Category Archives: Space for Cycling

Articles relating to infrastructure and urban design to enable safe cycling.

Bolton’s idea of a strategic cycle route.

There will be a meeting of the Bolton Cycle Forum on Wednesday, so I have been having a look at the most recent documentation I can find on the cycling strategy of Bolton Council. This is the “Bolton Cycling Strategy … Continue reading

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Pull the other one David.

Greater Manchester is a large county that has a population, at the 2011 census, of about 2.7 million. It is one of the major winners of the Government’s Cycling City Ambition Grants, with a grant of £20 million over two … Continue reading

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Let’s stop just treating (one of) the symptoms.

In a recent discussion about the appalling designs for Salford’s part of Greater Manchester’s Cycling City Ambition Grant project, Velocity 2025, I was prompted to think again about the lack of holistic thinking that seems to exist among many well-meaning … Continue reading

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Neither one nor t’Other! (Salford’s proposed Cycle Infrastructure.)

Salford City Council has published the plans for their share of the Greater Manchester’s “Cycle City Ambition Grant”, otherwise know as Velicity 2025. It seems the consultation on the first of three “packages” closed yesterday. Unfortunately I missed that as … Continue reading

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Is Britain showing symptoms of a third world country?

When a cousin of  my wife visited a country in Africa many years ago, she stayed in a relatively wealthy household. One of the observations that she made was that people there with expensive televisions in their homes often didn’t … Continue reading

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Thoughts from Skyride Bolton

Yesterday was the day of the Bolton Skyride; an event that happens at different dates & times in various towns and cities across the country. On these days,  the town is disrupted as roads are closed to allow families and … Continue reading

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Highlighting the bad bits.

Update (6th March 2014): Modified the annotations in the map to include links to videos showing examples of the problems that I encounter at these locations. Yesterday, I saw the following Twitter post from the All Party Cycling Group: My … Continue reading

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The stupidity of painting substandard cycle lanes on roads.

The UK Government’s guidelines for cycle infrastructure design are contained in  the Department for Transport’s Local Transport Note 2/08. This actually specifies quite a low level of design quality compared to those countries that have achieved high rates of cycling, but … Continue reading

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Playing billiards with cyclists?

Introduction In the game of billiards, points can be scored by hitting the red ball and the opponent’s cue ball in the same shot; that is called a cannon. I wonder whether the equivalent on the road involves hitting two … Continue reading

Posted in Article, Road Justice, Safe Cycling, Salford, Space for Cycling | 29 Comments

An unintended road improvement as work starts on a new cycleway.

I was pleased to see last week that work has now started on a new cycleway linking Bolton town centre to National Cycle Route 6, leading to Bury. I was already aware of the plans, since it was discussed in … Continue reading

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