Thoughts on Cycling and Walking in the Age of the Car

I often walk between towns and villages and in so doing I notice how overwhelming cars have become. If you walk from a village to a town, you have to contend with busy roads. These busy roads are often like deep rivers. Sometimes you need to wait for several minutes before you can cross. At other times you notice that cars see you at a crossing but they don’t slow down in anticipation of your wanting to cross.

If you walk from A to B, you might have to cross three ‘rivers’. This means that you have to interrupt your walk up to three times, because cars have priority over pedestrians, and bicycles.

There are road works now, going from Nyon to eysins, that are similar to the road works between Nyon and Geneva, to provide cycle lanes. They have the same design.

Whilst it might be seen as fantastic that they add these bike and pedestrian lanes I notice a serious and dangerous flaw. Often, when I walk in Eysins, in a 30 kilometre per hour village, I see cars mount the pavement right ahead of me, or right behind me. The roads were narrowed to slow cars, and the speed limit was lowered to signal that cars should slow down. In my experience, over several years, cars do not slow down, they speed up if a car is coming the other way.

The new road works have made it very easy for cyclists to go from the road to the slightly raised cycle lane, and vice versa, but this also makes it much easier for cars, trucks and buses to mount the pavement.

Between Nyon and Geneva, in summer, on the lake road, the cycle lane becomes unusable. People park on the pavement, and walk on the cycle lane, so cyclists need to slow down, or cycle on the road. The infrastructure that was designed to facilitate cycling becomes a car park during the summer months, and especially on weekends. In essence the cycle lane has little value. In summer it is better to stay higher and ride on roads between fields.

Another flaw in these pavements and cycle lanes, is that for weeks, or even months they make walking, and cycling less convenient. In several places, during road works, they force pedestrians to cross high traffic roads, for 50-100 meters. This makes getting around less convenient. Whilst they spend millions on mobilité douce they forget not to discourage people who already walk and cycle.

In Nyon, there is a 30km/h road. Bikes often go at 30 km/h but instead of using cyclists to regulate cars, they throw bikes onto the opposite pavement to get bikes out of the way of cars. The same is true of the new road works.

If you ride from Prangins to Nyon, via the water tower, cyclists have their own lane, until the roundabout, and then they’re kicked back onto the road. This forces bikes to stop, in case cars want to force their ‘priority’ instead of showing courtesy.

I love and appreciate cycling paths and infrastructure. What I have an issue with is when infrastucture breaks the flow of a cycle lane, to favour cars. The brand new cycle lane works well enough, but because it throws us back into traffic rather than keeping us as part of the flow, it increases the chance of a collision as a car or bike, fails to account for the other.

What I especially object too is the shallow gradient. Whilst it makes mounting and dismounting the cycle lane safer for bicycles, it also makes it easy for cars in a rush to mount the pavement.

Yesterday, as well as many times in the past, when cars are coming both ways, cars often veer onto the pavement, even when pedestrians, and people with prams are there. With smaller, narrower old cars, the roads were wide enough, but with modern SUVs the roads are too narrow, and people to impatient to show courtesy. They see the pavement as part of the road.

And Finally

On paper, and in the theoretical realm the new ‘mobilité douce’ plans are fantastic, but in practice, if you force people to slow down their cars, and you make it hard to pass, cars often go onto the pavement or cycle lane, instead of waiting as the road was designed for.

My pandemic walks were great, if it wasn’t for the danger posed by cars driving too fast and the lack of pedestrian paths and dog walkers not calming their aggressive dogs. If I was to design walking infrastructure I would flatten one meter of earth, add gravel, compact it, and within a few days we would have new walking paths between villages. Walking into town is not great.

I would also focus on cycle lanes that break from roads entirely, in favour of cycle routes away from cars. Agricultural roads, where cars are banned.