Telegraph today

[Tony Raven]

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
>
> 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

 

[Jim Price]

Tony Raven wrote:
> 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

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

Jim Price wrote:
> Tony Raven wrote:
>> 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.

> 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