Cycle paths, tracka and facilities: a proposal

Mike Causer said:

Anyone interested?

Count me in.

--
Dave...

Mike Causer said:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

Quoted message said:

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think
I can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.
Count me in if you need any translation of Dutch documents though.
When Pete contacted out local MP about some new rather useless facilities
he was asked what he thought should have been done - a resource to point
him at would help.

And I'm wondering if you should move the focus away from "cycle
facilities" and more towards "road design that includes/facilitates
cycling" or something along those lines.

Roos

Mike Causer said:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example,
the Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity -
maybe that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant
sites, and how they relate to the new proposal.

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?

--
not me guv

in message <[email hidden]>, Nick Kew

(') said:

Mike Causer said:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The
intimidation by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is
getting worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and
the non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them",
is very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example,
the Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity -
maybe that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant
sites, and how they relate to the new proposal.

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?

I would be prepared to put some work in.

--
[email hidden] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
/-\ You have discovered a security flaw in a Microsoft product. You
|-| can report this issue to our security team. Would you like to
| | * Be completely ignored (default)?
| | * Receive a form email full of platitudes about how much we care?
\_/ * Spend hours helping us fix this problem on your own phone bill?

Nick Kew said:

Should this be a new site? Or is that jumping the gun? For example, the
Warrington pages are relevant and have got some good publicity - maybe
that could be expanded (if the owner is interested).

I don't know if Warrington/Pete Owens would be interested, but the idea is
to be more formal. Think about pointing your local County Council to
Warrington, and they will categorise it as whinging. You and I might
think it does a good job as a gadfly, but someone who was held up for 10
seconds behind a cyclist negotiated some dodgy "traffic calming" in a safe
manner will disagree (happened to me this evening, honked at by a Cavalier).

Quoted message said:

How about as a first move, a brief overview of existing relevant sites,
and how they relate to the new proposal.

I haven't seen anything that covers what I propose, and I've looked at
everything I can find (in English, and a few in German).

Quoted message said:

Possibly. Do you already have hosting facilities readily to hand?`

Yes. Initially in space holding my own stuff (mainly car-related, Google
"mike causer lotus"😉. I have MySQL, Perl, Python, PHP, Ht://Dig; /and/ the
ISP lets me install my own software, provided I can get it to work in a
chroot jail. I would like to play with Ruby on Rails and Zope, but this
proposal wouldn't need either.

Mike

Roos Eisma said:

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think I
can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.

It would be useful to have comments from people not directly
involved in the production. How does that sound?

Quoted message said:

Count me in if you need any translation of Dutch documents though.

How's your German? I would really like to find out what the active anti
cycle-path people there are saying. I can handle touristy conversation
with my 1964 O-level German, but can't hack this technical detail. [1]

Quoted message said:

And I'm wondering if you should move the focus away from "cycle
facilities" and more towards "road design that includes/facilitates
cycling" or something along those lines.

That /should/ be what "Cycling Friendly Infrastructure" does. But the
revised version is now two years overdue....

[1] Because I know that speaking German is not appreciated in Holland I
always kept quiet and only used English or possibly French. Until in
1995/6 I was in an old hotel in Amsterdam over the winter, and the
owner (good English) and his daughter (excellent English) were away. The
owner's father tried Dutch, I replied in French. No go. So he tried
German. He was certainly old enough to remember the War, but when I
replied in German we got on fine :-))

Mike

Mike Causer wrote on 09/08/2006 17:34 +0100:

Quoted message said:

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

One of my Round Tuits has been to do a quiz page called "Is it a Cycle
Path?" with pictures of pavements where you have to guess if it is a
legal cycle path or not. If you are interested maybe it can be changed
to a Gotta Round Tuit.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

Mike Causer said:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

If there is a positive response here I'll set up a mailing-list so
discussion can carry on out of the public eye. I am also going to
register a suitable internet domain.

Anyone interested?

Mike

Don't know what use I could be, but happy to help at comment/critique
type level.

--
Brian G

Mike Causer wrote on 09/08/2006 17:34 +0100:

Quoted message said:

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

FWIW, my view of where we should start from is here:
http://www.camcycle.org.uk/newsletters/66/article8.html

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

Mike Causer said:

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:40:49 +0000, Roos Eisma wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think I
can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.

Quoted message said:

It would be useful to have comments from people not directly
involved in the production. How does that sound?

Fine. I just don't want to commit to being very involved only to find that
this coming academic year (going into honours year) takes all my time.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Count me in if you need any translation of Dutch documents though.

Quoted message said:

How's your German? I would really like to find out what the active anti
cycle-path people there are saying. I can handle touristy conversation
with my 1964 O-level German, but can't hack this technical detail. [1]

It's worth a try.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

And I'm wondering if you should move the focus away from "cycle
facilities" and more towards "road design that includes/facilitates
cycling" or something along those lines.

Quoted message said:

That /should/ be what "Cycling Friendly Infrastructure" does. But the
revised version is now two years overdue....

I have to look that one up. Does it say anything about car parking? There
are too many examples where parked cars make things more difficult for
cyclists (either for onroad cycling or for using any sort of facilities)
so it seems that if you think about infrastructure as a whole than it
should include thinking about how to handle parking.

Roos

Tony Raven said:

FWIW, my view of where we should start from is here:
http://www.camcycle.org.uk/newsletters/66/article8.html

Not bad!

One tiny niggle: "cyclecraft" should be referenced or made into
a link. Make it clear he's a recognised authority!

And *any* discussion of psyclepaths these days should surely
link to warrington?

--
not me guv

Nick Kew wrote on 10/08/2006 10:45 +0100:

Quoted message said:

Tony Raven said:

FWIW, my view of where we should start from is here:
http://www.camcycle.org.uk/newsletters/66/article8.html

Not bad!

One tiny niggle: "cyclecraft" should be referenced or made into
a link. Make it clear he's a recognised authority!

And *any* discussion of psyclepaths these days should surely
link to warrington?

Thank you. I was word limited by the editor and it was his choice what
links were included.

--
Tony

"Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using
his intelligence; he is just using his memory."
- Leonardo da Vinci

Mike Causer said:

For some time the dreadful state of planning, implementation and
maintenence of cycle facilities has been worrying me. The intimidation
by car and van drivers, and now a magistrates court, is getting
worse, and the complaints by local goverment, newspapers and the
non-cycling public about "all that money & they don't use them", is
very tedious.

So, I propose to set up an informative web-site, with a serious aspect
to it, like cyclehelmets.org, that contains not just amusing pictures
(FSVO amusing), but has the statistics, references, and advice such
that local government, journalists, & so on could be pointed to it in
order to educate them.

To that end I've taken hundreds of photos, collected lots of papers
and references, and thought about what to present and, to a lesser
extent, how to present it. But it's going to be a lot of work, and
seeing the success of the cyclehelmets and recent leaflet for children's
cycling, is anyone interested in making it a collaborative venture?

If there is a positive response here I'll set up a mailing-list so
discussion can carry on out of the public eye. I am also going to
register a suitable internet domain.

Anyone interested?

Yes, I've got a couple of my own. Here's my favourite:-

It's a cyclepath that's been provided to allow cyclists an alternative
to turning right at a T-junction from a minor road (Frogmore) and
having to cross a busy (Putney Bridge Road) London road. It runs along
the pavement for 90ft until a set of traffic lights which can be used
to cross this road.

This being London (and Wandsworth in particular), there are a few
gotchas...

A picture is worth a thousand words so:-

http://www.greenbank.org/misc/cyclepath.jpg

Notes:

Once you've negotiated the incorrectly replaced yellow 'directional'
paving slabs that cause the bike to judder, you're on a whopping 6ft of
badly replaced (after some gas/electric company dug up the whole
pavement) green gravel.

This promptly ends with more incorrectly replaced yellow 'directional'
paving slabs.

You then have a rubbish bin, lamppost and bus stop information sign to
avoid. The only way to do this is to cycle right infront of the bus
stop which can have up to 20 people waiting during rush hour.

Genius.

Ta,

-Alex

Mike Causer said:

Roos Eisma said:

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

Yes and No. Yes, because I think it's a good idea, and no, I don't think I
can afford to play an active part in it for at least another year.

It would be useful to have comments from people not directly
involved in the production. How does that sound?

It would certainly be nice for people who can't get that heavily involved in
this worthy scheme to be able to chip in. Just keeping the deliberation
process open (public list archives?) should be sufficient.

Quoted message said:

That /should/ be what "Cycling Friendly Infrastructure" does. But the
revised version is now two years overdue....

This is probably a redundant comment but, considering some of the "helpful
advice" contained in the current version, I'd be wary about pinning my
hopes on that document!

Regards,

--
David Nutter <[email hidden]> Research Assistant
MHAC MC3102, Brayford Pool Campus
University Of Lincoln,
LN6 7TS

Quoted message said:

Anyone interested?

This sounds like a good idea, I'd be happy to volunteer my services.

I can hack around in HTML and for my sins produce a lot of agreed 'forms of
words' and proposal documents in my day job.

E-mail addy is valid.

Andy Cox

David Nutter wrote (I think - attributions may have got mixed):

Quoted message said:

It would certainly be nice for people who can't get that heavily involved in
this worthy scheme to be able to chip in. Just keeping the deliberation
process open (public list archives?) should be sufficient.

Mike Causer said:

That /should/ be what "Cycling Friendly Infrastructure" does. But the
revised version is now two years overdue....

This is probably a redundant comment but, considering some of the "helpful
advice" contained in the current version, I'd be wary about pinning my
hopes on that document!

I believe it is much improved over CFI 1. The author knows his stuff;
I remember hearing a talk on the draft.

But the delay is worrying. It's with the DfT, and they may be trying
to remove some of the improvements.

Two very promising LTNs (local transport notes) drafted in 2004 also
don't seem to have made it to final versions.

I hope the delays are just due to the person working on them being
overworked.

The draft Manual for Streets, on the other hand, shows that its
authors don't understand cycling at all. Anyone care to bet that this
one will come out first, with its problems intact?

Colin McKenzie

--
On average in Britain, you're more likely to get a head injury walking
a mile than cycling it.
So why aren't we all exhorted to wear walking helmets?

Mike Causer of said:

How's your German? I would really like to find out what the active anti
cycle-path people there are saying. I can handle touristy conversation
with my 1964 O-level German, but can't hack this technical detail.

I will have a go at the technical stuff in German.
--
Steph Peters
Chorlton Wanderers Cycling Group
Monthly slow and easy rides from South Manchester
http://www.sandbenders.demon.co.uk/cycling/chwan.htm

Steph Peters said:

Mike Causer <[email hidden]> wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

How's your German? I would really like to find out what the active anti
cycle-path people there are saying. I can handle touristy conversation
with my 1964 O-level German, but can't hack this technical detail.

Quoted message said:

I will have a go at the technical stuff in German. --

Steph, would you join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyclefacility/
to get involved?

Danke schön,

Mike

I'll do whatever I can. Don't know if it'll be a lot or a little.

Cheers, helen s