"Dysfunctional clown show": Cycling fans react to Tom Pidcock's departure and accuse Ineos Grenadiers of "complete lack of ambition" and "monumental" decline; How to cross a bridge like Danny MacAskill + more on the live blog

True in one sense.  OTOH having a bit of "multi-modal" via tram is an excellent way to improve the utility of said tram.

Set against that there is a general question of "if the whole point of the tram is capacity e.g. fast and frequent loading/boarding won't having bikes on there work against that?"

Of course Edinburgh Tram tried to shoot down one style of "expanding cachement areas for tram stops" - e.g. cycle to the tram, lock bike, board tram - by installing uniquely hapless insecure cycle stands.  (Ignoring the council's own pretty good standards).

But then - the once or twice I was on the Edinburgh tram with bike I can't say there were enough people for us to be in the way...

Doesn't bother me in Edinburgh because we only have one tram (line) and it's quicker to cycle to almost any point on it than cycle to it AND then take it to the destination.

stonojnr wrote:

Isn't allowing bikes on the trams an admission the cycling infra isn't good enough ?

That would be a problem if anyone in a position of authority really cared enough about whether it was good enough or thought that a majority of their electorate did.

It is so easy to obtain false number plates for vehicles and that companies selling such number plates are so easily able to use myriad excuses get around the law that the number plate system is no longer fit for purpose, coupled with a lack of enforcement means that it is a free-for-all for drivers...but cyclists!

This is similar to the EAPC vs electric motorbikes debacle.  The laws are weak, and enforcement is non-existent, coupled with the general level of ignorance amongst the police about what is legal and what isn't.  It is so easy though.  If the rider doesn't seem to have to pedal and there is no number plate it is illegal...but cyclists!

We have the dumb situation in the UK where the slowest vehicles are speed restricted yet that fastest vehicles are unrestricted. It is amazing that at the age of 17 you can buy a car that is legal to drive on the roads that can exceed the motorway speed limits by 200% yet EAPCs are restricted to 15.5mph.  

Isn't this justification to have mandatory dashcams and compulsory intelligent adaptive speed control for drivers so that it is impossible to exceed speed limits?...but cyclists!

The police's motto is now presumably "Yeah it's such a problem isn't it but there's nothing we can really do about it".  This is what a police officer said to me when as a pedestrian I pointed out an illegal electric motorbike being used by a local chap who I've seen repeatedly who was around 50m from the officer in question. My response was "You can confiscate it" to which the police replied "OK then I'll go have a look" after which they did nothing.

I saw an article on BBC1 London news where the fire brigade was telling people that they appreciate how "great" e-scooters are for getting around London but to only buy their e-scooters from reputable shops to avoid house fires! Reputable shops don't sell e-scooters because they are not allowed on the roads.  Any shop that is selling them is by definition not reputable.  I see that a high street retailer of cycles is selling them.

 I'm looking forward to ordering my false plates for when I have to register all my bikes individually for use on the roads, and pay the CVLA or whatever the dumb quango will be called that forces me to do it.

Pub bike wrote:

I saw an article on BBC1 London news where the fire brigade was telling people that they appreciate how "great" e-scooters are for getting around London but to only buy their e-scooters from reputable shops to avoid house fires! Reputable shops don't sell e-scooters because they are not allowed on the roads.  Any shop that is selling them is by definition not reputable.  I see that a high street retailer of cycles is selling them.

I don't agree with you on that - private e-scooters are 100% legal to use on private land and 100% legal to buy and sell. Yes, using them on public roads/pavements is illegal, but that's an enforcement issue and the police don't see it as a priority.

It's true that by the rules it's just "illegal behaviour" rather than illegal things.  And in fact because of legal complexities in general it is quite hard to tell from a distance (although usually "I know it when I see it" - if someone's going fast uphill without pedalling and is not wearing a motorbike helmet and doesn't have a licence plate e.g. haven't registered this per "speed pedelec" then that's one).

HOWEVER the legislators and retailers * appear 100% not to give a stuff about the legality, or the consequences of suddenly introducing all kinds of powered vehicles on to the streets.  (Indeed, it seems like all of us they're wowed by "shiny new" tech).  And the police are pretty much the same.

Currently they're sort of at "minor nuisance" levels.  And clearly the "apocalypse" some people have been foretelling for years hasn't occurred.  However I don't think having large numbers of these is a good idea at all if we want to have more active travel.  Or feel that cycling and walking are a solution to lots of our current issues of "motornormativity".

It's kind of like an extension of the "cars 2.0 - now they're electric" harm minimization idea (allows us to keep selling tech stuff!).  So now the vehicles are just much smaller, lighter and a bit slower.  Hoorah!  Car problems fixed!

But again it's still stuff foisted on the public by vastly rich businesses (the point there being that the lawmakers will be bought and the rules ignored and then rewritten).  AFAIK nobody's done much "safety" or "side effects" assesment of these.  They could be "taking over spaces" (I wouldn't feel really comfortable walking through fleets of these).  They still require power, and limited resources to build, and they're even less recyleable...

I'm almost certainly farting against the whirlwind of human nature there though!

* Even "in respectable high-street shops" - depending on how you view Currys/PC world that is! - as they sell e-scooters.

chrisonabike wrote:

It's true that by the rules it's just "illegal behaviour" rather than illegal things.  And in fact because of legal complexities in general it is quite hard to tell from a distance (although usually "I know it when I see it" - if someone's going fast uphill without pedalling and is not wearing a motorbike helmet and doesn't have a licence plate e.g. haven't registered this per "speed pedelec" then that's one).

HOWEVER the legislators and retailers * appear 100% not to give a stuff about the legality, or the consequences of suddenly introducing all kinds of powered vehicles on to the streets.  (Indeed, it seems like all of us they're wowed by "shiny new" tech).  And the police are pretty much the same.

Currently they're sort of at "minor nuisance" levels.  And clearly the "apocalypse" some people have been foretelling for years hasn't occurred.  However I don't think having large numbers of these is a good idea at all if we want to have more active travel.  Or feel that cycling and walking are a solution to lots of our current issues of "motornormativity".

It's kind of like an extension of the "cars 2.0 - now they're electric" harm minimization idea (allows us to keep selling tech stuff!).  So now the vehicles are just much smaller, lighter and a bit slower.  Hoorah!  Car problems fixed!

But again it's still stuff foisted on the public by vastly rich businesses (the point there being that the lawmakers will be bought and the rules ignored and then rewritten).  AFAIK nobody's done much "safety" or "side effects" assesment of these.  They could be "taking over spaces" (I wouldn't feel really comfortable walking through fleets of these).  They still require power, and limited resources to build, and they're even less recyleable...

I'm almost certainly farting against the whirlwind of human nature there though!

* Even "in respectable high-street shops" - depending on how you view Currys/PC world that is! - as they sell e-scooters.

I think that on balance, e-scooters are a benefit to society in terms of harm reduction. They solve a couple of transport/commuting issues and are cheap, efficient and not particularly polluting (their batteries are probably the biggest problem). Various places have been trialling the legal e-scooter hire schemes and it seems bizarre that a private company can provide legal road-going e-scooters and yet a private individual cannot, even though they are likely to take better care of their own scooter than a hired one and private scooters don't cause an issue with blocking pavements.

hawkinspeter wrote:

I think that on balance, e-scooters are a benefit to society in terms of harm reduction. They solve a couple of transport/commuting issues and are cheap, efficient and not particularly polluting (their batteries are probably the biggest problem)

I'm mixed on these.  At least currently, in the UK, I just see them either in the "toys" class or competing with walking for modal share.  Possibly with buses.  But certainly not competing with cars.  (Exception - I have come across a couple of people who used them in addition to public transport to replace driving - when they were banned!  Of course cycling could also do that - if people felt it was safe and were used to cycling - but they don't and aren't.)

I'm not sure I see that changing, without these becoming much more like mini-motorbikes.  Or improving the "active travel infra" and surely we hope the point of doing that is more to encourage active travel?

I can certainly see use cases e.g. tiny storage footprint, which gets around "where do you store a bike (securely)", and also facilitates last-mile multi-modal travel.

Also "mass selling more things with batteries" because these can probably be made way more affordable than cars or even e-bikes?

They could be a helpful piece to slot in to the UK's current broken transport jigsaw-puzzle, to try to get away from driving.  I just think their potential is limited without doing all the things we would need anyway to fix our systems to reduce driving.  Which are in fact all those for increasing active travel.

If we already have lots of these things plus those facilities I could imagine we might skip the "active" bit of active travel completely as the cycle path becomes a scooterpath.  Or "scooter and speed-pedelec" path, which may eventually lead to "scooting on the 'footway', 30mph+ electric motorbikes on the 'cycle path' ".  With people still mostly driving because "carrying stuff / other people" / "weather" etc.

Again that might be pessimisticly dystopian.  Or it might be simply "yeah most people use motor vehicles to get around for anything more that a few hundred metres now in the UK and they're just not going to go back to walking and (unpowered / low powered) cycling, ever".

chrisonabike wrote:

I'm mixed on these.  At least currently, in the UK, I just see them either in the "toys" class or competing with walking for modal share.  Possibly with buses.  But certainly not competing with cars.  (Exception - I have come across a couple of people who used them in addition to public transport to replace driving - when they were banned!  Of course cycling could also do that - if people felt it was safe and were used to cycling - but they don't and aren't.)

I'm not sure I see that changing, without these becoming much more like mini-motorbikes.  Or improving the "active travel infra" and surely we hope the point of doing that is more to encourage active travel?

I can certainly see use cases e.g. tiny storage footprint, which gets around "where do you store a bike (securely)", and also facilitates last-mile multi-modal travel.

Also "mass selling more things with batteries" because these can probably be made way more affordable than cars or even e-bikes?

They could be a helpful piece to slot in to the UK's current broken transport jigsaw-puzzle, to try to get away from driving.  I just think their potential is limited without doing all the things we would need anyway to fix our systems to reduce driving.  Which are in fact all those for increasing active travel.

If we already have lots of these things plus those facilities I could imagine we might skip the "active" bit of active travel completely as the cycle path becomes a scooterpath.  Or "scooter and speed-pedelec" path, which may eventually lead to "scooting on the 'footway', 30mph+ electric motorbikes on the 'cycle path' ".  With people still mostly driving because "carrying stuff / other people" / "weather" etc.

Again that might be pessimisticly dystopian.  Or it might be simply "yeah most people use motor vehicles to get around for anything more that a few hundred metres now in the UK and they're just not going to go back to walking and (unpowered / low powered) cycling, ever".

I think they're really useful for shortish journeys - maybe up to 5 miles? They appeal to people as they're seen as "casual" - just hire one, hop on it and zoom off to where you want to go. No need for fancy clothing etc.

They probably do compete a bit with walking, but most people will only walk a very short journey of maybe up to half a mile, so there's quite a big range of journeys where someone will opt for an e-scooter rather than getting someone to drive them there.

Ideally, we'll fix all of our various transport issues, but in the meantime, I think e-scooters are here to stay so let's accept them and try to minimise their issues.

Up to five miles?  Dress for the destination not the journey?  Where have I heard that before...?  Could there be some other mode of transport - perhaps one with lots of additional benefits (albeit lacking the extremely small storage footprint of a scooter) which covers that use case?  Perhaps even one which lots of people even currently own (but just don't use)?

I want to keep an open mind but the scooters seem to be kicking around between "a distraction" and "just something new people want to sell which is at best of 'neutral' benefit if not a problem in some ways".

There clearly are *some* people who will replace some driven journeys but:
a) longer distances tend to be on the "more illegal" more powerful scooters
b) ... because until we have the infra, to get these distances quickly and conveniently you'll be doing this on the roads (little cycle infra, footways you'll have conflict with pedestrians)
c) ... which are unfriendly (because cars)

Then there is the "if I'm going longer distances, I'll probably get a car anyway" and "once I have a car, I'll tend to use it over other modes".  The same difficulty applies to cycling now of course...

chrisonabike wrote:

Up to five miles?  Dress for the destination not the journey?  Where have I heard that before...?  Could there be some other mode of transport - perhaps one with lots of additional benefits (albeit lacking the extremely small storage footprint of a scooter) which covers that use case?  Perhaps even one which lots of people even currently own (but just don't use)?

I want to keep an open mind but the scooters seem to be kicking around between "a distraction" and "just something new people want to sell which is at best of 'neutral' benefit if not a problem in some ways".

There clearly are *some* people who will replace some driven journeys but:
a) longer distances tend to be on the "more illegal" more powerful scooters
b) ... because until we have the infra, to get these distances quickly and conveniently you'll be doing this on the roads (little cycle infra, footways you'll have conflict with pedestrians)
c) ... which are unfriendly (because cars)

Then there is the "if I'm going longer distances, I'll probably get a car anyway" and "once I have a car, I'll tend to use it over other modes".  The same difficulty applies to cycling now of course...

Whilst cycling is obviously the best mode of transport and exercise and generally making people awesome, there's quite a few people that like the idea of just standing on a scooter and having an electric motor whizz them along. The only time I've tried an e-scooter was in Copenhagen and they are fun to ride, but not particularly economical for longer journeys.

The thing is that most people are lazy and even e-bikes aren't convenient enough for them unless they mod them to go without being e-assist. Also, e-bikes are a lot more than e-scooters.

Well, I was speculating on that.  There's human nature (go for easy), there's having "shiny new things" (display of prestige / fashion / wealth), there's curiosity, there's plenty of market forces, there's "we've just taken agin bikes and cycling, and/or see them as part of the past"...

... *mutters* and yet it moves (in large part on cycles - still mostly with no electric assist)! 2018, 2024...

I agree it is 100% legal to buy and sell them but it can only be a very small percentage of those bought in London that are for use on private land, because most people don't have access to such land.

It is difficult to know what the police see as a priority.

It is difficult to know what the police see as a priority

It's everything that sounds convincing, caring and sharing, but excluding the offences which the person in front of you is complaining about

Pub bike wrote:

I agree it is 100% legal to buy and sell them but it can only be a very small percentage of those bought in London that are for use on private land, because most people don't have access to such land.

It is difficult to know what the police see as a priority.

Yes, people are obviously buying them to ride illegally - I don't dispute that. However, who benefits by having e-scooters being illegal to use on a public road?

As far as police setting priorities, I daresay that they prioritise protecting rich people and their revenue streams.

What percentage are on public roads, and what percentage on public footways?

Outside of "may hit others; if sufficiently popular may act to suppress both demand for walking and the feeling of safety when walking" ... another concern is the safety for the users. Small wheels, short wheelbase plus upright position - that would seem to be already concerning.  Add in the fact these are used on and off pavements (kerbs) and - if they are used on streets / roads - the certainty of grates, edges of access covers and just general holes in road.

Having said that I've talked to a few people who've ridden these for a bit and they were still alive.  Though I did come across one crashed in the road one night, but the chap blamed his phone for distracting him - so no more danger there than in a car!

chrisonabike wrote:

What percentage are on public roads, and what percentage on public footways?

Outside of "may hit others; if sufficiently popular may act to suppress both demand for walking and the feeling of safety when walking" ... another concern is the safety for the users. Small wheels, short wheelbase plus upright position - that would seem to be already concerning.  Add in the fact these are used on and off pavements (kerbs) and - if they are used on streets / roads - the certainty of grates, edges of access covers and just general holes in road.

Having said that I've talked to a few people who've ridden these for a bit and they were still alive.  Though I did come across one crashed in the road one night, but the chap blamed his phone for distracting him - so no more danger there than in a car!

Decent separated infrastructure would entice riders away from the footways and allow them to feel safe using the road. Ideally, the infrastructure shouldn't have slippery ironworks, potholes and other hazards, but I think we can rely on people's self-preservation instincts to reduce the incidents. Unfortunately, there's going to be fatalaties on e-scooters, but then we also get them with pedestrians, cyclists and drivers so it's a question of reducing them as much as possible.

One interesting safety issue with e-scooters is the question of helmets. I think they're likely to be of benefit to riders due to the increased chances of single vehicle collisions (small wheels etc), but hire services make the use of helmets trickier as most riders won't want to be carrying a helmet around. However, by allowing private e-scooter usage, there's more chance that the owner will be putting their e-scooter somewhere safe which lends itself well to keeping a helmet with it too.

Care to actually substantiate that?  Your biases are showing.

I dont see him as any better or worse than any of the current crop of biking superstars and considerably better behaved than say someone like Sagan or even Cav.  If he is - how exactly?

dubwise wrote:

"dysfunctional clown show" a very apt description of Pidders of St Cock.

Junior world champion in cyclocross, mountain bike and road time trial, double mountain bike Olympic champion, cyclocross world champion, mountain bike world champion, one day classics winner, winner on Alpe d'Huez in the Tour...perhaps British cycling needs more dysfunctional clowns…

I just want to see him descend more.

ktache wrote:

I just want to see him descend more.

Luckily a few weeks back a different (but still utterly terrifying) camera view of him descending Tuna Canyon was released, so you can!

My humblest to apologies to all those affected by my comment.  I sincerely did not know that St Pidders was above criticism.

Well, you didn't so much criticise him as throw him an infantile insult. Which is pretty childish really.
 

And maybe consider the success TP has had, whilst operating under the terms of his contract, before being critical. Not many British riders have achieved as much by the time of turning 25 y.o. 

Your comment wasn't criticism, it was name-calling. There's a difference.

Oh my, not allowed to slag english cyclists then?

Yesterday, there were "childish" insults thrown by road.cc at an ex-pro.  But that was fine because he wasn't english.

'critisism'.

It's pretty clear the only clown here is you.
No one here said you can not critisize Pidcock. We asked you to substantiate your infantile name calling.

Define interesting?  You can say a lot about Tom and INEOS but you can't deny that he as a rider isn't interesting and the ongoing car crash at INEOS isn't entertaining, if not for the cycling.

Whats been interesting looking at the more Tom-critical SM accounts is how much they get on their high horse for him not being a pure roadie.  Like it offends their elitism or something.   When not being a pure road rider is exactly why INEOS signed him for so much cash.

A large chunk of people seem in denial about what road riding is - an opportunity for big brands - and some fairly toxic ones at that - to brand-wash by getting their logos on podiums and TV.  By that standard Toms done a decent job.

I dont know if they are blinkered about the Sky days but they tend to forget that Pro's are mobile advertising hoardings - or at least selectively forget that applies to most of the other riders - be it Pog greenwashing a Petro-state or Vingegaard reputation washing a Granny farmer and Car Importer.  ( The list could go on...)