I've long made a practice of knowing the 'cow's path' — the meandering
route between two points with the least change in elevation.
Ridges are wonderful; a short, sharp climb up the side can put one in
position for a long easy run.
The lay of the land is obviously a factor in designing cycle routes.
The layout of the bike paths in Bogota, Columbia, pays careful
attention to geography. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogota%27s_Bike_Paths_Network for a neat
overview map.
Richard
On 18 Sep 2007, at 09:55, Dave duFeu wrote:
> Edinburgh may be another interesting case, with its mixture of flat
> (primarily east-west) and hilly (primarily north-south). In
> particular,
> between the city centre (Princes Street) and the large coastal
> residential area to the north (Leith, Granton, etc) there is a
> big height differential. For many journeys there is a choice of using
> quite steep but direct roads, or a much longer but very enjoyable and
> high quality disused rail route with a gentle gradient and no at-grade
> road crossings. Both options seem to be fairly well used, but it has
> never been researched as far as I know.
>
> Dave
>
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, Dave Horton wrote:
>
>> Following on from John's comment about CDTs (below), the Lancaster
>> and Morecambe district is interesting in this regard. As you probably
>> know, we're a cycling demo town, and although that status is district
>> wide I think it's fair to say that the project is centred on
>> Lancaster much more than Morecambe. Lancashire County Council is also
>> engaged in a bit of a campaign to label Lancaster as the north-west's
>> cycling city. There are relatively high hopes for getting 'good'
>> levels of cycling here. But Lancaster is hilly, Morecambe is flat. I
>> don't have figures for the respective towns to hand, and a great deal
>> of local cycling is between them (the best used bit of local cycling
>> infrastructure is the disused rail line linking Morecambe and
>> Lancaster town centres), but my *guess* is there's more cycling in
>> Lancaster than in Morecambe. So this district might make a
>> fascinating case study, examining whether 'easy' topography
>> (favouring Morecambe) or favourable cultural sensibilities (favouring
>> Lancaster) are of greatest importance in producing cycling.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> The issue of influence of gradients is something that a detailed
>> examination
>> of the cycling demonstration towns might explore, Brighton being an
>> obvious
>> candidate (with Guildford, a town with similar topography and (up to a
>> point) demography s a reference base). CTC would be interested in
>> helping
>> out with that one.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> John Meudell
>
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