Cycling infrastructure needs joined-up thinking.

 Cycling is one of the greenest and healthiest modes of transport. Whether it's making short trips around town for shopping or commuting, or longer bikepacking adventures, cycling is carbon neutral, cheap, and provides exercise as you go. However, it's also dangerous. Cyclists are of course highly vulnerable when sharing the road with motor vehicles, which puts off a lot of people from cycling. There's also an anti-bicycle mindset among many motorists, with many reports in the press of road rage incidents against cyclists from motorists who consider the road to be theirs and theirs alone (despite the fact that bicycles, and horses before them were there before the motor car was invented). Except for designated multi-use paths, cycling on the footpath is illegal, slow and often difficult. The solution is obviously properly segregated bike paths. However, cycle path provision in the UK is patchy, to say the least. 

While some councils have made good effort to provide well-engineered cycle routes that connect places, many paths are isolated, inconvenient and often downright unusable. You get the impression in some areas that paths were provided merely where space and funding was available, with little thought to where the paths were going to and from, and who was going to use them. Warrington Cycle campaign used to have a Facility of the Month page (last updated in 2019), which named and shamed some of the worst examples. Many of these went into a book called "crap cycle lanes", which ridiculed these unusable, confusing, and even dangerous token attempts at providing bike paths. 

To campaign for better, safer cycle routes that actually go from somewhere to somewhere, campaigners in Scotland started a not-quite-annual pedal on parliament to take their concerns straight to the Scottish Government.

Simply put, cyclists want routes that actually connect places, and are safe and convenient to ride.

Photographed below are some examples of bad and good practice:

    Bad practice: Bridge Street Cambuslang at the junction of sustrans routes 74 and 75. Access to the bridge is down the overgrown path to the left. The path across the road is multi-use, but there's only a small sign on a lamppost to indicate this and there's no obvious transition on and off the path. Getting down to and across the bridge requires kerb-hopping, and then there's a fence across the road at the other end of the bridge. These things are all fixable with a bit of thought.

    Good practice: East Kilbride, on sustrans route 756. Well-marked and signposted, fully segregated bike path. Where the cycle route joins the road there are drop-kerbs and white lines to indicate this, providing a smooth ride with no kerb-hopping.