GeoffF100 wrote:AF62 wrote:GeoffF100 wrote:I had factored in the health benefits of pedalling. What price per year do you place on good health?
An awful lot - hence why driving to the gym and swimming pool is more sensible than being killed cycling on the 60 mph main road which takes us there and has no provision for cyclists.
My city is sprouting empty cycle lanes everywhere. Cyclists seem to prefer the pavement. Masked riders of unlicensed trail bikes go wherever they want, in whatever direction they want.
The problem is that cycle lanes tend to be requested by fanatics and implemented by well meaning but incompetent officials.
In my town down one stretch of road where cycle lanes have been implemented, on one section the marked lane has cars parked to the left of the lane so you risk getting 'doored' as a driver opens without looking, then the next section there is no cycle lane but the idiot traffic planners have put in traffic narrowing so impatient drivers try to squeeze between the cyclist and the narrowing, then at the next section there is a proper cycle lane but with priority to cars at every property entrance every hundred yards, and then at the next section the cycle lane becomes a shared path on the pavement with no delimitation so pedestrians think you are riding on the pavement, and then as you get to the busy town centre where a cycle lane might actually be helpful it vanishes completely.
And yes I could cycle the longer five miles to the gym through town down that poor excuse for a cycle lane, rather than the direct three miles down the main road which was built in the 1980s with no provision for cyclists (or even pedestrians as there is no pavement), but unsurprisingly I don't.