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Nice - price motorists off the roads

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15 minutes ago, Ontarian1981 said:

Rickshaws are the answer,  lol. That will get a lot of people off benefits and back to good health and clean up the city as well. :)

The economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 years who were economically inactive) was estimated at 21.0%, lower than for a year earlier (21.5%) and the joint-lowest estimate since comparable estimates began in 1971.

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1 hour ago, Cyclone said:

Cambridge has a much higher rate than the average, what's the difference (I'm convinced that being flat helps btw).

Being flat probably isn't as significant as you think. Bristol is hilly and has a high proportion of cyclists for the UK.

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2 minutes ago, altus said:

Being flat probably isn't as significant as you think. Bristol is hilly and has a high proportion of cyclists for the UK.

That’s interesting. Is that down to roads, cycle lanes, “anti-car” measures by the council, crap public transport? I haven’t been to Bristol for years so I can’t speak from first hand experience.

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19 minutes ago, El Cid said:

The economic inactivity rate (the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 years who were economically inactive) was estimated at 21.0%, lower than for a year earlier (21.5%) and the joint-lowest estimate since comparable estimates began in 1971.

Data collection was very different in 1971.

Any comparison  with the present day would need to guess at what was included and what was missed.

Data sets collected in 1971 included several "Unemployable", "Having NI paid,  but not unemployed", "Seasonal and benefit paid",  "Age" categories.

"Inactivity" data would have been also been defined and collected by different  government departments.

 

Anybody living then who followed the news would have noted general rise in unemployment paralleled by the rise in government rule changing trickery in attempting to reduce the number.

 

Statistics, Employment and Society has changed so much that comparisons are meaningless.

 

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, WalkleyIan said:

The figures don't really back up this claim.  Flat cities in the UK still have a very low number of trips by bike.  Lower than hilly cites in Europe. Flatlands are also notoriously windy.

 

https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/wiki/people-cycle-in-the-netherlands-because-it-is-flat

 

 

That link is very subjective - for example it cites Manchester (highest point 108 metres - that is City of Manchester only ignoring Pennine areas of Greater Manchester) as "flat" yet cites Nijmegen in the Netherlands (highest point 88m) as "being in the south which is particularly hilly". I'm pretty sure "flat" Birmingham has even higher points.

 

Have a look on here at UK cycling rates;

 

https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics  (point 12)

 

Nearly all the places are pretty flat. 

 

Cambridge and Cambridgeshire feature heavily - they are in East Anglia - a fact seemingly overlooked by your link which appears to think East Anglia consists of only Norfolk & Suffolk.

 

And did anyone mention petrol prices - which are are a good 10% higher in the Netherlands. Car ownership in the Netherlands is the most expensive of major European countries.

 

https://nltimes.nl/2016/02/01/survey-car-ownership-expensive-netherlands

Edited by Longcol

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44 minutes ago, tinfoilhat said:

I take issue with this bit. In major cities, and alot of towns, that would involve knocking down an awful lot of buildings I'd have thought, or removing pavements.

In that case I refer you to the Netherlands for real examples. Google Maps Streetview will have ample.

 

One thing the Dutch do is to make narrower streets specifically multi-use (ie. Cars are secondary to pedestrians and cyclists.) 

 

Roads that used to be main thoroughfares are now mainly for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. One trick used much better than here is by utilising one way systems for example.

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7 minutes ago, Annie Bynnol said:

Data collection was very different in 1971.

 

 

The data is from the ONS

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On 1/5/2019 at 7:33 AM, tinfoilhat said:

Through my travels around our fair nation, you do see little clusters of cycle use - the greater use often seems to be in areas where there aren’t many hills. There’s the odd anomaly - oxford seems to have more cyclists than average. 

 Scunthorpe, along with many Lincolnshire towns, is flat and bikes galore ruling the road, I am going back a long time since I worked there, but everybody seemed to be on bikes in the 70s

Edited by Ontarian1981

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1 hour ago, Longcol said:

That link is very subjective - for example it cites Manchester (highest point 108 metres - that is City of Manchester only ignoring Pennine areas of Greater Manchester) as "flat" yet cites Nijmegen in the Netherlands (highest point 88m) as "being in the south which is particularly hilly". I'm pretty sure "flat" Birmingham has even higher points.

It's gradients that makes a place hilly - not altitude.

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Just now, altus said:

It's gradients that makes a place hilly - not altitude.

You mean like the gradients we've got in Sheffield that don't exist in the Netherlands?

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13 minutes ago, Longcol said:

You mean like the gradients we've got in Sheffield that don't exist in the Netherlands?

You were complaining about them using Manchester as an example of a flat city, not Sheffield.

 

Bristol, which has its highest point at 112m and by your reasoning would be pretty flat, has Vale Street which is 21.81°. Compare that with Sheffield's steepest Blake Street at 16.6°. Not that I'm trying to imply that Bristol is hillier than Sheffield overall - just that your equating altitude with hilly doesn't stack up.

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32 minutes ago, altus said:

You were complaining about them using Manchester as an example of a flat city, not Sheffield.

 

Bristol, which has its highest point at 112m and by your reasoning would be pretty flat, has Vale Street which is 21.81°. Compare that with Sheffield's steepest Blake Street at 16.6°. Not that I'm trying to imply that Bristol is hillier than Sheffield overall - just that your equating altitude with hilly doesn't stack up.

I was commenting on the link posted by WalkleyIan that describes places as "hilly" and "flat" - the article makes no mention of gradient either - so was simply taking it on it's own terms.

 

My main thrust is that no matter what innovations Sheffield may get in terms of cycle paths etc, cycle usage in Sheffield is not going to approach that in the Netherlands due to the geographical differences.

 

Oh - and you can't have hills without increases in altitude 😎

Edited by Longcol

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