please empty your brain below

Nice to see you contemplating cycling, but the safety of cycle lanes is illusory. Understandable you might feel that way, but illusory. The danger area for cyclists is junctions and cycle lanes do little except alert drivers (possibly)

The safest way to travel by bike is to share the road with other users, chunking out areas that say "here you can drive as fast as you like" I think works against safety, but I do understand how it would make it easier for newcomers to get used to cycling on the street.

Sorry Ham, I'm still contemplating not cycling. No change there.

...yes, what Ham, says (as another cyclist, though not as much of one as Ham!)

"As a cyclist, the one thing you really don't want to end up underneath is a bendy bus. Along Bow Road we have lots of those trundling along route 25."

No cyclist has ever been killed by a bendy bus in London. And route 25 will be serviced by double decker buses from June 2011.

Good post, it's nice to know that the deficiencies of the Superhighways are obvious to a non-cyclist.

Just want to point out though, that no confident cyclist is scared of bendy buses (and if one isn't confident on London roads, one shouldn't be on them). Generally bus drivers are well-trained. There's no particular group of drivers that's worse than another, in my experience.

I was so excited when I first realised the CS2 was going to go from my house in Bow to Aldgate. I had visions of me cycling down it every day to Aldgate, then hopping on the tube for the last bit of my journey to work. How healthly I would be!

Because, I thought, OF COURSE they're not going to put it on the road. The road is too bloody narrow. OF COURSE they're going to do something similar to the CS3 that goes into Tower Hill - here, much of the CS3 between Limehouse Cut and Tower Hill has actually taken over the footpath.

As the Bow-Aldgate route has a MUCH WIDER footpath than Limehouse-Tower Hill, surely they will learn from the success of the CS3 and separate the cyclists from the traffic. Especially as Bow Road is so much busier and ergo less safe for cyclists!

You see where I'm going with this. No, they haven't taken up some of the 10-foot-plus width of the footpath along bow road for the CS. They've plonked it down on the already too narrow road.

So I won't be using it. It's too dangerous. I'll continue to cycle down Hamlets Way, back behind Mile End Station, across Mile End Park, along the canal to Limehouse Cut, and pick up the sensibly-implemented CS3 into Tower Hill. But I can't take this route in winter because the lack of lighting along the canal makes it feel too dangerous in the dark for a lone woman. The Bow-Aldgate CS was meant to be my winter option. Not anymore, sadly.

Encouraging me to cycle more, Boris? Fail.

The big problem with all the cycle superhighways is that they devalue all the existing cycle routes: because these others are NOT bright blue drivers will now not be llooking out for them as much. (It's like the incessant announcements on the tube: everyone switches off so when something important is being said (like "All change" or "this train is now going to Ealing Broadway instread of Richmond") nobody takes any notice)

I would like drivers to be aware that ANY road may have cyclists on it!

Hmmm. Does anyone ever cast a thought for another minority group, namely motorcyclists?
When the traffic conditions get thick, you'll generally find motorcyclists trying to avoid everyone else by filtering along the centre of the road.
Sure you can give pedal cyclists an another half-metre on this side, and the same on the other side, but sheesh, that extra metre has got to come from somewhere. And by cramming everybody else other than cyclists into less road space means that there just became less space for everyone else to keep clear of each other.
As is so often the case, this seems to be more about PR in the name of "safety" rather than genuine safety.


@Beth

The long segregated section of CS3, and all the other segregated sections of all the existing and planned cyclehighways pre-date the Boris plan and were part of either Borough efforts or London Cycle Network. The CSHs don't involve any layout changes that require stone work, its just what can be done with paint.

Bow Road was a deadly cycle, I always avoided it and went via Old Ford.

These things are a joke. Its a damn shame they weren't stopped after phase 1 before wasting any more money.












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