Waltham Forest could learn a thing or two about cycle lane maintenance from our colleagues outside London.
There is nothing more annoying than a potentially good cycle lane ruined by poor maintenance. Harlow council, in Essex, clearly understand this.
That is why this piece of useful infrastructure has just had a new lick of paint.
Before the revamp, the lines were becoming a bit faded (presumably from the vast hordes of cyclists who use it every day). Without repainting, cyclists may have become confused about where they should be on this shared facility. Now there is no confusion. Cyclists should be to the left. Impaled on the railings. And thank goodness the give way signs have been redefined as it is important to make sure those untrained cyclists give way at the correct places. Where there is an old unused turning that has been shut for years, for instance.
Now cyclists can enjoy this piece of cycling nirvana for all of its 10 metre length.
I assume such valuable maintenance work gets funded out of a cycling budget. With the budget squeeze on local councils, are these important cycling infrastructures at risk? The public deserves to know...
Not giving cyclists enough room when overtaking is often cited by cyclists as a major reason that cycling in traffic can be unpleasant.
If my cycle trip down Forest Road is anything to go by, this message is getting through to motorists.
I was cycling down this part of Forest Road, near Ruby Road
Except when I cycled it yesterday, the parking bays were full of cars as people got their fish and chips. The cycle lane was partially blocked by a wide van. So I cycled in primary to stop being squashed between the parked cars, an overtaking car, and the pedestrian refuge you can just about see in the background.
The car behind me recognised the requirement to give space, so overtook completely on the other carriageway. Past the pedestrian refuge on the wrong side. Such was his concern for my safety to give me space he put his own safety at risk by speeding past the turning on the corner just at the refuge on the wrong side of the road.
We should thank motorists like that for putting our safety concerns above all else. Apart from, obviously, the primary concern of getting in front of a cyclist who would slow them slightly for a few seconds until the road opened up again after the corner.
And probably a special vote of thanks should go to whoever designed this road layout to include a narrow cycle lane right next to parked cars on a busy parking bay and then making the road narrow enough with a pedestrian refuge so that cars encroach on the cycle lane. And then doing this on a blind corner, on a road with an endemic speeding problem, and with a turning thrown in for good measure.
There is quite a lot of poor driving out there. So, it takes something quite special to really take my breath away these days.
Step forward the imbecile piloting the burgandy old Honda through Stratford this evening.
He uses the bus lane illegally on the approach to the gyratory. He close passes me and another cyclist in order to undertake in said bus-lane
He then tries to bully his way back into the queue to pass the bus turning left, but when this doesn't work roars off down the bus lane by the station (which has been open to traffic during the road-works). He makes to close pass another cyclist, but is confronted by a bus pulling out of the station, and decides that fighting with a bus isn't going to end well.
He then forces his way into the other lane to overtake the bus, jumps back into the bus lane (which at this point has reverted to a standard bus lane outside the road-works) and then turns left up Angel Road.
All of this dangerous activity actually got him a few seconds on me whilst I was cycling. In essence it gained him nothing.
Driving like this falls so short of the standard expected, that the only solution is to rip up the driving license, take the car, and fine. And if they drive again, they go to prison. If someone steamed through Stratford Mall waving a baseball bat, they would be treated very seriously. Why is driving a car at cyclists and other cars any different?
Julian Huppert, MP for Cambridge, called for tougher punishments for motorists who kill and injure cyclists. The reaction from "motorists" can be found here.
When I say the reaction from motorists, what is actually meant is the reaction of the RAC foundation, a spin-off from the RAC (and also a registered charity, which is interesting).
What Julian Huppert says is eminently sensible and not outrageous.
What a spokesman for the RAC foundation said was
“The reality is there are reckless elements among all groups of road users.
“He is right to say tough action needs to be taken against offenders, but wrong to seek to establish a hierarchy of the supposed righteous.”
Of course there are reckless elements among all road users. But cyclists and pedestrians who are reckless don't have 1 tonne of vehicle in their control at the time. Surely even the most cursory consideration would draw the conclusion that reckless elements that pose a much greater risk to life and limb should possibly be treated with more rigour?
And the righteous comments are really starting to grate. Am I suddenly righteous on my cycle, but meek and humble when I do the same journey in my car?
The hierarchy that needs to be established is not of the "righteous" but of the vulnerability of road-user. Putting a higher duty of care based upon the potential hurt that can be caused seems very sensible. But road lobby groups will fight every inch of the way to preserve the status-quo.
I am going to email Julian Huppert. We need more people like him, and we need them not to be discouraged by the efforts of the powerful road lobby.
I am a helmet & high-viz type of cyclist. Not because I want to be, but because I want to give motorists the best chance to see me inbetween the other important driving tasks such as lighting a cigarette, drinking coffee, hunting for something in the back seat, texting, and having a magificantly animated row with the spouse.*
The futility of the high-viz and helmet approach dawned on me whilst cycling along Cathall Road in Leytonstone today. It is a terrible road for cyclists, but one of the few roads crossing the tear in Waltham Forest that is the A12 link road. So one has little choice, unless a lengthy diversion appeals. The road is just wide enough for cars to think that they can pass, without being wide enough so that they actually can without causing the cyclist considerable discomfort. Then there are some badly placed parking bays, a roundabout that is appalling for cyclists (cars squeeze past and overtake) and a slight incline as one goes over the A12 to a set of traffic lights where getting through the green phase is more important than the cyclist. All of this on a road where speeding is the norm as the motorist finds a new-found sense of freedom after the congestion of the A11.
I was close passed by around 5 cars, and overtaken on the roundabout by a mini-van. There was practically nothing I could do about this other than weave randomly around the road in the hope that the motorist would think I had lost my mind and back off.
If any of these cars hit me, they were going fast enough to cause real damage. Certainly more than my plastic helmet would protect me from.
So, the real cycling safety issue isn't helmet and high-viz. It is impatient and inconsiderate driving on roads that are completely hostile to cycling. It wouldn't take much to calm this road and make it more attractive for cycling. Some moving of parking bays and road markings would help. But even this seems beyond the various transport departments that manage Waltham Forest's roads.
* All these things I saw today whilst cycling. The row was something to behold. I am not too sure what the husband had done, but I would imagine he is sleeping on the sofa even as I type.
Perusing the London cyclist blog, I came across a post where he participates in a phone-in on LBC about cyclists. It is a complete ambush, and Andreas, the London cyclist blogger, valiantly tries to temper the interviewer's ranting with some reasoning, but alas, to little effect.
The blog can be found here, whilst I have embedded the actual interview below.
The interviewer starts of ranting about an anecdote ("a friend's son") contesting a fine for jumping a red light. In New York. From the inauspicious start of a "friend of a friend" anecdote based in another city in another country on another continent, the interviewer then extrapolates to brand all cyclists "arrogant" and so on.
She then moves onto the old chestnut of registration which holds all motorists accountable. Apparently. Except obviously the 10% who aren't insured in London. And, of course, the section of the other 90% who don't obey the rules. Including the large section who speed at least some of the time, and, even with our rather lax conviction rates, still manage to generate 1.8 million speeding fines per year.
Interspersed with these "bon mots" she covers such "facts" like "cyclists wear headphones more often than not" and various other "anecdotes". Anecdotes which, frankly, sound just a little made up.
Clearly these types of interview are just a waste of time. No-one manages to put their view across, all the interviewer manages to do is bully someone brought in under false pretences that has less radio experience, presumably in an effort to rile them into saying something stupid.
LBC seems to have form for anti-cyclist nonsense. Nick Ferrari conducted an interview here where he managed, for the entire interview, to remain unconvinced that roads that can accomodate buses, taxis, cars and lorries are wide enough for cyclists.
LBC's tagline is "London's biggest conversation", which might be true, but from the evidence so far, it isn't the most coherent.
When one steps back to think about what is going on here, it is quite amazing. There appears to be such vitriol for a group of people deciding upon a particular mode of transport. For people living in other cities in Northern Europe it must be somewhat incomprehensible. I am not sure on this point, but I doubt, after a cyclist is killed, that Dutch radio then conducts a series of "interviews" where a whole load of unsubstiantiated claptrap is thrown around to cast cyclists as the biggest danger to society after terrorism. Maybe it is because 93% of Dutch people cycle at least once a week - to have a series of rants like the ones heard on LBC would be some kind of strange exercise in national self-loathing.
Maybe these rants are just the desperate attempts for attention on a local talk radio station, but the way the BBC (see Adam Rayner) also accomodates the same type of anti-cyclist rubbish without question, makes me wonder what is going on in our media to think this is all OK.
In an effort to find out more about the cyclists' nemesis, Adam Rayner, I found the following on YouTube
This time about parking tickets and appeals.
At one point he says that " Motorists are subjected to a totalitarian society". I am sure we can all find the similarities between, for example, Chairman Mao's China or Stalin's USSR and the current plight of motorists and parking tickets.
On another interview on parking tickets he says it is "such an unpleasant thing to get a ticket". Well, Mr Rayner, I have had my fair share of parking tickets and can say they pale into insignificance to the unpleasantness of having one's well-being threatened by inattentive or bullying motorists. Or the unpleasantness felt when one knows that they can pretty much get away with anything up to killing a cyclist if they claim they simply "didn't see them".
Of course, if Mr Rayner finds tickets so unpleasant, maybe he could use alternative transport modes instead - I have never had a parking ticket with my bicycle for instance.
Or maybe parking tickets are simply a bit annoying as opposed to proof of a totalitarian state, and that Mr Rayner's hyperbole machine is going full tilt.
