Cyclists have made my home city too stressful to live in any more

Your Council can put pressure on Lime though to keep their bikes in order. It might be worth looking up what other councils done as I think there have been cases where contracts have been threatened to be removed & raising it with your councillors.

I've just been given a work thing in Cambridge & have to go there once a month. I've only been once so far & I'm in no hurry whatsoever to go back. Death wish cyclists is one of the main reasons.

That's simply not true. They are everywhere round here - partly because we live near a school and a large park which people come to visit, and cycly in - so the pavements are very affected. If I were to go outside right now I would be able to see several.

One of my dogs is in a wheelchair and getting to the park is a nightmare because we can't get past on the pavement.

And it is because of these problems that many councils are becoming increasingly exasperated with Lime.

I may be in a "golden zone" for Lime bikes but it is certainly a real issue round here.

That’s certainly been an issue where I live. It does depend on how determined the councillor with the transport portfolio is, but when they aren’t very determined it tends to go something like this.

Council proposes plans to make the roads safer.
People complain because it’s all for “the cyclists”.
Council waters down plans so they don’t meet engineering standards and builds routes.
Cyclists aren’t doing what people think they should be doing (because the plans have been watered down so the routes aren’t fit for purpose) and the routes are generally not very good (because they don’t meet engineering standards).
Despite having got what they wanted, the same people continue to complain about cyclists and council because the routes are rubbish.

Even where we have had road safety measures put it due to really dangerous driving or roads being structurally unsafe, some people still persist in believing / commenting that the sole reason for these changes is to get at drivers.

What’s so sad about this is that there are regular collisions and people are getting hurt or even killed and there are solutions such as Vision Zero. But if we can’t have a local debate focussed on facts and engineering standards, it’s very hard to do anything about this.

Jail time? Calm down.

Because people are only human. Yes, some people are just awful, and there's no excuse for that. With bikes, however, riding in the UK is made so stressful and inconvenient, I can't blame people for acting out sometimes.

Often it doesn't work because there's a complete lack of willingness to compromise car access or dominance at all.

The Dutch system works because it is expected that cars are "guests" on some roads.

I don't know. About two weeks ago I say a man with his son, about six, on his own bike. They were in a cycle lane, but a significant major city corridor, with complicate intersections, in rush hour traffic, so the lane was cut periodically by places where the main road turned into other streets, or in some cases where driveways had to come out on to the street across the bike lane.

I was thinking, this is not a good road for bikes, and no 6 year old should be allowed to drive it on a bike any more than he would be ok to do so in a car.

The city keeps telling people bikes are for all, all bike infrastructure is for all users. But it's really nuts in my opinion - there are multiple places where that is dangerous and irresponsible.

This is not so much a problem in the small town that I work in. Bikes are not that many, and the traffic is not bad and most bikers are just in the flow of traffic in town.

In the nearby city it is a shit show. There are clearly some problem demographics - mainly young university students, and the lycra crowd - both don't seem to care at all about other users of the road or spaces like parks.

However, there are systemic issues imo too. One is that the e-bikes and e-scooters are just so prone to being problematic. They go too fast, they are too quiet, and there are so damn many of them. They seem to come up so fast in places where you wouldn't expect that of a bike. It seems to me like they didn't think there would be so many, except they have given several companies contracts to leave them around town for anyone to use. They also massively litter up spaces when people drop them when they are done. It makes the city look like shit.

In general though their attempts at bike infrastructure seem to have gone really wrong somehow. They seem to be reaching for a kind of Dutch style bike utopia, but it's not worked out that way for various reasons, despite knocking down streets full of 100 year old trees to install bike lanes. There are more bikes but it's topped out and I think it's because they have made things too complicated. Which does not make people feel safe.

How does a lack of cycling lanes become an excuse for those arrogant rude entitled cyclists who terrorise the pavements?

I think the cyclist is in control of their actions and their gobs not a cycle lane, pedestrain or motorist

It is not cyclists that are the problem. It's the appalling lack of dedicated cycle lanes in this country.
Cycling should be encouraged to reduce car use and get people fit. In European cities it is lovely to see young and old alike out cycling safely.

I do my best to be polite, but I do understand why cyclists get frustrated.

It's tiring always being "the third class citizen".

I'm not breaking speed records, but I do use my bike to get to places. I don't want to pootle along at walking speed / get off and walk every 100 meters / stop at every minor crossroad. I actually have a destination to get to!

@LameBorzoi I only do it to cyclists who attempt to pass me on the pavement if they don’t warn me first! A quick “on your left/right” makes it safer for everyone. I do appreciate that some roads are dangerous for cyclists.

People go on and on about this, but it's mostly the fact that they exist that offends people. It's rare that they are actually in the way, and it's nothing compared to cars parked across footpaths / in bike lanes / at corners / cluttering up streets etc etc. We are just used to everything revolving around cars, which is not a good thing.

I'll take the evil eye over cars trying to side swipe me.

It is illegal for cars to park on the pavement but huge electric bikes are left all over the place. There is huge controversy about them. It is fair to say a lot of people are not happy.

It's tragic, and I loathe shared paths, but cyclists are still far less dangerous than cars are to pedestrians and cyclists.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y38zdle17o

already happened in Oxford, though this was a “legal” cyclist found not to be at blame. The pedestrian was an acquaintance of my mother. Shared paths can be lethal.

There is this false notion that cyclists are not using the road in the proper way, like they are playing on some big toy and only the car is the proper way to use the road. Why can't the cyclist use the road and take the lane if it's unsafe to overtake. In a thread about cyclists using pavements, they get criticised for using roads.

Better than taking up thousands of acres of public land for car parking.

Cars are a million times worse for cluttering up the place.

Far heavier and more deadly, too!

They are a complete menace. People just leave them on the pavement wherever they like - they aren't in special bays. They are everywhere. School kids use them to go to school even though they are officially too young. They weigh a tonne too.

Surely part of the problem is people being too lazy to organise and cook their own food so they use an app to arrange for someone to deliver (usually a very unhealthy) meal to their door. And the fact that these drivers are paid a shockingly low wage so they are trying to deliver as quickly as possible. It's a society issue not just the individuals on e scooters

No just cars

Anyone else have lime bikes parked everywhere?

@asrl78 Yes, that’s def. a point. But we certainly can’t get out of the way quickly if someone coming up behind us and wanting to pass doesn’t indicate that they’re there!

As a teenager, I used to cycle everywhere, including behind my school on a shared path by a stream. We were always told to let pedestrians know that we were there…I once witnessed a classmate fail to do this and try to pass someone at a narrow section…I watched his slow motion topple sideways into the stream. 😂