Telegraph today

Just zis Guy said:

It's a bit chicken-and-egg; some cities have a geography which
naturally encourages cycling (like around the Oxford colleges, where
many journeys turn out to be a five minute ride or a fifteen minute
walk). That means you get lots of cyclists, and they encourage more
cyclists. And then the council brags about how "cyclist friendly"
they are, when they have largely done nothing in particular to help,
and quite often the opposite (e.g. 18" wide cycle lanes).

On paper Milton Keynes is cyclist friendly. But the geography sucks,
distances are too great and parking too abundant to encourage riding,
so it is a motorised wasteland.

Which is interesting given that Oxford does relatively little for
cyclists and yet is seen as "cycling friendly" whatever that means while
Milton Keynes has the extensive Redway system to enable people to cycle
anywhere mostly without using the roads but is seen as cyclist unfriendly.

Personally I find a cyclist friendly city is one where lots of people
cycle, so other road users are used to cyclists being around and are
more accepting of their presence, making cycling a nicer experience
which encourages more people to cycle..........

--
Tony

"I did make a mistake once - I thought I'd made a mistake but I hadn't"
Anon

Tony Raven said:

Which is interesting given that Oxford does relatively little for
cyclists and yet is seen as "cycling friendly" whatever that means while
Milton Keynes has the extensive Redway system to enable people to cycle
anywhere mostly without using the roads but is seen as cyclist unfriendly.

I think people think Oxford is cycle cycle friendly because they are
somewhat more anti-car than some other towns. Milton Keynes is seen as
cyclist unfriendly because they've done a Grauniad and put the cyclists
with the pedestrians on the redways.

JimP

Jim Price said:

Tony Raven said:

Which is interesting given that Oxford does relatively little for
cyclists and yet is seen as "cycling friendly" whatever that means
while Milton Keynes has the extensive Redway system to enable people
to cycle anywhere mostly without using the roads but is seen as
cyclist unfriendly.

I think people think Oxford is cycle cycle friendly because they are
somewhat more anti-car than some other towns.

Oxford are anti-car? Funny that every narrow terraced street I've walked
down in Oxford has no parking space unused, then.

OTOH, there are slightly more measures taken to preserve the necessary
amounts of the town centre from cars that the similarly sized Bath has not
taken (and would find more difficult to take.) IME, people with cars in
Oxford can get everywhere they want to, and not just because I've only been
driven in Oxford by a blue badge holder.

Quoted message said:

Milton Keynes is seen as
cyclist unfriendly because they've done a Grauniad and put the
cyclists with the pedestrians on the redways.

Of course, I agree with that bit. Just saying that it's not helpful to
describe reasonable restrictions on car use as being anti-car.

--
Ambrose