"We can't earn so lycra-clad 'athletes' can tootle around": NIMBY locals thrilled by Commonwealth Games road closures; Horrendous speed bump crash during Burgos sprint; Christoph Strasser wins Transcontinental; Dreamy bike path + more on the live blog

Someone was telling me just the other day how he had been "locked in my own home" during the 2019 World Champs in Harrogate.

He was not locked in his own home. There were some road closures which may have been inconvenient for him.

The Black Country is the area that Birmingham looks down on for being backward and with a weird accent. I'm surprised the internet stretches as far as Wolves. 

And for Brummies to look down on something takes some doing

After all, "Alright" can be a complete (and lengthy) conversation, as I discovered in Erdington when I first moved there in '81.

Has anybody seen my camel?

Well we sent you to Coventry so.......

One of the biggest impressions that Amsterdam left on me was the thriving small businesses along the main tram and cycle routes. When the trams are every 5 minutes it is easy to jump off, pop to a shop and jump on the next one along or on the bike it is easy to park and pop in. In the car you would think about finding parking, decide it was too much trouble and just buy whatever it is online.

 would imagine that businesses in LTNs will actually see an improvement in business as people who can easily enter their premesis will feel more comfortable being nearby. I would love to see some data though if it exists. 

2018 - academic paper - effect of cycle infra on new business in London: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301709/

2016 - From the DfT - general "value of cycling" including ecomonic benfits: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-value-of-cycling-rapid-ev...

Various publications from TfL (your mileage may vary!): https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/economic-benefits-...

I think there is a fair bit out there (including EU stuff) for a quick google.  It's a regular trope in discussions - that doesn't mean it's true of course. I think the bigger problem is that the benefits are broadly distributed and some are in "savings".  Compare that with motor transport which definitely puts huge sums of money into a more limited range of pockets.  (However there are very large "infrastructure" costs. We do count some of those but there are lots of "negative externalities" which means "it's bad so we're not looking").

You mean all those "All the shops will close if they put in a cycle lane" stories aren't true?  I, for one, am flabbergasted.

eburtthebike wrote:

You mean all those "All the shops will close if they put in a cycle lane" stories aren't true?  I, for one, am flabbergasted.

You - and the Dutch, in 1975. Shopkeepers in The Hague were up in arms about one, it was planter-demolition-level stuff.  There was argy-bargy for several years and plans for a long "route" were pretty much scrapped.

So as long as we actually start now we should be OK in about 47 years.

Thanks. Definitely worth a read.

As always with Monbiot.

P.S. : The piece linked to in the article, from 17 years ago...
https://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/20/the-anti-social-bastards-in-our-midst/

marmotte27 wrote:

As always with Monbiot.

P.S. : The piece linked to in the article, from 17 years ago...
https://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/20/the-anti-social-bastards-in-our-midst/

That's aged remarkably well.

AidanR wrote:

That's aged remarkably well.

He was up there before many, if not most, others.

The problem with this article, and dare I say it, many of these LTN schemes, is that they politely ignore, or demonise, the needs of those directly impeded by the schemes implementation.

To simply ignore or poo poo them is always going to cause aminosity, and the more you ignore these voices, the harder they are going to shout and the more the more extreme they will become. 

I see it from both sides, and I love the idea of LTN, but doing so without addressing the cause of the issue in the first place is far from ideal. 

I've had my eyes opened by local road works, which has crippled access to a significant industrial / commercial estate that has historically bad public transport / cycle access routes. As a commuter, you can either spend between 10-40mins going through the 1 mile works, or use a rat run. Naturally many gravitate to the rat run. These are not bad people, just people dealing with a bad situation. 

For me, the order for dealing with traffic issue,s are, 1, what can be done to reduce traffic volume on struggling arterial roads (for instance, public transport improvements, better cycling access, schemes to get people on electric bikes), 2, what can be done to increase traffic flow on arterial routes, and then once both these options have been exhausted, then go for number 3, implement traffic limiting measures such as LTN's.

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

The problem with this article, and dare I say it, many of these LTN schemes, is that they politely ignore, or demonise, the needs of those directly impeded by the schemes implementation.

To simply ignore or poo poo them is always going to cause aminosity, and the more you ignore these voices, the harder they are going to shout and the more the more extreme they will become. 

I see it from both sides, and I love the idea of LTN, but doing so without addressing the cause of the issue in the first place is far from ideal. 

I've had my eyes opened by local road works, which has crippled access to a significant industrial / commercial estate that has historically bad public transport / cycle access routes. As a commuter, you can either spend between 10-40mins going through the 1 mile works, or use a rat run. Naturally many gravitate to the rat run. These are not bad people, just people dealing with a bad situation. 

For me, the order for dealing with traffic issue,s are, 1, what can be done to reduce traffic volume on struggling arterial roads (for instance, public transport improvements, better cycling access, schemes to get people on electric bikes), 2, what can be done to increase traffic flow on arterial routes, and then once both these options have been exhausted, then go for number 3, implement traffic limiting measures such as LTN's.

There's evidence that LTNs increase the numbers of people walking/cycling in the area, so that suggests to me that implementing LTNs is part of decreasing the amount of traffic.

It's the opposite of induced demand - if people see that there is a lot of traffic on the main routes, then they are more likely to chose a different form of transport and thus reduce the total number of large vehicles.

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

The problem with this article, and dare I say it, many of these LTN schemes, is that they politely ignore, or demonise, the needs of those directly impeded by the schemes implementation.

And for the previous however-many decades road construction has deliberately ignored the needs of anyone who cannot or does not wish to drive everywhere. Consider the sheer hectrage of tarmac given over to roads and parking and just how little is left for everyone else.

Congestion is not the fault of LTNs, it's too many people wanting to drive everywhere, all the time.

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

I see it from both sides, and I love the idea of LTN, but doing so without addressing the cause of the issue in the first place is far from ideal.

Councils should be able to provide better alternatives to car use but they can't afford / are afraid / do not want to take that bold step. LTNs and similar pedestrianisation schemes are a small step in the right direction but the opposition is very vocal.

You can blame LTNs but the people who live in those 'rat runs' do not want hundreds of drivers to use it as a shortcut every hour of every day. If you don't like queues then don't drive, since by doing so you're just making the queue longer. You're worsening the pollution, the noise, the distress and fear and lots more besides.

I think there is a measure of "you can't get there from here".  Or at least - many people believe that.  Or they believe the opposite e.g. that all objections are from the lazy / nimbys / bad actors etc.

Yes - it is more complicated.  There will certainly be inconvenience, distress and cost to some.  As usual the poor / those with the least power will suffer the most.

I think many people now acknowledge we do need to change our transport systems and infrastructure - for lots of different reasons. But if we do want change, then change is needed in how we do things.  So we can't fix things in the same way as before.  Minor tweaks won't do it.  Keeping our assumption of motor vehicles everywhere and maximising their flow rate won't do it.  Your comment (2) about increasing arterial traffic flow might be that kind of thing?  Maybe the question in response to that is "in that case, where would you like to put the congestion?"

I don't believe it will be easy.  But I also believe that we can get there from here ([1], [2]) and that some small steps are possible in the UK.  Things like stopping rat-running, reducing traffic volumes and slowing some traffic.  Both are moves in the right overall direction and deliver improvements on their own.

LTNs , which act to disentangle routes, are one of the first things you should do.  
 

disentangling reduces competition for the same road space, and naturally encourages modal shift by making walking and cycling more convenient, safer, and far more pleasant.  
 

not just bikes covers this excellently. 

BicycleDutch and David Hembrow also have good content on these alien landscape designs where cars and bikes travelling from A to B don't even need to meet.

we're sorry to say that due to the heatwave conditions experienced since April the 27th public consultation on a proposedpart-time closure of Acacia Avenue has had to be postponed as the forms spontaneously combusted 

I guess that was after the flash floods earlier in the year.

A drain subsequently collapsed and people moaned like hell because, well, it needed repairing, which meant roadworks. (the alternative to doing that was residents and business shitting in their own back yards, which wasn't too popular).

Well there you go.  We can't have Dutch-style cycling here in the UK because we have floods. And as people in e.g. South Holland will point out it's also flat in The Netherlands.

But the objection to any active travel proposal is almost always:

• not here, somewhere else
• not now, at a different time
• not this design, a different one

It's a recipe for getting nothing done.

While in an ideal world there would be a strategic plan for a town or city, we need to get on and implement decent schemes even if they are not 100% perfect.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

While in an ideal world there would be a strategic plan for a town or city, we need to get on and implement decent schemes even if they are not 100% perfect.

In so far as cycling is concerned, you can get pretty close to 100% by looking at what teh Dutch do.

HarrogateSpa wrote:

But the objection to any active travel proposal is almost always:

• not here, somewhere else
• not now, at a different time
• not this design, a different one

It's a recipe for getting nothing done.

While in an ideal world there would be a strategic plan for a town or city, we need to get on and implement decent schemes even if they are not 100% perfect.

exactly this. Eniugh of the piecemeal bollocks. City wide plan. Do it.