Psychlepaths: interesting analysis

Just zis Guy said:

This site has an excellent discussion of the pros and cons
of psychlepaths and the reasons for conflict between their
advocates and their opponents.

<url:http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listenin-
g/home.html>

The worst thing about them (and there are many) is that they
slow the cyclist right down by losing him/her priority at
every side road. Other problems are:

- Vastly increased risk of collision between pedestrians
and cyclists.

- Broken glass, usually Diamond White and Metz bottles
dropped by the local yoof, rarely gets swept up by the
council. On roads cars crush it down so it's harmless,
and the yoof tend not to drink in the middle of the
road anyway.

- Some of the surfaces are laughable - they don't have
decent foundations so tree roots turn them into a rippled
washboard after a couple of years.

- They always end just where you might actually need them,
e.g. at fast roundabouts, because there's no economical
and safe way to segregate cycle traffic at a roundabout.
This makes them useless for inexperienced cyclists too.

- Sustrans paths are mostly gravel. There may be excellent
planning reasons for not laying tarmac, but it makes them
next to useless for "transport" purposes.

- It gives drivers an excuse to moan at us for riding
on the road.

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

This site has an excellent discussion of the pros and cons
of psychlepaths and the reasons for conflict between their
advocates and their opponents.

<url:http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listenin-
g/home.html>

--
Guy

Shouldn't the report have had a third group (at least)?
Namely, those that think that road design should slow
motorised traffic, rather than being optimised to increase
speed (and perhaps give drivers more training).

Paul.

Paul Moss posted ...

Quoted message said:

"Just zis Guy, you know?" <[email hidden]>
wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

This site has an excellent discussion of the pros and
cons of psychlepaths and the reasons for conflict between
their advocates and their opponents.

<url:http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listeni-
ng/home.html>

--
Guy

Shouldn't the report have had a third group (at least)?
Namely, those that think that road design should slow
motorised traffic, rather than being optimised to increase
speed (and perhaps give drivers more training).

This does happen.

Where I now live in Intake, Doncaster, a main road has been
changed from a wide, mostly straight route to a much slower,
winding route by adding staggered parking spaces, white line
markings, bollards, pedestrian crossings, islands, pinch-
points and kerbs that are higher than the surrounding
housing estates kerbs. The paths are wider, and narrower in
various places, so even cycle and pedestrian traffic creates
bottlenecks at some times of the day. Also, rather
unfortunately, the net result is that the pedestrian or any
other pavement user, doesn't get a clear view of what's
coming up or down the road when they want to cross, and in
some places, especially where trees have been planted in the
wider pathways, it creates complete blind spots for peds,
cyclists and drivers alike, in fact all road users are so
inconvenienced that it has become dangerous, IMHO .. This
doesn't seem to have slowed traffic on the road down by much
either .. except at the traffic lights, which are also
routinely jumped on red by _all_ traffic, cycles, cars, vans
etc etc ... It appears that the local twoccers use the road
as a slalom, witnessed by the fresh skid and drift marks
every weekend ..

Frankly it's an abortion of the first water and makes a good
case for not slowing traffic with poor road design.

We (My wife and I) assume that it was an experiment ..
which appears to have gone a little differently to how
it was seen.

--
Paul

(8(|) Homer rocks .. 😉

"Zog The Undeniable" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

- Sustrans paths are mostly gravel. There may be excellent
planning reasons for not laying tarmac, but it makes
them next to useless for "transport" purposes.

Not around Bristol. All the new bits that have been
springing up that I use regularly are excellent quality
tarmac except for one bit that used to be a muddy public
bridleway which was resurfaced with hardcore presumably as a
compromise for horse users.