Infrastructure update

Spectacular cycle lane in Chingford Road

The above cycle lane demonstrates all that is wrong with Waltham Forest's cycle "infrastructure". Although clearly they think it is fine as they have repeated another cycle lane next to parked cars on the way back as well. 

The road is full of speeding cars, so cycling in this lane invites the cyclist to get doored and then flung in the path of a fast moving car - like some macabre cyclist pin-ball game.

I cycle slightly to the right of the white line, thus clearing the door zone, but inviting motorists to close pass me as punishment for not using the cycle facility kindly provided by their "road tax".

Appalling facilities like the one above are doing more harm than good, and is tokenism of the worst kind (the kind that might get a cyclist killed). Waltham Forest would do better by cyclists if they didn't bother at all in this case. But then I guess if they removed all the "facilities" that were useless or dangerous then they wouldn't be able to claim that they have 23 miles of cycle routes.

Interestingly, I have never seen a Waltham Forest document that details how many miles of these cycle routes are actually helping the cyclist.