You used to only see this sort of thing in places like Amsterdam...
But now everyday people in everyday clothes are seen taking to London's streets on two wheels.
Even the black cabs seem to be taking more care these days, after all one never knows if that is your boss cycling to work.
I was only wandering round for a couple of hours but cycling seems to becoming quite cool in some parts of London.
Now that's what I call a cycling hat :)
However, the issue is, would a scheme like this work in Manchester?
I think it could, but a scheme like this costs a lot of money to make a success of it. A major sponsor is needed with deep pockets and an image to promote..... It would be really cool if the Coop Bank were up for it!
I think a Manchester version of this scheme would suffer from the same issues as in London, suppressed cycling demand due to lack of safe convenient infrastructure, but without the same push factors which make the London scheme a moderate success, such as the shortfall between road space demand and supply and the sheer area covered by dense developments in London, which doesn't exist in the much smaller, dense core of Manchester.
ReplyDeleteA real boost to Manchester's cycling would be to bring all of the main radial routes into Manchester from the satellite towns up to Dutch standard, whilst fixing a lot of the inner city routes so that traffic reduction measures don't also impact on the convenience of using a bike.