Manchester Evening News today....
msmancunia
Posts: 1,415
... their blog writer (think the northern Richard Littlejon maybe), even advocates cycling on the pavement.
*facepalm*
Andrew Grimes: Why the bicycle has no place on our city roads
February 03, 2012
It is seldom a good idea to get on yer bike. Hail a taxi. Catch a bus. Drive a car. Walk. Each of these alternatives offers the likeliest chance of completing a journey through a British city without winding up at the undertakers.
Cycling is a relic of cosy, Edwardian rurality, when one could take one’s chances in contest with a lumbering horse and cart. Nobody got his or her skull crushed under the hooves of a farmer’s shire.
But that was then.
Today is the 21st century, burnt tyre rubber time, with a bloke in a tall cabin unable to see the assiduous helmet crouched nose-down on aluminium handlebars, sidling alongside his fuel-stashed juggernaut.
Yet the cycling lobby won’t give up. It never ceases to campaign for more road space – which means clearing goods lorries, buses and motor cars off great swathing widths of our arterial highways—to make way for its insane multitudes of pedalling romantics.
The death toll among these people is distressing. Since 2001, 1,271 cyclists have died on British roads, many crushed by heavy goods lorries. It’s safer to be a combat soldier. In the same period, 576 soldiers died in Afghanistan.
Yet the cycling fraternity insists that it is a human right to travel on two wheels wherever and whenever, and whatever the grisly hazards of sharing tarmac in built-up city centres with motorised traffic. Of course, it would really like most of the motorised stuff out of the way. It calls for modified junctions, safe cycle lanes, overhead platforms.
To give it even half off what it wanted would require the science of civil engineering to dig up all the arterial complexes of our cities and start roadbuilding again from scratch, as if the internal combustion engine had never been invented. If it could be done it would cost billions.
Cycling, its propagandists claim, is “cheap, green and healthy”. How healthy can you rank a mode of transport with such a high mortality rate ? Nor is green always its emblematic colour. Many of the bikers I see are clad in a hideous and fluorescent orange.
As for being cheap, well of course it is. Comparatively. That’s because, unlike slightly more up-to-date road users, cyclists enjoy the freedom of the highway without being urged to buy a driving licence or pay road tax.
I am fairly certain that Dave Cameron has allowed himself to be photographed on a bike, but not, I think, because he wants to advertise the things.
At any rate, his coalition has irritated the pedallers by abolishing Cycling England, a quango of Labour’s old transport ministry formed to entice motorists on to two wheels. Gone with the quango is a pro-cycling handout, funded by the taxpayer, of £60m a year.
The government’s withdrawal of this ludicrous facility seems to have been made on economic grounds. But it is a humanitarian decision, too, whether Dave meant it to be so or not.
It is not safe to ride a bike through high-cabined convoys of juggernauts. To pretend that it is, is to ignore the emergence of all mechanised locomotion since 1912.
Of course the cyclists’ propagandists point to Copenhagen, where 80 per cent of the population cycle to work, and to Amsterdam which allows neat little cycle tracks alongside shiny rails for crawling trams.
But Copenhagen and Amsterdam, compared to British cities, are mere villages.
They were put together on altogether different lines, 60 odd years ago, after getting blitzed to smithereens.
I think that all cycling on major arterial roads, especially at peak periods, should be outlawed on pain of jail, apart from in places without traffic lights and where the motorised speed limit has been brought down to 12 miles an hour.
At the same time, I am not completely heartless. Obviously, cycling on pavements should be encouraged.
It is the only cycling –apart from the competitive sort-- that is remotely safe for its riders. I know that elderly pedestrians consider these people pests, but the granny with her groceries is usually nippy enough to dodge a two- wheeled obstacle crawling past the shop window, even if she cannot always bring herself to knock him down.
*facepalm*
Andrew Grimes: Why the bicycle has no place on our city roads
February 03, 2012
It is seldom a good idea to get on yer bike. Hail a taxi. Catch a bus. Drive a car. Walk. Each of these alternatives offers the likeliest chance of completing a journey through a British city without winding up at the undertakers.
Cycling is a relic of cosy, Edwardian rurality, when one could take one’s chances in contest with a lumbering horse and cart. Nobody got his or her skull crushed under the hooves of a farmer’s shire.
But that was then.
Today is the 21st century, burnt tyre rubber time, with a bloke in a tall cabin unable to see the assiduous helmet crouched nose-down on aluminium handlebars, sidling alongside his fuel-stashed juggernaut.
Yet the cycling lobby won’t give up. It never ceases to campaign for more road space – which means clearing goods lorries, buses and motor cars off great swathing widths of our arterial highways—to make way for its insane multitudes of pedalling romantics.
The death toll among these people is distressing. Since 2001, 1,271 cyclists have died on British roads, many crushed by heavy goods lorries. It’s safer to be a combat soldier. In the same period, 576 soldiers died in Afghanistan.
Yet the cycling fraternity insists that it is a human right to travel on two wheels wherever and whenever, and whatever the grisly hazards of sharing tarmac in built-up city centres with motorised traffic. Of course, it would really like most of the motorised stuff out of the way. It calls for modified junctions, safe cycle lanes, overhead platforms.
To give it even half off what it wanted would require the science of civil engineering to dig up all the arterial complexes of our cities and start roadbuilding again from scratch, as if the internal combustion engine had never been invented. If it could be done it would cost billions.
Cycling, its propagandists claim, is “cheap, green and healthy”. How healthy can you rank a mode of transport with such a high mortality rate ? Nor is green always its emblematic colour. Many of the bikers I see are clad in a hideous and fluorescent orange.
As for being cheap, well of course it is. Comparatively. That’s because, unlike slightly more up-to-date road users, cyclists enjoy the freedom of the highway without being urged to buy a driving licence or pay road tax.
I am fairly certain that Dave Cameron has allowed himself to be photographed on a bike, but not, I think, because he wants to advertise the things.
At any rate, his coalition has irritated the pedallers by abolishing Cycling England, a quango of Labour’s old transport ministry formed to entice motorists on to two wheels. Gone with the quango is a pro-cycling handout, funded by the taxpayer, of £60m a year.
The government’s withdrawal of this ludicrous facility seems to have been made on economic grounds. But it is a humanitarian decision, too, whether Dave meant it to be so or not.
It is not safe to ride a bike through high-cabined convoys of juggernauts. To pretend that it is, is to ignore the emergence of all mechanised locomotion since 1912.
Of course the cyclists’ propagandists point to Copenhagen, where 80 per cent of the population cycle to work, and to Amsterdam which allows neat little cycle tracks alongside shiny rails for crawling trams.
But Copenhagen and Amsterdam, compared to British cities, are mere villages.
They were put together on altogether different lines, 60 odd years ago, after getting blitzed to smithereens.
I think that all cycling on major arterial roads, especially at peak periods, should be outlawed on pain of jail, apart from in places without traffic lights and where the motorised speed limit has been brought down to 12 miles an hour.
At the same time, I am not completely heartless. Obviously, cycling on pavements should be encouraged.
It is the only cycling –apart from the competitive sort-- that is remotely safe for its riders. I know that elderly pedestrians consider these people pests, but the granny with her groceries is usually nippy enough to dodge a two- wheeled obstacle crawling past the shop window, even if she cannot always bring herself to knock him down.
Commute: Chadderton - Sportcity
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I knew they existed, not sure why they are given a platform on a major regional newspaper.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Saw this via Twitter yesterday. Depressing as f8ck.
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I think I might know somebody who works for them. I might have a word...0
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The MEN is now owned by Trinity Mirror after it was sold by Guardian Media Group. Could just be flicking the Vs at the Times campaign. If it is, then it's pretty pathetic and pointless.Commute: Chadderton - Sportcity0
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Where does one start?
How about with Department for Transport statistics which suggest that the number of all road users (including cyclists) that have been killed or seriously injured has declined markedly in the past 30 years?
.Nobody told me we had a communication problem0 -
Wonder how may peds and car drivers have been killed on the roads in the last 10 years....
Maybe they should be banned from city roads as well and we'd better make them wear a helmet as well, just to be on the safe side
FFSDolan Preffisio
2010 Cube Agree SL0 -
The problem with newspapers is that they have a vested interest in not reporting the news.0
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The fella is a bum.0
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LOL @ comments.
Sad thing is, someone is paying him to produce this material.
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchesterevening ... 5#commentsFCN4: Langster Pro
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What a bell-end.0
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It's a good bait peice to be fair. Amazed they found someone willing to right it.
It was rushed which I can only preume is an instant reaction to the Times campaign which I'm cynical about anyway. Only started due to one of the hacks getting taken out while on their bike....0 -
CarlosDSanchez wrote:Wonder how may peds and car drivers have been killed on the roads in the last 10 years....
Maybe they should be banned from city roads as well and we'd better make them wear a helmet as well, just to be on the safe side
FFS
THIS!None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.0
