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Corfu abandoned its expensive new cycle lanes too soon it seems.
What a cavalier attitude towards investment, planning and infrastructure development!
See the Huffington Post or Kathimerini, article by Karolina Tagaris (Reuters)
See also my posting of May 2010
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Those cycle lanes without regulation turned into parking spaces, pedestrian walkways in addition to the pavements, and general confusion given the various exceptions granted those parking cars in them - e.g. traders serving premises, disabled (a category that unfortunatley seemed to include 'inconvenienced' by walking from a designated carpark) and emergency vehicles (which again became an expanded category including cops on coffee breaks). I was glad to see the last of that expensive fiasco. To make cycle lanes work you have to enforce the law that they are for cyclists. Yes it was a farce. Anyone being pilloried in Corfu? They should be. That said I find once near town that much traffic is so slowed by congestion that cycling is the best way to get about. But - touch wood - I've urban cycled for over a decade, know the risks and am v.careful. Getting into Corfu town on a bicycles would involve taking a culpable risk with the lives of the cyclists - children and adults.
ReplyDeleteI nearly always use my bike when in Corfu town, if travelling on my own. Definitely not a good idea for children. It's not that I was praising the original design or implementation of the now abandoned lanes, but rather that I was condemning the huge waste of money involved in installing them without adequate planning or consultation. Some contractors must have made a lot of money?
ReplyDeleteHow I wish someone could trace the story of this project from inception to its end. it would be a case study in how these squalid little projects get agreed and their ill-gotten proceeds shared to the disbenefit of the citizens of Corfu. The dense opacity of these processes is what makes them so repeatable. I wish I had a Greek friend who could use some equivalent of UK/US 'freedom of information' legislation to dig out the papers describing this life and death of the 2009-2011 Corfu Cycle Lanes Programme.
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