There is a pair of particularly brutal ones outside our local school. I wouldn't dare go over them at anything close to the posted 20mph speed limit. Even crawling up to them at 5 is to risk spinal injury. The best option available is to hug the side of the road so only one set of wheels is affected.
We have speed bumps on the small connector road between our road and the "main" road. They are interestingly asymmetric: they extend across the whole road, but one side is like someone built a wall in the middle of the road, and the other side is a low rise. Which is basically an incentive to preserve your suspension and drive on the wrong side of the road.
Many years ago I took a few driving lessons, and this rule worried me because, on a big roundabout, how did a pedestrian know which road you arrived on?
You are supposed to indicate that you are leaving the roundabout as you pass the previous exit, so there's no need for a pedestrian to understand the car's history: in principle, if you see a car indicating to leave the roundabout, it's going to leave by the exit road you're trying to cross. If it's not indicating, or it's indicating the other way, it's not coming your way.
Of course as noted in this thread, enough people treat indicators as interesting decorations for their cars that a pedestrian relying on them to predict a car's intentions is rather brave.
Here, roundabouts (we call them traffic circles) often appear on residential streets in lieu of speed bumps (which are euphemistically called traffic calming devices).
Here, roundabouts (we call them traffic circles) often appear on residential streets in lieu of speed bumps (which are euphemistically called traffic calming devices).
We have a couple down the road from my house, and almost nobody understands what to do with them, with the consequence that the city has put 4-way stop signs around them. So what we have now looks like a roundabout (central island with flowers on, circular road around it), but drivers are told to treat it as a single 4-way stop, which is the worst of both systems.
I think a lot depends on what one is used to. Many British drivers wouldn't know what to do at a four-way crossroads without traffic lights or indications of priority, but we're used to roundabouts.
Mind you, some large roundabouts have traffic lights, sometimes only operating part-time, to militate against excessive queueing on entry slips or to all vehicles on minor entry points to get into the stream of traffic.
When I went to Portugal, the traffic already on the roundabout had to let traffic enter it. The results were not good!
In Jersey and Guernsey, traffic junctions are often marked "Filter in turn".
We have this new freaky roundabout which incorporates an exit ramp from a freeway and an entrance ramp TO a freeway, along with a way to get onto a road running parallel to the freeway (access road). Nothing is properly marked, at least in a way that allows you to figure out where you're going before you actually get there; and the roundabout itself is a surprise to anybody who hasn't been there before--no signage, and completely surrounded by hedges etc. so you come up on it all unprepared.
We have this new freaky roundabout which incorporates an exit ramp from a freeway and an entrance ramp TO a freeway, along with a way to get onto a road running parallel to the freeway (access road). Nothing is properly marked, at least in a way that allows you to figure out where you're going before you actually get there; and the roundabout itself is a surprise to anybody who hasn't been there before--no signage, and completely surrounded by hedges etc. so you come up on it all unprepared.
It sucks.
Lack of clear signage is probably the biggest problem in road design anywhere. Do road designers all now assume that we're navigating with GPS systems and don't need road signs?
In principle, a roundabout with an exit ramp feeding it, which feeds an on-ramp, and has other connecting roads is a better choice than the horrible cloverleaf interchange (which has the on-ramp turn in to the off-ramp, and so requires lots of dangerous highway-speed merging in both directions simultaneously). But surprise is never a good feature in road design.
We have this new freaky roundabout which incorporates an exit ramp from a freeway and an entrance ramp TO a freeway, along with a way to get onto a road running parallel to the freeway (access road). Nothing is properly marked, at least in a way that allows you to figure out where you're going before you actually get there; and the roundabout itself is a surprise to anybody who hasn't been there before--no signage, and completely surrounded by hedges etc. so you come up on it all unprepared.
It sucks.
Lack of clear signage is probably the biggest problem in road design anywhere. Do road designers all now assume that we're navigating with GPS systems and don't need road signs?
My guess is the road designers would love signs but the accountants say otherwise.
Long ago we were taught to look at roundabouts as short, sharply curved one-way streets. You yield to join it and then signal well before your exit. It doesn't work very well in this part of Canada where it often seems to be seen as a competitive event, where yielding marks you as a loser. A lethal feature here is that they invariably have pedestrian crossings across the exits to catch you just as you put the right foot down or brake hard in front of the car behind.
A jolly little historical note is that at the first roundabout ever built, on Sollershott, in Letchworth (Hertfordshire), the direction you took round it was optional. Apparently this didn't work well for very long, so they took the fun out of it by insisting on clockwise rotation. I knew it well, but only in later days, of course.
When in the late ‘80s I was working with a church in suburban Chicago, but living in the city, I had to drive round the only roundabout I ever saw in the States (sounds like they are getting more common now) every time I went to or from work. I often thought I should hang a sign in my rear windscreen saying ‘I’m Scottish, I do traffic circles, follow me!).
And then late one night when I had been doing the midnight shift at a project for homeless people, and was tired, I accidentally drove around the roundabout the wrong way - i.e. the British way - and was stopped by the police. I rolled down my window and put on my very best Scottish accent, and since there was no other vehicle in sight, they let me off.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
On a school holiday half a century ago we saw elderly French ladies walk to the Arc from the roads outside without looking at the traffic. I suppose Parisian motorists then regarded anyone of that age as a war hero and untouchable.
In New York State there was a notorious roundabout that connected the Bronx River Parkway, the Saw Mill River Parkway, and the Taconic Parkway. It was called the Hawthorne Circle. It was every motorist's nightmare. It was finally replaced with a stack interchange.
I think the one outside Swindon is pretty terrifying when you first come across it but perhaps less so when you are actually in it
I've never tried tbh and I don't drive anymore these days.......
I think the one outside Swindon is pretty terrifying when you first come across it but perhaps less so when you are actually in it
I've never tried tbh and I don't drive anymore these days.......
There’s a tale that a senior police officer from another force arrived at the Magic Roundabout and his driver was so confused the Wiltshire plod had to rescue them.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
There is an urban myth that car insurance is null and void around the Arc de Triomphe. I am used to driving in France, but I would take a long detour to avoid it.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
There is an urban myth that car insurance is null and void around the Arc de Triomphe. I am used to driving in France, but I would take a long detour to avoid it.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
There is an urban myth that car insurance is null and void around the Arc de Triomphe. I am used to driving in France, but I would take a long detour to avoid it.
Swindon's Magic Roundabout is much easier than many large single roundabouts. Cars don't stray over their lanes when you are trying to unspiral as they do going round the big ones.
I'd been used to a smaller version in Colchester before we moved near Swindon, and have never found it a problem at all.
Swindon's Magic Roundabout is much easier than many large single roundabouts. Cars don't stray over their lanes when you are trying to unspiral as they do going round the big ones.
I'd been used to a smaller version in Colchester before we moved near Swindon, and have never found it a problem at all.
This. When you first encounter one, there's a definite "what the *^%@ is this?" moment, but it's easy enough to figure out.
I recently moved into a building that is relatively new -- so new that Google Maps shows the address as a vacant field. This confuses the devil out of Uber drivers and some delivery drivers.
However, the building is clearly visible from the street and well marked with a prominent sign showing the building's name and street address.
If drivers would pay attention to what they see, rather than to what Google Maps tells them to see, there would be rejoicing in heaven.
Does anyone remember the infamous Barnton roundabout on the Queensferry Road just outside Edinburgh? It was in fact two roundabouts so close together it was almost a figure 8. It was at its best in the evening rush during the summer holiday season with foreign tourists losing their minds.
A former work colleague of my husband’s once woke up inside the Cardiff magic roundabout after a heavy night out. He had no recollection of being taken there and initially thought he was hallucinating his surroundings…
I recently moved into a building that is relatively new -- so new that Google Maps shows the address as a vacant field. This confuses the devil out of Uber drivers and some delivery drivers.
However, the building is clearly visible from the street and well marked with a prominent sign showing the building's name and street address.
If drivers would pay attention to what they see, rather than to what Google Maps tells them to see, there would be rejoicing in heaven.
Tourists in my area, who although they have not ridden one in years rent bicycles. They do not seem know that they must follow the same rules as cars. They ride facing traffic, do not stop at stop signs, ride on sidewalks, and will suddenly ride across in the middle of the street in front of your car. I no longer drive, but as a passenger in a car of friend or family they give me chills. Yes, every year there are accidents.
In my neck of the woods the cyclists are unlikely to be tourists ( unless one counts young people on working holiday visas) who are almost invariably entitled nightmares on the roads for the reasons you describe. Curiously Enough don’t see so many M(iddle)A(ged)M(en)I(n)L(ycra)s on the roads and footpaths these days….
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Tourists in my area, who although they have not ridden one in years rent bicycles. They do not seem know that they must follow the same rules as cars. They ride facing traffic, do not stop at stop signs, ride on sidewalks, and will suddenly ride across in the middle of the street in front of your car. I no longer drive, but as a passenger in a car of friend or family they give me chills. Yes, every year there are accidents.
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Riding a bicycle in New York City, I found that the greatest hazard was pedestrians stepping out into the bike lane while waiting to cross the street, without bothering to look and see if any cyclists were approaching.
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
Riding a bicycle in New York City, I found that the greatest hazard was pedestrians stepping out into the bike lane while waiting to cross the street, without bothering to look and see if any cyclists were approaching.
That's the other thing - a lot of supposed cycle infrastructure is shared with pedestrians which just moves the conflict. It also makes the cycle route a lot slower which is no use if you're on a 10 mile commute to work. Take the road at 20mph for a two mile stretch or dodge pedestrians at 7mph - it's obvious what people will do.
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
I can't answer for Karl but I don't use the crap cycle routes because they are slower and sometimes more dangerous than the road. For example when a cycle lane is put on to the footpath I would have to slow down for every side road and look for vehicles coming round the corner. Why should I be held up in this way? If I am at the front of the queue at a traffic light I don't automatically go when it turns green but I check to make sure that nobody going the other way has ignored their light turning red. Which is illegal, of course.
I do use the cycle routes that are good and there are plenty of them around.
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
No, he's saying that cycling infrastructure is shit, to the point where why should you use it when you have a right to use the road (as cyclists do in the UK). If you use the road you use it as another vehicle so don't have to wait for 50 cars to go by before the crossing om the cycle lane at the roundabout approach road changes in your favour, you just use the roundabout.
One of the reasons it's so awful is that projects get grants for cycle provision - but there's nothing to say it should join up to anything else. Near us a big new technology park has a dropped kerb so you can get off the road onto a nice cycle lane. But if you use it you then have to cross the entrance road to the park and, a hundred yards further on when you reach the park boundary, the cycle path ends and it's down a dropped kerb onto the road again - having to wait for any cars to pass first.
That's one of the better thought out schemes... so no wonder cyclists don't use cycle lanes!
Our area has had cycle lanes put on the edges of many main routes through and between towns, making the space available for cars, buses and trucks much narrower and therefore more hazardous.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
No. We use the roads because they don't have the multiple sets of light controlled crossings which involve a two minute wait each time at every junction. There's one near me where it routinely takes 5 minutes to get 100metres through a number of Toucan crossings.
I am not a cyclist, but I am told by people who have tried cycling in London that there are cycle lanes in London which are all of five metres long. Also cycle lanes that just stop five metres before a complicated junction.
Basically many cycle lanes have been put in to meet targets of so many km of cycle lanes, rather than by people thinking about what would be actually useful.
I am not a cyclist, but I am told by people who have tried cycling in London that there are cycle lanes in London which are all of five metres long. Also cycle lanes that just stop five metres before a complicated junction.
Basically many cycle lanes have been put in to meet targets of so many km of cycle lanes, rather than by people thinking about what would be actually useful.
The City of Edinburgh deserves a special award for brilliance in cycle lane design at the top of Leith Walk (probably other places too) where the cycle lane is between the pavement and the bus stops. Unless the passengers stop the bikes by swarming the cycle lane to get across it to the bus, their survival is not to be taken for granted.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
Is it legal to cycle on the road? Yes.
Is it sensible to cycle on the road rather than follow a cycle path that makes you wait at multiple pedestrian crossings (as a pedestrian (or perhaps a toucan))? Often, yes.
Nobody is cycling through the middle of town for fun. They're trying to get somewhere. If your dedicated cycle facility is significantly less efficient than the road at getting there, then cyclists are going to use the road.
They ride facing traffic, do not stop at stop signs, ride on sidewalks, and will suddenly ride across in the middle of the street in front of your car.
A group of parents at my local elementary school operate a "bike bus". Once a week, they follow a designated route cycling around the subdivisions, playing music from a portable speaker and collecting more cycling children as they pass like a two-wheeled pied piper.
In principle, I like the idea. Get kids out of cars and on bikes, get them confident about cycling to get to places.
In practice, I hate it. The "bike bus" ignores all the rules of the road. They routinely blow through stop signs without looking. The adults do block the other road to prevent cars from running a kid down, but it seems to me as though what they are training the kids to do is to ignore stop signs. What are these kids going to do when they cycle somewhere without the bike bus? Will they suddenly obey the stop sign?
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
Is it legal to cycle on the road? Yes.
Is it sensible to cycle on the road rather than follow a cycle path that makes you wait at multiple pedestrian crossings (as a pedestrian (or perhaps a toucan))? Often, yes.
Nobody is cycling through the middle of town for fun. They're trying to get somewhere. If your dedicated cycle facility is significantly less efficient than the road at getting there, then cyclists are going to use the road.
Also This!
If you want cyclists off the road, you need alternatives that are worth them using, or they will choose to stay on the road.
The next driving challenge being considered in the US is called the "Diverging Diamond."
Originally developed in France. Took close to 65 years to reach North America
Had intended to pose this last week. Forgot to hit the post comment button.
Dealing with cycle lanes: My son is in Portland Metro. One of his first projects was to design bike lanes throughout the city. Part of the challenge was to slow down some of the main roads using new curbing technology. He is now working on housing projects.
Comments
We have speed bumps on the small connector road between our road and the "main" road. They are interestingly asymmetric: they extend across the whole road, but one side is like someone built a wall in the middle of the road, and the other side is a low rise. Which is basically an incentive to preserve your suspension and drive on the wrong side of the road.
You are supposed to indicate that you are leaving the roundabout as you pass the previous exit, so there's no need for a pedestrian to understand the car's history: in principle, if you see a car indicating to leave the roundabout, it's going to leave by the exit road you're trying to cross. If it's not indicating, or it's indicating the other way, it's not coming your way.
Of course as noted in this thread, enough people treat indicators as interesting decorations for their cars that a pedestrian relying on them to predict a car's intentions is rather brave.
We have a couple down the road from my house, and almost nobody understands what to do with them, with the consequence that the city has put 4-way stop signs around them. So what we have now looks like a roundabout (central island with flowers on, circular road around it), but drivers are told to treat it as a single 4-way stop, which is the worst of both systems.
Mind you, some large roundabouts have traffic lights, sometimes only operating part-time, to militate against excessive queueing on entry slips or to all vehicles on minor entry points to get into the stream of traffic.
When I went to Portugal, the traffic already on the roundabout had to let traffic enter it. The results were not good!
In Jersey and Guernsey, traffic junctions are often marked "Filter in turn".
It sucks.
Lack of clear signage is probably the biggest problem in road design anywhere. Do road designers all now assume that we're navigating with GPS systems and don't need road signs?
In principle, a roundabout with an exit ramp feeding it, which feeds an on-ramp, and has other connecting roads is a better choice than the horrible cloverleaf interchange (which has the on-ramp turn in to the off-ramp, and so requires lots of dangerous highway-speed merging in both directions simultaneously). But surprise is never a good feature in road design.
My guess is the road designers would love signs but the accountants say otherwise.
A jolly little historical note is that at the first roundabout ever built, on Sollershott, in Letchworth (Hertfordshire), the direction you took round it was optional. Apparently this didn't work well for very long, so they took the fun out of it by insisting on clockwise rotation. I knew it well, but only in later days, of course.
And then late one night when I had been doing the midnight shift at a project for homeless people, and was tired, I accidentally drove around the roundabout the wrong way - i.e. the British way - and was stopped by the police. I rolled down my window and put on my very best Scottish accent, and since there was no other vehicle in sight, they let me off.
Think of roundabouts as a legalized game of chicken.
First time we drove to Paris, everyone said whatever you do, do not get off at the Arc D' Triomphe. Guess where the GPS took us. Fortunately, we only had to go two exits off it.
I'm very chicken!
On a school holiday half a century ago we saw elderly French ladies walk to the Arc from the roads outside without looking at the traffic. I suppose Parisian motorists then regarded anyone of that age as a war hero and untouchable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_(Swindon)
I've never tried tbh and I don't drive anymore these days.......
There’s a tale that a senior police officer from another force arrived at the Magic Roundabout and his driver was so confused the Wiltshire plod had to rescue them.
There is an urban myth that car insurance is null and void around the Arc de Triomphe. I am used to driving in France, but I would take a long detour to avoid it.
Even the Boulevard Peripherique?
There ARE limits!
I'd been used to a smaller version in Colchester before we moved near Swindon, and have never found it a problem at all.
This. When you first encounter one, there's a definite "what the *^%@ is this?" moment, but it's easy enough to figure out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzQunCuQCJY might amuse.
However, the building is clearly visible from the street and well marked with a prominent sign showing the building's name and street address.
If drivers would pay attention to what they see, rather than to what Google Maps tells them to see, there would be rejoicing in heaven.
Although this one was pretty funny as there is a perfectly good bridge the driver could have used: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9e32yv9g5o
I was able to see it; but, then again, I have yet to reach the monthly limit of free looks on the BBC.
Originally developed in France. Took close to 65 years to reach North America.
However adult cyclist prefer to ride in the traffic and kids ride on the pavements. Cyclists are seen so rarely using them that people now share photos on Facebook when they come across one.
Because cyclists are free spirits and nobody is going to tell them how to ride.
Not just tourists behaving like that around here
Usually because the cycle lanes are crap.
I use the ones around here that are useful. I ignore the ones that aren't.
Generally non-cyclists have very little insight into what's wrong with them. It's only when you've tried to use them and spent ten minutes waiting at lights, crossings and junctions when staying on the road takes two minutes that you understand it.
But yeah, it's really because we're entitled arseholes. Putting up with this shit is just part of the package.
Are you really saying that cyclists use the road so they can jump the lights? Is that legal?
That's the other thing - a lot of supposed cycle infrastructure is shared with pedestrians which just moves the conflict. It also makes the cycle route a lot slower which is no use if you're on a 10 mile commute to work. Take the road at 20mph for a two mile stretch or dodge pedestrians at 7mph - it's obvious what people will do.
I can't answer for Karl but I don't use the crap cycle routes because they are slower and sometimes more dangerous than the road. For example when a cycle lane is put on to the footpath I would have to slow down for every side road and look for vehicles coming round the corner. Why should I be held up in this way? If I am at the front of the queue at a traffic light I don't automatically go when it turns green but I check to make sure that nobody going the other way has ignored their light turning red. Which is illegal, of course.
I do use the cycle routes that are good and there are plenty of them around.
No, he's saying that cycling infrastructure is shit, to the point where why should you use it when you have a right to use the road (as cyclists do in the UK). If you use the road you use it as another vehicle so don't have to wait for 50 cars to go by before the crossing om the cycle lane at the roundabout approach road changes in your favour, you just use the roundabout.
One of the reasons it's so awful is that projects get grants for cycle provision - but there's nothing to say it should join up to anything else. Near us a big new technology park has a dropped kerb so you can get off the road onto a nice cycle lane. But if you use it you then have to cross the entrance road to the park and, a hundred yards further on when you reach the park boundary, the cycle path ends and it's down a dropped kerb onto the road again - having to wait for any cars to pass first.
That's one of the better thought out schemes... so no wonder cyclists don't use cycle lanes!
No. We use the roads because they don't have the multiple sets of light controlled crossings which involve a two minute wait each time at every junction. There's one near me where it routinely takes 5 minutes to get 100metres through a number of Toucan crossings.
Basically many cycle lanes have been put in to meet targets of so many km of cycle lanes, rather than by people thinking about what would be actually useful.
This!
Is it legal to cycle on the road? Yes.
Is it sensible to cycle on the road rather than follow a cycle path that makes you wait at multiple pedestrian crossings (as a pedestrian (or perhaps a toucan))? Often, yes.
Nobody is cycling through the middle of town for fun. They're trying to get somewhere. If your dedicated cycle facility is significantly less efficient than the road at getting there, then cyclists are going to use the road.
A group of parents at my local elementary school operate a "bike bus". Once a week, they follow a designated route cycling around the subdivisions, playing music from a portable speaker and collecting more cycling children as they pass like a two-wheeled pied piper.
In principle, I like the idea. Get kids out of cars and on bikes, get them confident about cycling to get to places.
In practice, I hate it. The "bike bus" ignores all the rules of the road. They routinely blow through stop signs without looking. The adults do block the other road to prevent cars from running a kid down, but it seems to me as though what they are training the kids to do is to ignore stop signs. What are these kids going to do when they cycle somewhere without the bike bus? Will they suddenly obey the stop sign?
Also This!
If you want cyclists off the road, you need alternatives that are worth them using, or they will choose to stay on the road.
Originally developed in France. Took close to 65 years to reach North America
Had intended to pose this last week. Forgot to hit the post comment button.
Dealing with cycle lanes: My son is in Portland Metro. One of his first projects was to design bike lanes throughout the city. Part of the challenge was to slow down some of the main roads using new curbing technology. He is now working on housing projects.