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Someone Somewhere · October 13th 17, 02:04 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 13/10/2017 14:37, wrote:
In article , (Someone
Somewhere) wrote:

On 13/10/2017 02:32, wrote:
In article ,
(GeorgeK) wrote:

Thank you all for your replies. My wife doesn't drive but we are
willing to live on the suburbs of Oxford provided that she can take at
least the bus to work which is at the city center. We are mainly
interested in living near a city with certain amenities (restaurants,
bars, shopping street, etc).

The idea of staying at Headington doesn't sound bad as it seems to be
less than 30min from the city center by bus. From your replies, it
seems that the 6th zone (Ickenham, Hillington or Rickmansworth) is the
closest I can get by car to London before being stuck in the jam.

When I checked the commute from Didcot to London by train it wasn't
faster (or cheaper) compared to Oxford. You reckon that Didcot would be
more convenient though?

Has you wife actually looked at the cycling option? Oxford is only
second to Cambridge for UK cycle commuting and up to 5 miles is an easy
cycle commute. My wife doesn't drive and regularly cycles to her job
2.5-3 miles away as I did when working even though I drive.

The problem with relying on cyclng is that it's lovely when the
weather is, and when it isn't it's bloody horrible.

I live on what is allegedly one of the busiest cycle routes in the UK
and it's incredibly noticeable how usage drops when the weather is
less than clement.

Because of this I'd seriously argue that a modal shift to cycling is
impossible - you still have to dimension the transport infrastructure
for those bad days, and if you've just taken a chunk out of it to
accomodate the cycle lane then for periods of the year (e.g.
"February") you're actually making things worse, not better.

Sorry, but that is as ridiculous as saying you will drive even though 10% of
the time traffic will be so bad that you will be seriously late to work.

No it's not - it's observational that during poor weather (or winter)
the number of cyclists reduces dramatically. Do you dispute this?

Non-trivial rain occurs as commuter time well under 10% of the time. It
isn't that hard to get good cycling raingear either.

That's not the point, the point is cyclists seem fickle about the
weather but presumably will still make their journey which presumably
will be via tube / trian / taxi / uber / car.

Look at Cambridge commuting if you don't believe me. Traffic is worse on wet
days but that makes cycling even more advantageous in travel times.

That may well be, but a) this is still uk.transport.london however many
times you wish to bring Cambridge into it and b) I suggest that when
introducing segregated cycle lanes that reduce overall throughput of
people (excepting cyclists) then this needs to be taken into account.

I'm not arguing that cyclists shouldn't have safe routes to follow, or
similar, just that cyclists have differences that aren't shared by other
modes of transport which means they don't use the road capacity with the
uniformity of other users.

Similarly it could be fairly argued that on days of bus strikes,
penalties for other vehicles using bus lanes should be removed, but such
events happen far less frequently than inclement weather (probably less
than 0.1%).

Again, I'm not arguing that such measures are practical - they probably
aren't (reasonably) - just that such a modal shift is not as simplistic
is as often presented (creating safe, segregated cycle lanes will mean
people shift to bikes and overall journey times will decrease and not
increase)