This week our winning facility is an off-road cycle track, designed to allow cyclists to negotiate a busy roundabout at the southern entrance to Horsham town centre.
The first section starts on the pavement to the left. The roundabout we want to avoid is in the distance.
It is a matter of a few yards in length. Note that the space marked to the left of the white line is a two-way path for cyclists.
Once you have crossed the road at the lights, you are then on the right side of the road. Notice how you are told to dismount here (and before crossing), despite the crossing being a ‘toucan’, and there being a path on both sides of the pavement. Still, ludicrously, a two-way path.
The path stops for no apparent reason as we reach the roundabout, even though it continues to the right in the photograph below (I can only think of potential conflict with crossing pedestrians, but I think all this amounts to is a shrug of apathy from the designer) –
Below, we see the classic yielding of priority, this time to a road coming off the roundabout, which in this case is not at all busy, leading only to a small staff car park. Quite why cyclists also have to dismount to cross a road is not explained.
And yet another ‘dismount’ sign, with added barriers, stopping you from easily accessing the path that runs around behind Sainsbury’s supermarket.
If you wish to continue northwards into the town centre, rather than being diverted eastwards around this supermarket, the path simply stops. You have to continue on foot around the perimeter of the roundabout, cross the road on the north side, and then remount.
The short, hundred-yard stretch featured in these photographs contains five separate instructions to dismount.
As Easy As Riding A Bike 
That. Is. Truly. Horrible.
As I also live in West Sussex, I’m no stranger to horrific roundabout design either http://lofidelitybicycleclub.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/crap-cycle-lane-ii/ 🙂
West Sussex County Council really hate us! What’s worse is that they’re prepared to waste Council Taxpayers money proving that they hate us.
That first picture, of a red cycle “lane” across the junction, is classic. Do cars have to Give Way to cyclists using it? Do cyclists have to Give Way to cars? Who knows! A recipe for confusion and danger, I think.
Of course this isn’t a proper cycle facility at all. It’s just some paint and tactile paving on what is still very much a footway designed for pedestrians. Apart from the paint and tactile paving, which exists mainly for pedestrian benefit, absolutely nothing has been done to make cycling here either pleasant, convenient, or safe.
Yet another classic “cycle facility” from West Sussex County Council, perhaps the council that hates cyclists the most in the whole UK?
It would be shocking if irate cyclists took matters into their own hands and removed the “dismount” signs. Utterly shocking.
No, of course I’m not suggesting anything, I don’t know what you could possibly mean.
I’m concerned at your use of the word “designer”. That implies some sort of analysis about the potential uses and users of the path. I’m not sure there is a great deal of evidence of that. I assume you were either being tongue in cheek or using the word in its broadest possible sense.