Britain's forgotten cycleways

[jsabine]

Seen elsewhere - Carlton Reid has been doing some (metaphorical) digging into MoT-required cycleways beside major roads in the 30s, and he's got a Kickstarter going for more research.

[orienteer]

Our family regularly cycled up the Gt Cambridge Road (A10) one in the early 1950s, starting from Highbury and finishing up on Broxbourne Common, which is now a housing estate. Father on tandem, me as "stoker", younger brother in a kiddy seat, mother on her solo, both Macleans bikes with 3-speed Sturmey Archers. My father fitted wooden blocks to the pedals so I could reach them.

So not forgotten!

[Exit Stage Left]

There are a couple near me still in use. One on the road to Southport, and one near an old 1930s munitions works. I've used the Southport one on time trials, as it affords better shelter. Club cyclists generally refuse to use them on principle. The CTC campaigned against them in the 1930s.
They weren't for the benefit of the cyclists, more to ensure a clearway for the motorists.

[sg37409]

Our family regularly cycled up the Gt Cambridge Road (A10) one in the early 1950s, starting from Highbury and finishing up on Broxbourne Common, which is now a housing estate. Father on tandem, me as "stoker", younger brother in a kiddy seat, mother on her solo, both Macleans bikes with 3-speed Sturmey Archers. My father fitted wooden blocks to the pedals so I could reach them.

So not forgotten!

 

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've travelled along the Keynsham bypass many times and never noticed anything looking vaguely like a cycle track there. I guess it's hidden under grass verges now. Admittedly I've never cycled along it, but even if the cycle tracks were unearthed and renewed, it still wouldn't be an attractive route for anything very much.

[cycleman]

i have used the ones alongside the a24 on many occasions . one of them has been improved in recent years   

[Wobbly John]

I looked at some of the roads on his map that I'm familiar with...


...one of the roads marked wasn't bulit until the early '70s 

[Cudzoziemiec]

According to Wikipedia, the Keynsham bypass was constructed in 1964, which is the kind of date I'd have guessed from its appearance. But it's possible they're referring to the original alignment of the A4 (which isn't a bypass but goes through the centre of the town) as there are "access roads" and wide "pavements" at each end of the bypass where it joins the original alignment – and there are 1930s houses at one end.

[Pete Owens]

My daughter lives just off the farcility on Barton Road in Manchester. It is every bit as c**p now as it was when the car obsessed highway engineers of the 1930s were trying to clear the troublesome two wheeled obstructions to the free movement of motors of the roads:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.4553316,-2.3309116,3a,75y,253.83h,67.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1spFkoK8T10G2F7LKoFWVX8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Full of bollards, gives way at every side road and creates conflict at every driveway. Fortunately the CTC managed then to resist the compulsory use of this sort of rubbish.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's interesting to see that and put it together with Carlton Reid's description. From that I'd presume that the similar area on the other side was also a cycleway. I wonder whether each was bidirectional or it was one in each direction? The bollards must be modern but what was the original priority situation? And I bet those cars are strictly speaking parked illegally, unless its legal status has actually been changed.

[MikeFromLFE]

As orienteer says 'gone but not forgotten' - I rode the A127 Southend Arterial Road a couple of times in the 70s from my home in Tottenham to Sarfend. I'm sure I would have used the A10 Great Cambridge Road ones too, but I have no recollection of those.
Cudzoziemiec's point about the current legal status of these paths and them being obstructed is a (potentially) very interesting one for a archeological legal minded bod


Tapatalk puts this signature here, not me!

[Butterfly]

i have used the ones alongside the a24 on many occasions . one of them has been improved in recent years   

My dad remembers them with a distinct lack of fondness!

[red marley]

What strikes me about many of the photos of lost cycleways is the amount of road space we actually have. In many cases, those lost ways have been given over to car parking space.

Wandering around my local neighbourhood we were given a glimpse of the shear amount of public space normally devoted to supporting private car parking because the council are introducing a residents' parking scheme and required the roads to be cleared for a couple of days to paint the new parking zones.

Here is a neighbouring road that's normally head to toe with parked cars on both sides of the road.


And once the parking zone lines are painted, a reminder that the majority of our shared space is given over to accommodating the minority with their own cars:



Why not make it impossible  for this space to be colonised by parked cars? After all, in the road round the corner, people parking cars have done the same with the pavements (and continue to do so daily with impunity):

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'd say those are relatively wide for 19th century residential streets. The ones round here tend to be almost exactly three cars wide!
The immediate answer to why we don't prevent this road space being taken over by parked cars is provided by your last photos. In the longer term, charging "market rates" or at least something closer to parking meter rates for residents parking might be part of the answer.
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21720269-dont-let-people-park-free-how-not-create-traffic-jams-pollution-and-urban-sprawl

Unlike Africa and Asia, European streets are for the most part well-policed. Although some cities have parking requirements, these are seldom as extravagant as American ones, and have been progressively weakened. Several cities even have parking maximums, which restrict the amount of spaces. Huge buildings rise with hardly any provision for cars: the Shard in London has 95 storeys but just 48 spaces. Yet European cities are much kinder to cars than they usually admit.

To ride in one of Amsterdam’s “scan cars” is to witness the epitome of Western parking enforcement. As it moves through the streets, clicking noises confirm that roof-mounted cameras are snapping the number plates of every parked car. If any vehicle has overstayed—which the system knows because Amsterdam’s parking meters are connected to a database, and drivers are required to enter their number plates when they pay—a second officer is alerted. He rides to the scene on a moped and issues a digital fine. Amsterdam’s parking officers describe their system as fair. They mean it is so ruthlessly efficient that it cannot be beaten.

Just the ticket

Amsterdam charges up to €5 ($5.30) an hour for parking on the street. Visitors can also park underneath office buildings or in large, clean park-and-ride garages run by the city. Drivers thus have many choices and the city raises a lot of money—€190m in 2015. Yet this diverse, market-based system covers only a small slice of parking in Amsterdam. Three-quarters of spaces on the streets of the city centre are occupied not by visitors or commuters but by residents. And the people of Amsterdam, who are so keen on pricing parking for others, would not dream of exposing themselves to market forces.

Anybody who lives in a home without a dedicated space is entitled to buy a permit to park nearby for between €30 and €535 a year. This is a good deal and, not surprisingly, the number of takers in many districts exceeds the number of spaces. So Amsterdam has waiting lists for permits. The longest, in the Westerpark area, is 232 months long. To free more spaces, the city has begun to reimburse permit-holders part of the annual fee if they keep their cars in suburban garages. Take-up is encouraging—which suggests that, despite the long queues, many people do not prize the opportunity to park close to their homes.


It’s a sign of the times in Kolkata
A more obvious solution would be to charge more for permits. But that is politically fraught. Amsterdammers believe they have a right to park near their homes, explains Pieter Litjens, the deputy mayor in charge of transport. (They also believe they should be able to leave their bicycles absolutely anywhere for nothing, which is another headache.) So the queues for permits are likely to grow. Amsterdam expects to build 50,000 more homes before 2025, which will mean between 20,000 and 30,000 more cars.

Even more than in America’s sprawling cities, car parking in Amsterdam is unsightly. “The canals are beautiful, and cars are parked along them all the time,” laments Mr Litjens. The city would love to sweep them away, but that would be unpopular. So in one district, De Pijp, a bold (and expensive) remedy is under way. Engineers have drained a canal and are digging an underground garage with 600 parking spaces into the marshy ground beneath. When the car park is finished and sealed, the canal will be refilled with water. The city will then abolish 273 parking spaces on the streets above.

Other cities lauded for their excellent public transport and enthusiasm for market-based solutions to traffic problems also have a blind spot when it comes to residents’ parking. Much of inner London, for example, is covered with residents’ parking zones. The permits are often even cheaper than in Amsterdam: Kensington and Chelsea charges between £80 ($100) and £219 a year for the right to park anywhere in the borough and on the fringe of nearby Westminster. Visitors, on the other hand, must pay between £1.20 and £4.60 an hour. Given that the average home in Kensington and Chelsea sold for £1.9m last year, residents’ parking represents a gift to some of Britain’s richest people.

Despite being the home of Lyft and Uber, two car-sharing services, San Francisco is similarly generous. It charges just $127 a year for residents’ permits. Unlike Amsterdam, though, San Francisco does not cap the number, and in some neighbourhoods one and a half are issued for every parking space. The result is a perpetual scrap for empty kerb. A survey in 2015 found that 53% of permit-holders had spent at least five minutes looking for a space at the end of their most recent trip, and 7% more than half an hour.

As San Francisco’s infuriated drivers cruise around, they crowd the roads and pollute the air. This is a widespread hidden cost of under-priced street parking. Mr Shoup has estimated that cruising for spaces in Westwood village, in Los Angeles, amounts to 950,000 excess vehicle miles travelled per year. Westwood is tiny, with only 470 metered spaces.

There is, however, one exception to the rule that residential parking must never be subjected to market forces. In the 1950s, when it was still far from rich, Japan began to require city-dwellers who did not have parking spaces in their buildings to purchase them. These days anybody who wishes to buy a car must first show a receipt for a space. He or she had better use it: any vehicle without one left on the roadside will be removed by the police in the middle of the night.

Parking brake

Freed of cars, the narrow residential streets of Tokyo are quieter than in other big cities. Every so often a courtyard or spare patch of land has been turned into a car park—some more expensive than others. Takaomi Kondoh, who works for a firm that manages buildings and car parks, explains that prices are usually higher close to transport hubs, because commuters compete for those spaces. Near the central station in Tama, a suburb, the going rate is ¥17,000 per month ($150). Ten minutes’ walk away it drops to ¥10,000.

Once you become accustomed to the idea that city streets are only for driving and walking, and not for parking, it is difficult to imagine how it could possibly be otherwise. Mr Kondoh is so perplexed by an account of a British suburb, with its kerbside commons, that he asks for a diagram. Your correspondent tries to draw his own street, with large rectangles for houses, a line representing the kerb and small rectangles showing all the parked cars. The small rectangles take up a surprising amount of room.

[Mr Larrington]

San Francisco is a total 'mare for parking in.  Space within a day's march of Haight-Ashbury at 7 on a Saturday morning?  No chance.

[ian]

Parking should be a nightmare.

Telling photos from Jo there, I can't imagine my neighbourhood without cars. I don't understand why my progress along the pavement is less important than someone storing their car. Presumably the owners wouldn't mind me storing my crap in their garden. They can walk around it.

I don't condone it, but I had a rueful smile when I squeezed past a pavement parked Jaguar on the way to the station last week. Idiot had parked it on the pavement but adjacent to a telegraph pole, leaving about 10 cm between pole and car. Evidently someone had taken exception and removed the wing mirrors and wipers using non-manufacturer approved methods. I'm less radical and leave a boot print on the paintwork.

[Cudzoziemiec]

https://youtu.be/lbuxuXwhJqM

[Pingu]

On the Beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39847740

[Guy]

On the Beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-39847740

The caption under the third picture in that article:

Sometimes cars mistake the cycle ways for roads, because they are so wide

These driverless cars are everywhere 

[Pingu]

indeed.

[Cudzoziemiec]

machine learning

[Regulator]

In India there is a requirement for any new highway/motorway to have a road for low powered vehicles and cycles built alongside.  For example, you can cycle the 211km from Delhi to Agra alongside the Yamuna Expressway.  Cyclists also have access to the motorway services stations.

[graculus]

On 'You & Yours' today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08p5lbw

[menthel]

Supported this as I have a couple near me (Bushey Road and Coombe Lane in Raynes Park) and discovering other stretches since taken up by road, verge and parking would be nice!

[Martin]

I remember them alongside the A217 and A23 in the 70s; apart from the Severn Bridge it was the only place I ever saw the blue bicycle signs;

I think most are laybys etc now,

didn't the CTC oppose them?

The one alongside the A24 from Leatherhead to Dorking is superb