Something I feel BaNES Council and particularly councillors do not get. You think you are slowing down speeding cyclists or making exits safe, but every damn time, you’re just excluding people with really bad mobility issues.
The way debates around the division of space in urban areas are framed – how much space we should allocate to private motor traffic, to public transport, to walking, and to cycling – presents walking as an ‘essential’ mode, one that all of us engage in, while by contrast cycling is almost always an optional extra, something that’s nice to have, but not all that important.
For example, we wouldn’t dream of building a new road scheme without footways that are suitable for the children or the elderly to use – or without footways altogether – yet it’s extraordinarily common for new schemes not to bother including any cycling infrastructure at all, even in places where cycling is already a relatively established mode of transport, despite the conditions.
A brand new road scheme in Westminster, London. No cycle space included.
What this means in practical terms is that cycling as…
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