We are lucky to have lots of pedways in St Peter’s. The problem is that they were designed some time ago quite narrow and most of them don’t really support two pedestrians walking side by side without a passing cyclist making them jump out of their skins. What can we do? How do we enforce or even encourage good manners?

It’s a tricky thing to enforce, perhaps a better way is to try and get both cyclists and pedestrians to talk and understand each other more?

It’s completely reasonable for two pedestrians to walk side by side. Why shouldn’t people listen to music or a podcast whilst walking?

The roads feel unsafe to cyclists.  Lots of cyclists are also both pedestrians and motorists too. Cyclists understand what it’s like to be close passed by a car at speed. Most will empathise with how pedestrians feel when they are closely passed from behind by a cyclist. I know some cyclists think it a bit rude to ring their bell or call out from behind, that it will somehow be thought of as being a rude ‘get out of my way’.

I must admit I was thinking about signs to spell things out like, ‘slow down when passing close to pedestrians and ring your bell’. But the signs would need to be quite big to read at speed, how close is too close?, how fast is too fast?,  and if the empathy is not there will the signs be heeded? How would this be enforced? Signs telling people what to do sometimes feels a bit big brotherish. Perhaps better dialogue and increased empathy between pedestrians and cyclists that really gets to the heart of things and is the key?

I’ve pulled some of my thinking from Danny Brothwell, chair of Bike Worcester, who wrote this blog: https://www.bikeworcester.org.uk/blog/a-blog-actively-promoting-considerate-cycling

Talking to people at Bike Worcester they’ve shown me signs used in other places like the Malvern Hills that encourage better dialogue. We’ve adapted their sign to remove the reference to horses – see below. I don’t know how effective these signs would be but I’d like to test this idea in a few locations to see if the signs work. Let me know what you think?