Can I cycle vs. would I cycle?

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christhebull
Can I cycle vs. would I cycle?
yojimbo
christhebull
A good place to use for this would be Guildford (or at least, a place I'm familiar with). The A31 dual carriageway to the west has a 60 mph speed limit but would appear to be a good place for a cycle path. There is plenty of room, albeit much of it is between the two carriageways because they are so far apart; and quite possibly the demand, because a bus stop on the road has been closed and residents of a nearby village have complained that the road is unsafe to walk on, which is not surprising when there is no pavement. In contrast, the lower, cobbled part of the historic High Street is a one way street, mostly closed to all vehicles during certain hours. This is despite the fact that the pedestrianised section forms both directions of National Cycle Route 223, with stickers at the top pointing cyclists the "wrong way". This is hardly surprising when you look at the route traffic is supposed to take. The street is quite wide, so contraflow cycling would be safe even with parked cars.
pj.mcnally
yojimbo
sallyhinch

AKA TownMouse

Jim
yojimbo
sallyhinch

AKA TownMouse

PaulJames
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Jim
PaulJames
PaulJames's picture
christhebull
Cliff Matthews
Cyclability survey

The idea of polling cyclists and non-cyclists about a range of junctions etc in their area is great. The difficulty is in capturing the dynamic feel of a junction. Some junctions I'd happily let my 7 year old navigate alone at 6:00am whereas at 5:00pm I would be wary.

Capturing the dynamic aspects by sampling streetview is difficult and the point of view is an elevated camera on a car, often (where the google car has only gone one direction) from a viewpoint on the wrong side of the road.

Streetview also fails where a cyclists can go off-road along a cycle path, pedestrian area, footbridge, canal tow-path etc. Some features are seen as good cycling infrastructure by town planners but are lamentable to ride due to poor surface, obstacles, narrowness etc.

My view is that the only way to capture the dynamic cylists eye view is to establish a databank of set format videos provided by cyclists with action-cams. I'm not thinking of the expletive laden near miss postings of some you tube afficionados but simple short sequences of junctions, roundabouts etc with a cyclist executing a safe manoevre in different traffic and weather conditions. These could be easily managed in a national database referenced by standard postcode proximity

 

Clive Durdle

Isn't it not only physical structure but time and weather? M25 is possibly fine at 4 in the morning :-)

my local streets are good until a boy racer or merc driver turns up!

Clive Durdle

Isn't it not only physical structure but time and weather? M25 is possibly fine at 4 in the morning :-)

my local streets are good until a boy racer or merc driver turns up!

Clive Durdle

Isn't it not only physical structure but time and weather? M25 is possibly fine at 4 in the morning :-)

my local streets are good until a boy racer or merc driver turns up!

pete owens

150 examples of "could cycle" (indeed supposedly designed for that purpose) here:

http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.uk/facility-of-the-month

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