This is a rant. Please ignore it if you wish.
Here in Bristol, where I've ridden a bike for about 35 years, we have a lot of money spent on 'schemes'.
In the last five years or so we've spent (of other people's money!):
- 12 million on bus lanes (which have CAUSED at least three serious accidents (incl. fatality) when pedestrrians have been hit)
- More than 10 million on 20mph zones
- Unknown amounts on "residents' parking schemes"
Had this money gone straight to the police to pay for traffic officers, I think it would have been far better spent.
Cyclists belong on the roads -- on SAFE roads -- not pavements. The enthusiasm for breaking traffic law, either by riding on the pavements or jumping red lights (or whatever) is understandable, but not really excusable. The ones that do it aren't actually statistically safer because they are, by definintion, behaving unpredictably, and thus very likely to do something a driver will misinterpret. Never mind hitting pedestrians (well, they do here, anyway)...
Enforcing good driver behaviour, by actually catching the bad ones, would work. Many drivers resent cyclists sharing their road space, and that attitude needs changing. Similarly, cyclists need to ride to a higher standard and be law abiding, just like anyone else. Enforcing both is the police's responsibility, yet their funding is being cut.
Accidents are CAUSED by many of these expensive schemes, especially at the boundaries. They are also rarely thought through properly, and the law of unintended consequences applies with a vengance:
- One of our expensive bus lanes had to be re-done (planners' fault, so at the taxpayers' expense), because it was found to be causing FOUR MILE tailbacks simply because it was about 100 FEET too long, and traffic couldn't use a junction properly.
- I've already mentioned the fatalities and other accidents caused by the scheme in the Centre.
- I now live on a major road which is officially 20MPH. At the bottom end of my road is a police station, a major hospital with a casualty department and a fire station. Guess which road they use with blues+twos to get places fast. But pedestrians -- many are elderly round here (and deaf!) -- are now EXPECTING 20MPH traffic! There are five zebra crossings between here and the police station. The first fatality will probably be from a police car, with a preoccupied driver forgetting to switch on the siren, or a full fire engine overturning after hitting the high curb on the islands.
- We have another major road very close by, with a 20MPH section on one of its widest parts for less than 350 yards. I am certain the only purpose is future revenue-raising. Obviously I live in a city, but this bit of road has LOWER housing density than the 30MPH bits either side of it.
- We have several bus lanes where the buses run against one-way traffic flow. The predictable accidents have happened, quite a lot.
Our city traffic department seems almost completely unaccountable. This has got far worse since we got a mayor with executive powers. Schemes that have had HUGE amounts of local resident and political opposition have been pushed through regardless of locals or their councillors.
Our traffic is slower than ever before. The city has more traffic light poles than it can count (there are seventy four on the old Tramways Centre alone, which was a simple roundabout in the 1980s). Someone is getting very rich through all this, and our roads are no more efficiently used, nor safer for the 'greenest' users, meaning cyclists and pedestrians.
There have to be better ways of doing all this...
E.
