It's been pretty grim riding for Stuart in Birmingham. The city centre is utterly broken with one or two routes holding the whole thing together in the face of road closures, gridlock, tramlines and the 'kin Christmas market. The lack of any decent cycle infrastructure is painfully obvious and I'm frequently having cars, taxis and buses driven at me. I've also been hit on the head by a passing pedestrian.
There's no density to the location of the restaurants or the punters, so mean turnaround time per drop is consistently coming out as about 40 minutes. This means the only way to get a double figure hourly rate is to do weekend evenings to get the extra rewards.
A question - have any of you felt the need/urge to go through more red lights than you would do normally, because you are on the clock?
I'm with kyuss - there's no significant time saving from jumping lights. I've always figured I lose my right to rant at others who break the law if I'm doing it myself. I'm in control of a vehicle on the road, therefore the laws of the road apply to me. Of course, it only takes a second or two to switch to pedestrian mode, and that can be useful sometimes...
I'm pavement cycling more than I would otherwise, out of decisions based on trying to stay safe. At 10pm there often aren't many pedestrians around, but the roads can still be bedlam (or gridlocked), so there's not a lot of conflict there. I'm also filtering more, again because of the gridlock. Did I mention Birmingham's broken?