"A bike lane doesn't close a village": Dame Sarah Storey defends cycle lane blamed for "ruining business" and "killing village", calls shops closing "a coincidence, not an unexpected consequence"

chrisonabike wrote:

People will see what they want to.  Got earwigged at lunch by a chap who saw me with my bike and wanted to take up the fact that he apparently had stood by some new cycle infra for some hours and seen but a handful of bikes.  Well... I can't speak to his data * but I'm pretty sure the M1 wasn't exactly grid-locked immediately after it opened...

The notion of "this is for today's drivers - who are tomorrow's cyclists" is frankly unbelievable to most people (if not an unwelcome notion!).

There's also the "waste of space" effect whereby motor traffic is so space-inefficient that a handful of cars is obvious "traffic" while a handful of cyclists is invisible.

*  Aside from some doubts that someone would actually stand around for that time merely to confirm their feeling that cycle infra was a waste of money... I've ridden this way probably 20 times now, at various times, and have generally seen at least one other cyclist (in probably 500 metres of separate bi-directional cycle path).  I'd certainly agree it's hardly "cycling superhighway" busy and much less so than the road next to it.  Also if you stood at the end furthest from town you'd probably only see the odd "recreational cyclist".  OTOH the old route which covered part of the new "corridor" is quite close and most existing cyclists may be continuing to use.

I hope you explained to him some of the reasons that cyclists avoid using poorly designed infrastructure. It's a common trope that non-cyclists believe they know better than cyclists about how and where to cycle.

Didn't bother as this is actually not bad and he was on transmit about this issue.  Plus I'd managed to get one point of "you don't disagree with *this*, do you?" and he'd gone some minutes in conversation with a "cyclist" without this being violently disagreeable.  (For all I know it was a case of "I'm an avid cyclist myself" and he just didn't agree with cycle infra at all (like some here), or not where it was put, or not for that price, or expected to see it nose-to-tail full of bikers after millions were spent.)

FionaJJ wrote:

Shop owners should realise that if they really believe their customers need somewhere to park that making claims about there being 'no-where to park' is going to put off customers, and it would be better if they took the opportunity to let them know of the existence and location of perfectly useful locations within convenience walking distance.

Don't you know that when someone on the reactionary side of an issue says something is bad, they're just voicing the "common sense" view of the "silent majority". It is only treacherously "talking down our great nation/region/county/town/village" when someone on the progressive side says something is bad.

It's "growth" and "advanced economy"!  Shouldn't we be proudly trumpeting that our citizens refuse to (and don't have to) carry a bag of chips as far as those in Europe?  Even if we're still behind those of the US who wouldn't transport their fries in anything less than 2 tons of metal and plastic?

chrisonabike wrote:

It's "growth" and "advanced economy"!  Shouldn't we be proudly trumpeting that our citizens refuse to (and don't have to) carry a bag of chips as far as those in Europe?  Even if we're still behind those of the US who wouldn't transport their fries in anything less than 2 tons of metal and plastic?

Pfffft - carry our own chips?

We get underpaid, overworked asylum seekers to ride round on semi-explosive, danger-to-life, ghetto e-motorbikes to Deliveroo our chips round here.

Everyone's a winner.

Desperate people (or just those needing casual work at odd hours) get money *, fast food folks get a marketplace and delivery service (also not sure how much this benefits or if it's just "now you have to..."), customers get convenience of delivery and only dealing with one service, the companies get to (*checks legal backing*) avail themselves of the letter of the current regulations thus giving themselves space to create a business out of not very much and ... er ... politicians get ... looked after?  I'm sure I don't know.

* Of sorts.  Some people have written here in positive terms about using this system but I still wonder if at least some aren't using this for other purposes.  Either because opportunities for other jobs are not available or perhaps this gives opportunities for additional unofficial deliveries?

It's always instructive when faced with a "ULEZ/cycle lanes/LTNs forced me out of business" story to have a quick glance at two things: Google reviews and company tax returns. Very often – at least 75% of the time in my experience – one finds that the business had a poor reputation and/or was running at or close to a loss from long before the measures they are blaming for their business failing were even proposed.