I my last post I gave a few thoughts on the “Quality Bike Corridor” in Edinburgh, but I forgot to add any images. So here are a few, just count the number of parked cars…
Note the way the cycle lane takes cyclists around the outside of the parked cars and down the left side of queuing traffic which may turn left at the lights. There is no way this can be considered to be best practice.
Note that only two of the motor vehicles shown above are parked legally, the one in the first picture and the yellow car.
The Quality Bike Corridor (QBiC) does have a 20mph speed limit along only a short section:
Southern end of the 20mph limit:
^looking south (end of 20mph)
^looking north (start of 20mph)
Northern end of the 20mph limit:
^looking south (start of 20mph)
^looking north (end of 20mph)
It is worth noting that at the northern end of the 20 mph zone stops short of an existing accident black sport, so not the best place to encourage drivers to accelerate.
Yet the roads with the highest rates of Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are not given 20mph speed limits:
From ITO road casualties UK.
Sunday, 25th, November 2012 at 20:57
These photos remind me why I switched to cycling through bruntsfield and the meadows to get between the Kings Buildings and George Square -somewhere close to Picture 3 I got doored by an elderly driver who’d just gone round the block to get his messages. Nothing in these pictures convinces me that 20 years later it is any safer at all.
Sunday, 25th, November 2012 at 20:15
This is just completely unbelievable. I walk along parts of this route every day and I actually think it is now more dangerous than before. It’s not good for cyclists, but it’s not even good for cars either, it just makes the whole situation more complex and more difficult for everybody. Cyclists are forced into weird maneouvres, and many car drivers will be taken by surprise when cyclists suddenly swing into their path.
To be safe, a road layout has to be simple and clear, and this one isn’t. It’s confusing, it’s noisy, and it wastes a lot of space that could be used much better.
One gets the impression that the planners don’t have much experience or understanding of traffic. I don’t think anybody on the continent would even consider such a design, not since the 1980s.
Perhaps it might be a good idea to organise an exchange programme between Edinburgh’s twin cities? Get some planners from the continent to spend a month working in Edinburgh, and send the Edinburgh planners to work in one of the continental cities?
Sunday, 25th, November 2012 at 21:21
The Dutch Ambassadors comments after she saw a video of it at the Cycling Scotland Go Dutch Conference 2012 were highly amusing, she said they just won’t build that sort of thing in the Netherlands.
The real problem here is one of political will.
Saturday, 7th, July 2012 at 19:36
Oh dear, what a sadly awful execution of what should have been an excellent idea.
Making bad cycle infrastructure and lots of parking, then claiming “no-one rides a bike” is an ingeniously self-fulfilling prophesy. I wonder how many people would drive now if our motorway infrastructure was as badly designed and maintained?