On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:45:22 -0000, "Jeremy Parker"
wrote:

London is about halfway through building the "London Cycle Network".
Actually to some extent that's rebuilding. Many miles of cycle track
were built alongside the new bypasses in the 1930s, but much of those
routes vanished in the 1960s, mostly unnoticed, and unmourned. You
don't see people mourning lost bike tracks in the way they mourn
canals, or steam trains, or the routemaster bus. Cycle tracks
weren't that popular at the time, actually, except among motorists
who hoped that cyclists could be forced, officially or unofficially,
to get off the roads onto them

Believe it or not, the 1930s national cyle organisations opposed the
cycle tracks on the grounds that they might become an excuse for
taxing (push) bikes.

Not all the tracks vanished. Some of them are still around.

Here's a first attempt at starting an inventory of what we still
have, and what we have lost. For those tracks that used to exist,
and now have vanished, any information on when, how, and why they
went would be useful.

...
A24 past Box Hill

That used to be lethal with the cycle track on the RIGHT of the main
carriage way, Is it still like that or has that bit crumbled away.


The cycle tracks built into Stevenage New Town might be worth
mentioning - completely separated from the motor roadways even at
junctions (except for some recently developed areas). They are a
haven of peace and quiet but best avoided by strangers because of a
complete lack of road name and direction signs.
--
Peter Lawrence

update:

the A41, Hendon Way, supposedly had cycle tracks in Hendon (exact
details unknown). The present day cycle tracks further out seem to
be just rechristened pavements

The A 406, North Circular, apparently had cycle tracks in Enfield
(between the A105, Green Lanes, and the A10, Great Cambridge Road?)
No other part of the North Circular seems to have had them

the A1 in Barnet is not believed to have had them

Jeremy Parker

"Peter Lawrence" wrote

[snip]

Believe it or not, the 1930s national cyle organisations opposed
the
cycle tracks on the grounds that they might become an excuse for
taxing (push) bikes.
In 1958 Professor Sir Colin Buchanan wrote in his book "Mixed
Blessing, The Motor in Britain"

"The meagre efforts to separate cyclists from motor traffic have
failed, tracks are inadequate, the problem of treating them at
junctions and intersections is completely unsolved, and the attitude
of cyclists themselves to these admittedly unsatisfactory tracks has
not been as helpful as it might have been.


The cycle tracks built into Stevenage New Town might be worth
mentioning - completely separated from the motor roadways even at
junctions (except for some recently developed areas). They are a
haven of peace and quiet but best avoided by strangers because of a
complete lack of road name and direction signs.


It's certainly easier, and results in better quality, when the
bikeway network results from building the network first, and then
building the town round it, rather than trying to retrofit things
into a town that has been growing through two thousand years of
history.

Hatfield/Welwyn, another new town in the same direction, but closer
to London, has the remains of a few tracks to a similar design and of
a similar age. The major routes in Stevenage have a 12 foot cycle
track with an eight foot pavement one one side. This makes the total
width double that of a good many country lanes in the countryside
round about.

Harlow, nearby, another New Town, also was designed with a complete
bikeway network. Harlow managed to solve a problem that Stevenage
didn't. The cycle tracks of Stevenage are not really separate from
the other roadways. In the 1940s the law did not allow the
construction of special roads for only certain classes of traffic,
such as motorways for cars, or cycleways for bikes. All roads had to
be built to be open to all.

Harlow solved the problem by taking over the entire existing road
network, and redefining it to be for bikes only - that was allowed -
and building a new road network with all the new roads well away from
the old network.

Stevenage was world famous for a long time, thanks to the town's
Chief Engineer, Eric Claxton, who wrote lots of papers describing it.
There's one in the proceedings of the first Velo-City conference, in
1981, for example.

All the continental bike path systems that activists like to praise
nowadays are descended from British systems less than an hour by
train from London. Britain was the world leader in bike facilities,
which is why Britain became the leader in cycling

Jeremy Parker