Casting by Schrödinger's Cat

There’s confusion. It’s deliberate, I am almost sure. As with so many cycle-related things in the UK, you’ve come to expect the most silly solution to be implemented, the most fragmented network to be build, and all to be solved with an extra thick icing of training and promotion. Jubbly!

Here’s the script. Once upon a time.

Cycle lanes. I mean, I love‘em. Give you some safe space, dunnit?

Until the mothered motorists comes along, discarding their shells in the door zone and there's no  buffer strip, or plonked its beloved thing right in the lane cuz there’s no double yella and the authorititties kennet dee anything aboot it anyweees. Cock-a-snook! Sillies!

Fair? Nope.

Next.

Cycle lanes. I mean, I love‘em. Give you some safe space, dunnit?

Until UK cycle training comes along and tells you what you should really do is take primary position (that’s middle of the car lane for the uninitiated). Unless a lorry comes hurtling towards you, then you may like to consider getting out of the way. Road design doing one thing, and official instruction inform you of yet another. What’s the sense in that? Primary position is also a solution that heavily relies on conflict. You, soft squashy thing, have to put yourself into the line of fire. Others are bullet proof. Bullseye!

Or.

Until the cycle lane ends - it inevitably always does when you most need it, at a pinchpoint and when the road narrows, in a bend, over a sideroad. It's a conspiracy. Hidden cameras? You've been framed possibly? All good things come to an end, none more so than the cycle lane.

Not quite joined up.

All sounds too familiar.

Proceed to the Cycho clinic now! I’ll be patiently sitting in the waiting room until my number’s up. To bide my time I am playing the Waiting Game with you-know-who.

Ride the lane? Or hold the line? We can’t be in both at once. Maybe we’ve been looking for the wrong solutions and it really is rocket science and particle physics?

Nah. Coarse knot!

Und die Moral der Geschicht’?
Bleib’ auf der Linie nicht!
Mach’ dir ‘nen Platz, der sicher ist,
Dann kannste radfahr’n ewiglich!

Moral of the story?

That’s exactly why we must have physical separation on our fast, busy, hostile, dangerous roads with the most mothered motherf*cking motorists on the them. Or else no-one will ride the revolution or revolutionise the ride.

They lived happily ever after.