Boris to build bike lanes in London, to " de-Lycrafy the bicycle" : TreeHugger

Transport or London is talking about Quitelanes. The acual link is here but the idea is to build something really non-pro cyclist friendly. They are spending £54 million on this.

Boris to build bike lanes in London, to " de-Lycrafy the bicycle" : TreeHugger

Progress on new cycle analysis system.

Red dot represents traffic lights. White lines 'cycleable' routes.

Cycling

From the guy who brought you 'Cycle Chic'
One way of thinking about this is an argument for better mathematical models of cycling.
I like the notion of following desire lines.
I'm with the kids wanting roofs for bikes

▶ London Moves, visualising 16 million cycle journeys across the UK capital: Jo Wood at TEDxEastEnd - YouTube

▶ London Moves, visualising 16 million cycle journeys across the UK capital: Jo Wood at TEDxEastEnd - YouTube:



One of the elements I took from this is

• That Hyde Park (i.e. a car free) is a very popular area for cycling.
• Tourists prefer car free places to commuters 
• Women use bikes considerably less than men (but not in the Netherlands) 
• Women much prefer the car free areas to men 
• Women tend to be more evenly distributed compared to men who cluster more.

Quote "In the Netherlands 25-30% of all journeys are made by bicycle." (wow) if we could do that to London it would make a considerable difference to congestion, energy consumption, pollution and health.



 The problem of studying bike hire is that the bike parking locations aren't randomly distributed - still it's informative.

Toward a History of Needs

A good quote from the 60s on the advantages of cycling From Energy and equity: Toward a History of Needs. Ivan Illich, New York: Pantheon, 1978: "The bicycle uses little space. Eighteen bikes can be parked in the place of one car, thirty of them can move along in the space devoured by a single automobile. It takes three lanes of a given size to move 40,000 people across a bridge in one hour by using automated trains, four to move them on buses, twelve to move them in their cars, and only two lanes for them to pedal across on bicycles. Of all these vehicles, only the bicycle really allows people to go from door to door without walking. The cyclist can reach new destinations of his choice without his tool creating new locations from which he is barred. "Bicycles let people move with greater speed without taking up significant amounts of scarce space, energy, or time. They can spend fewer hours on each mile and still travel more miles in a year. They can get the benefit of technological breakthroughs without putting undue claims on the schedules, energy, or space of others. They become masters of their own movements without blocking those of their fellows. Their new tool creates only those demands which it can also satisfy. Every increase in motorized speed creates new demands on space and time. The use of the bicycle is self-limiting. It allows people to create a new relationship between their life-space and their life-time, between their territory and the pulse of their being, without destroying their inherited balance. The advantages of modern self-powered traffic are obvious, and ignored."

Message from a cycle city.

Bicycle Anecdotes from Amsterdam from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Rents in London's housing ‘backwaters’ increase thanks to Boris bikes - London - News - London Evening Standard

Rents in London's housing ‘backwaters’ increase thanks to Boris bikes - London - News - London Evening Standard



While the academic in me doesn't normally rely on these kinds of surveys I think it does show that investing in cycle infrastructure does raise the value of housing in the areas affected. This is also a good example of taking a hybrid approach, that is, extending the reach of the current tube network by providing on demand bicycle transport to the station.



 This ability to extend the reach of stations with bikes does change the overall economic's of trains. The general problem with trains is always do, you want to build the stations as far apart as possible, this reduces train (station ) cost but also means that the trains have fewer stops in an overall distance meaning that the journey time is quicker.  Not something that London needs to worry about that for capitals and cities installing new infrastructure it's something to be aware of.

Lift accessed mountain biking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lift accessed mountain biking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You would think if sportsmen can have this then why can't commute cyclists? ( he said in an old and bitter voice).