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  • This thread has brought up far too many points for me to comment on everything, so just briefly on the usual 'controversy':

    (1) The 'debate' between 'segregation' and 'non-segregation' (or a hundred different variants of the same simplistic and poorly-understood idea is a non-debate. Both ideas mix up a number of things and are necessarily intertwined.

    (2) 'Filtered permeability' is what the concept of 'closing roads' is most often called, although there are other terms. That is, you filter out certain modes of transport by means of 'modal filters'. The idea that you end up with a coarse-meshed network of streets for motor traffic (main streets for the most part) and a fine-meshed network for the access modes (primarily walking and cycling).

    (3) Without the filtering, you can still ensure that a transport network is permeable ('maximum route choice, minimum diversion') for cycling. A lot of London isn't--a one-way street isn't permeable in both directions, a junction with banned turns isn't.

    (4) Permeability and filtered permeability, technical as the ideas may sound, are the only traffic management measures which have been consistently associated with significant increases in cycling modal share. Nothing else apart from a change in overall political culture, which can include political will, social culture, legal improvements, or economic factors, and a myriad of other small measures, has ever done this.

    (Note that increasing modal share has become associated with sidepath segregation largely by accident--a lot of Dutch cycle tracks are simply contraflow cycle tracks (or two-way tracks in one-way streets). Whereas in London streets were made one-way to result in two kerbsides for car parking, in the Netherlands streets were often made one-way for motors while preserving permeability and reserving only one kerbside for car parking. Another recent example is in New York City, where a few cycle tracks, e.g. in Prospect Park West, are two-way in one-way streets. While Dutch transport policy is definitely better than UK transport policy, they have also greatly expanded the motorway network and built a lot of roads, so they are far from perfect, and we have a fair few advantages over here, too.)

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