Cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at

One of our requirements of what pretends to be part of the cycling is "cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at."

Unlike inner Bristol, there is the space. We know that, because they keep putting up new dual carriageways, new buildings with lots of parking.

If there is room to add a dual carriageway and lots of parking, there is room to add a quality cycle path

If there is not, then the blame has to go on competence or a complete lack of willingness to care.

Such incompetence is unacceptable to the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, even if the Popular Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire think differently and are happy to accept the shite the council gives us.

We want, as stated before "cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at."

That means

1. Cycle paths that require cars to give way. Interestingly, this exactly what is going up in the housing estate behind the MoD Abbey Wood site.

2. Cycle paths that connect up to create a network of traffic free routes. Again, the new development paths do this, as here they connect with the existing UWE-Lockleaze route

It also means no fucking drops the height of a wheel between the two paths, ones that do require you be sporting an MTB with 100-120mm worth of travel on the bike along with hydraulic disk brakes because otherwise you aren't going to do the dropoff and reduce speed and turn left or right fast enough not to clip one of the students.

What kind of idiot would do this? Not just design it, but notice, while they were perfectly levelling the new tarmac, that there was 50cm worth of difference between this new tarmac and the existing path? 

At some point in the future, David Hembrow is going to see this. And he'll laugh. At some point Amsterdamize will see this, and they will say "one of those English jokes". Eventually Mikhael from Copenhagenize will see it and say "That monty python humour, I almost get it"

Because whoever did this is one or more of:

• Utterly incompetent and in need of having their right to design any kind of road or path removed, banned from ever calling themselves a civil engineer again, until they spend a year's apprenticeship in Haarlem or Den Haag.
• Utterly ignorant of the needs of people trying to get round the city alive by bicycle.
• Utterly indifferent of whether or not the cycle paths they design and get built can actually be ridden by someone who isn't a mountain biker that thinks 50cm dropoffs are fun.

This is the problem S Gloucs suffers from. It is a problem that means the Cycling Embassy of GB is only going to make progress here if the entire S Gloucs traffic design team die in a bizarre accident involving a white minibus and a snow plow  -and they replace it with one person who has been to mainland Europe at least once since 1972 instead of some apprentice who learned about road design from the old team and A-Z maps of glasgow and leeds.

But before Carlton Reid and Vehicular Cyclists say "Told you so", these are the same fucking idiots who are trying to accomodate bicycles on the roads. You cannot expect the incompetent and indifferent idiots who do things like this to look at the new dual carriageway they are planning and think "how will a family of four on their own bicycles get over this alive". No, they will produce something that will end up with that family of four getting mentioned in a footnote on the evening news, "family of four died", then some fat git will appear on TV and patronise everyone and say "did they have helmets on?".

For everyone who thinks we are some kind of joke. No, the council cycling team are. Which is why anyone who tries to use these paths will be joining the campaign. Contact us via twitter, @cyclingfront. And together, the council will come to fear us or at least feel vaguely self concious about their imcompetence, and note that whenever the say "We are the South Gloucestershire cycle planning team" everyone from Europe will snicker. 

This is why we have to overthrow the council, or at least embarrass them so much they will hire a new traffic planning team.