Cycling in Brisbane Australia
Shaky Camera Mount Field Test 0.10: Brisbane CBD (Eagle St to City Botanic Gardens)
Gliding past (me, but not the poor camera) Eagle St toward the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. Heavily annotated but as I wrote this up quickly, there might be more to come. Feel free to make use of the pause button. :)
The technique used here can be described as vehicular cycling. It *doesn't* annoy drivers. Go out enough and you'll notice that drivers annoy each other far more often.
http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/animations/lane-control/ (Perhaps the most important animation in the western world you will ever see. Doesn't take long to click through.)
http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/11/29/helping-motorists-with-lane-po... (A video comparing two lane positions - one of which is generally better than the other.)
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/index.htm (This is the second site I went through after Sheldon Brown's - the information provided here is much more useful than governmental "advice" on bicycling.)
http://sheldonbrown.com/beginners/index.html (Don't neglect proper braking and starting/stopping technique!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPkbNFt5NuY (Exchanging Places - discussing riding near trucks)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling (Other general information.)
Camera: http://www.flickr.com/cameras/sony/dsc-p73/
Mount: GorillaPod on the bars; not very carefully done as expected.
Location: Brisbane City
Comment
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Comment by Paul Martin on October 14, 2011 at 11:12am -
Oh... yes, I meant to mention that I saw no annotations! :)
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Comment by Raymond on October 14, 2011 at 11:01am -
Whoops, didn't realise I had to click "Publish" to make the annotations work - fixed now. That should make it a little less boring!
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Comment by Raymond on October 14, 2011 at 10:56am
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Indeed - proper infrastructure would be good value for money and the evening peak for motorists would also improve. That link-dump would also be mostly unnecessary, but clearly a lot of it has been developed in America by those trying to reject the status quo; land of the American Dream. We can head that way too if that's what we want.
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Comment by Paul Martin on October 14, 2011 at 7:56am
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Excellent positioning, Raymond. I think good VC skills are really important, as you know, but they shouldn't be *required* if the environment was conducive to cycling. When I ride on those streets you've highlighted, I ride smack bang in the middle of the lane as well... but I prefer riding on bikeways. ;)
I particularly like your positioning behind the bus at 1:02. I'd do the same. No point lane splitting vehicles like that.
The disadvantage of VC is that, particularly if it is unsafe to lane split and make the most of your small size, you're often slower than the cars. If this were Holland, you'd be long gone with the cars left behind - which is why infrastructure & priority for bicycles is so important, particularly in the city.
If you were to ride along Eagle Street at peak hour in the evening strictly 'vehicularly' you may as well walk - it will be faster...
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