"Road safety remains the biggest barrier to more people cycling": Research suggests more than two thirds of Scots think not feeling safe is main barrier to cycling

I love my bike wrote:

Stevenage has 'motorway' class cycle tracks, but once off them, motorists often behave aggressively towards cyclists, as they don't care/know that there is no cycle track alternative at that point.

Well I'd be delighted with them, but ... are they "motorway" class, though?  I haven't yet been but pictures suggest they're... OK (by Dutch standards).  However unlike e.g. Milton Keyes at least they don't keep swapping from one side of a road to another.

Do they keep sending cyclists up and down (e.g. to cross under underpasses)?  Too much of that and convenience is lost (the ideal is that the cars go up, cyclists stay on the level).

How "socially safe" are they?  They look like they're often essentially "below ground" - below road level, and not overlooked by houses.  How's the lighting?  It seems there are lots of underpasses - which (in the older UK form) tend to feel dangerous and generally be unpleasant places.

Is it easy to know where you are?  Not everyone is a great navigator - especially without conspicuous landmarks (see "below ground")?

The council's cycle strategy suggests they almost grasped what the problem was:

Quote:

Stevenage has a fast, high-capacity road system, which makes it easy to make journeys by car. Residents have largely been insulated from the effects of traffic growth and congestion and generally there is little incentive for people to use modes other than the private car…Stevenage, with its extensive cycleway network, has largely the same level of cycling as other Hertfordshire towns, where facilities for cyclists are less developed. This seems to suggest that the propensity to cycle depends on factors other than the existence of purpose built facilities.

Necessary, but not sufficient (in that last line).

I love my bike wrote:

Segregated infrastructure will never be 100%, so driver behaviour needs to be addressed!

Indeed - it is far from 100% even in The Netherlands.  However a) that doesn't mean there's a lot of interaction between drivers and cyclists, far from it.  b) how do you address that driver behaviour?  Ultimately I think it requires that i) people driving either regularly cycle themselves or their relatives do, so they've "skin in the game" and ii) cycling being seen as a normal mode of transport (rather than something for sportspeople, children or oddball enthusiasts).

As usual a "chicken and egg" problem!

Maybe Autoroutes would be better, as they don't tend to be so conjested, but in Stevenage they're certainly more deserving than the the previously called cycling Superhighways in London.

(I was implying that motor vehicles need more than motorways, so cyclists need more than city cycleways)

Yes.  Although it looks like the newest London stuff may be better than Stevenage quality (certainly better than the Superhypeways).  Though probably will be excellent in patches but interrupted by poor or problematic bits?

The old Stevenage routes appear to have the coverage required (e.g. there is an actual network).  Again not been to see them - do they actually go to the town centre destinations?  Or do they e.g. drop you on the edge of a large car park because we want to park our cars right next to the shops / pedestrian area?

It always seems to be "pick one" or "pick two" with cycling!  You can have safety OR convenience.  Longer-distance / more efficient routes OR ones that go past the shops / into the residential area.  (TBF not having the latter would be fine if we didn't have complete permeability for motor traffic so a "street" is also a "route" from either end...)

As a regular users I'd echo what Chris says, they are certainly not motorway class.  Unless I've missed the UK motorways becoming a confusing network , littered with glass, prone to flooding, constantly diverting up and down and through dark underpasses for the convenience of non users etc.

The truth is that the car problems (parking, congestion) aren't that bad in my area, so yes driving is relatively easy.

But on the other hand, the route is really empty of commuters, with only some children riding at slow speeds being its users that I come across.

I attribute the lack of adult commuters mostly to the domination of the car culture, but even despite that, there should be at least more, given the relatively good infra and the mostly fair weather for riding. Besides the marketing thing, it is also that when you start commuting on bike everything seems difficult at start, but after a while, congestion and parking a car seems boring and difficult.

It will soon be 4months since l last commuted by bike, which I've been doing regularly for best part of 20years, no real single reason for it other than safety on the road.

yeah weather hasn't been great,bike needed some winter tlc maintenance, but I don't like to ride to work and have near death experiences, or loads of conflict with drivers just for riding a bike.

And if after 20 years I feel I've had about enough of putting myself in danger constantly, how the hell is someone completely new to it ever going to start and continue riding.

Totally understand it, as most of my commuting is to work, that by sheer luck it is mostly comprised by segregated cycling routes and low traffic roads. Without this route, I would probably avoid cycling, as I feel relatively safe there.

@stonojnr I have cycled for 40+ years and last year on my commute I was almost killed. The sh1t I had to go through to try and get resolution was incredible. I was under no impression that my life was anywhere important to those that could make a difference, but the utter indifference towards my life told me everything I needed to know. Yes, I still commute by bicycle but for the first time I no longer enjoy it.

I knew two riders who got killed last 18months or so, on roads I ride, had couple of very near misses, and I don't mean nmotd style I get those every ride, I mean ksi style, myself.

It's just easier to hop in a car instead.

When I hurt my knee, I couldn't cycle for about 18 months and the first few trips back were a nightmare - a real insight into someone starting for the first time.

18 months :-o The longest I've been off the bike is 5weeks after my bowel cancer op.  On nurses advice it was to be 6weeks but fortunately I saw the doctor before that and when he said "I should have already been back on the bike", he didn't need to tell me twice!

This is the elephant in the room, or second elephant with bike theft. 

I've sat in in a few highway planning reviews about cycle infra with local councillors and witnessed a level of biased incompetence not witnessed since watching The Office, and I live in Cambridge. 

Cambridge has higher cycling rates IN SPITE OF the woeful meddlings of highway officials, not because of them. 

The solution is simple. I call it Triple Zero. 

Just shift the budgets allocated to drivers across to non-motorised. For example £100,000,000 for local A-road interchange to save 4 mins on journey time compared to £500,000 for a bit of painted and unpoliced cycle route where it's not needed. 

Change this budget allocation with a 000 shift away from motor infra giving £100,000 for drivers, £500,000,000 for city-wide non-motorised infra. 

Do this for just 5 years. 

The investment will show many-fold societal returns, unlike motor infra which has a very high burden. 

In the UK there's a massive gap in the "social" side of this.  Lots of great organisations are obviously trying to address this.  But there's something blocking a key part of this: we are used to taking the train, driving, flying, walking etc. in groups and normally "side-by-side".  BY DESIGN our infra (such as it is) does not cater for that, and indeed it's seen as antisocial by many people if you're "two abreast" or more on the road.

There's also the other social dimension.  I think people mostly do things that other people do, or that they think will make them look "good" (wealthy, smart, capable, reliable, sexy etc.) to others.

Most people in the UK aren't cycling.  Most people's role models aren't cycling.  Most people's parents aren't cycling.  Most people's friends aren't cycling.

If I offered someone a lift on my bike (even if the bike could take it) no-one's going to think that's normal!

chrisonabike wrote:

Most people in the UK aren't cycling.  Most people's role models aren't cycling.  Most people's parents aren't cycling.  Most people's friends aren't cycling.

This mostly is the problem for me.

On the other hand, according to documentaries, cycling in Netherlands was not that popular in the 70s, and with the proper infra it was improved to today levels. My guess is that flat terrain meant that it was already quite popular back then and with the proper infra it became super popular now.

cyclisto wrote:

[...] according to documentaries, cycling in Netherlands was not that popular in the 70s, and with the proper infra it was improved to today levels. My guess is that flat terrain meant that it was already quite popular back then and with the proper infra it became super popular now.

I'd mostly agree - only ... I think it could happen there because it was still popular.  Even with infra AND a strong cycling culture AND dense population centres AND flat country ... by the 1970s the numbers cycling were falling (and the road casualties were soaring).  However ... because they were falling from what was still a high point there still was transport cycling (whereas in the UK we had essentially lost cycling as a mainstream transport mode by then).  So there was enough popular support so that - together with some other factors - the politicians were pressured / supported to change direction.

And it's not quite "it became super popular".  Numbers of trips cycled have gone up since the low point but not to anything like previous levels.  It has been much more a case of most of that work stopping the continued decline.

Also - there was an equal or greater percentage of people cycling in the UK earlier in that century.  There was even cycle infra being built into the 1930s which is as good or better than much more recent UK stuff.  Again "it's complicated" but I'd say that the UK governments chose to go all in on motor transport some decades earlier than the Dutch, to a greater degree.  (And make later choices e.g. favour road over rail transport etc.).  So by the time we got to the period which prompted the change in NL effectively "nobody cycled".  Motor transport was literally built in to our way of life (e.g. distances to amenities).  We'd let public transport decline or actively removed it.  There was also the effect of a "success" in that the number of casualties had declined also.  I suspect this was in large part due to "driving vulnerable road users off the road" / suppressing demand for active travel because of all those motor vehicles...

chrisonabike wrote:

* In fact at least in the case of Milton Keynes the cycle infra isn't "the best" - it has several failings and is certainly second class relative to the driving infra.  Milton Keynes is primarily designed around driving.

I can attest to that. On a recent trip in, I decided to cycle completely around the main shopping centre, looking for the most secure place to lock my bike up. This was the best place IMO. Near to a Costa where people were sitting outside, with a CCTV camera close by and frequent vehicular traffic passing:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TB5vMd9rmUicFkUR8

There is little cycling infrastructure at the main centre, you basically have to ride in the car park.

This is the main area to park your bike (the biggest bike shed). It's got some odd looking bike rack that sort of secures your front wheel, but it's a bit out of the way and not as secure IMO.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Zty9ZALbovXwy45h7

Then there's this horrendous area that on the face of it looks ideal: it's undercover, it's got sheffield stands, it's close to the shops. But I hardly ever see a bike locked up there. It just feels like the sort of place you'd get mugged.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/eTbq3WpU3yRcm29GA

Car parking is abundant though and well used. It was quite surprising just how few bicycles were locked up at the shopping centre in comparison to the number of parked cars.