Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeemonkee | Hacker News Reader

I've lived in the UK and Finland. When I lived in Finland, I cycled everywhere in town, for work and shopping and for pleasure (needless to say, I was more than a few pounds fitter).

I never, ever cycle in the UK.

Reason ? In Finland towns have cycle paths everywhere. It's safe. People take their little kids cycling. Lots of people cycle.

In the UK it's appallingly bad in comparison. Some places may have a few cycle lanes here and there for appearance's sake but in the main it's nothing. When you go cycling in the UK you're taking your life in your hands. You're a completely unprotected second-class citizen. A guy I knew died that way, hit and run by a taxi. I certainly wouldn't allow my kids to cycle here.

View on HN

Certainly on road cycling in a British city can be "challenging" - I used to have a 10 mile cycle commute through the center of Edinburgh for a few years and I had a number of incidents that were pretty scary.

However, things are getting better - Edinburgh has a pretty decent cycle path network (mostly on old railway lines, so they sometimes appear to be ridiculously over-engineered - with huge bridges and tunnels). We had a family cycle on Sunday morning where we cycled for about 3 hours with perhaps 15 minutes of that being on roads.

I wouldn't let kids cycle on roads by themselves though - something I did as a child from an early age without thinking about the dangers (I did grow up in a small village in the north of Scotland!).

There's more to it than recreational cycle paths though.

In order to change people's lifestyle - i.e. to be a practical alternative to the car in cities - the paths have to go somewhere useful. In other words, you need cycle paths connecting offices, schools and shops. Even in Edinburgh I see that as a long way off - and the city council seem fit to sink money instead into the neverending tram fiasco.

Absolutely - one of things we were discussing as cycling along yesterday is what could have been done with a tiny percentage of the money wasted on the trams.

<sigh>

Really? I remember Oxford having a great many dedicated bike lanes (not just a part of the road), although maybe it's an outlier.

The big university cities tend to have good cycling. Oxford, Cambridge, and York I know are all good, although the car drivers may disagree. London careers from the brilliant to the disastrous, often within blocks of each other.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com