exdulwicher

Does that apply for other walks of life too? If you drove into a pothole and wrote off your car wheel, would you be happy if the council told you to slow down and take a bit more care? If you were walking along the pavement and tripped on a cracked and uneven paving slab, it'd be fine for the ambulance service to tell you to stop wasting their time and you should have just looked where you were going? If a wheelchair user fell down an unguarded open manhole cover, perhaps you'd be first on scene looking down at them and saying it's their own fault for not slowing down a bit? Or would you think that's it's not unreasonable that a public space should be maintained to a basic standard of safety? That's one of the most crassly stupid comments I've read on here and it's up against some really quite stiff competition!

Mice will eat *anything*! That shop had a couple of very low food hygiene ratings over the years (and it was closed for "refurbishment" for a while which was obviously the first attempt to deal with the pest problem) so I'm not surprised by that article. You'd hope that pest control would have dealt with the majority of them...

I've given you several reasons but as usual you're weaving around with insinuations rather than asking actual questions or stating your own views. Here's the document: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/travel-in-london-2024-active-travel-trends-acc.pdf TfL themselves highlight fluctuations and changes in travel behaviour noting for example (page 9) in 2023 the annual demand on Santander Cycles saw a drop of 26 per cent from the previous year. On closer inspection, it is seen that this drop occurred only for demand from casual users (that is, those who are not registered members), while hires by members continued to increase (by three per cent between 2022 and 2023). Key features behind some of the data (page 14) However, in recent years there has been a steady and substantial decrease in the proportion of cycling trips for shopping or personal business. This is in line with the decline in trip rates for shopping or personal business observed overall (regardless of mode of transport). What it's clearly showing is that shopping habits have changed (thanks Amazon!) and fewer people are making shopping trips overall (which also means fewer people cycling to the shops). There's all sorts of this wider context in every part of the data but you're fixating on an apparent short-term decline and arguing about percentages - I'm not even clear on what point you're actually trying to make. Most of it was cut! The National Audit Office said that investment of £7bn over the CWIS2 (Cycing & Walking Investment Strategy) period was required to meet two of the four CWIS2 2025 targets and come close to meeting the other two. Government initially committed to spend £3.8bn through CWIS2, of which only just over a third (£1.3bn) was ring-fenced for active travel. Spending just £3.8bn would effectively result in all four 2025 objectives being missed by a large margin. The UK Government were aware from 2022 that their own CWIS2 objectives would not come close to being met, even before it reduced the funding further still, to around £3 billion, in a Written Ministerial Statement on 9 March 2023. This included a dramatic reduction in the amount of dedicated funding (which is primarily capital funding for local authorities’ Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plans). Ringfenced funding for the final two years of CWIS2 (i.e. 2023/4 and 2024/5) was cut by £233m, from £488m to £250m (of which only £100m is capital funding). This has massively exacerbated the sense of uncertainty within local authorities to deliver the Government’s cycling and walking ambitions. This is also affected by the previous decades of austerity which hollowed out council back-room functions (like Legal, Procurement, HR etc) to the bone which means that every scheme going through is delayed because there's limited capacity to check it all, hire the relevant people, go through the contracts and then deliver on it. By the time it's all gone through, costs have gone up by 20% so what's delivered then gets cut / redesigned / watered down midway through. It's a woefully inefficient way of doing things. In short - yes, if the funding required had actually been delivered (rather than being grandly announced and then successively cut back), if the designs and ambitions had been as transformational as required than there could easily have been a tenfold increase. But tinkering around the edges and taking 5 years to deliver a hundred square metres of public realm in Dulwich is not "transformational"... (don't get me wrong, it's good but it's nowhere close to the speed or scale required to deliver a tenfold increase).

Growth was in decline... 🤔 Growth rates will fluctuate day to day, week to week, month to month etc which is why you look at overall trends. Note that against all this there have been changes in population, changes in transport options (like the Elizabeth Line for example, also changes to congestion and ULEZ zones / charges), there's been a pandemic and associated changes in working patterns. There's a whole mix of factors in the background but *overall*, the trend is up. Imagine if you drive 12,000 miles in a year. That's an average of 1000 miles a month, yes? You could draw a dead straight graph of that growth. Except it won't look like that will it? That month you were away and the car sat on your drive. 0 miles, no growth in mileage. That month you did a big road trip, 3000 miles. HUGE growth! But the next month you WFH a lot and didn't drive to work much so it was only 500 miles. And so on. But the average over a one year period is still 1000 miles a month. Same here. The increase is the 43% stated. It honestly doesn't matter much what happened month to month, year to year so long as you look at the figures in Year X and the figures in Year Y and calculate accordingly. You can absolutely get more in depth with things like "ULEZ zone extended on this date" and "Elizabeth Line opened on that date" and "new cycle lane installed here" and "new housing development built there" and that'll obviously play into it but what it being talked about here is a headline figure. X % increase over Y years. It is as simple as that.

It's the standard "keep yourself relevant" method. It doesn't matter what is announced or what happens in terms of cycling, it'll never be enough, or never be justifiable, or never be "worth it". If 20 people use a cycle lane, that's not enough, it should be constantly busy 24/7 and this needs to happen within 10 minutes of the cycle lane being finished, otherwise it's a scandalous waste of taxpayer money. If the cycle lane is busy then everyone on it is a danger to themselves and everyone around and drivers can't drive and pedestrians can't cross and won't someone think of the children / elderly / disabled / wildlife?! Also of course, it must be very difficult for many people on this forum to actually understand how this increase has happened because remember that most of them simply cannot see cyclists at all! They are literally invisible. I'm not surprised that some people on here claim to have never seen anyone using a cycle lane. The cycle lanes are really busy but they're actually in an alternate dimension, imperceptible to drivers. That explains why so many of them park in cycle lanes, they just assume they're empty.

Various explanations. One is that over the years you have consistently cherry picked stats and figures to suit whatever your opinion is at the time, shouting about the ones that you like, downplaying the ones you don't so that will have skewed your perspective. I honestly don't know how much of that is wilfully misleading on your part or you simply don't understand how stats work - sadly facts don't really care what you do or don't believe in, they remain facts no matter what. Another is that mainstream media (of all political persuasions) are not good with stats because most people (readers and the people writing the newspapers) don't understand them so they'll dumb them down. Now to an extent, that's the job of media, to take a complex topic and unravel the basics so that the layperson can get the gist of it but it does lead to confusing stats such as "50% increase in cycling" (for example) but with no indication in the headline of over what time period, from what baseline, is it numbers of people cycling (and if so is there any understanding of how often those people are riding) or is it done on mileage / time...? Very basic examples: If I ride 10 miles in a day and then the next day I ride 15 miles, that could be interpreted as a 50% increase in cycling! If an average of 100 people ride their bike 3x a week or more for a year and then the next year, an average of 150 people do the same for a year, that's also a 50% increase in cycling. However, that won't pick up local and period-specific trends. During the school holidays for example, only 20 people are riding for 3 months of the year cos everyone is on holiday - whereas you'd probably look at that and shout "DECLINE IN CYCLING!!!", anyone doing some statistical analysis on it would look at the overall trend and agree that yes, there are peaks and troughs (as with all stats) but the overall average trend is a 50% increase. As an aside, you can see this with vehicle traffic; the School Run Effect in Dulwich is very pronounced because of the sheer number of schools. Another reason is, as I mentioned above, locality. Where exactly are these stats being measured - is it City of London, Greater London, London within the N & S Circulars, all London boroughs combined...? This also needs balancing out because averages hide a lot of info. If you have a safe and efficient cycling corridor (like Greendale, Calton, Dulwich, HH) it's very well used compared to a corridor like Denmark Hill, EDG, Village Way, HH. So someone standing at Goose Green will see a very different picture of number of people cycling vs someone standing in Dulwich Square which is why personal views and "I've seen / I've not seen..." is such a terrible measure of understanding. (same way that if you said there were an average of 30 buses an hour in Dulwich - there might well be 30 buses but someone on Woodwarde Road will see zero and someone on LL will see 20 and someone on EDG will see 10. Every single one of them would question the "30 buses per hour" narrative.) And a final reason is methodology although that one is easy to balance via various statistical calculations. Data now is more dense and detailed than ever before via traffic count sensors, mobile phone data, fitness tracking apps, connected vehicles etc so there's a constant process of adjustment and factoring in new info while still maintaining the old info. *it should be obvious but all the figures, counts and percentages I've quoted above are examples, designed to show the picture of how stats work. I don't know how many buses there are, I've chosen easy to understand figures.

It crops up on police social media feeds regularly. That one came from this BBC article. Police car stopped on the hard shoulder of a motorway (so as per standard police operating it'll have had it's flashing red lights on too). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjw23pnde6jo Still someone drove into the back of it. Happens with those massive impact protection trucks that they deploy behind roadworkers too. Massive flashy "MOVE RIGHT" orange arrows and lots of hi-vis, still people pile into the back of them. Oh, cos a few posts back, you were suggesting that cyclists were all the same and using the "giving others a bad name" nonsense and you were seemingly suggesting that all two-wheeled contraptions should be treated the same. Now you're saying that there are good and bad ones? Maybe perhaps, "individuals". And for the record, no-one on here is suggesting that people should NOT wear hi-vis. We're pointing out that it's not the actual issue. Wear what you want, I don't care. The issue is not whether cyclists (or pedestrians) do or don't wear hi-vis or helmets (or any other clothing), what is being pointed out is that it rarely makes the blindest bit of difference. The fact that drivers can (and do) regularly crash into things painted in very bright hi-vis is an indication that it makes sod all difference. The issue is that they're not LOOKING in the first place. Not that they don't SEE. You can make yourself easier to be seen with lights or hi-vis or reflectives or cycling around wearing all-black and jumping red lights (at which point everyone sees you and posts on here about it). But the primary cause of car crashes (be that car/car, car/bike or car/pedestrian) is people not looking. And that's significantly different to not seeing. There was quite a famous article by an RAF fighter pilot about that concept translated to road safety. https://www.welovecycling.com/wide/2019/06/26/things-you-should-learn-about-bike-safety-from-a-royal-air-force-pilot/

People are simply pointing out (not unreasonably) that it doesn't matter how visible you make yourself if the driver is not looking, not paying attention or doesn't care. Pictures like this crop up fairly routinely: If you can hit something like that then a cyclist can be dressed as a fluoro unicorn and it'll still make sod all difference. Already on here you've had at least one comment about how someone has been hit while wearing all the "correct" kit. A few years ago I had one of the closest near-death experiences I've ever had, coming from North Dulwich Station to the RPH / EDG crossroads (on a bike with working lights, plus I had reflective ankle tabs and a brightly coloured top and a helmet), I stopped at the just-changing-to-red lights. The driver behind knew full well I was there cos he'd been behind me for 200m by that point, he just didn't want to wait so he floored it through the lights. The wing mirror brushed against my right arm and wrist as he sailed through the red light. That, by the way, is one reason I will rarely stop if there's anything behind me and the lights are just in the process of changing. Can pretty much guarantee that at least one of the vehicles will just floor it to get through. And as per my previous comment, you all seem highly capable of not only spotting anyone on any sort of two-wheeled contraption, but also describing exactly what they're wearing and how they're riding! It's just yet another anti-cyclist tirade which, coming from someone who claims to ride a bike, is somewhat surprising.

Normally you're one of the regulars complaining that a thread goes off topic or has been hijacked by the "what about a car?" brigade. Here we have a thread nominally about the difficulty of seeing some cyclists which has now veered wildly off into the realm of e-bikes in Amsterdam! I maintain by the way that there is no issue whatsoever with cyclist visibility. You're all able to spot a cyclist at 1000 paces, state what they're wearing (usually also including the use or otherwise of a helmet / earphones), the brand of black clothing they're wearing, the pavement they're riding on, the red light they've just jumped, the type of bike they're on, the speed they're going at (which, if they're on a road is always so slow that they're holding up everything for miles around and if it's anywhere else is so fast that terrified pedestrians are leaping for cover as they hurtle along) and how much respect / empathy they deserve if they're hit by a poor innocent driver.

I was just going to say, I was sure it was you on a different thread arguing the definitions of SUV vs crossover vs off-roader and getting upset that everything was being lumped in under "SUV". Well the same applies to bikes and there is a legal difference between e-bike (or EAPC, electrically assisted pedal cycle) and illegally modified cycles or unregistered e-moped / e-motorbikes. "acknowledge" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I explained it - you seemed to be under the impression that Amsterdam was flapping around panicking about e-mopeds etc, I simply pointed out that every city authority is doing this (and similar) on a daily basis. Anticipating issues, working out possible solutions, trialling them, gathering data and acting accordingly. It's strange how it's always bikes that are the issue with you though isn't it? Paris for example has identified that the major issue is cars (of all shapes and sizes and models and engine types, Penguin!) and has taken some dramatic steps to seriously restrict them including massively increasing the parking charges for heavier vehicles (which is normally but not exclusively the SUV-style) yet you're strangely not going on about the chaos over there of too much vehicle traffic and the actions of the authorities to "ban" them (it's not a ban, it's just some restrictions and extra charges).

The point I was making Rockets is that any decent city transportation authority is doing this sort of stuff day in day out - in fact if they weren't doing it, you'd be complaining too! Is [xxxx] becoming an issue? What can we do about it? What needs improving in order to manage [xxxx]? What is the cause of [xxxx]? What possible solutions are there? So let's say the use of e-scooters has become an issue. Well 10 years ago, e-scooters didn't really exist so there were no laws around them, you may as well have suggested laws around time machines. Well now, they are an issue (and they don't actually exist in legislation because the law invariably takes a while to catch up with reality). So the solution put forward (in the UK) was to run legally recognised hire schemes using private operators (Lime, Dott, Tier etc) and use that to gather evidence as to what can / should be done about e-scooters in general. It's not a perfect solution (cos this is the UK and we're about 40 years behind Amsterdam in this respect). But it's a mostly workable one. Every city in the world is grappling with these sorts of dilemmas on a daily basis, tweaking things (mostly behind the scenes, the public will rarely be aware of a new algorithm at a set of traffic lights for example) and occasionally, it demands more public measures like saying "OK, back in the days when fatbikes made up 2% of city traffic, there were no real issues, but now they make up 10% it's probably time to move them off the cycle lanes, but we can take a bit of roadspace away from cars and pop in a special "big e-assist vehicle lane", everyone will be happy" Apart from Rockets who will treat it as some massive conspiracy.

Surely it is the responsibility of the highways authority (not sure about Amsterdam but over here it'd mostly be the local council) to manage any issues within transportation? That's literally their job to look at problems, issues etc and deal with them. That could include: buses not running on time too many cars growing use of e-motorbikes / fatbikes / e-mopeds overcrowding at a station etc A few years ago, there were very few e-motorbikes and as they came along the legislation hasn't really kept up so a blind eye might have been turned to them using cycle lanes but now there are a lot more of them, they're faster than regular bikes and e-bikes and maybe the law needs changing a bit to recognise that? That's not a "problem". It's a highways authority doing what they're paid to do. Same way as over here people are finally realising that there are simply too many cars and they might need to do something (or some things) to discourage car use a bit. Again, not really a "problem", it's just an evolution of local needs in conjunction with some regional / national strategic oversight. And yes, fatbikes are not e-bikes. Same with those delivery riders around here, they're not e-bikes. They're illegally modified / illegally used electric motorbikes, or electric mopeds It's really quite an important distinction. Normal legal e-bikes (25kph, pedal operated etc) are classed in law as bicycles. Electric mopeds / motorbikes, any form of bicycle with a throttle is classed as a motorbike. That's the law, regardless of what you want to believe or what the lazier elements of the media print.

It was irony* *Like gold-y and bronze-y but made of iron. 😉

Oh I can't see *anything* cos none of them are wearing hi-vis. That's literally just a black screen, none of those boats are in hi-vis. How careless of them! If someone paddles into one of those boats, I'll have no sympathy for it cos it's not dressed properly. Stupid boat. Where's its lifejacket and helmet? I had to look away from the rest of it, the absolute chaos of all those black things colliding with each other was traumatic. It's been a while since I saw Amsterdam actually; last time I saw it, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson were having a massive shootout in the place. I assume Rockets must have been visiting at that time and assumed that was just normal rush hour. 😉

It's a fair question. Rockets seems to have fairly consistently complained about any and all traffic measures but maybe we've missed his thread of glowing endorsements about Dulwich Square, school streets, cycle lanes and bus lanes?? Some positivity would be nice so a list of what people like and support might be quite enlightening!