We’re all supposed to be abandoning our cars and taking to either using public transport or cycling everywhere, apparently. I stumbled across a brilliant site (linked from BBC News) with some excellent examples of why taking to your bike might be a very bad idea indeed.
While some local councils spare no expense in marking their cycleways clearly, some prefer the alternative approach. Some go out of their way to make the cycleways as unobtrusive as possible, while others are high-visibility and their use is highly advantageous. Forget those bike lanes in Germany where you have to share with buses and get your own set of traffic lights at junctions to allow you to cross before cars start cutting you up – we deal with the problem much more cost-effectively with well-designed filter lanes and completely segregated stretches of cycleway!
Seriously now, what the hell? I can only assume that local councils are paid by central government per cycleway. The stupidest one I’ve seen with my own eyes was in Scotland, where the incredibly narrow cycleways added on either side of the road made it too narrow for two cars to pass without – guess what – encroaching on the cycleways. Nice one Scotland. That was as nothing to these horrors, though – more hilarity on the site.
