Here’s one guaranteed to make all my Murkin Readers chortle:
Pop-up cycle lanes set up as part a £225million plan to get Britain moving again are lying empty while traffic is squeezing onto narrowed streets, bringing the capital to a halt, it can be revealed.
MailOnline visited some of the key cycle lanes across the country at the height of the rush hour to gauge how busy they are, only to find them chronically under-used with cyclists criticising them as well as motorists.
Our research in London, where Transport for London is leading its own £33million scheme, shows that on the Euston Road, just 7 cyclists used the designated lane over a 15-minute period. Meanwhile 420 cars fought their way through traffic. In Park Lane, Mayfair, just 21 cyclists used the lane as 400 cars battled past.
Nonsense like this basically stems from the dreaded Car Hatred Disease, which engenders the opposite feeling from motorists. The Englishman, as I recall, thinks that shooting cyclists from one’s car should not only not be prosecuted, but rewarded. Mr. Free Market’s opinion should not be made public, but suffice it to say that there is plenty of gore involved.
We have nice wide roads Over Here in north Texas, so the “two-wheeled Taliban”, as the Brits call them, are not much more than a mild nuisance — other than committing the visual offense of wearing those faggy Lycra outfits and pisspot helmets. It is, however, one more reason to enjoy winter here, because our usually icy roads make cycling deadly. (“Make it compulsory, then,” grumbles Mr. FM.)
Of course, because BritPM Scruffy Johnson is a rider, all these crappy devices (“pop-up” cycle lanes?) are given a lot more government attention and support than they deserve.
I know that secretly — or perhaps not so secretly — the Greens would banish all cars if they could, and force us all to ride around on two wheels. This is one of the reasons why, when the Beer & Treason Crowd gathers at its secret meetings, mass execution of Greens is generally ranked after the same treatment for anarchists and Communists, but just ahead of record company executives. Or maybe it was vegans, I don’t remember.
I do know that in Britain, cyclists are generally hated more than badgers, and they squirt poisonous gas into the ground to deal with them. Come to think of it, that sounds remarkably similar to one of Mr. FM’s suggestions…
When in London we stay at a place on Cartwright Gardens one block off the Euston road. It’s close to Euston, St. Pancras and King’s Cross train/tube stations, which is whey we stay there. Last time I tried to drive in London I damaged a rental car with my gross incompetence at driving on the left side of the road, so we use TfL, so I want to be near it.
Euston Road was a mad house without bike lanes. I can hardly wait to walk along it again on a stroll up to Regent’s Park laughing at humanity, the ones stuck in the cars, the ones on the bikes and myself too. We are such idiots.
Fred,
You need to install Free Now (My Taxi) on yer phone. It’s like Uber, but for black cabs in London.
I’ve stayed around the KC/StP/Euston area myself, and the best thing I can say about it is the restaurants around the stations. The accommodations? Ugh. Flophouses, really.
Give me South Kens, any day. Close to the SoKens/Earls Court/Gloucester Tube stops, half a dozen different bus routes, and closer to Chelsea Football Club.
Kind of flop-housey, for sure, but we’ve found a decent recently renovated one, and I do like all the student pubs and raffish air of Bloomsbury.
Even so, time for a change, so I’ll give s. Kensington a try. Some of the places there listed on Airbnb look good and seem more reasonable than I expected.
Always assuming I’m ever again allowed to go there by Her majesty’s Canadian and United Kingdom governments without masking or quarantine.
PS. I just looked up restrictions for travel from Canada to the UK and France. The Limeys want me to self-isolate for 14 days on arrival, the Frogs have no restrictions at all except masks in crowded public spaces, which I can live with, barely.
I admit I rode a bike a lot in college, mostly because I was poor and couldn’t afford a car and its associated costs. And I DID wear a helmet, because I saw the aftermath of a bicyclist who hit something on the road, fell and hit his head on the curb, he was wearing a helmet and the dent in it could’ve been in his skull (He did get a concussion IIRC, but a concussion is better than a fractured skull, and the concrete curb is a LOT harder than your skull).
I wasn’t one of THOSE riders though, I kept to secondary and tertiary roads whenever possible, and I didn’t insist on a dedicated lane, I share the road with the cars, trucks, and buses. I also obeyed traffic lights, stop signs, traffic direction, etc.
I can’t tell you how often in NYC I had close calls with bicyclists riding the wrong way, or on the sidewalk, and got cussed out for being in their way. Unfortunately for them, if you cuss me out I’ll cuss back, and since my Dad was a US Marine, merchant seaman, heavy-equipment-operator, etc I’m MUCH better at it than some yuppie asswipe urban cyclist.
Does any State license (tax) bicycles? In MA, signs admonish us to Share The Road, but there’s no indication that the mimes-on-wheels are willing to share the load.
.
I admit it! I admit it! I’m guilty.
I used a bicycle for 11 years – then I was old enough to start driving.
Actually I would be favorable to restriction on cars if the space was dedicated to horses. Western style of course and with the six shooter and lever action mandatory.
Bicycles scare the horses.
Robert Heinlein said, “If you can’t change your mind, are you sure you have one?”
As you say, it would be useful to research the question of whether or not this is genetic.
Los Angeles loves to put the bike lanes and the car lane eliminators on the main commuter roads, so traffic is pushed onto the residential streets where the residents demand more traffic controls to tie up the traffic on the main roads.
Interesting. Thanks for the link.
Karl Hess, Barry Goldwater’s speech writer, whom he nicknamed “Shakespeare”, said in his Playboy Interview in 1976, that when conservatives make something he called “the Jump”, they became libertarians, and when Liberals made the jump, they became Stalinists.
If we could somehow study this without involving the Leftists who want to conclude that conservatives are somehow rigid, stupid, unimaginative. and ungenerous.
I often rode my bike to work, it helped to keep my ass from getting any wider. (I’d sit for 12 hours at a time.) 20 minutes to work but an hour to get back home, up the hill.
In the last couple of years, the greenies have butchered the traffic lanes and painted the pavement around controlled intersections green for the preferred use of bicycles. They’ve reduced lanes up a busy and steep hill from 3 to 2 for cars and left a full lane for bicyclists to push their bikes up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rider go up there. I think TPTB want to force people onto buses and bikes.
This almost makes me wonder if Mr. Free Market is actually Jeremy Clarkson.
i can confirm he’s not, but they’d probably enjoy a beer together