Biking in Edinburgh

Okay. Hey. Um, there we go. We good? We good. All right. I am We are in Edinburgh um on a sunny day and I am going to take you on a bike ride. Um, I want to be brutally honest with the biking infrastructure on this is on my ride to pick up uh my kids and drop them off at camp. And so uh I want to just kind of narrate what I’m what I’m doing here uh on this ride and uh just on this one ride so you could see. All right, so let’s tally ho here. Uh so the first thing that you notice right away is the quality of the pavement. Like you can see uh I’m I’m bouncing around a ton. There’s crap everywhere. Like the the the pavement has potholes. It’s rigid. It’s patchy all over the place. Um okay. Now we’re in this pretty cool little stretch here. You’ll see I have to kind of pull over to the side cuz it’s so narrow. It’s just one lane. Um, but this is kind of You would think this is um a bike a bike priority. It is. It is. But you can see the stenciling right here. Um, this little stretch here is like part of a larger project where they’re they’re doing some uh sort of slower bike um priority zones. Um, so here you can see how it’s kind of like this isn’t bad, but you got kind of the same stuff where you got to push a button, you got to dig, you got these intersections here um that are pretty intense um and could be like a lot better. You end up having to wait quite a bit. You don’t really have priority. it doesn’t uh identify, oh, you’re a cyclist or a pedestrian waiting to cross. So, there’s nothing that kind of moves you along. What’s going to happen here, I’ve done this now a few times, is this uh this light is going to turn red. Then these guys are going to turn green. And I’m still going to have to wait. I have to wait for them to go all the way through. So, um, all the cars up here in a queue are going to go and then eventually I will be given, uh, like 3 seconds. So, another really kind of wild thing. Yeah. So, there you go. So, now these guys are all going to go. Um, you can see there’s virtually nothing. You just have like a box with a stencil with a bike in it and like effectively no no paths or anything in these in these spaces. Now what happens is uh I get a green light. So that’s great. I have literally like 3 seconds. Watch this. Let’s see. You can hear it beeping. And there. That’s it. So that’s it. I don’t know how many seconds that was. 5 6 seconds. Maybe seven. But that’s it. It’s kind of amazing how quick that goes. All right, so you can see I’m clearly not on a bike lane. There is no bike uh paint uh or anything, but that doesn’t bother me as much as the quality of this pavement. Look at this. Uh what I keep kind of reiterating here, I think over and over again, is just like look at this. This is like an an inch um down. And not a big deal if you’re driving. just kind of bumpy and uncomfortable. But when you’re biking, obviously it’s really really dangerous. Um you kind of constantly have to avoid this stuff. Uh and because you’re kind of moving around, you got to kind of weave around all this stuff in the street and you’re bouncing around. The thing can throw your wheel off. It’s the kind of thing that easily can um throw you to the ground. I that hasn’t happened to me. But what has happened is you know you’re missing traffic. Oh, it’s really windy. Um and uh you’re weaving with traffic and you’re you’re next to cars, which is not necessarily bad because they’re going pretty slow and they seem they seem to be pretty attentive, but you have to navigate all around. So you c you end up looking kind of insane. you’re weaving all around stuff and that’s on top of just some of the other things. So here you can see this is very typical of uh Edinburgh where you have really narrow pretty narrow streets and so basically everybody’s kind of in a single lane um which is not again not bad like that’s a generally a good thing. Oh this is kind of an interesting stretch where the pavement is is really really um smooth and you might say oh this is this seems really good. I think this is like recently. I don’t know. The stenciling is all off, but there are gaps in here where uh where it shows the bottom layer. And all they did was just take this and just pave over the the crap below it rather than like ripping up the the foundation or the bottom layer and kind of rebuilding it correctly. Okay, so here’s like the first kind of interesting little spot. So, this is uh an entrance into, you know, kind of like a shortcut, but you can see there’s like a ballard here, there’s crap over here, there’s prickly bushes over here. These were totally overgrown until like a week ago. Um, and and they sort of cut stuff out. But you can see kind of like this at least the uh uh the curb is down so you can turn on, but this is like really really narrow. And then the pavement here. You would think that a that a walking path would be really really smooth, but it’s still like all patchy and weird. Whoops, that was a little plant. And then um you know, you’ve got a stone ballard. Fine. But like there’s almost no room. Uh okay. So now so you know things could be better, but then you’re like where are we going here? Oh, we’re going directly out into the street. And this is kind of one of the weirdest, most odd spots cuz when you’re coming the other way, right, you’re coming from the left, but then you need to go right on a blind curve where remember all the cars are on the left side. So cars would be on the outsides coming around this way, but I need to basically go directly in this way, which is just this whole little spot is actually really dangerous. Cars are generally fine, but there are big double-decker buses which you’ll see uh here which come around this corner like there you can see a car. So anyway, so these are the kind of the like points in the network, the nodes in the network. It was a a double-decker bus. Um and the nodes like are not connected. you’re like, this is kind of like a bike route that you would naturally want to take to go through those those little spaces, but there’s not really uh there’s definitely no signage, but there’s not even um you know, a ramp or anything that indicates uh that it is meant for bikes or anything. There’s nothing that makes it convenient or comfortable for bikes. forget stencils and signs, just literally just curb cutting. Uh, you know, so it’s so I can just hop over and get through or just a little bit of width um and not having like 90° turns. Okay, so here’s the next little uh part of the action here. So now we’re into like this kind of other kind of pavement. This is pretty smooth. Um, but you’ll notice like it’s not really that smooth. I mean, it’s okay, but once this stuff I don’t know, this is like a different style. Um, this also is, I think, an incredibly rich neighborhood here. Uh, I saw like a for sales sign back there, which is kind of interesting. Um, so yeah. So there I have to kind of make room. Okay, so up here is going to be a really interesting thing. Again, I’m going to kind of go onto this bike, this little sort of bike/pedestrian path. But you’ll notice because I’ve now done this a few times, I know where to go. But look at this. I’m going to hop the curb here because this is smoother and because now I’m getting to avoid the cobblestones here. But also, what I ended up doing, I had to you come over here and then you have to make a right. Now, there’s two things wrong with this situation. One, there’s no curb cut. So, on a bike, you’ve missed the turn. You then need to either U-turn back there or turn back around here or something and get on the sidewalk. You can’t even get on this way. And then the second is like again, you have this like 90° kind of turn here, which is like just really annoying. And it’s really uh challenging when you come out because you obviously can’t go straight out. You have to go out and then immediately turn before you hit the curb and like fall off the curb. Anyway, this is really nice. This is like a little cut through, I guess, through uh some nice houses here. Here you’ve got another uh another um ballard. That’s fine. But look at the qual the quality of this pavement is so atrocious. I feel like they have these little strips and I think of them as like little strips that I have to like bike on to have any hope of being smooth. Otherwise, like look at this. I have to go on this part, then this part. Watch out for this Then over here, you’ve got this whole thing. So, I’m going to avoid that. And then this whole thing right here. I’m going to avoid that. All right. So, now this is another thing. Look at this. So, this is like the entrance, but look at how tight this is. I just happen to have done this a bunch of times. So, that’s how we get on. But then the quality of this pavement is so bad that I’m bouncing around a lot. And it’s hard to pick up in the camera, but half of it is this. I’m going to go on this right side almost like touching the right this uh stone fence here. Um because it’s a slightly smoother experience. It’s not all like wobbly and crazy. But here, if I go on this side, I’m just sort of bouncing a lot. It’s just all I mean, look at this. So, you can hear it. Everything is banging around. It gets even worse up here. It’s like, what the are we doing? And then you get this little landing strip thing here, which I’m like, all right, let me try to stay on this strip. And then here’s my favorite part. Now, you got this really tight turn through these two stone things. And then two of these like ballards were here. And they were probably like, “Oh, those things are really dangerous for not helpful for cyclists, so let’s cut them out.” Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe a car hit them. Who the hell knows? Any case. All right. So, then you got this little stretch. This is nice and smooth, which is great. But here we’re going to get to uh among the worst parts of this of this short little journey, which is quite common. um I’ve noticed is is pretty common around here is you get dumped out onto an unsignaled um intersection here where you have they’re not cars are not going super fast but they’re also not slowing down or anything. They’re not yielding. I probably could have gone it there but um you got to make I got to make a right turn which mean which is kind of like a left turn in America. So, I’ve got to go through two uh lanes of traffic going in both directions, which as we know is like the most dangerous kind of maneuver. And so, here I’m looking. I’m here. And then what you realize is, okay, that’s bad enough. But then look at the quality of this pavement is so rough. You’ve got all kinds of Look at this. Um you’ve got this thing like this is this will throw you out. This thing will throw you out. Then you’re going, you’re going, going, and then there’s a giant bump here. All while you’re trying to navigate. Now we’re into this random um roundabout with like this all over the place. Um there’s a bus stop up here. So there’s a double-decker bus that is often, you know, blocking the way. So I have to kind of go around. But you could kind of see just the quality. Like look at this. Look at this. Look at that. And then here I’m turning here. But like it’s so hard to navigate uh with all of this pavement being so bad that like so I’m sort of weaving all around this crap because it’s the only thing I can do here. Going around this. Okay. Then here it’s just like patches of stuff and you’re going like all like so bouncy. Um here’s a pothole. There’s a pothole up there. The right here. Look at this thing. I’m on the sort of smoothest part that I could find. Um, and then here again, I’ve got to make a right turn here. So, um, I’m going to look. I’m going to look. I think another thing you can kind of see there, they have a lot of these like blind turns where you it just sort of goes and then you have to make a turn and it’s completely blind. You can’t see around the corner at all. uh you know, which is kind of like really bad for drivers, really bad for pedestrians. Like, one thing that’s good is there’s not really a lot of uh parked cars. I mean, here there is a little bit, but it’s on one side, and you know, it’s not it’s uh it’s pretty good on the bigger roads and stuff. Um they have some pretty good control there. So, here again, I’m going to look. Then, there’s one guy. Um, what I will say is, and then here we’re almost done, but um, and but here, like here’s a a good uh good example of a really blind turn, right? So, you’re kind of like here, but you do have to pop out just to see what’s going on. You saw that guy make made a right. So, they should have given a lot more uh space there, but they didn’t. Anyway, uh, all right. Well, that’s it. And uh yeah, that concludes my my assessment on this ride. Hope you enjoyed. And uh here we are. We’re at camp here,