A little bit of the US in south London: bike-free

The winning design for the new US Embassy has been announced. They'll be moving from their current position, in posh Mayfair, to a spanking new building on the south bank by Vauxhall, at Nine Elms, due for completion in 2017.

The Philadelphia-based practice KieranTimberlake won the bid. They've taken time out from making shoes and pop singles to come up with this bold vision (right). Perhaps it was inspired by 'local traditions', such as the 3-D headache of the Michael Faraday Memorial at the Elephant and Castle.


And a real, genuine bit of America-in-Britain the new Embassy is. Because despite all the mentions of the 'environmental responsibility', 'sustainable design' etc, guess how much mention there is of bikes? Yup: sod all. Nothing about parking or access. Oh well: the terrorists will just have to drive there, like everyone else.

Mind you, given that Nine Elms Lane has one of the Britain's worst bike lanes, that's hardly surprising. Who'd want to cycle there anyway?

This is one of my favourite stretches of it, not far out of Battersea. In the space of fifty or so metres, the lane is blocked at least five times by posts in the middle of it (right) - two of them for signs informing you that it's a bike lane.

Comedy Cycle Lanes 1: Nine Elms Lane

This is the first in a series about bad bike facilities. (For the mathematicians among you, the series is infinite, irrational, and monotonic increasing.)

First up is one of the crown jewels of crap cycle paths: the one along Nine Elms Lane in south London, between Queenstown Road and Vauxhall. Here's a Google map:


View Larger Map

I've been past it several times, and greeted it like an old friend yesterday when I went into Clapham to have my teeth re-grouted.

Well, not so much an old friend, more like a vengeful and ugly ex-partner from a messy divorce.

Anyway, the path starts just by Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, where stray or unwanted apostrophes are taken in and cared for. Here is where you can join the path. Except that you can't, because they fence it off from the road by these toothpaste-coloured blocks.
If you get as far as rappeling the blocks to get on to the path, then once you've abseiled down the pavement, you can practise your slalom skills.
A bad bike path is a bit like those hitherto unseen characters that join the Star Trek party, beaming down to a dangerous planet populated by bad actors: you just know it's only a matter of seconds before they disappear horribly. Sure enough, the Nine Elms path expires here, only to rematerialise after the bus shelter. (All cyclists, of course, simply ignore the path and opt to follow the road.)
Finally, just by the turn-off to the fruit and veg volcano of New Covent Garden market, comes your comic highlight: the cycle path completely blocked in the space of ten metres by an electricity box, a street light pole, and - boom, tiss! - the sign for the cycle path.

To be fair, the same bike path is also blocked by the sign for the bike path at several other points on the bike path, and on the one that runs along the opposite side of the road.

Do you know of more LOL bike facility incompetence? Other chortle-making cycle-path cluelessness? Or perhaps you're a publisher who wants to push a book called Crap Cycle Lanes, which I distinctly recall was actually my suggestion? Let me know...