"Jeremy Parker" wrote in message
...
London is about halfway through building the "London Cycle Network".
Actually to some extent that's rebuilding. Many miles of cycle track
were built alongside the new bypasses in the 1930s, but much of those
routes vanished in the 1960s, mostly unnoticed, and unmourned. You
don't see people mourning lost bike tracks in the way they mourn
canals, or steam trains, or the routemaster bus. Cycle tracks
weren't that popular at the time, actually, except among motorists
who hoped that cyclists could be forced, officially or unofficially,
to get off the roads onto them
Not all the tracks vanished. Some of them are still around.

MAJOR SNIP

Jeremy Parker

The London Borough of Harrow (and probably all of yours) must have spent
thousands and thousands of our pounds, painting cycle lanes on our roads. In
some places they are even coloured green and seem to have a different
surfacing. On one railway bridge on the road between Pinner and North Harrow
they have even planted a line of metal bollards (how much do they cost ?) to
enforce the cycle lane which reduces the road width but which I have NEVER
seen a cyclist use !! In the last two years I don't think I have seen more
than a dozen cyclists using any of these cycle lanes which are all the more
stupid when you see that cars are parked across them. Long Elmes in Harrow
is a typical example with probably as many as 50 cars parked on the cycle
lanes at any one time but never a cyclist in sight. I really resent the
squandering of so much money on a laudable but stupidly executed idea. Given
that there are now far more active motorists than pedestrians or cyclists,
cycle lanes should either be on pavements or segregated completely from the
roads but WITHOUT reducing the road width. /rant
Cheerz,
Baz