"peter" wrote in message
oups.com...
I remember trying to use the old cycle paths alonside the A10 south
of
the Cambridge roundabout (now an underpass where the A10 crosses
the
North Circular Road) back in the 1970's

The problem was that whenever a side road joined the main road, the
give way line was between the cycle path and the main road. So
mototists joining the main road would shoot across the cycle path
without looking, and cyclists would have to look out at every
junction.
I soon realised that it was far easier to cycle on the main
carriagway
where I had right of way.

Add to that the fact that the cycle paths always vanished at big
junctions (like the Cambridge roundabout), and the incentive to use
them was zero!

In 1958 Professor Sir Colin Buchanan, one of Britain's greatest
traffic engineers and town planners, wrote in his book "Mixed
Blessing, The Motor in Britain"

"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been."

Not much changes. The consulting firm that Buchanan founded has been
quite active in planning the London Cycle Network, but doesn't seem
to have kept it's founder's attitude



Jeremy Parker