But.. as explained above, this particular scheme is completely rubbish as an encouragement for people like me to cycle instead of using public transport.
your streetview image looks well out of date, the-cycle lanes are now wider and painted green I think.....
Touché then.
But you can't have joined-up cycle lanes if each individual stretch of that joined-up route is rejected on the basis that it's not part of a joined-up route yet.
Thing is, as fredfelt says, most people when you consult them will respond according to their own self interest (of course) . Something like the 5p plastic bag tax for instance, apparently there was uproar in some quarters , because you know, it's annoying for the individual to have to remember to carry a bag. Or increasing tax rates, etc and so on.. you know what I mean.
No they're not. The image is from this year. You can see them in the background here.
Ok.. but I didn't mean a joined up route of incrementally closed streets, closed to all but cyclists and buses - just suggesting that for me the closures don't make much sense as part of any joined up cycling encouragement scheme. .
So how do you propose we achieve this joined-up scheme, if we reject making any of the bits that can be joined up?
True, but (at the risk of taking this to an extreme) as a local resident I don't really consent willingly to giving people the right to pollute the air I breathe, or put my children's lives at risk on the roads.
Yes - but things change somewhat when you get beyond fiveways (something that seems to be consistently ignored here when talking about how wide LR is, as part of the argument that it's a principal through route and therefore nonsensical to close off)
What if instead of closing one end of the street completely (this big street here I mean) it had been attempted instead to reduce the amount of cars parking all along both sides of it and so widen the cycle lanes instead, for instance?
That would be preferable to doing nothing. But once you got to Fiveways and continued onto Akerman Rd or Loughborough Rd as it turns left, you'd be back in a situation with relatively narrow streets, into which all that traffic, along with the cyclists then has to funnel.
I think the local powers that be outdid themselves today, omnishambles-wise, with the deputy leader and deputy mayor presumably having had a quiet chat about the 'misunderstanding'. It's such a shame, feels like a wasted opportunity this whole thing.
I think that supporting more ambitious attempts to improve things in the local and wider area both now and in the long term, is preferable to settling for self-contained minor local level improvements, yes. Certainly.
The whole point is that a good proportion of these car journeys can, and will, "disappear" if things are followed through confidently.
Because it would be overkill? What's your point?
Ok, the percentage was ridiculous but what is your response to the basic idea ?
If I want to provoke people I say that we should substantially reduce the amount by which we subsidise car owners.
Just quoting you as a way of emphasising like. Because you mention blunt instruments, and I think this particular instrument is so blunt as to be useless really.
Basically you want to increase the overall capacity of the road system by making additional streets into part of a main thoroughfare network. So we can pour even more vehicles into the area to fill up that capacity and end up with everyone going at much the same speed afterwards.
