As a teenager I was a fearsome cyclist. I had, I recall, three bikes; a heavy chugger, a utility bike and a whiplike racer, for naked speed is fun, all built or re-built by me. The chugger was a heavy old steel machine with Sturmey-Archer gears and wired-in lights powered both by batteries and a dynamo and despite its age was superbly comfortable for long, low speed rides. It was also very sturdy - I once carried a No.19 radio set including power unit and variometer, which must have weighed 30kg, for about 25 miles. All in all, I cycled many thousands, even tens of thousands, of miles. The object wasn't health or exercise but either exploring or visiting mates, who were scattergunned across half the county. I was already smoking, and never quite managed to overcome the uneven burn on a fag when smoking whilst riding, though at 14 I bought a pipe in an experimental effort to do so. So I should be well disposed towards cycling, which I am. But not so well disposed towards the arrogance and violence displayed by many cyclists in London.
Londoners may have failed to notice the little plastic bendy rods springing up in long snakes along their roads; it's what the councils have been doing during lockdown. These wands designate new road space for cyclists. So rapidly have these been deployed, so assured the position of the new routes, one can only imagine that instead of stockpiling PPE the London authorities were stockpiling plastic traffic wands, ready for a crisis such as the Wuhan virus to roll them out overnight. London's incredibly low rate of new infections at just twenty-four a day may mean that drivers venturing out from lockdown will encounter these for the first time, and find that their own roadspace has just been reduced by a third or more.
What I'd like to see are these new spaces colonised by families on bikes, including the wobbly learners, by slow pleasure riders of all ages with wicker baskets or panniers, by cycles with babies and infants strapped into carriers, all cheerily smiling and nodding and behaving gracefully. What I fear we'll get is the lycra louts, with an enormous sense of entitlement, who will with great aggression assume their right to dominate these new spaces, and feel nothing but vindication for their past boorish, uncouth thuggery. They will assume the lane expansion is a reward for their previous loutish and utterly selfish posession of cycle space. And until it becomes legal to kick the buggers off their bikes, I'm not sure what can be done about it.
13 comments:
When I worked in London for a few years I stayed at the Victory Services Club in Marble Arch and needed to get round quite a bit. My preferred modes of transport were: walking, Boris Bike, Bus, Tube, Taxi (pre Uber).
What scared me most about being on a Boris Bike, and I often cycled to/from the Liverpool Station area, were those Lycra clad idiots. I found lorries, taxis and most motorists were usually tolerant and courteous, but the Lycra clad idiots would recklessly cut in an out and on a couple of occasion I feared being knocked it to the traffic or against the kerb.
Anything that curtails their anti-social behaviour gets my blessing, although to be fair the chances of me even visiting London again are as close to zero as makes no difference.
I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong in one respect. I speak with experience. Enfield has created a ~4 mile pair of cycle lanes along the north-south main road down to the North Circular Road. £60m. Half of it from the EU. A Lycra clad cyclist wouldn’t be seen dead in it. All the detritus from the road goes into the cycle lane & causes the high pressure tyres to puncture. So the louts avoid it like the plague & hardly anyone else uses it. In the rush hour it is impossible to overtake a bus so traffic proceeds in a convoy at the pace of the slowest bus. Children are late for school & the whole transport infrastructure brought to a grinding halt just so some bureaucrat can tick a box. (Sorry, 3 bureaucrats 1 in Enfield, 1 in London & 1 in Brussels).
Plastic? Are they mad??
It's the zig-zagging and bouncing up onto the pavement to whizz past red lights that pisses me off, hardly a care for pedestrians. Harsh but I do like seeing the youtube evidence of one or others' comeuppance every now and again, which is sad that they make me feel like that.
I used to bike a lot too, little radio strapped to the back to not miss the charts on Sundays.
Ahhh, the summer time "we all love cycling" debate. It wouldn't be quite so cynical if local authorities had 'seasonal' cycle lanes in cities instead of assuming that a greater %age of people will be using them all-year-round instead of the typical 'fair weather' use they generally get.
I, for one, welcome our lycra-clad overlords.
(where I live - on a national cycle route alongside the Loch I live along - cyclists are welcome customers to my business. They can enjoy 80 miles of almost-traffic-free cycling as a PASS TIME and not have to debase themselves using it as transport to work)
I only had one bike in my youth, hand built by me from whatever was available. My older sister and brother had the new bikes for birthday and Christmas but the money seemed to run out when it came to me - Heath's three day week didn't help and everyone was broke where I lived. I never mastered cycling slowly. Wasn't in me to just cruise along, enjoying the view. Get up to 4 and keep pumping hard until half way up the next hill. Speed is addictive to a thirteen year-old. Stretched many a chain slack so periodically Dad would take a link out with a tool he had for the purpose. Cycling in Dorset in the late sixties early seventies was more than easy it was pure freedom. Hardly any cars during the day so for mile after mile we'd plow the road down the middle, fagging it from a packet of 5 Woodbine. Happy days.
Steve
YouTube is awash with videos made by Lycra Louts as they race through London complaining about the rest of the population in their self-entitled away.
Every other road-user from the 40-tonne wagon to the zimmer-frame clutching OAP shares road space and modifies their speed and direction accordingly. What is most striking about these self-posted videos is the determination of these louts to make progress at speed regardless of what the 'effing' other road users are doing.
Sane government would ban bikes fom cities, unless they are fitted with wicker baskets, saddle bags and a BELL!
I think there is a fundamental problem with a lot of these lycra louts.
30-40 years ago most of them probably would have had flash cars. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of them really want flash motors but feel pressured into riding a pushbike (and I have found that using the term pushbike sets their teeth on edge which is why I always use it). Societal pressures, "green" propaganda etc.
If you genuinely like riding a pushbike and do so without being a tool, good for you.
But you wouldn't park in the middle of the pavement, a sweaty, lycra clad narcissistic bellend, with weights, effing and blinding at anybody intruding into "your" space. So why do it with a pushbike?
Sometimes it's good to remember, they're vehicles and should be ridden in a responsible manner. However a small minority do seem to want to use the victim card... as this little video shows.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=s1mzs_1589477146
Enjoy your weekend folks!
I'd go further - the whole zoning of the highway (bus lanes, cycle routes etc) has made folk more territorial and aggressive and is a most inefficient use of limited space. Look at any old film of busy street scenes and every one intermingles with care and politeness.The late Hans Monderman had the right ideas with shared space which not only improved traffic flow but reduced accidents.
M.
There is most definitely distinct breed of uberlouts who are a world apart from normal ‘cooking’ cyclists like myself.
A little while I was out in on my Thorn Catalyst - a nice hybrid with marvellously engineered Rohloff gears. I arrived at a junction and tried to engage in jolly conversation with two chaps in spray-on canary outfits. I was completely ignored. They looked at me as I commented on the weather or whatever, then looked at each other, looked at me in a pitying sort of way and sprinted off.
And Radders, don’t try driving from Needham to Bramford via Barking Tye and Somersham on a Sunday. Around every bend there will be a blue lycra clad Peleton of Ipswich clubbers.
....... and they wont let you past.
There are two other types of cyclists, the fixed wheel brigade, and me on my electric machine, which I love, as in my 73rd year, I can do any hill around here in leafy Kent!
I had a fixed wheel bike once, it was my dad's and I fell off about every ten seconds, but as I look stupid in lycra, especially with those little mauve wraparound glasses so they can swivel at the girls, I'm very happy about facing a one in seven hill tomorrow, when I tootle around the lanes where we live, and take not one jot of notice of anyone else, as I'll just stick in the middle of the road, and stuff them.
Michael is 72 and a half...
I had a reasonable conversation with lycra guy asking him why they continue to hog the Highway after it has been narrowed to accommodate a cycle lane.
His reply confirms what you say about detritus/burst tyres.
Councils get funding for establishing cycle lanes, not for their maintenance.
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