Nuxx:MPG.258f3dbd95b552a89896e1@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!shaftesbury.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Guy Cuthbertson  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Plonkers Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:07:26 -0000 References:     Lines: 25 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit User-Agent: MicroPlanet-Gravity/2.9.13 Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 3b97c7fb.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=2=PE?R8`:BMg`4Y59;oSFLnok4Z\0bI9nA2abDEn, guy.chapman@spamcop.net says... > > But most of my cycling is done in London these days, where > private motoring is a minority mode which gets disproportionately > favour bale treatment. Over 10,000 people work in my building, and > only a few dozen arrive by car, but the entire environment around the > building is dominated by motor transport and the 10,000 have to defer > to the few dozen at every junction. Which seems wrong to me.

That's why when you give the main road a green light there is usually at least one vehicle (often a car) going through, but when you give green lights exclusively to the more politically correct forms of transport (or too much green light time to minor roads), those on the main road are very often sitting there at a red light while nothing else is happening.

Your description of the situation is, as you know, absurdly inaccurate in practice. Of course, the problem of sitting unnecessarily at red lights could be solved very easily by making all traffic lights vehicle/cycle-activated. But they won't do that...I wonder why? Probably for the same reason that you don't want it: you don't want motorists to have it too easy and you would rather they were artificially delayed, so that you can feel smug when you're passing them on your bike.