I rode for a while some years ago, some other changes made that impractical for a period then I tried again recently.

I have not raced to repeat the experience. I'm about 23km from work. About 5km of that does not have anywhere to stay out of the traffic and it's pretty obvious that a lot of people in ute's and small trucks find passing as close as possible to a cyclist to be a challenge that can't be passed up.

My life's to valuable to me for that. I can potentially get to work a bit faster on a bike than on public transport, add a bit of time having a shower at work then save some more on "exercise". I suspect overall I'd save a little time over public transport, quite a bit of money and a miserable day on a bike is still more pleasant than the crush of a QR peak hour train (or the out of hours feral's) .Right now I have access to a car park and driving takes about half the time the train takes.

So for now I don't ride, build a safe bike way and I would ride regularly and maybe most days when my access to free parking disappears. For now the risks of mixing it with idiots who think it's fun to buzz push bikes with their little truck is just not worth it.

R0bert

*I was driven by ideology *

Well that kind of explains it all, Squeers. Get your thrills
whichever way you want, it will suit some people, not others.
Luckily we each have a choice about these matters and so it should
be.

I use a barber in Beenleigh, a lower priced Brisbane suburb, on the southern outskirts of the city.

She has a one person shop, & lives in her apartment over the shop. There is a school a couple of hundred meters down the road.

The road is wide, & until recently there were 6 angled parking spots in front of her shop, & the premises beside it.

That was until about a year ago, when some idiot decided there should be a cycle lane down either side of the road, including past her shop.

Now I have to park some distance from the shop, & there is a lot of illegal parking now in the area, with many parking spots gone.

I mentioned she lived over her shop, so has continual observation of this fool lane. In about a year the total cyclists she has seen use the lane is now a total of just 3.

When I recently had to park as far away as the school I noticed the bike rack in the parking area. It had 6 bikes in it, & 24 empty spaces.

To those on this list who made positive comments . In 1996 I wrote a paper for an International bicycle planning conference in Perth that should be of interest.

http://alanparker-pest.org/Publications%201990%27s_files/BicycleFriendly.pdf

Alan Parker (1996) Bicycle friendly roads are safer for all road users. That has several graphs setting out a 17 nation record of the decline in bicycle deaths from 1970 to 1994. These where 14 Western European countries, Japan the US and Australia. Also the decline in all road deaths for 100,000 population from 1945 to 1992 in 8 countries . And the total number of road deaths in countries from 1970 to 1995 going down.

Most interesting of all was the increase in road deaths per 100,000 population of the six Eastern Europe countries controlled by the Soviet Union from 1970 to 1995 which show that cyclists where driven off the roads and that total road deaths increased in the same period.To those who made comments with negative attitudes you need to see the death rates per 100,000 population of all roads users. Compare Eastern Europe with Western Europe in the table below with and see the difference , assume that the 3 Eastern had an average death of 12 that if applied to Australia would double
the Number of actual road deaths.

Road Death Rates per 100,000 population
Country…………. 1995……...2010
....................................................
Sweden…………..7………..…3.4
UK ………………..7…………..3.0
Netherlands ……..8…………..3.7
Japan……………..9…………..4.3
Australia………...12…………..6.2
Germany………..13…………..4.7
USA……………...17……….. 10.5
Czechoslovakia.. 18…………10.4
Hungary………….20………...11.7
Poland………….. 23………...13.8

If Australia is to learrn from world best practice its clear that smartest people
Are the Western Europeans.

PEST you people either kid yourselves, or you are as dishonest as our greenies, & warmists. You'll grab any statistic that either favours your point of view, or you can twist until it looks like it favours your point of view.

You laying claim to the reduction in road deaths is about as cynical as it is possible to get.

Have you not noticed the billions invested by governments, car maskers, & us public in making cars so much safer, that you would need a padded room to be any more protected.

Crumple zones, air bags, & structural advances is what has improved safety, not bl00dy bicycles, or the damn fool bike lanes that have been so often stolen from roads we paid for with our fuel taxes.

The most sensible move for road safety would be to ban the things, from all public spaces.

Hasbeen,

"The most sensible move for road safety would be to ban the things, from all public spaces."

Funnily enough, I read your last sentence first - and I thought for a brief second that your were referring to cars.

They are all very nice, of course, convenient and give us a capsule of security while we're travelling through space. This is the modern world after all....but too much traffic actually freaks me out. I don't drive these days, and either walk or rely on public transport for the most part.

I sometimes dream of an environment where there are no cars : )