Should parents let their kids use busy bikeways?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ส.ค. 2024
- I was approached at a community meeting recently and was asked if I could "do something" about parents who "let" their kids ride on busy bikeways.
When I asked what they wanted me to do, they wanted me to advocate to tell parents not to teach their kids to ride on busy bikeways, and stick to parks, and perhaps even advocate to council and state government to create laws forbidding kids riding on "commuter bikeways".
As I always do on this channel, I treated the issue with nuance and looked at the evidence.
0:00 Introduction
1:25 Speed limits for bikeways?
3:30 Internalised car brain
5:15 The beauty of human scale environments
7:13 Children are the future!
Don't let kids play in the street, it's too dangerous. Don't let kids hang out at the mall, they just get up to no good. Don't let kids ride their bicycles on bikepaths (I mean seriously, WTF?) it's a safety issue. What the hell is wrong with people?
It's insane isn't it? And after all that, then we moan about kids not going outside and being active.
Taking back our streets is the main battlefront in my view, so any suggestion that kids aren't welcome on active transport infrastructure has to be nipped in the bud! (I've given away my video position huh? Oh well, as if it wasn't obvious what I'd think!).
Don't let kids go to public school, they might learn to think for themselves!
@@GaigeGrosskreutzGunClub Independent Thought Alarms, perhaps?
Perfectly level-headed thoughts as always.
Shared paths are such a minefield sometimes. I always slow down or otherwise prepare to stop whenever I'm not sure what someone I'm about to pass will do. Sometimes I wonder if ringing the bell even if there's room for me to pass is the right move (I don't want people to think I'm annoyed at them for "taking up the path" when they're not, I just want to let them know I'm coming, but also sometimes people get flustered and end up more in the way than if I hadn't rung the bell...). But ultimately, it's like you said, when there's an altercation on a shared path it's always easy to say "sorry" and move on (unlike in a car...).
Another great video, Chris. A broader point is that this is related to the upsetting idea that we need to be constantly thinking about how to anticipate and control children's (perceived in a lot of cases) negative behavior rather than encourage developing positive behavior. I'm not a huge fan of children, but I'd rather have them outside exercising and making noise in this environment then stuck stir-crazy in their suburban houses or being loud near my house.
Thank you for all the advocacy work that you do. Did you see on the ‘North Brisbane Infrastructure’ page they launched for a community response to a proposed toll tunnel to ‘reduce Gympie road traffic’ and surprising the response has been overwhelmingly against! Most public comments rightly say more lanes means more traffic even if they are underground, and public and active transport should be improved instead. They had a public poll with ~1000 results that was 55% No, 5% unsure and 40% Yes but they have since hidden the results as that clearly was not the response they were wanting
Yep. But now the State Government is wasting another $35 million asking the same question. Amazing how much money gets absolutely pissed away on needless car infrastructure - or even just plans!
Nice video, & so true about the most vulnerable in society. Saw a comment recently that you can tell how good a city is for cycling if you see the youngest and oldest out riding.
My dad's 80 now and can't walk but he rides an electric recumbent bike on the centenary bikeway - keeps him healthy. Without the path he wouldn't do it.
I’m more concerned with speed limits. Was pulled over at the new Queens Wharf area this week for not doing 10kph. I didn’t get a ticket but was told to slow down. I noticed they didn’t radar me but stopped me anyway. They just said slow down, I was doing 20 with nobody around. Absolute joke. Almost makes me just want to ride along Coronation drive where we would just anger drivers.
Yes this is really worrying. A pedestrian was hit and killed there a couple of weeks ago, so all these 10kph signs popped up and overzealous policing.
Oddly, when a cyclist was hit and killed on Nudgee Road they did not immediately apply a 10kph limit and start pulling over every motorist telling them to slow down...
@@ChrisCoxCycling Oh dear, so was the pedestrian hit by a cyclist and killed ?
I'll slow down, carefully go around the family with the kids. Problem solved. I do this a lot more often anyway because of people with dogs.
Those kids have to learn to ride sometime, and these dedicated bike paths are perfect for that. And going slow and wobbly can also mean they're just tired after a long trip.
When I was growing up there was just an acceptance of certain risks. Bicycle riding, monkey bars, tree climbing and assorted adventures that didn't see you home until dark. Maybe this type of 'free range' upbringing (where fun was to be found outdoors) endows a natural awareness of risk management and as a result, a strong sense of personal responsibility. Now days a great many people seem to want to nerf all the sharp edges in life. This phenomena can be observed whenever someone ends a conversation with the recent covid popularised 'stay safe' sign off. (My teeth grind every time I hear it). Its these 'stay safe' types who, clearly having been deprived of a 'free range childhood' themselves, would ban kids from riding on infrastructure designed for that very purpose.
I read the title. I thought yes.
If places are not safe for children the solution is not to get rid of the children but to get rid of the unsafe things.
Good video. In Ireland when i'm on bike paths and there's no one around I'll happily cruise at 40kph+, which is easy to do in a velomobile. I love travelling at those speed sorts of speed. But if there's people about sharing the space, I'm slowing down and passing them carefully with a friendly hello and if there's small kids on bikes in the mix I'm slowing right down. They're generally thrilled to see a velomobile passing by anyway. Car free places should always be safe friendly places. I really hate the "fast and the furious" macho road culture perpetuated by certain drivers on the roads in Ireland, so I'll never allow myself to bring any of that same macho culture into places that should be people friendly.
Wow. Brisbane has come a long way with some nice infrastructure. Great video. Couldn't agree more.
Honestly, if you are feeling strongly enough to "regulate" bikeway use then the law should roughly reflect sensible, polite use. ie. Don't pass too close and keep a relatively low speed differential with the person you are passing. I know you can't police that with a speed camera but you know what? Good.
It's a treat for me to see infrastructure that I commute on every week.
I'm one of those fast roadies, you can often see me fangin' it down the coro bikeway at 40+ early in the morning. But when it starts getting busier I slow down a tad and make sure I call nice and early that I'm passing, or just hit the skids and wait for people to do their thing.
During those times, you just ride to conditions, just like you should on the road or in a car. If I want to race, I do it at 5am when there's nobody about.
Bingo! It's not hard is it? I certainly don't think we need big daddy government and their jackboots to do anything.
Reality is cyclists, even fast cyclists, know that if they crash, they're going to get hurt too. That's the big difference between managing cyclists and motorists - motorists don't have that self preservation mentality. Afterall, they're told their ANCAP rating means they are completely safe and cocooned in their car...
@@ChrisCoxCycling to be fair, I do sometimes see cyclists riding as if they were protected, so it's not like it's not a problem, but they probably also drive like twats on the road so...
i ride an euc on many of the bikeways seen in this video, i would probably have a hard time staying upright at some of the low speeds suggested for some bikeways (10kmph), my average riding speed is almost spot on 20kph but i can get upto faster bike speeds of 35-40kph but thats on the rare occasion, I commute on the euc so it has always been in my best intrest to follow all the rules but even though i can ride at 10kmph or less it starts to feel easier to walk at that point and its much easier to just fall off/wobble more and sway much more than at a comfortable 15-25kph
Rail trails and other rural cycleways can help with this problem a bit (along with all the stuff you already mentioned in the video). In the Netherlands they have not just urban cycleways but also inter-city cycleways so when fast, recreational club cyclists are going out for a ride, those cycleways are where they choose to go. They tend to have fewer other cyclists and also fewer traffic lights so they're better for club rides and that leaves the urban cycleways safer for people who need to visit a specific place in the city by cycle.
They're not going to be the highest priority to build. I would want at least a sparse connected network in the city before trying to connect Brisbane to the Gold Coast, but I wouldn't wait for a dense city network. They may not get all that much use directly but they can make the urban cycleways quite a bit safer and more pleasant.
Hoping that your area has those Childrens' Road-sign & cycling training areas, Chris.
There still is one at Kalinga Park, but, for some reason, the Council removed it from Hamilton Park, when they re-did it, a few years back.
Also,have you noticed that only we cyclists feel the need to be gracious about using the "Shared" paths?
Another good video. They don't care enough about cycle infrastructure around where i live to try and restrict cyclists. What little there is is disconnected and poorly built so you can't even roll along at speed. There is no impetus to get people on bicycles either. For example, my daugther brought a magazine home from school on friday. It had a section on winter motoring, but nothing about active travel. I keep campaigning to try and make a difference, but its hard work. Ive recently realised that my local county council shut down any discussion about the poor infrastructure by treating everything i query as a complaint. They then rally round and close rhe discussion as a completed complaint. Ive had to go further to an ombudsman now but i have little hope they will help. Oh well, just makes me push harder. 😂
One final thing to show what its like in the UK. My local council have been awarded 1.8 million pounds to develop cycle infrastructure between my village and the local town a mile away. Its all gone quiet and i had to do a freedom of information request to find out details. The feasibility study that will say yes or no is going to cost £25,000 and that wont be ready until next year, two years after the funding was mentioned. Two years just to get a feasability study, without anything being built for 1.5 miles of infrastructure that has just had around 70 million spent on a roundabout and stub (incomplete) road in the middle. The 70 million was spent so quickly yet the 1.8 million is taking years to materialise.
That sounds even worse than here! It's so frustrating when they will tell you that active transport is great and they encourage it, but every suggestion to actually facilitate it is met with "gee, that might mean taking space away from cars, or not help drivers with more capacity, so no".
@@ChrisCoxCycling I've just added more to my comment as you replied. 🙂
@@ChrisCoxCycling Absolutely. Every local politician znd government representative says they are all for it. Then when it comes to doing something they don't want to be involved for 'political' reasons.
People walking their dogs can sometimes take up a lot of the path still not as bad as 3 people walking side by side
I think if a cyclist is riding fast enough that they are causing danger to others using the bike path they should consider using roads where they can keep up with traffic. Then slow riders or children won't delay them. If they decide that riding with traffic is too dangerous then they ought to do the responsible thing and slow down.
That's it in a nutshell. If you want to ride fast, do so in an appropriate environment. And if you can't, then adjust to the conditions. Kids, elderly, whoever should be able to ride without threat or intimidation on bikeways. And streets for that matter...
This video aptly shows how openly selfish the world is generally becoming. It is the same plague of people driving on our streets, insisting that people who care to drive the speed limit are the problem.
Keep advocating for children. I wish my "great" state of California and all of its counties and cities would care enough about its citizens to install good walking and riding infrastructure.
Who makes this stuff up ?
Banning kids is daft, and massively counterproductive if we want to encourage kids to ride more, but everyone should take some responsibility for their behaviour on bike routes - slowing down where necessary and staying close to their kids to help them ride safely.
What *really* needs to happen is something akin to the old Cycling Proficiency scheme from my childhood in the UK. It started woth basic bike handling skills in a controlled environment and then progressed to riding on real roads with similar scenarios to a driving test. Great for building skills and confidence.
I've been saying that for a while, some sort of cycling proficiency program as well as those gov ads spruiking cycling safety like they do driver safety would be a great idea.
Like just having ads showing how to cycle safely in different situations, you're not going to get everyone to play along but it's an education thing. I have 40,000km on the road and have worked out a lot of the ways to stay safe, but for people that don't cycle as much it's not always obvious.
It depends how much you like them?
LOL
WTF It's a bikeway .. for bikes
Sure, why not. We let them play on the motorway, right?? 👍
No problem with the mother ducking, the fam out with mum at the front and dad at the back or vice versa. All good. But playing on the bikepath with an unleashed dog while watching facebook. Maybe not so much.
As my wife says, cycling is a risk management activity. Why make it more risky?
I have no problem with kids riding independently on bikeways either.
@@ChrisCoxCycling same deal so long as they are not being a menace. We had a situation during covid where some folks would sit in the shelter beside the bikepath and let their kids doodle in the middle of the path on their bikes along with the free ranging doggos. This on a blind corner at the bottom of a hill. That's no good. But the ones riding along paying attention and having a good time, all good, many thumbs up.
I actually think the original idea presented has a lot more merit than you and the other comments give it credit. Personally, I would never suggest banning it, but I would say if you’re taking your child to the Bicentennial Bikeway at 5pm on a weekday to learn to ride, you’re being a very irresponsible parent. No different to if you took your 16 year old to Coronation Drive for their first driving lesson.
We don’t need to ban it. But we do need people to apply some common sense. Which, to be fair, in my experience, they do.
I don't see kids with their parents at 5pm or 8am weekdays on the Bicentennial. But this person wasn't talking about peak hour, they meant any time.
Regardless the issue is not and is never the kids or their parents, but people with the attitude of wanting to ride fast regardless. Absolutely no better mindset than the twat in a wankpanzer revving past a cyclist in the suburbs.
Yeah, it's common sense that the Bicentennial at 5pm on a Tuesday isn't the place to learn to ride 😆 But how do you define where that limit is? How do you enforce it? It gets very silly very quickly, and like you pointed out, it's fixing a problem that mostly doesn't exist. At quieter times you see plenty of kids (and wobbly adults) using the same infrastructure and that's totally fine.
@@The98597thMark frankly I don't think we need any rules about it. People who do it should probably be called out and shamed, but nothing legal.
It's no different to taking your learner driver to Coronation Drive on their 16th birthday. There's nothing illegal about it and nor should there be. But anyone who did it would rightly be called reckless.
To be fair, there’s a certain level the kids need. But that level is purely being able to ride straight and keep left.
It's disappointing when cyclists punch down at children and pedestrians. We know what it's like, so we should know better.