Paul,I don't understand why you need to throw my sex or type of bike I ride in the mix (by the way, I don't ride a road bike).I'm a cyclist, like every other cyclist around, and I've the same right as any other cyclist to be riding safe from traffic. I tend to ride slightly faster than somebody casually ambling around, true, but so does a colleague of mine who happens to be a mother of three. In fact, she normally leaves me behind in the dust! Both of us have the same right to be riding safely, don't you think?When I lived in countries where cycling infrastructure was an integral part of urban and country life, Denmark and Belgium, I've never had the feeling that the cycle lanes weren't 'quite right' for my purpose. Sure, there were places where bike traffic forced one to go slow, but they never were quite designed in such a way to make a journey unnecessarily convoluted, or to cause trouble if one missed an abrupt turn or something like that. In London, this happens all over. This is what I object to. Sure, perfection is not of this world, and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I think that some constructive criticism should be welcome, since we usually just hear nonsense from the velophobes.
Francis Sheehan ● 1071d