Letter: Every Bike Commute Helps Ease Traffic Congestion

Published on: 27 Aug, 2015
Updated on: 27 Aug, 2015

From Simon Schulz

Great to hear that MP Anne Milton is a cyclist.

Cycling combined with mass transport is really the only long term solution for the area’s growth-choking transport issues. Every person who switches over to cycling for their daily commute takes a car off the roads.

Obviously it can’t work for all journeys, but it actually could for most people most of the time, if the infrastructure was right. We now even have electric bikes for those “not yet fit” so most of us can cycle. But routes must be designed by people who actually cycle themselves, and therefore “get it”.

What I would really like to hear, from Guildford Borough Council, is what their targets are for the fraction of journeys in the borough by 2020, and what their plan is to get there? Do they have such targets?

Responses to Letter: Every Bike Commute Helps Ease Traffic Congestion

Bernard Parke Reply

August 27, 2015 at 11:13 am

When I served on the planning committee, two decades ago, planning applications were were inclined to be turned down if they included staff parking facilities in favour of those businesses who provided shower facilities to encourage staff to ride to and from work.

Perhaps this policy should be revisited.
Mary Bedforth Reply

August 27, 2015 at 1:03 pm

Never mind the photo ops for an MP and a county councillor and the condition of cycleways (where they exist), Guildford’s road surfaces are lethal.

For example: Harvey Road; Warwicks Bench; Woodbridge Road and some of the side roads off the Epsom Road.

I no longer cycle as I feel unsafe.

Why does Guildford draw the short straw on road maintenance compared to say Woking or Kingston?

The gutters are unswept, the traffic islands are surrounded with mulch sprouting weeds, white plastic direction bollards on islands are either filthy dirty, broken or sometimes missing altogether and pavement edges have fringes of grass and weeds.

Yet our taxes rise each year.
Ben Paton Reply

August 28, 2015 at 12:00 pm

Places that are serious about cycling have dedicated cycle paths. In Holland you can cycle for tens if not hundreds of miles on safe paths dedicated 100% to cyclists and pedestrians without any danger of being killed by a truck.

In London the incidence of “cyclist road kill”, particularly young women, is disgraceful. The basic cause is that cyclists are expected to share the road with juggernauts – often driven by people who have no respect for cyclists. See this article:http://www.london24.com/news/cycling/london_cycle_deaths_2015_1_3964719

How many miles of dedicated cycle paths does Guildford have?

How many miles of new dedicated cycle paths have been built in Guildford in the last five years?

Painted lines on the road don’t count. They are an invitation to take your life in your hands. Until the councils build dedicated cycle paths their pretensions to being pro cyclist are bogus.
John Robinson Reply

August 28, 2015 at 7:25 pm

100% agree with all the above comments – and to add my own, what on Earth are “advisory” cycle lanes?

I’ve complained to Anne Milton and SCC about these before, but no-one is interested.

The advisory lanes (marked by broken white lines) are not enforceable so, for example on the Worplesdon and Aldershot roads, people can use them as a parking “option” on the side of the road.

How exactly does that assist cyclists, when we have to constantly make a ‘life saver’ check over our right shoulder, then ride out into the traffic stream to manoeuvre around a parked vehicle?

This is just SCC giving lip service to the issue of provision for cycling, so they can say, disingenuously, that they have provided x number of cycling lanes in Guildford.

As Ben Paton says above, it is not a nice situation to be in when you have a huge lorry thundering past, who is either not able to recognise what is happening, or doesn’t care, as, once again, you have to pull out wide to pass a parked vehicle.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of parking, since when did all the bus stops around Guildford, including that near the cafe at the Worplesdon Road traffic lights, become a convenient place to park, or leave your van while you nip off to have breakfast?

Bus stops are for buses to use (who’d have thought it?) and for the safety of passengers entering or leaving the bus. Why is this not recognised as an issue and some proper action taken? I’ve just returned from Holland and Germany, and they seem to manage to police and enforce traffic rules, so why can’t we?