3 ms·

It is truly unsafe to take a bicycle in the U.K.?

dmitri1981 6y ago
Depends where you are. London is starting to get some good cycling lanes and some junctions are having traffic rerouted to make it safer for cyclists. Sadly in many other places cycling only really works for confident riders. Lots of drivers are either unaware of cyclists or downright aggressive. I would have near misses on a weekly basis. Things are getting better but very slowly.
- wooger 6y ago
  And in our other cities it's still way cheaper (and socially acceptable) to drive in from the suburbs and park. There are car parks literally 200m from the centre of Birmingham where you can park all day for less than 10 pounds, and cheaper still nearby. Things are starting to change (oddly during COVID) by addition of bus gates, but they're making very slow progress. We've already delayed and diluted our congestion charge multiple times.
armada651 6y ago
As a Dutch person who lived in the UK for a year, yes. Bicycle lanes are nearly non-existent outside of London and the boroughs seem to be hostile to the idea in general. The few bicycle lanes you do find often end as abruptly as they start, there's nothing connecting them and there are no bicycle crossings when you meet a road. However if you get a mountain bike and stick to the dirt roads along the rivers and hills, it is a great place to enjoy cycling through the countryside. One of the best bike trips I've done is cycling for 30 miles along the Thames river. So the UK is great for scenic cycling, terrible for a cycling commute. And yes, any Dutch expat you meet is silently judging your country on the safety of its cycling infrastructure.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  > Yes, any Dutch expat you meet is silently judging your country on the safety of its cycling infrastructure. And so you should. The UK's cycling infrastructure is embarrassingly bad. An example. Local to me, recently, the government spent over £100m on a new road junction, to replace an old one. One of the main reasons that they had to build a new junction was that they claimed they could not remove traffic lights from the roundabout to improve traffic because pedestrians and cyclists both crossed the junction at 'street level'. A local cycle organization submitted a proposal with modelling (I can't find the link atm.), that showed that the desired increase in capacity could be achieved by adding bridges for pedestrians and cyclists, removing traffic lights, and altering the road layout. And save about £90m. Needlessly to say, the junction was built. I have no idea whether their proposal was considered, or not, unless I submit a freedom of information request to the UK government. Regardless, the bridges should have been built anyway, because the junction is between two suburbs. The new junction did get a new cyclist/pedestrian bridge to replace the old one. Except it's about 1km further away from the suburbs that the previous junction, so adding 2km to bike journeys.
  - markvdb 6y ago
    Actually, bicycle tunnels - with a limited slope of course, like all other bicycle infrastructure - are recommended over bicycle bridges. These are more comfortable for cyclists. Gravity helps one cycle down, and the kinetic energy gained helps cyclists on the way up in the second half of the tunnel.
    - Muximize 6y ago
      Also they can be smaller and cheaper to build. Because they only carry bicycles and pedestrians, a height clearance of about 2.5 meters is enough, while a bridge needs around 5 meters to let cargo trucks pass underneath. This also results in much shorter ramps.
    - DrBazza 6y ago
      Agreed. In England, however, tunnels particularly in towns tend to attract anti-social behaviour, which is rather unfortunate.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  A problem in the UK is that in general we are hostile to build roads and certainly wide roads. So roads are as narrow as possible and congested, which in itself is not great for bikes but also makes bike lanes near impossible. And when a bike lane is built (i.e. painted on the road or pavement) it is usually also very narrow and interferes with traffic. Obviously this is difficult to change for existing roads, but we could at least make sure that new roads are wide enough, but this is not the case.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    Do you think the centre of Amsterdam has wide roads? It does not.
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      That's great but I fail to see the relation with my comment. I'm not talking about very central roads that can be mostly restricted to pedestrians, or city areas with narrow streets but also little to no traffic. I'm talking about roads in general. Amsterdam has many roads that look hugely wide for British standards. Example: hhttps://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7524584,-1.2749531,3a,75y,81.37h,70.28t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3Mk1fV_F6xCPtK-BgT8eLg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3Mk1fV_F6xCPtK-BgT8eLg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D107.590294%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7524584,-1.2749531,3a,75y,... This is one of the main roads into Oxford. Note the "cycle lane"... Still, that road is not too bad because it has an exceptionally wide pavement on one side. It's usually more like this: (Henley on Thames, where Boris Johnson used to be MP, again one of the main accesses to the town) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5375008,-0.8998416,3a,75y,296.4h,70.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNPg6kPII1CROWH6Cqrmrxg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5375008,-0.8998416,3a,75y,...
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
        1. Botley Road - there is plenty of space for a two-way cycle path in the photo you show. Just a couple of photos down, you can see the road fits three vehicles abreast: in other words, it would comfortably fit two road lanes and a double cycle lane, if only that had been or was constructed. There are much trickier problems solved in the Netherlands. 2. Henley Bridge - Overall, Henley could be ideal for cycling around. OK, one of the main routes into the town crosses a river. Yet, if this was in the Netherlands, they would simply have built a parallel cycle bridge at some point in the last 20 years. Or, if there still wasn't one, they'd build one now. Here you go, Rijswijk swingbrug, opened 2014 (watch the video for relevant commentary): https://www.oozo.nl/video/rijswijk/84608/rijswijk-cycle-bridge https://www.oozo.nl/video/rijswijk/84608/rijswijk-cycle-brid... Or Delft's Gelatinebrug, scheduled to open in 2023: https://www.delft.nl/wonen/bouwen/bouwprojecten-de-stad/schieoevers/gelatinebrug https://www.delft.nl/wonen/bouwen/bouwprojecten-de-stad/schi... There are plenty of other examples. Amsterdam's narrow roads have little to no traffic only because of political decisions that cars are not the only form of transport that need to be considered. You can see in archive footage that this wasn't always the case.
DrBazza 6y ago
It depends, but yes. There are a lot of deaths each year, and the law is not in favour of the cyclist either. In fact, it gets worse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45154708 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45154708 Stay away from the cities, and it's generally safer, but at the same time you'll find cars doing 60 mph on single carriageway roads (the national speed limit), which can also be marked as a national cycle route. If you cycle somewhere where cars don't normally encounter cyclists, it can be "fun" as the motorists don't know how to behave. The trouble with the UK is that even so-called cycle paths are shared with footpaths, so pedestrians are all over the place, and cycle paths that are getting built as 'joint' footpaths, mean as a cyclist you also stop at every road junction. Compare that to Europe, where the cycle path is an additional lane next to the road/main carriageway and is usually physically separated in some way for safety. In the UK this has the unfortunate effect of making a large percentage of cyclist just us the road (which they are legally entitled to do), because the cycle path next to the road "stops" every 100 yards because there's a road joining the main carriageway that you have to cross.
- phicoh 6y ago
  The side road can be restructured to give bikes priority. And put some good speedbumps on the side road to give cars a hint that they need to pay attention.
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    Agreed. They can, but they never are. For car drivers, the expectation is that they have right of way on a road, and they that come to a halt at the road junction, and not a few yards before it because there's a bike path crossing. Town planners/local planning departments are under so much pressure that they literally just end up ticking boxes, and rarely push back on house builders to change their site plans. The 'desire path' is a straight line, for both pedestrians and cyclists, yet new housing estates are allowed to put in bendy cyclepath/footpaths next to otherwise straight roads. It is ridiculous. Anything 'new' to car drivers in the UK is a problem. We definitely should try and change UK roads to be more bike friendly, but that's the reality. The new bike roundabout in Cambridge, unique in the UK, but common in Europe, and.... accidents: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambridge-traffic-cyclist-involved-crash-19275730 https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambrid...

dmitri1981 6y ago

Depends where you are. London is starting to get some good cycling lanes and some junctions are having traffic rerouted to make it safer for cyclists. Sadly in many other places cycling only really works for confident riders. Lots of drivers are either unaware of cyclists or downright aggressive. I would have near misses on a weekly basis. Things are getting better but very slowly.

wooger 6y ago
And in our other cities it's still way cheaper (and socially acceptable) to drive in from the suburbs and park. There are car parks literally 200m from the centre of Birmingham where you can park all day for less than 10 pounds, and cheaper still nearby. Things are starting to change (oddly during COVID) by addition of bus gates, but they're making very slow progress. We've already delayed and diluted our congestion charge multiple times.

armada651 6y ago

As a Dutch person who lived in the UK for a year, yes. Bicycle lanes are nearly non-existent outside of London and the boroughs seem to be hostile to the idea in general. The few bicycle lanes you do find often end as abruptly as they start, there's nothing connecting them and there are no bicycle crossings when you meet a road. However if you get a mountain bike and stick to the dirt roads along the rivers and hills, it is a great place to enjoy cycling through the countryside. One of the best bike trips I've done is cycling for 30 miles along the Thames river. So the UK is great for scenic cycling, terrible for a cycling commute. And yes, any Dutch expat you meet is silently judging your country on the safety of its cycling infrastructure.

DrBazza 6y ago
> Yes, any Dutch expat you meet is silently judging your country on the safety of its cycling infrastructure. And so you should. The UK's cycling infrastructure is embarrassingly bad. An example. Local to me, recently, the government spent over £100m on a new road junction, to replace an old one. One of the main reasons that they had to build a new junction was that they claimed they could not remove traffic lights from the roundabout to improve traffic because pedestrians and cyclists both crossed the junction at 'street level'. A local cycle organization submitted a proposal with modelling (I can't find the link atm.), that showed that the desired increase in capacity could be achieved by adding bridges for pedestrians and cyclists, removing traffic lights, and altering the road layout. And save about £90m. Needlessly to say, the junction was built. I have no idea whether their proposal was considered, or not, unless I submit a freedom of information request to the UK government. Regardless, the bridges should have been built anyway, because the junction is between two suburbs. The new junction did get a new cyclist/pedestrian bridge to replace the old one. Except it's about 1km further away from the suburbs that the previous junction, so adding 2km to bike journeys.
- markvdb 6y ago
  Actually, bicycle tunnels - with a limited slope of course, like all other bicycle infrastructure - are recommended over bicycle bridges. These are more comfortable for cyclists. Gravity helps one cycle down, and the kinetic energy gained helps cyclists on the way up in the second half of the tunnel.
  - Muximize 6y ago
    Also they can be smaller and cheaper to build. Because they only carry bicycles and pedestrians, a height clearance of about 2.5 meters is enough, while a bridge needs around 5 meters to let cargo trucks pass underneath. This also results in much shorter ramps.
  - DrBazza 6y ago
    Agreed. In England, however, tunnels particularly in towns tend to attract anti-social behaviour, which is rather unfortunate.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
A problem in the UK is that in general we are hostile to build roads and certainly wide roads. So roads are as narrow as possible and congested, which in itself is not great for bikes but also makes bike lanes near impossible. And when a bike lane is built (i.e. painted on the road or pavement) it is usually also very narrow and interferes with traffic. Obviously this is difficult to change for existing roads, but we could at least make sure that new roads are wide enough, but this is not the case.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  Do you think the centre of Amsterdam has wide roads? It does not.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    That's great but I fail to see the relation with my comment. I'm not talking about very central roads that can be mostly restricted to pedestrians, or city areas with narrow streets but also little to no traffic. I'm talking about roads in general. Amsterdam has many roads that look hugely wide for British standards. Example: hhttps://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7524584,-1.2749531,3a,75y,81.37h,70.28t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3Mk1fV_F6xCPtK-BgT8eLg!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3Mk1fV_F6xCPtK-BgT8eLg%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D107.590294%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7524584,-1.2749531,3a,75y,... This is one of the main roads into Oxford. Note the "cycle lane"... Still, that road is not too bad because it has an exceptionally wide pavement on one side. It's usually more like this: (Henley on Thames, where Boris Johnson used to be MP, again one of the main accesses to the town) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5375008,-0.8998416,3a,75y,296.4h,70.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sNPg6kPII1CROWH6Cqrmrxg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5375008,-0.8998416,3a,75y,...
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      1. Botley Road - there is plenty of space for a two-way cycle path in the photo you show. Just a couple of photos down, you can see the road fits three vehicles abreast: in other words, it would comfortably fit two road lanes and a double cycle lane, if only that had been or was constructed. There are much trickier problems solved in the Netherlands. 2. Henley Bridge - Overall, Henley could be ideal for cycling around. OK, one of the main routes into the town crosses a river. Yet, if this was in the Netherlands, they would simply have built a parallel cycle bridge at some point in the last 20 years. Or, if there still wasn't one, they'd build one now. Here you go, Rijswijk swingbrug, opened 2014 (watch the video for relevant commentary): https://www.oozo.nl/video/rijswijk/84608/rijswijk-cycle-bridge https://www.oozo.nl/video/rijswijk/84608/rijswijk-cycle-brid... Or Delft's Gelatinebrug, scheduled to open in 2023: https://www.delft.nl/wonen/bouwen/bouwprojecten-de-stad/schieoevers/gelatinebrug https://www.delft.nl/wonen/bouwen/bouwprojecten-de-stad/schi... There are plenty of other examples. Amsterdam's narrow roads have little to no traffic only because of political decisions that cars are not the only form of transport that need to be considered. You can see in archive footage that this wasn't always the case.

DrBazza 6y ago

It depends, but yes. There are a lot of deaths each year, and the law is not in favour of the cyclist either. In fact, it gets worse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45154708 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45154708 Stay away from the cities, and it's generally safer, but at the same time you'll find cars doing 60 mph on single carriageway roads (the national speed limit), which can also be marked as a national cycle route. If you cycle somewhere where cars don't normally encounter cyclists, it can be "fun" as the motorists don't know how to behave. The trouble with the UK is that even so-called cycle paths are shared with footpaths, so pedestrians are all over the place, and cycle paths that are getting built as 'joint' footpaths, mean as a cyclist you also stop at every road junction. Compare that to Europe, where the cycle path is an additional lane next to the road/main carriageway and is usually physically separated in some way for safety. In the UK this has the unfortunate effect of making a large percentage of cyclist just us the road (which they are legally entitled to do), because the cycle path next to the road "stops" every 100 yards because there's a road joining the main carriageway that you have to cross.

phicoh 6y ago
The side road can be restructured to give bikes priority. And put some good speedbumps on the side road to give cars a hint that they need to pay attention.
- DrBazza 6y ago
  Agreed. They can, but they never are. For car drivers, the expectation is that they have right of way on a road, and they that come to a halt at the road junction, and not a few yards before it because there's a bike path crossing. Town planners/local planning departments are under so much pressure that they literally just end up ticking boxes, and rarely push back on house builders to change their site plans. The 'desire path' is a straight line, for both pedestrians and cyclists, yet new housing estates are allowed to put in bendy cyclepath/footpaths next to otherwise straight roads. It is ridiculous. Anything 'new' to car drivers in the UK is a problem. We definitely should try and change UK roads to be more bike friendly, but that's the reality. The new bike roundabout in Cambridge, unique in the UK, but common in Europe, and.... accidents: https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambridge-traffic-cyclist-involved-crash-19275730 https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/cambrid...