Feed aggregator

When you want to see a lot of people cycling at the same time, it’s always good to go to one of Utrecht’s conflict points. This time I went back … Continue reading →

De speedpedelecrijder voelt zich – ook met helm – niet veilig op de rijbaan. En hij rijdt een aanzienlijk deel van de afstand op het fietspad, waar hij eigenlijk de rijbaan zou moeten kiezen.

At CIVITAS Forum 2017 on September 27-29, the Cycling Embassy of Denmark will be sharing their know-how at their stand and invite you to try a virtual bicycle tour around Copenhagen. Get inspiration on how to promote cycling Two members of the Cycling Embassy of Denmark, HOE360 Consulting and Weinreich Mobility will be at the ...

The post Be inspired by Danish cycle experts at CIVITAS Forum 2017 appeared first on Cycling Embassy of Denmark.

By Sofie Kyhn Jakobsen  This May, the Copenhagen City Bike, Bycyklen, won the category “Best Urbane Initiative” in an annual “Best in the city” competition. The users of the bikes were the ones who voted for Bycyklen to take first place. The other nominees were strong names such as Urban Riggers (houses on the water, ...

The post The City Bike is the Best Urbane Initiative 2017 appeared first on Cycling Embassy of Denmark.

This spring, the Municipality of Aalborg allowed cycling against the direction of traffic on 10 one-way streets in central Aalborg. A cheap and simple initiative signaling that cyclists are prioritized more and more in Aalborg. The discussion about cycling against traffic on one-way streets has been a sensitive political subject. With increasing political support, an ...

The post Aalborg introduces cycling against the direction of traffic in 10 one-way streets appeared first on Cycling Embassy of Denmark.

Kijk uit met investeringen in fietsinfrastructuur, wanneer de lokale bevolking er niet om gevraagd heeft. Want het effect op het fietsgebruik wordt meestal overschat. Dat stelt prof. Dr.ir. Caspar Chorus, hoogleraar ‘Choice behavior modeling’ aan de TU Delft.

Analyses and citizens’ involvement have resulted in a detailed plan of how the bicycle lane network in Copenhagen should be expanded before 2025. We want more people to cycle Even though a great many people are already cycling, the City of Copenhagen’s goal of 50% of people cycling to work and studies in 2025 is ...

The post New Bicycle Track Priority Plan for Copenhagen appeared first on Cycling Embassy of Denmark.

The emergence of the autonomous vehicle has the potential to further enhance our traffic systems. But it also poses a number of challenges to our bicycle culture both in terms of safety, public health, and livability in our cities. Before the summer holidays, experts from Denmark and the Netherlands met to discuss the topic. Challenges and ...

The post Cyclists and self-driving vehicles – challenges and potentials appeared first on Cycling Embassy of Denmark.

How do you review a bell? To answer the simple question of whether this bell goes “ding” – yes it does.

But the Knog Oi Bell is so much more than a simple cycling bell. It is sleek. It is discrete. It is charming.

As real estate on our handlebars becomes increasingly valuable these days: what with smart phone cradles, cycling computers and so on; something so small but effective is a welcome addition to the colossal range of bells available.

This is a perfect fit for anyone with awkward handlebars, particularly velomobiles and recumbents. The ergonomics work brilliantly for quick access and with minimal disruption to your control of the bike/trike.

It may be small in stature, but the Knog Oi Bell stands out in the crowd as one of the best on the market. Generally available at only £14.99 / €19.99 it’s a great deal.

Video to follow.

Due to personal circumstance VeloVision has had a few weeks of being quiet. Over the coming days we will be publishing lots of exciting news and reviews again.

Thank you for your patience and it’s good to be back!

Groningen wil fietser richting Zernike Campus graag over de meest effectieve routes leiden, die weinig hinder opleveren voor het autoverkeer. Dat deed men al met ‘Slimme route-acties’. Maar nu is ook de infrastructuur verder verbeterd.

The F28 Fast Cycle Route from Utrecht to Amersfoort is currently under investigation. In today’s post, I will show you what the possible route looks like now. That’s right, I … Continue reading →

Onder MBO-ers, met name met een migratieachtergrond, is fietsen niet populair. Fietsen is ouderwets, duurt langer en je haar raakt in de war.

In the late 80s I worked as a contract software engineer and lived as a sort of a self-propelled technological vagrant. I had never had an interest in cars and wouldn't learn to drive for several more years so all my travel was by public transport, by bicycle or by foot. Many people thought this an unusual choice, but I managed to make my way with an ancient laptop computer and portable stereo toDavid Hembrowhttps://plus.google.com/114578085331408050106noreply@blogger.com0http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2017/09/business-as-usual-by-driving-green-car.html

An old post from Joe Dunkley that resurfaced yesterday in the wake of some comments about Christopher Chope – a former transport minister in the Thatcher government and helmet law enthusiast – has prompted me to reflect on some of the intrinsic problems with ‘shared use’ footways.

The history of ‘shared use’ is itself rather murky, as that post from Joe Dunckley explains.

I understand the “cycle tracks” — that is, crappy shared pavements — that [the Thatcher government] introduced in the 1980 Highways Act were not intended to encourage and enable cycling, but to improve road safety by getting cyclists out of harm’s way while the poor things saved up to buy a car of their own.

This is a good explanation of the background assumption behind the Act – namely, an assumption that cycling was an insignificant mode of transport, one that would either remain insignificant, or disappear completely. The intention of this 1980 Act – which allowed footways to be converted to ‘shared use’ – was clearly not to improve conditions for walking and cycling. Instead it rested on the belief that cycling was so negligible it didn’t deserve its own space, and could just be ‘added’ to the walking environment, presumably until it vanished out of existence.

Of course this brings us to the basic problem with ‘shared use’. It’s a design philosophy that is based around an assumption that cycling is, and will remain, a tiny mode of transport.

‘Shared use’ isn’t future-proof. Anywhere it is implemented in urban areas, in preference to designing for cycling in a space separated from walking (be that cycleways, or low-motor traffic streets) amounts to a prediction that negligible, current, cycling levels will remain negligible.

And indeed, it’s largely a self-fulfilling prophecy. The inconvenience of using shared use footways, coupled with the conflict with people walking that results, serves to actually suppress cycling levels – a point made in this post from New Zealand.

Shared paths are The Hunger Games of urban transport. Pedestrians and cyclists are thrown together in a hostile environment to fight over the breadcrumbs left by cars and see who survives. They are effectively a self-sabotaging form of infrastructure. The more popular shared paths become the worse the level of service gets for both modes, which then undermines uptake.

There’s – quite literally – no space for growth in cycling on shared use footways. To illustrate this, we can look at environments where cycling was formerly accommodated on a shared use footway, but now has its own space. For instance, on Lower Thames Street.

There ins’t a huge number of pedestrians walking here, but combining the current levels of cycle traffic – greatly increased following the construction of CS3 – and the current levels of walking on that footway would clearly be a recipe for enormous conflict. Only with sufficiently wide, separated space for each of these modes will we see any growth in cycling. ‘Shared use’, in an urban context, is self-suppressing.

In choosing to employ ‘shared use’, highway engineers and planners are assuming that cycling will remain a tiny mode of transport. It represents a continuation of that 1980s belief that cycling wasn’t worth bothering with, and indeed that 1980s hope that it actually disappears. Cycling needs its own space if suppressed demand for it is to be unlocked – ‘shared use’ certainly isn’t that space.

Fietsberaad Vlaanderen startte begin 2016 een onderzoek op naar de voorrangssituatie op kruisingen van fietswegen en lokale wegen.

Met data uit de Fiets Telweek is het mogelijk om fietsprojecten te evalueren. Men kan bijvoorbeeld het effect van nieuwe fietsinfrastructuur zichtbaar maken of van de opening van een fietsenstalling.

The Royal Parks agency in London has a bit of an issue with cycling. The actions it takes – whether it’s adding cobbled speed humps to popular cycling routes in Hyde Park, or attempting to remove a popular cycle route from that same park, or chasing after a cycle taxi service – give the impression of an organisation that views cycling as something a bit… undesirable. For the Royal Parks, cycling is a problem to be managed, rather than an opportunity, and it appears to be actively trying to discourage it.

What’s even more unfortunate is that the policies the Royal Parks are implementing to manage this ‘problem’ are actually making the Parks worse for everyone, whether they are cycling or not.

A sensible strategy for managing cycling on the existing routes in Hyde Park would be to separate walking and cycling from each other, and to give each mode plenty of space, so they are not coming into conflict with one another. Indeed, we can see this policy working well on a number of routes in and around Hyde Park, already.

We can see it on South Carriage Drive, where the new cycle ‘Superhighway’ runs alongside a footway.

Here people can walk and cycle, without getting in each other’s way. They have their own clear, distinct space.

Likewise on West Carriage Drive, where the same ‘Superhighway’ runs in parallel to walking provision.

People walking on the left; people cycling on the right. People walking can do so at leisure, knowing that anyone cycling will not be anywhere near them.

The situation is similar on Rotten Row, with separate walking and cycling space.

This is the route that the Royal Parks want to ban cycling on, following the construction of the ‘Superhighway’, but the evidence suggests – as in the photograph – that this is still a popular route for cycling, despite that new route.

There isn’t a great deal of conflict between walking and cycling here, but if there is, it should be addressed by creating wider, separate space for each mode, not by banning cycling altogether (which at the very least creates issues for people who use cycles as a mobility aid, depriving them of access).

We also see separation of walking and cycling on the (newly widened) Constitution Hill route.

Formerly, cycling and walking were crammed together (albeit separated by markings) on the path to the right. With the new path on the left, both modes have adequate space, and do not come into conflict with each other.

It’s notable that despite absolutely minimal distinction between these two paths, either in terms of signs, or markings (perhaps a deliberate Royal Parks policy), people are naturally opting to walk where other people are walking, and to cycle where other people are cycling. In other words, the natural choice of human beings is to avoid conflict, and to seek out space that is being used by people that are travelling in a similar way to them.

Yet the policy on the Broad Walk in Hyde Park stands directly in opposition to the way people naturally behave, and what they actually want. This path used to have a painted cycle route on one side of it – dating back to the 1980s – with a solid white line, and intermittent cycle symbols.

Broad Walk – image via Streetview

Far from perfect, certainly, but enough to make it reasonably clear to users that cycling and walking should be expected to use distinct parts of this path. If you are walking on the right hand side, you should be able to do so in peace, free from interactions with faster-moving people who are cycling.

All this has been undone, however, as a result of the Royal Parks’ misguided interventions. The distinction between walking and cycling has been removed, and on the remains of the cycle path, ‘Pedestrian Priority’ symbols have been added.

The result – an entirely predictable result – is that people are now cycling across the entire width of the Broad Walk.

By removing distinction between walking and cycling, the Royal Parks have converted what used to be cycle-free walking space into a space that has people cycling in it, entirely innocently.

Presumably the Royal Parks’ intention, with these measures, was to make walking more pleasant, by attempting to ‘control’ cycling. But, in my view, the exact opposite has been achieved. By removing distinctions between walking and cycling, they have created paths where pedestrians are having to deal with people cycling around them, in unpredictable ways. It’s surely the exact opposite of what anyone walking here would actually want.

I dearly hope the Royal Parks start paying attention to how cycling is designed for in some of the photographs at the start of this post; with wide paths, clearly separated from walking, to remove conflict. It simply doesn’t make sense to push the two modes together.

Questions about crossing the streets keep coming back in the comment section of my videos. Some people comment that they don’t understand the lack of crosswalks on the cycle paths. … Continue reading →

De afgelopen weken heeft de gemeente Amsterdam ongeveer 400 deelfietsen verplaatst naar het Fietsdepot in verband met te lang of hinderlijk parkeren.