Cycle lanes are a waste of money

thistle (MBNW) wrote:

According to the government: https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... missioners

I've always found a decent painted bike lane pretty useful and prefer them to shared footways, I think the problem that most of them are awful.

I hadn't read that as "from the government", but a call from local commissioners to the government to define the current guidelines of cycle lane widths (recommended 2m wide, minimum width 1.5m in LTN 01/08 ) and other parameters to a legal standard, such that council's can't stick a 60cm cycle lane on a busy road and state they've provided suitable cycling infrastructure for people to cycle to school or work in...

The current DFT guidelines on cycle provision are due to be replaced in a few months time with LTN 01/19, but they'll still only be guidelines as far as I'm aware, so council's will still have "discretion" to state "It's only a guideline, we don't need to follow it"..

Been a while since I looked at it, but this is still great: http://wcc.crankfoot.xyz/facility-of-th ... ry2019.htm

Slowbike wrote:

Bartimaeus wrote:

Yes it's the "national minimum safety standards" that are key... a good wide painted bike lane with a solid white line is well worth having, while a 60cm lane with dotted lines is worse than no lane at all. With a narrow lane drivers don't act as though they are overtaking you, so pretty much every car is actually close-passing you at speed without thinking about it.

There are some very good bike lanes - but lots of them are rubbish and many are positively dangerous.

Minimum standards is what everyone seems to aspire to these days ...

If only.
Hampshire constantly installs 1.2m wide cycle lanes, despite LTN 01/08 and states

LTN 01/98 - Para 7.4.3 - "A narrow cycle lane may therefore give motorists (misplaced) confidence to provide less clearance while overtaking than they would in the absence of a cycle lane. At localised carriageway width restrictions, designers can continue a full width advisory cycle lane alongside a substandard all purpose lane, or the cycle lane can simply be discontinued. A narrow cycle lane should not be used ."

An absolute minimum of 1.2m may be used on Feeder lanes to ASL's, but only for short distances - typically as long as the queue is that is being bypassed. (Sustrans)