HS2 accused of breaching cycle crossing commitments

[takno]

Firstly, to give you an idea of how busy a road with a peak of 300 cars an hour is, a road carrying 100 cars an hour is seen as the threshold of a road where footways are provided. In actual traffic frequenties that's (assuming a fairly even split by direction) that's a car overtaking a cyclist on average once every 24 seconds (which sounds a lot but government guidance says that cycles should be able to cycle at 15kph, meaning that along a 2km road you would likely be passed by something like 20 cars).

I would also question how many people would be cycling if there's no settlement of over 500 within 2.5 miles, as that would mean that the major places that people wanted to cycle to would likely be over 3 miles away, even if you were taking from within half a mile of the bridge and going just beyond the 2.5 mile distance.

Even if they were then providing 500m of cycle route to get you across/under a bridge is hardly going to make any difference to hire safe that route is.

I also said next to no cycle provision, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be some passive provission for a shared route if traffic volumes increased.

Even at the higher traffic flow figure out 450, that's a car overtaking a cyclist every 16 seconds or 30 cars overtaking a cyclist on a 2km length of road.

Both those traffic flows are fairly low and probably a lot lower than a lot of roads which have a fair number of cyclists and no cycle provision.

Yes traffic flows can change when new developments happen, however if that was the determining factor of where we provided cycle facilities then the whole country would need to have cycle tracks along side it.

Actually a better thing to spend government money on would be to ensure that there was a better provision of cycle routes to schools. For instance changing the provision of school buses so that the 3 mile distance only counted if there was a safe cycling distance over a large percentage of the route as this petition calls for:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/224790

Theres a few problems with that analysis:
- traffic volumes don't split equally, and you can safely assume at least 2/3rds of the traffic is going the same direction as the cyclist
- 3 miles is a completely reasonable distance to want people to cycle. A lot of cyclists wouldn't even get the bike out for less than 2 since it's such an easy walk
- getting overtaken every 15-20 seconds by a fast-moving car is extremely stressful for normal people. Arguably in a 60 limit there is no volume of overtaking cars which is comfortable, but that kind of regularity would leave most people a quivering wreck after 3 miles

 

[Via Bank]

And it’s stressful enough if the drivers overtake considerately - which they won’t, if it seems like a “quiet” road and they’re following their sat nav to avoid queueing traffic.

I’m also sceptical of the 15kph figure. The average speed of a Dutch cyclist is only about 12kph, and even then, you’re going to go slower if you’re going up a hill, or into a headwind.

 

[JamesT]

And it’s stressful enough if the drivers overtake considerately - which they won’t, if it seems like a “quiet” road and they’re following their sat nav to avoid queueing traffic.

I’m also sceptical of the 15kph figure. The average speed of a Dutch cyclist is only about 12kph, and even then, you’re going to go slower if you’re going up a hill, or into a headwind.

15kph sounds actually a little slow. It's less than 10mph. https://www.road-bike.co.uk/articles/average-speed.php reckons a beginner cyclist should manage 10-12mph (Which is getting on for 20kph). The https://www.cyclestreets.net/ planner has assumptions of 'unhurried' at an average of 10mph, 'cruising' at 12mph, and 'quick' at 15mph.

 

[The Ham]

which is all completely irrelevant. Cyclists have the absolute right to use the road (apart from where a mandatory cycle path condemns them to an unswept un-maintained parallel route.) Motorists need to learn to drive more safely and enforcement needs to become the norm, rather than sympathy for the poor motorist who hit someone.
Are you saying that if you live in a rural area you should not be allowed to commute - let alone explore - by bike? Or that kids should only visit neighbours to play if a parent can drive them there? There are a lot more people without access to a car nowadays...

What I'm saying is that the presence of a few hundred metres of cycleway isn't going to make it any more or less likely that someone would cycle for several miles along rural roads.

Should there be a good cycle network across the UK, yes. However should we be spending money on routes which, as a maximum, have very low traffic volumes.

 

[The Ham]

Theres a few problems with that analysis:
- traffic volumes don't split equally, and you can safely assume at least 2/3rds of the traffic is going the same direction as the cyclist
- 3 miles is a completely reasonable distance to want people to cycle. A lot of cyclists wouldn't even get the bike out for less than 2 since it's such an easy walk
- getting overtaken every 15-20 seconds by a fast-moving car is extremely stressful for normal people. Arguably in a 60 limit there is no volume of overtaking cars which is comfortable, but that kind of regularity would leave most people a quivering wreck after 3 miles

Even if you count all the traffic then that's a car passing every 12 seconds. The other thing to bear in mind is that cars are more likely to take risks when the risk of them being delayed is greater, as such on a fairly quiet road where there's little/no traffic coming the other way cars will tend to pass cyclists by using the other side of the road.

3 miles is the distance which the government defines as an accessible by cycling, hence the reason for using that distance.

Again a 500m cycle route would save circa 8 cars passing you, there would still be more circa 24 cars overtaking over the other 2km distance.

 

[AndrewE]

In the Times yesterday, and quite relevant here (and to older discussions on e.g. why it is important for Dore to have a big car park):

Britons are among the laziest citizens in western Europe, with a third of adults failing to walk for 20 minutes a day, a global study has revealed.
Women do worse than men, with 40 per cent not taking enough exercise, according to data gathered by the World Health Organisation.
Globally 27 per cent of people do not take enough exercise, compared with 36 per cent in Britain.
Rich countries are generally lazier than poor ones where people have little choice but to walk. Finland, where only 17 per cent of people are not active enough, is the most energetic nation in the West...

My take on the cycle provision is that the bridge or underpass needs to be wide enough that cyclists don't get pinched by traffic going fast on what they see as a nice open bit of straight road, so the passage needs to be an adequate width (as obviously it cannot be altered)with lane markings or other features so that the car lanes don't encourage speeding.