Comments on: Bicycling in the ‘Hood: Do-able or Dangerous? https://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2014/02/28/bicycling-in-the-hood-do-able-or-dangerous-2/ Regular people riding bicycles Sun, 29 Apr 2018 00:30:12 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 By: Stephen J https://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2014/02/28/bicycling-in-the-hood-do-able-or-dangerous-2/#comment-883 Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:55:21 +0000 http://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/?p=5026#comment-883 My main route is from Bishopdale to work on Kilmore St every day. Intimidating things for the novice cyclist:
– negotiating the big roundabout at the intersection of Harewood and Highsted
– the right turn from Harewood on to Papanui
– the Merivale shops on Papanui Road, where the risk of being doored or cut off is very high. If it were up to me, I’d remove the relatively few car parks on Papanui Rd in this block.
– the lack of cycle lanes on Harewood Rd (except for some token bits around Bishopdale Mall)
– the everyday occurence of vehicles parked in the cycle lane on Papanui Rd, in defiance of the yellow lines.
– The roadworks in the CBD often create dangerous pinch points.

A general bugbear is the way cycle lanes seem to disappear just where they are needed most (eg where roads become double-laned at intersections).

]]> By: Richard H https://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/2014/02/28/bicycling-in-the-hood-do-able-or-dangerous-2/#comment-882 Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:00:50 +0000 http://cyclingchristchurch.co.nz/?p=5026#comment-882 Picking up on your mention of the introduction of “traffic calming” measures, from my experience “traffic calming” measures equal danger and frustration when you are on a bike. Some encourage more speed from some drivers, especially if they have turned a straight road into a set of fast chicanes… Or narrowed a wide street and allowed parking on both sides hardly leaving enough room for a car let alone a car that wants to pass a bike (or a bike that wants to pass a car). I can’t see any shared space being desirable by anyone. One of the main advantages of riding a bike in traffic is the ability to beat the queues of cars. If you try and make people share the same space cycling is going to be just as slow and frustrating as driving a car! It would probably put me back in a car. I have seen this time and time again, they narrow an intersection with sticky out kerbs making a difficult intersection a dangerous pinch point!

]]>