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Cyclists are destroying London

In North Korea and Kazakhstan, loyal subjects build ludicrous follies to celebrate their leaders. We?re doing the same. London has been turned into a gridlocked building site as roads are dug up and rebuilt to create Boris?s follies, a network of cycling superhighways. These segregated routes that run north-south and east-west are part of the outgoing Mayor?s ?cycling revolution?.

Walking in London, is now a vile activity as the level of pollution from traffic fumes has soared. Soon, pedestrians will be following their counterparts in Tokyo, wearing anti-smog masks. Building cycle lanes has not deterred car use. It means that traffic has to fit into a much smaller space and so it is reduced to a crawl.

Why should cyclists get preferential treatment over pedestrians? What about the young, the elderly and the disabled who may not want or be able to cycle and who cannot use public transport? By championing bikes to such a ludicrous level, as his ?legacy? project, Boris is as blinkered as the car lobby and lorry drivers.

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Reply to
MrCheerful
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And sadly, so often misconceived. The mess at the Elephant being a prime example. I'm not anti-cyclist and they should have the same rights to safety as any other road user. And also help cut congestion over a single person in a car.

Brilliant local example. A local quite narrow road which is also a bus route. They've just resurfaced it and added a bike lane at some traffic lights. If a car observes that lane while waiting for the lights to change, a bus coming out of the T junction can't make the turn. And it's not a route much used by cyclists anyway.

And the Boris bus being a prime example. Most are broken so can't use battery power. So run totally on diesel. Which only allows a snails acceleration and pollutes more than a standard one. As well as taking up far more road space per passenger - even when full. But the real blame lies with successive governments for encouraging diesels. It was well known that they pollute far more than petrol - except possibly for CO2. Even your nose tells you this. ;-)

Actually worse. He is only interested in his own personal agenda. Not the interests of the average Londoner. He has done precisely zero to provide genuine affordable housing for the low paid. Of which there are many in London. He is more interested in high priced develpments which are often bought as investments by over seas buyers and left empty.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Cycling lanes are largely ignored in Manchester, by my observation, and most cyclists ride on the pavement, or in the worst case switch from road to pavement and vice versa to avoid obeying traffic signals.

Reply to
Gordon H

Come to think of it. My otherwise marvellous 1995 Saab 9000 failed MOT because of dull O/S headlamp reflector. Considering that I often drive on motorways, and most long distance drivers nowadays are diesels. Then consider that a shallow layer of air on motorways is really diesel fumes, just entering my headlamp and causing the dullnes of the reflectors. I believe this happens on many other cars, and it inevitably shows up after some years of usage, if not in your lungs as well.

Reply to
johannes

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