r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	Scunnered20
Comment	Not downvoting you, but you come across as someone reasonably thoughtful in what you say so I want to reply to a few things in a good spirit, hoping that maybe you take them on board? > What I see is roads being chopped to add a cycle lane in which in turn actually increases congestion, and emissions......so having freer flowing traffic makes more sense to reduce emissions to a point. As a starting point, vehicle emissions are caused by the vehicles that emit them and nothing more. Often you hear this point from drivers, and this sounds harsh, but I never ever ever get the sense that in saying this they are recognising or acknowledging in any genuine way the harm their emissions are causing, either to the climate, to people nearby on the street, or even themselves (studies show that drivers are exposed to astonishing levels of CO2, NO, NO2 and particulate matter from their exhausts, when inside their own cars). I feel I need to say this. I never ever feels like a genuine argument, but one only raised as some sort of throwaway gotcha. If we take it as a genuine complain, then good! We all should care about our emissions. We should be aiming to get more people out of cars and into any other mode of transport we can. Be it bus, train, bike or get them walking a journey if it's short enough. The more people that are able to make journeys by one of these modes - bikes included mind! - this means the only drivers on the road are the ones that either really really need to be there. It makes it much easier for them to drive around too, because they are sharing roads with fewer cars (cars by the way take up a huuuuge amount of space per user compared to buses or bikes, with most cars having an maximum of 1.3 - 1.4 people inside them at any given time on average, i.e. driver alone and no passenger being the most common situation). This is an exceptional video on the topic, which you might like: https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k > but cycle lanes being planned and added constantly for an extremely small minority of the population, with no real evidence to suggest that there’s going to be a sudden uptake in cycling if we had an incredible network The evidence is plain to see in countries and cities which have already built comprehensive networks. Build it and they do indeed come. If you don't create a well connected network though, you can have intermittent high-ish quality cycle lanes, but you're holding back what you can achieve in terms of ridership. It'll be five to ten years, maybe a bit more before we get anywhere close to Danish levels, but I do believe we are on the way in Glasgow. > It’s a culture change needed, not just lanes. The cultural change only comes after you address the way roads and urban spaces are designed. That's why the Netherlands is the cycling culture it is, and Denmark and other nearby countries following closely behind. They moved much much sooner than us to radically rethink their streets and roads back in the 70s to be much safer for more vulnerable people, cyclists and pedestrians, to use. The cultural shift then followed this, not the other way around. If you look anywhere in the world, the trick to getting mass cycling is the create streets and spaces that cater to it: good, reliable, well connected cycle lanes, and not much else.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/10q5za7/hate_towards_cyclists_on_social_media/j6pgbrr/
Created	Tue 31st Jan 2023 11:34pm
Status	normal ()

Not downvoting you, but you come across as someone reasonably thoughtful in what you say so I want to reply to a few things in a good spirit, hoping that maybe you take them on board?

> What I see is roads being chopped to add a cycle lane in which in turn actually increases congestion, and emissions......so having freer flowing traffic makes more sense to reduce emissions to a point.

As a starting point, vehicle emissions are caused by the vehicles that emit them and nothing more. Often you hear this point from drivers, and this sounds harsh, but I never ever ever get the sense that in saying this they are recognising or acknowledging in any genuine way the harm their emissions are causing, either to the climate, to people nearby on the street, or even themselves (studies show that drivers are exposed to astonishing levels of CO2, NO, NO2 and particulate matter from their exhausts, when inside their own cars). I feel I need to say this. I never ever feels like a genuine argument, but one only raised as some sort of throwaway gotcha.

If we take it as a genuine complain, then good! We all should care about our emissions. We should be aiming to get more people out of cars and into any other mode of transport we can. Be it bus, train, bike or get them walking a journey if it's short enough. The more people that are able to make journeys by one of these modes - bikes included mind! - this means the only drivers on the road are the ones that either really really need to be there. It makes it much easier for them to drive around too, because they are sharing roads with fewer cars (cars by the way take up a huuuuge amount of space per user compared to buses or bikes, with most cars having an maximum of 1.3 - 1.4 people inside them at any given time on average, i.e. driver alone and no passenger being the most common situation). This is an exceptional video on the topic, which you might like: https://youtu.be/d8RRE2rDw4k

> but cycle lanes being planned and added constantly for an extremely small minority of the population, with no real evidence to suggest that there’s going to be a sudden uptake in cycling if we had an incredible network

The evidence is plain to see in countries and cities which have already built comprehensive networks. Build it and they do indeed come. If you don't create a well connected network though, you can have intermittent high-ish quality cycle lanes, but you're holding back what you can achieve in terms of ridership. It'll be five to ten years, maybe a bit more before we get anywhere close to Danish levels, but I do believe we are on the way in Glasgow.

> It’s a culture change needed, not just lanes.

The cultural change only comes after you address the way roads and urban spaces are designed. That's why the Netherlands is the cycling culture it is, and Denmark and other nearby countries following closely behind. They moved much much sooner than us to radically rethink their streets and roads back in the 70s to be much safer for more vulnerable people, cyclists and pedestrians, to use. The cultural shift then followed this, not the other way around. If you look anywhere in the world, the trick to getting mass cycling is the create streets and spaces that cater to it: good, reliable, well connected cycle lanes, and not much else.