As inspired by this post, I feel it could be worthwhile to list some of the cycle lanes in the country that are, perhaps, not the greatest feat of engineering ever seen.

I'm going to start off with this gem here, where a seemingly nice and useful cycle path just gives up because there's some land ahead that the council can't purchase. So you're left with this complete and utter dead end, with no warning of it if you don't know the route and think it might be a nice shortcut.



Any more for any more?

There's this ridiculous thing in Kilmarnock.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=green+str ... 8,,0,14.45

I can think of a few. This one and similar along that road seem somewhat pointless. There's also the much longer ones along the A259 running down both sides of the road, often only a door width from parked cars and hops on and off the pavement seemingly at random.

Excellent topic - and that example you give Ritchie is an excellent example.

The Warrington Cycle Campaign has some excellent examples on their Facility of the Month pages.

My local favourite is this in Ilfracombe. Yes, that is NCN Route 27 going up a flight of stairs...

Is that a cycle route? I can't see the signposts on it.

Relating back to my earlier picture, what's truly pathetic about it is the fact that it ends immediately in front of two giant telegraph poles. Quite how they anticipated to extend the path around this is beyond me. Crossing under the railway looks fairly straightforward, but it could then really do with crossing the Stour to be really useful, as it would give me a far more direct route from home to Willesborough, avoiding the town centre or the A2070.

I suppose cycle routes are no less prone to design blunders than anything else. Last year we were dealing with an M&E contractor starting up on their first fit inside a large structure, with many pipes leading out at one point through a wall to a landscaped nothingness on the other side - the boilerhouse structure and fitout had somehow been completely lost somewhere along the way, modern CAD and clash-detection software notwithstanding. M&E contractor's estimator had presumed a different subbie must be doing it. What a Variation ensued !

Almost identical to the infamous one in Sheffield (also featured on the Warrington site).

It does serve to remind drivers coming out of the side road to watch for cyclists on what might otherwise be considered a quiet road (not that they shouldn't be aware of their surroundings, but let's not debate that here...)

When I did my response training, the instructor pointed out that the road at one point (going around Portsbridge Roundabout) was safer than the cycle path, due to the cycle route being a combined cycle/ped path, very narrow and very poor visibility.
I agreed, then pointed out the newer cycle path that had been built since he'd last been in the area which is a lot better, though still has a 90 degree bend that people have a habit of loitering on to chat, and very bad sightlines at the end if you were actually to stick to it and not cut across some grass.


Portsmouth has (amazingly) got some terrible signage up along some roads with a contraflow cycle lane.
Such as not continuing the signage after barriers, so you divert, only to see coming back up that it was still a contraflow cycle lane. Usually these errors are due to PCC only putting up car facing signs.

There's also the fun ones where you have a 2 way cycle lane next to the road, but the cycle paths are marked and connected up so that you are cycling on the right!
The advice from the instructor for the A3 through Stamshaw was pretty much "Go along the white line, don't use the cycle lane" since it was very narrow and in the door zone.

There's this soppy affair in Watford. The cycle lane from behind you has come all the way through a pedestrian zone and at this point cyclists are just dumped. If they want to go right into King Street all well and good, but to carry on down Lower High Street they are faced with a one way towards them. Of course most just carry on! The vestigial bit forward of the 'END' road marking is a bit of a mystery!

David

on this thingy I've done, I've shown where the bike area is at some lights, and drawn along where the cycle route goes. nowhere near.

I've never seen anybody negotiating the end of this one in Bredbury on a bike in the 12 years or so that its been there...

http://g.co/maps/vp54p

Oh, clever.
If that's a "Get to the crossing lane", not clever
If it's a "Jump the red light" lane, and leads to a common destination, clever.

When you get to the end of this contraflow cycle lane there is no legal way out - except a U turn or dismount. It's also potentially dangerous to carry on as there obviously isn't a phase at the traffic lights for cylists leaving the one way street.

It used to be said that the architects of high rise flats ought to be made to live in them. In similar vein, the designers of cycle farcilities like that one ought to be made to cycle in them.

That's not a cycle path going up a flight of stairs. This is a cycle path going up a flight of stairs: (click to enlarge)

To be exact, it is route 62 by Ditton Brook just west of Widnes. It's not much fun for a cyclist, but it does at least mean you get a good view of the Runcorn bridge:

All in all, the organisers have a fairly idiosyncratic view of cyclists' abilities.

This is one of the most pointless I know. It goes nowhere, and there is every excuse just to stay on the road for all the length of it, as I nearly always do when cycling that way - and I very much believe that cyclists should use cycle paths where provided!

Link didn't work for me. Are you referring to the crossroads at The White Hart? There are cycle routes on all four arms, they're just little-used.

And therein lies the problem. If you don't do any serious cycling, or consult people who do, you will end up with all sorts of issues. OK, the ones like Ritchie's OP are plain daft, as are ones where there are bollards in the middle of the cycle lane and such, as anyone can see that they're not usable. However, cycle lanes don't have to be physically impassable to be borderline useless, but often the problem isn't apparent in the abstract to someone not used to utility cycling.

For example:

• Tight turns. There are numerous cycle lanes in Loughborough that require you to perform a 90º turn in the width of a standard pavement immediately after crossing a side road. This isn't impossible, but to do it safely you have to slow to walking pace or less. Given that you're just coming out of a road crossing, this is impractical: it requires you to slow when half-way across the road, thus getting in the way of road users.
• Giving way to traffic approaching from right behind you. Any shared-use pavement or segregated parallel cycle track presents this problem at every side road, and it's especially problematic if you're travelling in the same direction as the lane of traffic nearest to you, which you usually are.
• Being expected to fit in an area of tarmac that's narrower than your vehicle. Just because bicycle tyres are only a few inches wide doesn't mean the bike and its rider is.
• Having to stop and start the whole time. It may be superficially safer to direct bikes on a zig-zag route through a housing estate rather than down the main road, but no serious cyclist is going to voluntarily choose a route that involves give ways every hundred metres. In any case, I'd question the safety aspect here. In estates you tend to get narrow roads with junctions with poor sightlines, and if you're using the estate as a through route (a purpose for which it was explicitly not designed), you'll pass through lots of them. You're far more likely to be the victim of a SMIDSY there than you are on a main road with good sightlines, plenty of space for overtaking traffic and where most other road users are travelling in the same direction.

The problem is that many of these issues are not immediately obvious to someone whose only experience of cycling is going for a walking-speed pootle with their kids in the park.

thats the place.

cyclists are told to go up Priory Street, onto Old Church Street (via the 3m long cycle path), turning right onto Gregory Street (nice segregated bike lane there), and over the crossing near the canal bridge and down Birdcage Walk (which is to the north-west of the car park)