by John Holland, on July 18th, 2012
Parked car on cycle lane on Albert Road Southsea
The title of this post is the headline for an article in Portsmouth’s daily newspaper published on 18 July. Here is a response from Portsmouth Cycle Forum.
Portsmouth Cycle Forum does not condone illegal cycling, yet one must ask why a minority of people take to the pavements.
The answer is that many fear for their safety on the city’s busy and crowded roads.
Portsmouth has a collection of disjointed, badly signed and poor quality cycle lanes often ending abruptly throwing the cyclist into the traffic.
Cyclists are encouraged to use the so-called quieter back streets which are choked with parked cars, obscured junctions and used by some motorists who are unaware of the prevailing speed limits.
Plans for cycle improvements are often promised, but last year’s highways budget of £2million had nothing for cycle enhancements.
Travelling by bicycle is increasing in popularity, it is cheap, healthy and environmentally friendly. Major cities such as Copenhagen, New York, London have all embraced cycling and have many new measures to encourage it.
Rather than urging just cyclists to be more polite, the Police should be urging all road users to be more polite – and this must include enforcing the speed limits on our roads. Perhaps then will the problem of pavement cycling disappear.
You can read the News article at here.
And Portsmouth City Council’s version is here.
Crackpot – not crack down.
Portsmouth City Council in 2011/12 unfairly spends not one single penny – 1p – on cycling, of £2 milllion pounds of your money for highway LTP3 budget. PCC chooses not to provide 1cm of new safe legal alternatives for cyclists, whilst turning its perpetual blind eye to far more lethal vehicles routinely speeding, and parked on cycle lanes, double yellow lines, and yes – pavements. This £2m list of LTP3 schemes was approved behind closed doors in March 2011, mysteriously away from your gaze, dear reader. Why? Further – PCC does not count and monitor cycling in these schemes. How can PCC possibly have a clue what ad hoc barmy ideas work? PCC quietly sacked its cycling champion last year. PCC has no current cycling strategy. So – all in all PCC clearly has no fair idea or plan for the enlightened place of the bicycle in the very best clean active healthy 21st century city.
PCC institutionally demonises and discriminates against all Portsmouth cyclists in word, pound spent, and deed – like this crackpot crackdown.
I wrote to Jason Fazackarley
Dear Jason,
I sincerely hope that you were misquoted in The News, or that your words were taken out of context, and if that is the case, that you urge The News to publish a rectification.
“Many cyclists say they ride on the pavement because they feel unsafe on the road.
“Our advice is to get off your bike and walk on the pavement until you feel it is safe to get on the road.
So you are telling cyclists that motorists can bully you off the road, and when they have driven past you can go back on the road?
Do you seriously think that people who cycle recklessly on the pavement are the same ones who feel unsafe on the road?
I think that it take one bullying motorist to make a group of cyclists feel unsafe for a long time.
I teach my children to cycle on the road, they are 9 and 12 years old, but reading your comments I am made to feel an irresponsible rather than a responsible parent!
“But please also tell us why you felt unsafe, and we will look at improving that area for cyclists.
But as you are open for suggestions for improvement, I have a wish list to make the roads in my area safer for my children (I get by OK myself being a confident cyclist)
Introduce speed-reducing measures, such as speed bumps, in 20 mph zones
Extend the double yellow lines at crossroads to improve visibility.
Re-introduce two-way cycling in Eastfield and Westfield Road, so that we can avoid the busy Eastney Road
Apply zero tolerance to cars parked on cycle lanes
It’s not rocket science. It just takes vision, leadership and guts to stand up to the motorist lobby.
Best wishes
Eric de Greef