should cyclelanes be "kerbed off"?

gtvlusso

Well - should they? Allot of vehicles are in them, don't realise they are there - are they worth the bother of painting them? Answers on a postcard, please....or a post on here..

redddraggon

I'm not sure it would be good idea, they could be used then to direct bicycle traffic onto shared paths and the like - I never use shared paths.

lost_in_thought

No, I am not a fan of those kerbed cycle lanes.

They slow me down - I get stuck behind other cyclists, and they sometimes make it harder to get to the right area of junctions etc. if not well-thought-out.

I'll stick with the cars.

cjcp

Might prevent us overtaking slower cyclists.

I don't like being penned in though. If a ped steps into one, and there's a kerb to your right, you've got problems unless you can bunny hop onto/over the kerb.

gtvlusso

I don't think they are worth the bother...I don't even think that cycle lanes are, after 10 years of commuting, it has made bugger all difference to me as vehicles ignore them anyway. I certainly don't want kerbs for the above reasons - overtaking, junctions....blah blah!

chaley

lost_in_thought wrote:

No, I am not a fan of those kerbed cycle lanes.

They slow me down - I get stuck behind other cyclists, and they sometimes make it harder to get to the right area of junctions etc. if not well-thought-out.

I'll stick with the cars.

What she said!
Chaley

always_tyred

I'm somewhat against traffic engineering aimed at getting cyclists off the road. The logical extension is that cyclists ideally should not be on them. The logical extension of this is that cyclists will not be permitted on roads provided with cycle lanes. Besides, where is there room for kerbed off cycle lanes - busses have to use the cycle lane that exist at the moment in most places, as do those big VW 4x4's which are even wider.

Big Red S

I think enforcing them would be a far better solution than kerbing them off.

I don't think it'd take many well-publicised cycle-lane cameras to put drivers off driving/parking in them to a similar extent as for bus lanes.

ride_whenever

no, bad idea and almost more dangerous due to roadside garbage.

Unless they were in primary,which would be lovely!!!!!!!

Gussio

Big Red S wrote:

I think enforcing them would be a far better solution than kerbing them off.

I don't think it'd take many well-publicised cycle-lane cameras to put drivers off driving/parking in them to a similar extent as for bus lanes.

Agree entirely - annoys the **** out of me when cars park in the cycle lanes.

ride_whenever

screw that, just tow the cars and crush them...

I'm a big fan of complete over-reaction, pulls people into line far far quicker.

dirk_van_gently

These are quite prevalent in Belgium/Holland. However having said that, the cycle lanes in both countries are so far ahead of anything here.
One advantage, would be that it would stop cars parking on the cycle path, seems cars are allowed to park anywhere, cycle paths footpaths etc. :evil: Which makes me so angry.

Surf-Matt

Kerbs are designed for bunny hopping off/over and are therefore great fun.

Used to love them even more when i skateboarded many years ago - such a simple thing turns anywhere into a playground

Jeremy Parker

gtvlusso wrote:

Well - should they? Allot of vehicles are in them, don't realise they are there - are they worth the bother of painting them? Answers on a postcard, please....or a post on here..

Well, bikes are vehicles too, of course. It's only the militant motorists who believe that the only proper vehicles are motor vehicles.

If you ride a bike on a road, trying to be "not a vehicle" you are almost bound to make life dangerous for yourself. It's hazardous to be a gutterbunny or ouslem bird cyclist.

Putting a kerb alongside a bike lane converts it from a lane to a "trapped in the trough" cycle track. Cycle tracks are the facility that dare not speak its name nowadays. They have long had a very bad name, because of their danger.

The danger of misguided attempts at separation is that they makes cyclists more likely to be hit by cars. If you don't understand that, how will you avoid any looming accidetns?

Jeremy Parker

chuckcork

Kerbed cycle lanes. A bad, bad idea, the only one I have seen is in Kingston and that is mostly used as a footpath for pedestrians.

And what then happens at junctions and driveways that cross these kerbed cycle lanes, when cars pull out and cross your path you will have nowhere to go.

As for stopping cars from parking in them, kerbs between footpath and road don't stop cars from parking over the footpath, do they?

dondare

Get rid of all cycle lanes. We have the right and quite often the requirement to make use of the full width of the road. I don't let green paint make me ride in the gutter and I certainly won't be kept there by a kerb. If there was one I'd ride outside it with the rest of the "real" traffic.

Bassjunkieuk

I'd have to say no as well. Like most poster's on here I think they are more of a hazard then a help!
Mind you I think it would have been helpful judging by the appaling driving I witnessed on the way to work this morning, following in my car behind another driver. I had just turned of the A3 heading towards Ripley and as you come into the town there is the most fascinating bike lane that goes from being about 3 ft wide to about 3 inches wide as it runs down the road! I watched in amazement as the car ahead, despite the road being almost wide enough for 4 lanes and having a big hatched area down the middle drive down the road straddling the carriageway and cycle lane! They still had a good couple of foot of room to their right but choose instead to occupy the cycle lane.

In their defense is was a "recommended" lane rather then a mandatory one as it had a dashed line next to it but it's still quite worrying to think some people drive like that when there is miles of room around, god only knows what they would have driven like in closer quarters! Thankfully they didn't try turning up the narrow road I was taking a bit further ahead otherwise I think I would have been waiting a rather long time for them to make their way up it!

spen666

Dirk Van Gently wrote:

....
One advantage, would be that it would stop cars parking on the cycle path, .....

It doesn't stop them parking on the pavement after driving over the kerb
:evil: :evil: :evil:

Eat My Dust

I can just imagine them on a Monday morning full of the weekends smashed bottles etc. People would probably let their dogs sh*t in them as well!

chuckcork

Also, cycle lanes are often enough full of all kinds of rubbish, the typical broken glass, leaves and so on, and that is when they are used for driving in and accessible for road cleaning vehicles.

Without those what is to stop them from just filling up with rubbish?

Personally I'd rather see cycle lanes seperate to road traffic abolished, and roads lanes made wide enough to allow cars to drive in them and cyclists to cycle in them at the same time, would put the onus back on the motorist to drive safely rather than the cyclist to stay in their narrow little lane and emphasise that we are a legitimate road user, not a special class that needs its own little space.

laughingboy

chuckcork wrote:

Personally I'd rather see cycle lanes seperate to road traffic abolished, and roads lanes made wide enough to allow cars to drive in them and cyclists to cycle in them at the same time, would put the onus back on the motorist to drive safely rather than the cyclist to stay in their narrow little lane and emphasise that we are a legitimate road user, not a special class that needs its own little space.

I was reading the minutes of a Select Committee for Transport from May this year, and an advisor for the Association of British Drivers repeated this point of view in his answer to Q263.

This after the questioning turned to safety, and he said this:
[Answer to q259]'Obviously, all road users are entitled to use the roads to get to where they want to go and there has to be a balance between the different road users and obviously that balance changes depending where on the road network one is. Clearly, on motorways you would expect the right of way to go to motor vehicles and in town centres you would expect it largely to go to pedestrians and, to a certain extent, cyclists..'

The problem is that there are so many different interests and points of view on the same issue that I suspect that there is no 'right answer'. Clearly cycle lanes developed out of a perceived need to protect cyclists, but whether they do this is another matter.

Personally, for one of the few times in my life I am giving serious thought to what an advisor to a motorists' group has to say. To paraphrase his argument: over-designing roads/cycle lanes and over-emphasising speed limits makes it easier for road users to forget that to drive safely they need to moderate their behaviour according to the circumstances. That is, it is not enough merely to obey the speed limit.

The whole Select Committee discussion makes interesting reading (if you have a lot of time to kill).

AndyManc

gtvlusso wrote:

Well - should they? Allot of vehicles are in them, don't realise they are there - are they worth the bother of painting them? Answers on a postcard, please....or a post on here..

Raised cycle lanes you mean , if they are enforced ..... they don't stop vehicles parking in them , they just drive up the kerb.

They need to make the kerb bigger so they rip their exhaust off

prj45

Should cycle lanes be kerbed off?

No no, no no, no,no, no no no no no, no no, no.

I don't even like cycle lanes on roads, I'd happily seen them all ripped up tomorrow and replaced with nothing more than bike signs, no dividing lines.

Cyclists, motorists, pedestrians and car drivers have got to learn to share the road or we're never going to get anywhere.

Kaydee

chuckcork wrote:

Personally I'd rather see cycle lanes separate to road traffic abolished, and roads lanes made wide enough to allow cars to drive in them and cyclists to cycle in them at the same time, would put the onus back on the motorist to drive safely rather than the cyclist to stay in their narrow little lane and emphasise that we are a legitimate road user, not a special class that needs its own little space.

Hear hear!

chuckcork

Kaydee wrote:

chuckcork wrote:

Personally I'd rather see cycle lanes separate to road traffic abolished, and roads lanes made wide enough to allow cars to drive in them and cyclists to cycle in them at the same time, would put the onus back on the motorist to drive safely rather than the cyclist to stay in their narrow little lane and emphasise that we are a legitimate road user, not a special class that needs its own little space.

Hear hear!

In saying what I've said, commuting in to work in the past year I was using a stretch of road that was 100kph and heavily trafficked, but the left lane was quite wide, I could easily enough keep out of the traffic flow and still be in that lane, and cannot recall any occassion when any vehicle didn't have or give me enough room in overtaking.

That was traffic right next to the container port in Cork, which I've heard describe as one of the busiest roads in the country, so plenty of HGV's as well as cars.

Of course it usually ended in a nice traffic jamb which I could filter through rather faster than the traffic that had overtaken me a few 'K earlier.... :P

vorsprung

The way I see it, instead of getting the bikes off the road we should make the road work properly

Now it's interesting that cars have their own network of transport links called "Motorways"
Bikes aren't allowed on these of course- but fair dos the cars need somewhere to use for getting from A to B

When not on a motorway cars should be limited to a top speed of 5 mph and have a person walking in front with a red flag for safetys sake

Then cyclists would be able to use the roads as originally intended and we wouldn't have to bother with this cycle path BS

simple_salmon

I'm going to put my neck on the block here and say that very occasionally I think they might be a good idea. There are certain dual carriageways around here where a separate cycle lane is a nice relief from having cars pass you at 50 mph. I think it's horses for courses; some places yes, most other places no.

IMHO.

ride_whenever

There is one that is fairly good near me. Going over a bridge linking two major roads out of oxford, due to the shape of the bridge you have a very short distance that you can actually see, and even with wider lanes I think it would be very dangerous for cyclists, especially seeing as the speed limit is 40mph (so the cars do 50+)


In fact it is just on one side, but has two lanes of cycletraffic, it is totally bizzare now i think about it. It doesn't fill up with rubbish either.

biondino

In Paris, on a Velib, moving at a serene pace, I think they're pretty good. On my regular commute, on a road bike, they'd be frustrating times a million. HOWEVER, if the pootlers, old people, kids and housewives are happier in them then by all means, just as long as no-one legislates to take me off the road.

Brains

In favour of kerbed cycle lanes,as long as they are of a minimum width - say 1.5m for each direction.

Also in favour of kerbed bus lanes in many cases.

But one thing I thnk really needs to be done is ALL cycle lanes the white line should be rumble strip, so vehicles know when they stray over the line

In addition in places where cycle lanes exit junctions such as roundabouts the cycle lane should run inside a traffic island or a bollard or something big and physical so that vehicles (particularlly large ones) have to go around the outside and therefore can not cut up cyclists on the bend. This would save many lives as so many of the accidents seem to be caused by left turning vehicles

dirk_van_gently

spen666 wrote:

Dirk Van Gently wrote:

....
One advantage, would be that it would stop cars parking on the cycle path, .....

It doesn't stop them parking on the pavement after driving over the kerb
:evil: :evil: :evil:

I was thinking of the kind of kerbing they use in Belgium, where the road and cycle lane are at the same height, but there is a raised kerb between them. Driving over those would rip the bottom out of a car.