"Helen Deborah Vecht" <[email hidden]> wrote
in message >
[snip]
Lamp post? That's trivial! Round here, we have one with a
full-sized
Quoted message said:phone booth!
[snip]
I haven't seen that one myself, but Helen and David showed
me a photo. Phone booths come and go, like Tardises. There
was one in Cockfosters for a while, but it's gone now.
They seem only to appear on bike lanes on the pavement, not
lanes on the roadway. I think it's the Time Lords trying to
tell us that vehicles belong in roads
Here in London, TRL, the Transport Research Lab, the now
privatised former Ministry of Tranport's Road Research Lab
has started an investigation into, sorry, review of,
"procedures associated with the development and delivery of
measures designed to improve safety and convenience for
cyclists". The review is being done by Stuart Reid, formerly
of the CTC, and now working for TRL
The review was sparked by the various deaths on the bike
facilities on london's bridges.
I quote:
"A range of stakeholders, external to TfL, that are of
relevance to this project have been identified. These
stakeholders need to be consulted on their experience of,
and input to, TfL's development of cycling schemes."
You and I are not on that list, of course. The London
Cycling Campaign is, but not the London Bike Messengers
Association, or the CTC.
I think it is important that this investigation not be a
whitewash, and it is important to keep the pressure on the
LCC. I think the LCC has been part of the problem, by
campaigning for a "London Cycle Network". London already has
a cycle network. Every inch of the 8500 miles of London's
road system is cycle network. To be sure that network can
be, and should be, improved for bikes in some places, but
the key word here is "places". London should have a target
of number of places improved, not a target of number of feet
of white paint added to road or pavement. Bicycles do not
need cycle tracks like trams need tram tracks. We already
have our network, and we should fight what is the first step
in what the Dutch call "fietsapartheid" - being relegated to
our own bike bantustans, separate, but never equal..
Jeremy Parker
It's long been my rule of thumb that it always takes two
deaths to get any cycle facility removed. Only local deaths
count. Deaths in other locations are never in locations that
are comparable enough to be relevant. That rule was derived
from my US experience. I doesn't really cheer me to discover
that it works in London as well.
Jeremy Parker
