Study says vast majority of Britons won't cycle on urban roads as they are now. So what's the answer?
From The Guardian:
A major academic study has spent the past couple of years looking in depth into why people cycle (or don't cycle) in four English towns. I won't go into the research too much here, simply as I've written a separate news story on it, which will be up soon - I'll link to it when I can.
But I wanted to consider its main conclusion: the UK will never get anything close to a European-style mass cycling culture without some major (and to me, seemingly unlikely) changes, notably the construction of proper-width, segregated lanes on all main urban roads.
It calls for other things - for example a strict liability law and measures to make urban car use less attractive - but it's the bike lanes which grab my attention.
UK cycling lobbyists have bickered long and hard about whether bikes should be segregated from other traffic or merely integrated safely. If you believe this study then only the former has any chance of getting significant numbers of Britons out of their cars and onto bikes.
Now, there's two main points I can see here. Firstly, are they right? I was considering this as I cycled to work this morning, pondering how my ride would appear to a novice cyclist. The more I thought about it the more I agreed with the academics.
more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2011/jun/03/cycling-stud...