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Bike route Rotherham you can't get a bike through-largeChicanes on bike lanes - why are we still building this rubbish? ask frustrated campaigners
This week we saw Giant-Alpecin rider Warren Barguil dodge a chicane made of cows on stage 11 of the Tour de France, but elsewhere regular cyclists are expected to do the same every day on routes supposedly designed for bikes.
Those wanting to use a new cycle link on a new housing estate in Waverley, near Rotherham, will have to cross a main road without drop kerbs, before being blocked by a kissing gate.
In Hackney on a popular cycle route between the canal and park, reportedly used by families with cargo bikes, a chicane appeared last week because "a small minority" of cyclists were cycling at speed along the pavement.
Installed in Victoria Park today at what (was) a well used entrance for families on cargo bikes coming from the canal pic.twitter.com/RHRMVcRLzL
— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) July 13, 2015
The chicane was installed at the St Marks Gate entrance to Victoria Park, according to one local councillor, because "a small minority" of cyclists were using the pavement.
.@CllrJoshuaPeck please don't ban these people from using the Victoria Park playground pic.twitter.com/VbwzDipzi2
— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) July 14, 2015
Frustrated by the move, local cyclists have suggested alternatives, one of which could include opening the park's massive gates for cyclists, rather than forcing riders onto the pavement with pedestrians.
Meanwhile, cyclist Matt Turner expressed dismay at the cycling provision on a new housing estate in Waverley, near Rotherham, including a kissing gate with a 2ft gap you can't get a bike through. He called it 'incredibly depressing' that even with a blank slate - the entire town is brand new - the UK is making the same mistakes of the past 40 years.
@psyklyn What do you reckon? New cycle route... pic.twitter.com/xmgqceh8Tg
— Matt Turner (@MattTurnerSheff) July 19, 2015
Without drop kerbs, riders unable to bunny hop will have to stop while crossing the main road and lift their bikes onto the pavement.
@RantyHighwayman probably also missed the lack of dropped kerb on other sied of road... Shambles! @psyklyn pic.twitter.com/ilYTlwa2qC
— Matt Turner (@MattTurnerSheff) July 19, 2015
@MattTurnerSheff @RantyHighwayman Full marks to the UK engineering profession for making cycle facilities hard to use
— paul gannon (@paulgannonbike) July 19, 2015
Turner, who lives in nearby Sheffield, told road.cc he went to see if people could live in the new town without a car. A new cycle route runs from Sheffield to Waverley, paid for by the council, but when the route gets to the housing estate a kissing gate blocks cycles from entering.
He said: "I found it incredibly depressing - we are just making the same mistakes we have been making for the last 40 years."
"On the developer's side of Waverley it is a gravelly track and then you get to the 40mph trunk road and then you are expected to dismount or rejoin the carriageway. No-one is going to do that - they are going to drive".
"It is unbelievable that we are still designing neighbourhoods like this when we have got blank slates. It seems to be that what we are doing at the moment on new estates is putting cycling in pedestrian environments without realising the bigger benefits of unravelling the routes - rather than putting the cycle track and foot path in the most direct route we have trunk roads."
The CTC's Sam Jones told road.cc this week the UK needs design standards to "rule out the conflict that you get between vulnerable road users".
"We need national design standards, rather than having every council coming up with their own design standards, the only people who are benefiting from that are the consultants, it is not cyclists," said Jones.
Here's a tricky one in Manchester - courtesy of the Mad Cycle Lanes of Manchester blog.
Poorly thought out chicanes appearing on your patch? Share your rubbish cycle infrastructure in the comments section, below.
And here's the cow video, in case you missed it.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
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I'm surveying all the bike infrastructure like this so there's data on what is out there. I get the feeling councils don't know what they have put in or put in, so maybe (hate to use the word) some joined up thinking will prevail once all these facilities are mapped (at least in North Wales) and any new stuff will follow best practice or we can see what best practice is.
They are just trying to ensure active-travel is as active as possible. Otherwise people might improve their leg muscles at the expense of upper body strength. To avoid that they've helpfully added some weight-lifting exercises, where you lift your entire bike plus panniers to shoulder height or above every few hundred yards.
They spoil us really.
I hit a trail earlier in the year that was like that after heading out for what seemed like a nice CX solo ride, after about the 7th-8th gate my upper body had quite enough weight lifting and it was only the fact I knew Id have to repeat the whole thing in reverse if I turned back that made me push on. fortunately some nice people out walking helped me over the last one, though it may just have been I was holding them up blocking the whole gate.
Do they have these barriers in The Netherlands or Denmark?
Why are we still building this rubbish?
...because as any of you who read the 'popular' press will be fully aware, cyclists are currently the greatest danger to modern civilisation that exists. We put small children at risk with our high speeds and irresponsible lack of bells, while frightening old ladies to death by appearing in stealth mode from thin air.
As long as a large number of fckwits perpetuate such nonsense with their local councillors, then we will get meddlesome obstructions to perfectly good routes.
It's a bit off topic, but can anyone explain how - if cyclists are such evil predators - so many pedestrians fail to notice us when they decide to cross the road?
You'd think they would be hyper aware of us by now, able to smell chain lube at a hundred paces, that sort of thing, like gazelles and lions (not that lions smell of chain lube) (I think).
Instead, they look right through me and just walk. I honestly don't know if literally don't see me (some sort of bicyle based chameleon circuit), or if they think "It's just a cyclist" and think it won't hurt if I hit them (and if the latter, then why the horror of cyclists on shared space and footpaths?).
And if I failed to swerve around them, and actually hit one of them, you can bet that I'd be the bad guy...!
/rant
Part of the problem is that no one appreciates how fast a halfway competent cyclist goes. Even if you're only doing 15mph, that's about 10mph faster than you're going in someone's head when they glance up and see you, which means you're closing 3 times faster than they're expecting. In their head they have all the time in the world, because they think cyclists are slow.
I average about 15mph across the various types of rides I do - some flat, some hilly. So on a flat stretch I can be doing 20mph. That's not much by the standards of a lot of decent cyclists, but the "laypeople" that I speak to think I ride at about 10mph. There's clearly a big disconnect between how fast people think we are and how fast we actually are.
Sadly, all of this is typical of the complete lack of understanding in road planning offices in general.
Road planners either don't understand or don't care about the needs of cyclists.
'Planning' such as it is, generally appears to be an exercise in box ticking.
So, until they come up with cycle routes that are actually useable by cyclists, I will continue to use the road - as I am fully entitled to do.
Why are we still building this crap? Because Cameron doesn't care about cycling safety enough to impose minimum standards on councils because that would go against localism and be red tape... but I can't hear them saying they'll remove any of the red tape forcing councils to design for motor vehicles which hinders good cycling infrastructure either!
Because the labour party in 17 years in office did so much for cycle infrastructure standards.
There are plenty of things you can complain about, but this is not one of them.
This is one of them. The Brown and Blair governments were useless for cycling too, but they're not in power any more, so aren't the reason we are STILL building this crap.
This beauty cropped on my FB feed recently.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJv87GfVAAAX6Vb.jpg:large
Well obviously, cycle paths are put in to meet some sort of target, and then someone advises the council that cyclists are using them, which comes as a bit of a shock, and they have to put a stop to that sort of behavior.
Just experienced this (a kissing gate) in the New Forest. A solo bike could get through with a bit of shuffling back and forth (why must you do that??) but my MTB and tagalong? No chance! And why all those gates every 200 metres? Do we make car drivers get out and open a gate to make progress? This was in part on an NCN too.
On the gates for cars, I have come across a few, it is VERY unusual which I guess is the point!
the only gates I have ever come across for cars have been to keep livestock in
Looks like a job for Angle Grinder Man
http://heroesinthenight.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/angle-grinder-man-legacy-...
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0097238,-2.0741558,281m/data=!3m1!1e3
Slightly different, see the feint green line through the grass, yes that is an NCN path, bit further on it goes through a wheat field, a ploughed wheat field!
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.062337,-1.999841,3a,75y,347.08h,72.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3cC8RCDdcyZ0XStt8sQ0tg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
nice bollards, blind bend NCN41, gravel, potholes....
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.910083,-2.079915,3a,75y,257.25h,67.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s0uI53Bqh_TySEqUQLEKC6g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
gravel potholes, you can't see the tight gate where you enter the path properly at the end. NCN41
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Folly+Ln,+Cheltenham,+Gloucestershire+...@51.907812,-2.08301,3a,75y,2.3h,81.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sVr5LOWYKDWkQeVmp7g5V5Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x48711b84d92197bf:0x8dbcf08c7a8e9977
NCN41 again
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.897142,-2.098738,3a,75y,78.61h,76.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJkEc9hBZ3ZWSLUssDo4lKQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Another stupid tight entrance, although in this case you can cut through the railway station carpark opposite, if you know you can!
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.895795,-2.124006,3a,75y,34.73h,73.28t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAQ_Y8z-TROUbcHfaDAyMRg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
how about this one, it is a shared use path, but please don't ride your bike???
Plenty of others, thing that really pisses me off though is ANY issue with an NCN, aren't these meant to be audited and signed off???
Nice bollard in the middle here. This is the route onto Marylebone Road, so I suppose they worried some tourist on a Boris bike might not realise the cycling infrastructure ends as soon as it begins
https://goo.gl/maps/Tp2zj
Here's a pet peeve. This is a nice alternative to getting around London's A40/Marylebone Road/Edgware Road area north/south or vice-versa. Westminster College is at the rear in the Streetview. Church Street market is nearby, Paddington Green (and through an underpass Paddington Station and so on) behind you.
There is a very wide pavement with more than adequate space for a cycle lane. Yet none is marked and the barriers are staggered to impeded progress. If they want to exclude cars, use bollards.
It appears cyclists are supposed to use the busy slip road parallel to the elevated A40 here. Even though that has no connection to the underpass (it is eastbound-only), so how you could travel south is a bit of a mystery. Going south from the college would require turning right onto busy Edgware Road.
https://goo.gl/maps/czxtZ
That august body, the Isle of Wight Council, has recently resurfaced a very popular 2-mile shared path between Wroxall and Shanklin. The publicity announced that walkers, horse riders, dog walkers and cyclists would all benefit. I suppose two out of four ain't bad.
We cyclists and dog walkers have to contend with a surface dressing of tiny, arrowhead flints that cause havoc with animal paws and most bike tyres. I've had two flats in half-a-mile, my wife had one within the first hundred yards and we know of dozens of other victims. Most of our cycling friends no longer use the path and it seems to be mostly holiday makers who ride onto it unaware. The number of dog walkers has also dropped, if our experience is representative.
The council's response to complaints has been a predictable and defensive statement explaining that the surface must be OK as it's been used in Kew Gardens. You couldn't make it up.
That stuff is the worst, you can't brake on it, like you say it's a puncture nightmare and when the wind picks up clouds of nasty gritty dust fly everywhere.
If you're a path designer then DO NOT USE THIS NASTY MATERIAL, EVER.
Sadly these sort of barriers are everywhere in the UK and are still being installed.
They should all be ripped up. They actively create conflict between different path users which would not otherwise exist.
What a moronic waste of money, cyclists use the pavement because that is the only way in. FML.
Exactly. The main 4m gate is always locked!!
A local favourite.
Shared use sign, yay!
Cyclist dismount sign, boo.
Local cycle route sign, yay!
Bike symbol on the path, yay!
Dropped kerb, yay!
Railings across the dropped kerb, oh dear...
Second railing, just to make sure (and also block wheelchairs, mobility scooters and prams) now that's just spiteful.
Here to take a closer look - https://goo.gl/lvCWuW
Bikebot - just wow. I wonder, as it's so close to the New Malden to Raynes Park link, being paid for by Mini Holland money, it would be worth talking to the council. As you say, it just seems total overkill, on what should be a handy bike route across the A3. Can you even get a bike through that gap without lifting it?
If the alley is shared use, why the need to dismount? surely not for crossing the pavement, as far as I am aware it is legal to drive a car across (as opposed to along) the pavement, otherwise most people break the law every time they park on their drive. Presumably the dropped kerb was put in for that purpose, why then the barriers? It seems these people have some concern that cyclists are suicidal lemmings who will just shoot straight out of cycleways onto the road without looking if a barrier is not there. a stop sign should be sufficient.
I don't know about Hackney or Manchester but near where I live in Liverpool, some public spaces with nice shared-use paths are plagued by young scallywags on scrambler motorbikes. The non-cycling users and neighbours find it very distressing and so the council install heavy-duty barriers which sometimes help a bit. In those circumstances, I accept the need to dismount or even lift my bike over.
Every city (or otherwise) has an element of that, but not everyone is fit/able to lift their bike over such obstacles - in particular, those that ride trikes (recumbent or otherwise) due to physical issues may well find it impossible.
Best solution ? - I honestly don't know, but penalising legitimate users doesn't seem to be the way to go.
As it is, I'd have to lift a 40lb-odd (19+kg) of touring recumbent over many of the obstacles around...just as well I'm able to...
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