume I can.

Our Road Safety team in partnership with @PoliceScotland

are asking pedestrians, if you're out walking this winter, don't fade to GREY - Be BRIGHT, be seen!

https://twitter.com/GlasgowCC/status/1585996017937387524

Also watch out for drivers who ignore no right and no left turns and drive through ped crossing when the green man is lit.

PU Backer Rod is used to fill expansion gaps before sealing over with some sort of sealant. It's made by - among others - Soudal (sponsor of Lotto Soudal).

Louise Perry might want to refrain from referencing the Taliban as a source of road safety policy. Apparently they are no longer issuing driving licences to women.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/asia/south-asia/tal...

S-1 has been in The Rules for as long as I can remember...

You'd think someone with a cycle carrier would have a bit more care around cyclists.

NSL, blind bend, SLOW, chevron sign. At the decision to overtake, the red van was blocking the view (not that it was a good idea anyhow).

How do these people get to stay on the road with this level of incompetence ?

Re the "Traffic Taliban" article, I live near East Dulwich Grove, the road the author claims is "permanently choked with traffic" due to the LTN; this little video I made back in June in response to a challenge from another anti-LTN person may prove instructive.

https://twitter.com/Rendel_Harris/status/1585902647391195136

(Sorry the audio's a bit indistinct, the important bit to note is that it's 10.43AM on an ordinary working Friday; sorry also about the dreadful brake rub, it was a warped rotor that I replaced that weekend!)

This is the bike parking at my office, in theory it's quite good being a courtyard yard with swipe access but our neighbours the pub/nightclub seem to feel that it would be a better space for bin storage. You can imagine the broken glass. 

Daily Mail out here threatening us with a good time again. 

Imagine a world where other options were prioritised so much that you didn't want to get in your car!

The worst kind of bike rack is usually none at all, although some of the examples given are admittedly worse than none.

I had my covid booster last week, and rode my ebike rather than use the car, to get to the community centre.  When I arrived, I looked for the cycle parking, but there isn't any, but there was a very nice, recently surfaced car park, with a sign banning bicycle riding.  I locked my bike to the railings on the pedestrian ramp.

I've asked the council, which owns the place, to install proper cycle parking and to remove the ban on cycling.

Bike storage: another area where simply copying "what I've seen in pictures" from e.g. The Netherlands leads to cargo-cult facilities.

I believe in NL because bikes are traditionally a) heavy and b) come equipped with a rear wheel ring lock* it's common to have the "wheel bender" bike racks as simple storage for shorter stops (e.g. shopping).  So people tend not to lock to the rack.  This likely works because it's harder to lift / carry away a Dutch bike (because heavy and the back wheel's immobilised).  Places where bikes are stored are often more "visible" in NL.  Finally if you've got tons of people cycling you need very space-efficient (and cheap) designs.

In the UK racks tend to be hidden somewhere out of sight.  (Also inconvenient - often you can park a car closer than you can store a bike in the "designated" storage.)  People everywhere don't understand security.  I discovered both things recently (grr) when a thief found that if you pried some bars (turned out they were only held on by tacks) next to the gate of our bike storage you could just reach round and turn the latch to open the lock.  They then had a convenient private space to take their time over angle-grinding locks.

* Many wheel ring locks allow you to plug in a chain so you can properly immobilise such a bike relatively easily also, although I personally would probably carry a second lock.  However I've found to my cost angle-grinders will go through most things so it's more about the security of where you leave it.