Cycle For Manchester

Note: I do not condone running red lights. They are there for safety predominantly and you should always follow the rules of the road when on the road. I cycle a lot in Manchester and have noticed other cyclists disobeying red lights. Interestingly, it happens an order of magnitude more often on Oxford Road near the university campus than on any other road in my experience. It could be down to irresponsible students who have never taken a driving test and thus don't know the rules of the road (but surely everyone knows red means stop?), or there could be other factors. Maybe cyclists are given the red light too much? Maybe red shouldn't always mean stop? I think the first issue is that cyclists are often given a red when there doesn't need to be one. The designers of Oxford Road clearly understood this, as they have implemented a few red light bypasses for cyclists along the route at T junctions. These allow cyclists to go straight on, even when the side r...

Inspired by Prestwich Pootler's  recent blog post , I thought I would compare my commute options too. I live in Chorlton, and for the sake of this blog post, we will say that I live at the Barlow Moor Road Co-Op. I do live a little away but not significantly so that it will affect my choice of transport. I commute to the top of Deansgate, to the junction with Blackfriar's Street, although this will soon change to Princess Street but it shouldn't change the outcome much. I'm going to shamelessly steal Pootler's criteria, although I won't be assigning a numerical score, I'll just outline each aspect for each mode of transport. The below list is lifted from his article (hope you don't mind!): Speed: time taken from front door to office door (in-bound journey described for brevity, similar values assumed for return trip unless otherwise stated); Cost: how much each journey costs (for return trip purchased at peak time); Time active: how much exercise ...