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It's OK folks, Bury council have us covered.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-65161463
Did Escher design that?
Only barely less easy to comprehend…
I occasionally ride through the area where Bury council is altering the junction outside the town hall.
Some bits for bikes might have improved with a protected cycle lane. The cycle lane protection ends where there are cars turning left towards a school which I see as a problem as the left turning cars will probably ignore the bikes that are going straight on.
The rest of the Cyclops junction looks messy with multiple options for cyclists going in different directions and all in channels so it will be easy to meet oncoming bikes and probably walkers and have no where to easily move to without encountering a kerb.
The kids mentioned in the article have a subway to use in the area which solves most of the road crossing problems already.
Cougar
It’s OK folks, Bury council have us covered.
Ultimately though it's a "why should cyclists be told to use the road/cyclepaths like motorists are told" argument.
"That's not adding a lot to journey time to/from the shops? "
"People shouldn't use infrastructure (roads/cycleways) for leisure... "
All the arguments end up with exceptionalism
Around here the biggest reason not to use a bike for transport is you'd have it nicked and the response would be a "here is a crime number for your insurance now sod off"
Ultimately though it’s a “why should cyclists be told to use the road/cyclepaths like motorists are told” argument.
Well, they are, unless you mean "cyclepath instead of the road" (when there is one). Any highway user can punch up but not down. Just yesterday I walked across a road.
I wonder how many people who scream at cyclists to use the cycle lane wouldn't think twice about parking half on the footway. I bet the Venn diagram is a near-perfect circle.
(And anyway, that wasn't really my point, it was just a silly title.)
I find my twitter feed (I know that's the problem right there) more and more filled with the helmet camera work of a particular brand of cycle commuters who seem to have daily (more than daily sometimes) encounters with other traffic users that I have maybe once or twice a year. They are always in the vain of "This driver is an idiot, they almost killed me" and they all have a side-line in "look at this badly designed cycle infra"
I struggle to get worked up about paint on a road frankly. Is there a point I'm missing?
Is there a point I’m missing?
Yes. A YouTube account with lots of followers can be very lucrative.
They seem to have loads of followers fo'shure. I've pointed out the contradiction to a couple of them, but they just seem to want to ban me...
🤣
They've been doing those 'improvements' near the town hall for what seems like a millenia now.
I saw this article today and think I'm going to take a pootle out at lunchtime and have a ride through the whole thing to see what its like.
To be fair to Bury Council, on my 7 mile commute into town, this is pretty much the only area of road that doesn't have decent marked cycle lanes. The subways to get you away from the hellish road layout above are most welcome
Most of my route looks like this
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I did a new road route at the weekend which took me through a new build estate near Corby.
As I rode into it, I saw a nice wide cycle lane at road level on both sides. Not a tacked on skinny strip, but full width road, a thin paved dividing line (kerb width) and then a decent width cycle lane on both sides.
I was impressed. It seemed like a real attempt to provide decent infrastructure for cycling. But, then I realised why it was laid out the way it was. None of the houses appeared to have much parking opportunity. Once I got a bit further down, the entire cycle path was covered in parked cars, making it completely useless and more like an extended parking area for the residents.
I suspect this was why it was put in flush with the road with no segregation at all.
I’ve pointed out the contradiction to a couple of them, but they just seem to want to ban me…
🙂 I had a similar conversation with a middle aged guy by the bike racks at my local Tesco (just over a mile from home on quiet mid-afternoon roads.)
He told me I should wear a helmet. I said that I did when I thought the occasion warranted it such as MTBing or busy roads at rush hour. He got quite insistant mentioning he'd broken 5 helmets in crashes. My suggestion that he should get lessons as he was obviously doing something very wrong brought the conversation to an abrupt end.
took me through a new build estate near Corby.
You have my sympathies
brought the conversation to an abrupt end.
Last week a Twitter user told me, with presumably a straight face, after she complained about a QOM being flagged that she "didn't do it for validation". When I pointed out that she's a blue tick verified twitter user with 3500 followers, I got the hammer pretty sharpish.
nice try, where did you lift that image from though? There's no subway in the UK that doesn't have the walls covered in graffiti and the floors soaked in piss. 😂Most of my route looks like this
@zilog6128 - Its quite bizarre, isn't it? I think we may live in some sort of alternative dimension.
You actually ride through a number of town centre subways and at no point to do feel like you're about to be relieved of your bike and your phone by a drug-addled, knife-wielding scrote.
I'm sure the feelings of safety and its unvandalised air are nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that right next to the subways is this...
The entrance to the subways is literally just out of shot on the right 😂
It’s OK folks, Bury council have us covered.
Pop across to Salford and ride around (and around, and around...) this while you're at it!
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Cougar
Well, they are, unless you mean “cyclepath instead of the road” (when there is one). Any highway user can punch up but not down. Just yesterday I walked across a road.
I wonder how many people who scream at cyclists to use the cycle lane wouldn’t think twice about parking half on the footway. I bet the Venn diagram is a near-perfect circle.
(And anyway, that wasn’t really my point, it was just a silly title.)
I know it was just silly but I'm just pointing out the Venn diagram of "people who think cyclists should be banned/must use cycle paths" etc. and people replying to similar on local FB groups
It's just the "cats" vs "dogs" .. divisive argument the local rag loves to stick on its FB group and get some real hate and interactions going on they can monetise.
That Salford pat looks easy to navigate to me. It's just a roundabout with pedestrian crossing points. It's certainly a bit narrow, but doesn't look hard to understand or navigate if* everyone is sensible.
*heavy lifting is, I understand the current phrase in vogue.
This one in Ipswich is fun, especially when there's people waiting for a bus, or even better when a bus pulls up...
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/39+Woodbridge+Rd,+Ipswich+IP4+2EA/ @52.0581403,1.1602656,3a,75y,91.51h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sWe5icAYxFtYwWx5Q8NUHJw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!4m7!3m6!1s0x47d9a02acac9749b:0xea73de5952fa62ed!8m2!3d52.0582032!4d1.1601622!10e5!16s%2Fg%2F11c28_j1jz
This one keeps you on your toes too, oncoming cars around the blind corner and pedestrians scattered across the crossing
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @52.0556508,1.1623452,3a,75y,85.58h,74.13t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seT8HgdZE7RFyOpxbE4evdA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Damn! Fat Bob's has gone? That said, it's been a while since I went back to Ipswich and actually paid attention to the roads.
If you want to keep people ont heir toes, you should have sent the Norwich Road/Valley Road double mini junction. Always hilarious.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @52.0652994,1.1400921,3a,75y,287.74h,72.2t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1slGC1frxYJYJbZbgUxqf6bw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DlGC1frxYJYJbZbgUxqf6bw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D237.02646%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192
I had a friend that would detour around that because his brain just could not cope with two roundabouts that close together.
Most of my route looks like this
I know that route. In the other subway heading towards the new police station I encountered a bloke pulling up his pants after taking a dump, one night on my commute home 🤮.
This one in Ipswich
A little earlier on that road near the traffic lights looks poor, cycle on to the pavement to encounter a pedestrian crossing post right in the way!
Why don't I use the cyclepath? Why don't you use it?
Cycle paths are great for businesses, you can ride to the local pub, have a few pints and ride home without breaking any laws.
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That’s a fantastic machine
I struggle to get worked up about paint on a road frankly. Is there a point I’m missing?
Given you're on this forum I assume you're an experienced/competent cyclist so it's not a problem to you. But it's a barrier to access to lots of people who aren't so confident. Easy win to get traffic off the road if you get rid of that barrier
I struggle to get worked up about paint on a road frankly. Is there a point I’m missing?
Maybe.
Paint on the road is useless, in most cases it makes things worse.
Motorists will just assume that if they aren't in the cycle lane (painted) that whatever pass they just did was perfectly legal and safe. Even if it was less than 1.5m (which to be frank, on 95% of cycle lanes, it'll probably be less than a metre). Then you've got all the issues of them being in the wrong place (door zone) and used as parking (because i've not seen any cyclists, and it's "off the main carriage way so it's safe").
Given you’re on this forum I assume you’re an experienced/competent cyclist so it’s not a problem to you.
That's a bit of a stretch TBH. Loads on here are most definitely not experienced or competent at mingling with traffic on the daily commute, or knowledgeable about the risks faced commuting through the centre of a city.
Hell, i used to do over 15000km a year on my bike and could probably count the annual hours travelled through a busy city during rush hour on my fingers and toes. Not to mention, when i was passing through i would have been travelling at a similar speed to the cars (probably 5-10 kph speed differential) rather than normal commuter speed (which might be 20kph speed differential or more.)
or knowledgeable about the risks faced commuting through the centre of a city.
Getting 'car-doored' hurt more than the various times I've been knocked off commuting into Manchester City Centre, which I used to do daily. Car doors are very unyielding things when you hit them at a fair pace and the corners of them are very pointy.
Do that once and you soon learn to give rows of parked cars a wide berth, no matter how much it upsets the traffic behind you
But it’s a barrier to access to lots of people who aren’t so confident.
Sure I get that, but traffic "solutions" are almost always an unholy compromise between cost, time, legislation, budgets, space, users and on and on...You could legitimately make valid criticism of nearly everything built in the urban environment to the point where nothing would be built if you took into consideration everything; including the ability of all the people that may use it, to use it. The amount of folks I see running the risk of crossing the road a couple of metres away from a perfectly safe method (ped crossings) makes me think that some folks would struggle with anything slightly out of their experience
Paint on the road is useless, in most cases it makes things worse
At the risk of making a broad-brush statements, broad-brush statements like "paint on the road is useless" is in of itself, kind of a useless thing to say.
In the communist utopia of Wirral, the building of cycle paths have just been blamed for a potential suicide attempt off a motorway bridge.
Because by spending money on pesky cyclists, it directly meant a huge barrier couldn't be built on the motorway bridge to prevent some poor soul from threatening to jump.
The fact that the lanes were actually funded from central government taxation is, of course, moot. So is that exercise = better mental health.
****ing cyclists.
At risk of sounding like a broken record, if you’re not happy about the state of local cycling infra, the answer is to get involved in the local campaign group.
Might not achieve much in Bury (where the answer to every consultation has been ‘cycle lanes on the A56 please’) but every little helps. Having said that the master plan to reduce through traffic on Angoulême Way and get it all onto Peel Way superficially looks good - linky
In the communist utopia of Wirral, the building of cycle paths have just been blamed for a potential suicide attempt off a motorway bridge.
A potential attempt?
Because by spending money on pesky cyclists, it directly meant a huge barrier couldn’t be built on the motorway bridge to prevent some poor soul from threatening to jump.
Looks from that like the money would have been better spent on literacy tuition.
Does anyone else think that this anti cyclist mentality is going to worse with all "15 minute city" conspiracy stuff doing the rounds?
I think on SM? Yes absolutely.
Car doors are very unyielding things when you hit them at a fair pace and the corners of them are very pointy.
It's not the doors, it's the car that runs you over after you get knocked off the bike into traffic... As my colleague will testify.
Why would anyone want to live in an environment designed for machines rather than humans? Bleugh.
That Salford pat looks easy to navigate to me. It’s just a roundabout with pedestrian crossing points. It’s certainly a bit narrow, but doesn’t look hard to understand or navigate if* everyone is sensible.
TBH it’s using some pseudo road marking , triangles and double dashes which are going to make sense to someone with some sort of road licence whose been trained to recognise squiggles but that’s an assumption the planners have made.
I think they’ve over thought that one tbh,information overload on the floor which means nothing when there’s a bunch of pedestrians walking all over it admiring the flowers in a world of their own 🙂
Stopped at Cougars original posted junction this morning (admittedly in a car) - the problem is that the planner/designer has taken a normal cycle lane that runs upto that junction and then split it into two single ways for each road crossing of the junction as if they expect swarms of bikes and have kept the directions segregated
This one in Ipswich
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @52.0554872,1.1770734,3a,75y,31.63h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8iBy1AFDPoU7XRBpiXKvaw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Has been improved since Google last went there. There's concrete planters down the centre of the bridge and the other side has a raised path across the road to emphasise the pedestrian right of way. Other LTN filters are similarly good along the Colchester Road. Hopefully someone will re-engineer Rope Walk to make it safer, possibly by removing the parking and making a segregated two-way raised cycle track on the crossing side of the road.
That article is funny. 40 cars enjoying the view of the sea yet a cycle lane isn't in keeping with the Victorian sea front 🤣
They've nearly finished building the crazy golf course on Deansgate, all manner of obstacles, herbs, bollards and lane switching, with all the requisite confusing hieroglyphics painted all over the tarmac (and covering some of the potholes).
"That article is funny. 40 cars enjoying the view of the sea yet a cycle lane isn’t in keeping with the Victorian sea front 🤣"
Need photographs of Victorian ladies cycling along the seafront.
They’ve nearly finished building the crazy golf course on Deansgate
That’s a total shitshow. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the sign off meeting for the plans.
You dowander what passes thru the minds of the folk who build this rubbish!
Foot o the Walk in Edinburgh is getting a new road layout with the trams. It looks like from what we have so far from the cyclepath going north on leith walk there is no safe way to progress onto any of the other roads I'll take a photo tomorrow
The one on Deansgate looks lethal, I particularly love the way it spits you out into moving traffic to cross from one side to the other. The only way they could have made cycling safe on Deansgate would be to ban vehicles, the standard of driving in central Manchester is terrifying.
I think, to be fair, that was the original plan. Some bus company (which was already pissed off by the King of the North’s plan to re-regulate bus services) decided to make trouble…
There’s no excuse at all for the cycle lane changing sides twice nor how it does so. I’ve no idea why they didn’t just run it along the same side all the way along, and probably neither do they.
They’ve nearly finished building the crazy golf course on Deansgate, all manner of obstacles, herbs, bollards and lane switching
There's been herbs on Deansgate for quite some time now.
"There’s been herbs on Deansgate for quite some time now."
Smelt at least 3 times when I navigated the 18 holes from Victoria to Deansgate station yesterday...
If you continue your journey on towards Stretford then you'll notice even more herbs growing in all the drain grills, which have been blocked up for years now with all the the builders rubble and rotting leaves. A tree started to grow in one of them!
As for the kerbs... one of them on an new cyle ditch near me has already seen me have an off where I tattooed my palms with gravel.
Smelt at least 3 times when I navigated the 18 holes from Victoria to Deansgate station yesterday…
There's a golf course on Deansgate too?
"There’s a golf course on Deansgate too?"
There is now and it's crazy!