Shame on you drivers.
Recently I've been hearing a lot from irate drivers about how cyclists are the bane of their lives, and a wretched nuisance. This surprised as much as it pained me- I always felt people would value or at least pity cyclists as performing a small service which most are too lazy to perform, manfully bearing bad roads and worse weather. I know I always felt proud claiming my strip of road. To put it bluntly- I don't see where smug drivers get off hating us- we're the vulnerable ones!
I found this article by Lionel Shriver who Mrs C at least will know as the writer of We Need To Talk About Kevin (an excellent if decidedly disturbing book: read it) which I hope will enlighten y'all:
London: the city that hates cyclists
Lionel Shriver
Tuesday July 26, 2005The Guardian
It's a known fact that drivers hate cyclists. Yet it may come as a surprise to the droves of Londoners who have flocked to bike stores since the city's public transit bombings that London cyclists hate each other. A bicycle has been my primary transportation for 40 years, and I've never encountered a cycling "community" more antagonistic and lacking in camaraderie than London's. Regardless of pace, London cyclists consider any bicycle in front of them an indignity. When gluts collect in rush hours, they compete viciously to lead the pack.
Obviously, cycling's athletic component excites the ego. Yet the capital's push-bikers resent one another to an exceptional degree because the city has made such nominal provision for their existence. London cyclists negotiate a perilous Darwinian universe, jockeying for dominion of a narrow passage that is constantly vanishing altogether. Abusive, hostile drivers rouse hostility in return, and in a state of blind rage everyone and everything in one's way is naturally subject to indiscriminate loathing.
What else is unique to London? The 10ft-long bike lane. I do not exaggerate. All over the city, you have these bizarrely weeny segments of green grit two feet wide, nicely inlaid with a picture of a little white bicycle. Arbitrarily, they start; bang, 10 feet later they stop. They end in a parking space, with a car in it. They do not resume on the other side. For city planners, what is the concept here? A cyclist is meant to a) ride over the top of the parked car; b) go home and cry; c) lie down and die; or d) swerve abruptly into passing traffic.
Bingo! Expect indignant motorists to lean on their horns and sideswipe your handlebars, but the correct answer, if you ever intend to get anywhere, is d.
Worse than nothing, these ludicrously brief segments of "bike lane" are insulting. I often come upon metropolitan work crews labouring over tiny spot projects meant to gesture towards "alternative transportation" without making it one whit safer to cycle. Round the corner from my flat is an insanely elaborate pedestrian signal for a lone bike path that intersects Borough High Street. I have never seen a pedestrian stop for it. I shudder to think what that signal cost.
Likewise, I recoil at the cost of the cheery TV adverts Ken Livingstone has run this year sponsoring perky commuters who've discovered the joys of London cycling. All that money should have been ploughed into an overhaul of the city's bike routes - one that facilitates these cherry-cheeked citizens covering a reasonable distance in a reasonably direct manner without getting killed.
Of course, a large proportion of London roadways have no bike lanes at all. Instead, the cyclist is to ride in the bus lane. Are any two vehicles less suited to sharing the same space? Bus drivers revile cyclists, and seem to relish corralling them into the kerb. Worse, cycles and buses often keep the same rough pace. Yet since the bus stops and surges, the two vehicles play perilous leap-frog for miles at a go.
How is it that parking is allowed in bike lanes on evenings and weekends? When I tell my American friends about this policy, they go, " What ?"
I've yet to witness a policeman issuing a ticket to a motorist because he has violated a cyclist's right of way (assuming there is any such thing). It is presupposed, even by law enforcement, that if you get on a bicycle you want to be treated like rubbish. Cars routinely commandeer bike lanes for left-hand turning lanes and loading zones. Why not? No traffic cop will ever do them for it.
When construction or public works obliterate cycling lanes, the lanes are never restored. Westminster bridge has been under renovation for, what, four years? The fact that the fencing around the repairs has completely eliminated the northbound cycling lane hasn't bothered any transit official, though all that would have been required to replace it was a tin of paint.
New York City also suffers from Disappearing Bike Lane Syndrome. Continuous bike lanes along Manhattan avenues are reliably bunged with pretzel vendors, delivery trucks and wandering British tourists who (understandably, given the contempt in which the lanes are held in their capital) fancy that bike lanes are extensions of the sidewalk. But a few years ago, New York constructed a dedicated bikeway on the West Side that goes all the way from the southern tip of the island at Battery Park City to the northern end at the George Washington Bridge. This is not some dinky goat path. It is nicely paved. Its two lanes are each 5ft wide. A double yellow line runs down the middle like a proper roadway. This artery alone has transformed biking in Manhattan, which is now vastly safer, not to mention faster. Plans are under way to construct a mirror artery on the East Side as well.
On the West Side Bikeway, sure, cyclists are still competitive. But they don't hate each other. There's enough space to overtake, and they're not foaming at the mouth because some overweight jerk in an SUV just cut them up while they were doing 30mph. Instead, bikers' communal antipathy is reserved for in-line skaters (aka, evil incarnate) and $2,000 prams the size of Hummers.
Why is there no similar bikeway along the Thames? The Embankment's bike lanes are as fitful and farcical as everywhere else. If Livingstone is truly committed to alternative transport, he needs to establish sustained north-south and east-west routes for cycles whose lanes do not sporadically vanish and force pedallers into the path of (justly) consternated motorists. He needs to get the Met to regard violations of cyclist's rights as ticket-worthy infractions, and to clarify firmly that those green-gritted pathways with the cute inlaid pictures are not car parks - not even at weekends.
Until then? Go away! We don't need any more little friends! Don't you believe that guff about how cycling makes you fit; it makes you tired! The weather is terrible! Ooh, ugh - you get dirty and sweaty, and drivers will lean censoriously on their horns when you're obeying all the traffic laws just because you exist! Maybe cycling does save a whack of money, but can any amount of cash compensate for the fact that bike helmets are so naff? So what if a bicycle is the fastest and most reliable way of getting around London, especially now that the whole tube system shuts down whenever a greasy chip bag gets abandoned on a bench. Haven't you ever heard of being "fashionably late"?
posted by warm as toast at 3:55 pm
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