exdulwicher

4-5mph is about the speed that the motor will cut in and give you a boost. However Dulwich Park is geofenced. If you try and use a Lime bike or scooter in it, it won't give full power and I think it cuts out entirely if you try and ride them in the centre of the park rather than just around the edge. I've not tried it but maybe I should give it a go in the name of research... There is of course the final, rather significant, point which is that speed limits do not apply to pedal cycles...

Clearly you missed the irony and play on words with Re-leash the Hounds... Also "me and my cohort"?! I have a cohort? Wow. Can anyone who is in my cohort raise their hand? It's just that I didn't know I had a cohort and I should probably do something about it. Some kind of induction day for starters.. Do I need to do anything else? I can supply some left over mince pies.

I'm going to set up a campaign advising people to put their dogs back on leads. I'll call it Re-leash The Hounds.

It hasn't established that at all. You've provided no actual link to any official sources, you've just stated your belief. And you didn't answer the question as to what you'd do if Southwark started issuing PCNs for drivers exceeding this 5mph, just tried to turn it around and avoid it.

They can't run faster than 5mph...?

It was 1968 and it still didn't set a speed limit for bicycles. Seriously Rockets, this has been done to death and I mentioned it in one of the first replies on here. Speed limits do not apply to bicycles. You can be done for the wonderfully named Careless and Wanton Cycling but not for speeding. And literally every time someone tries doing it (even in the headline you linked to in the opening post) whatever fines are issued are almost invariably rescinded after being argued about for a while. I do wonder though, what would you say if a driver was issued a PCN for driving at (say) 9mph? Would you be on here saying they were caught bang to rights, should pay the fine immediately and never set foot in the park again? Or would you come up with the usual stuff about "war on motorists", the council treating the hard-working motorist as an easy target / cash cow, couldn't they go and find some real criminals, what a ridiculously stringent speed limit... ? Also, you try riding a bike at a steady 5mph. Not easy is it, especially a laden e-cargo bike. You need a bit of speed to keep them stable.

Doesn't apply to bikes either but that doesn't seem to stop you wanting every last one of them fined!

Yep. Most joggers, a fair few kids, and pretty much every driver and cyclist! Parkrun would be fascinating. Ooh, just under 30 minutes for 5km, yep, that's 10kph, 6.2mph, you're in breach too, just pay the nice chap from Southwark over there. See you next week!

The 12mph speed is generally regarded as a sort of tipping point. Helmets for example are tested to withstand a fall at 12mph. Shared use foot / cycle paths generally have a guidance for designers of 12mph, the idea being that if you're faster than that you should be on the road. Also 12mph is 20kph so it's kind of a logical number. It's all a bit archaic and disorganised and of course byelaws from the GLC days did not predict e-bikes (and to be clear, I'm talking about the legal ones that cut off at 15.5mph, you have to pedal to make them work, blah blah. Not the illegal souped up e-motorbikes which are already illegal for multiple other reasons!)

We've been through this before. Speed limits don't apply to cyclists. 5mph on a bike is the sort of speed that has most people falling off. None of that is to say that people shouldn't behave sensibly but the whole speed limit thing is ridiculous. Also, how many drivers adhere to that. I think you'll find it's vanishingly few...

The fact that they are completely different areas with totally different population density, land use and traffic volumes etc has seemingly passed you by?

It's not cycle *lanes* as such. What has happened a fair bit going back to the introduction of cycle superhighways was the use of bus lanes to connect things up very easily and cheaply. Back then of course there weren't as many cyclists and generally it all worked fairly well but asking a small squashy cyclist who wants to travel at a relatively constant speed and a very large heavy bus that wants to go fast - stop - fast - stop - fast etc to share the same space is a stupid idea. Yes, it kind of works when there aren't many cyclists but you get to a crunch point where there are so many cyclists now (there's another thread about that!) that every time the bus stops, a flow of cyclists passes and keeps passing which makes it difficult for the bus to pull out again. Once it's out and going, it's trying to pass all the cyclists before then trying to pull in again, right in front of them. And so it repeats. It slows the bus down, it's very dangerous for cyclists, especially if they're caught in a blind spot and it's frustrating for the driver who is then tempted into taking more risks. There are various answers and options: 1) Bus stop bypasses. In spite of the wails of protest from some people, far and away the best (in fact almost the only) solution if you're going to ask bikes and buses to share the same space is to give the bikes a bypass at the back of the stop and the bus can then pull in and out without ever having to negotiate a constant flow of bikes. 2) 24/7 bus lane enforcement. This works for both bikes and buses because it means they're not constantly having to pull out into traffic and back in again to avoid a single parked car. Also bus priority junctions. There's a few of these up the Walworth Road and also at the bottom of DKH heading south; traffic lights with a lane for buses to nip in up the side and get in front while the cars are stopped. Saves the bus having to wait forever until a driver finally lets them out and also largely negates the bike overtaking issue - either the bikes wait behind the bus and follow it through or they move right which puts them in the main traffic lane stopped at the light. 3) Completely segregated cycle lanes. Stop the bikes and buses mixing in the first place. 4) And related to that, reallocation of road space to both buses and bikes. A lane for bikes here. A lane for buses there. Remove the cars. Not going to work everywhere of course but there are some roads where cars could be sent a longer way around. Tottenham Court Road is a good example.

It's standard for Rockets to just drop in a headline with no other text, no opinion (at this stage anyway!) and no wider discussion points. Also (from reading the article) it was one fine which was subsequently rescinded. They usually are - even when there are allegedly local byelaws to "enforce" some sort of action against speeding cyclists, no-one is aware of it and most don't have a speedo and most of the very occasional enforcement is so embarrassingly over the top that the council will eventually just sigh and let it go. The Royal Parks (notably Richmond) have occasional "crackdowns" on speeding cyclists which then ends up in an interminable back-and-forth as to whether or not speed limits apply to bikes (they don't) and whether or not Richmond Park has a byelaw to cover it (it does / it doesn't / it does again / it doesn't / oh no it really doesn't...). What do we reckon for this one? 8 pages? Can we run a sweepstake on how many times someone suggests number plates and road tax for cyclists? Or can we just pick one of the eighteen older threads where this sort of nonsense has been done to death by the same people and reference that?

Another vote for The Cheese Block on LL but for 20 adults, you'd better be willing to pay a fair chunk of money or hope that they'll be happy with very small amounts of cheese! Other than that, supermarket or search online for a large Christmas cheese hamper and take your pick. For example: https://www.finecheese.co.uk/collections/christmas-selections-hampers (only mentioning them as we had a gift hamper, much smaller than a big Christmas one, from them a while ago and it was very nice). I'm sure there are other excellent options.

Does that apply for other walks of life too? If you drove into a pothole and wrote off your car wheel, would you be happy if the council told you to slow down and take a bit more care? If you were walking along the pavement and tripped on a cracked and uneven paving slab, it'd be fine for the ambulance service to tell you to stop wasting their time and you should have just looked where you were going? If a wheelchair user fell down an unguarded open manhole cover, perhaps you'd be first on scene looking down at them and saying it's their own fault for not slowing down a bit? Or would you think that's it's not unreasonable that a public space should be maintained to a basic standard of safety? That's one of the most crassly stupid comments I've read on here and it's up against some really quite stiff competition!