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Neil Williams · September 11th 05, 04:59 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 11 Sep 2005 08:58:07 -0700, wrote:

That was you! I was thinking very brave and very stupid.

Not really any more dangerous than on a motorcycle. On most of the MK
grid system, it's either dual carriageway with generally good
visibility (straight roads, you see) or single carriageway with the
road effectively being 2.5 lanes wide with a shaded bit in the middle,
meaning there is almost always room to overtake a cyclist safely.

The one major exception to this, Saxon Street, now has a 40mph limit,
which strikes me as an entirely reasonable situation due to not only
this but other things that differ about its layout from the rest of
the grid, it being one of the oldest parts.

They're generally pretty good in the South. Perhaps it was a bit of
Hamburg that we didn't destroy in the war.

Quite possibly. The particular example I gave was near the university
which is surrounded by relatively old buildings.

If a UFO did this to you, you might react in the same way. Motorists
and Pedestrians are not used to cyclists, except in some towns like
Cambridge.

Or Milton Keynes, which does have an unusually high amount of cycling.
People still walk down the Redways (a wide shared cycle/pedestrian
arrangement, and emphatically NOT just a footpath) paying no
attention, however. There really needs to be an advertising campaign
to get pedestrians to treat them as quiet country roads instead, that
is to walk on the right hand side facing oncoming "traffic" and not to
block the entire width. Occasional cyclists, OTOH, need educating to
ride on the left and give way at junctions where appropriate. Both
are as bad - and that drives me onto the roads!

Neil

--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
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