That means NO!!!!! STOP YOUR ABSOLUTE SHOWER OF OUT OF ORDER NONSENSE AND LISTEN!!!

What's all this business Bike Gob is hearing about you going ahead and tacking on "cycle upgrades" (fnguuh, upgrades! sorry, BG just choked on BGs last mouthful of High Five there) to the Fastlink routes that have NOT BEEN CONSULTED ON, and get this people, for this is a prize nugget of news, centre around SHARED USE PAVEMENTS????!!!!!!! And apparently, you've just gone ahead and started the work on it! STOP!!! RIGHT!!! THERE!!!

Seriously, Fastlink people, what are you thinking??!! Although this should really be something you as transport planners should already know all about, let Bike Gob patronisingly explain to you all about why Shared Use Pavements are the most counterproductive thing you could be doing to improve cycling around Fastlink.

1. Shared Use Pavements cause um.... like... conflict for cyclists mkay. With like.... pedestrians. Because like, pedestrians and cyclists get in each others way because they like, travel at different speeds. Mkay?
2. Pavements aren't designed for cycling at any sort of like... speed. Like the sort of speed you might wish to ride at if say you decided to take up active travelling for like say commuting to work. Partly because the pavements are always full of bus stops, electricity boxes, fences, bollards, dogs, oh and pedestrians. Bike Gob should say at this point that BG actually really likes pedestrians. In fact, many of them are BGs friends. And well also there was this one time that BG's favourite bikes' wheel fell off and then bike two got a seized bottom bracket from not washing it and then bike three got stolen but it was OK cos BG eventually got the insurance money and got a better one and it wasn't a sentimentally important one anyway, and then BG forgot to bring the right shoes for bike four and so BG had to also BECOME A PEDESTRIAN!!! So from that time BG learned that Pedestrigobs really need their own safe space to actively travel around the place without the worry of having faster things bash into them.
3. Shared Use Pavements are rarely as direct as the road (see above for considerations for our gob deciding to take up active travel for say riding to work, said gob being wholly supported by the parliament and council, who continually stipulate that they are absolutely behind increasing active travel, although let's be honest the now impossible 10% by 2020 statistic seems to be getting left out of a lot of their more recent posturing about just how behind this they really really are).
4. Cyclists get shouted at for cycling on Shared Use Pavements because people think they are not allowed to and to be honest, gob knows where gobs can and can't cycle on pavements in Glasgow because the signs are so useless and they rarely tell you when the shared use designation has ended or in fact, begun. Plus it does seem pretty pretty idiotic to have pavement cycling illegal on some pavements and yet encouraged as the safe option on others. Totally totally stupid.
5. If you think cycling on a Shared Use Pavement gets you to your destination as easily as cycling on a road you've never done it, in the words of Jade Goody from Big Brother (gob rest her soul), "End of". There are all the side streets and entrances you need to cross for a start. And there's getting on and off the pavement. And another of BGs pet hates... TOUCAN CROSSINGS! But that's for another day.

So anyway Fastlink, as you know, you just don't get to build brand new infrastructure in a city in this day and age without incorporating active travel into it. That doesn't get to happen. Oooooh no no no no no no. Not on Bike Gob's watch. Oh, but hold on a second, YOU ALREADY HAVE!!!! Have you any idea how backward that is! It's embarrassing! And not only have you not involved any planning from the outset to include cycling in the plans you've, uh, uh, um, BANNED cycling from parts of it! Were you actually having a laugh when you did that? It's like, the only way that could have come forward out of a meeting would be by you all sitting around the table in your suits with your shit biscuits having a right good laugh about how funny it would be to see the faces of the cycling campaigners if you were to say, ban cycling from parts of these brand new pot hole free freshly tarmaced wide roads that are protected from the majority of city traffic, and the person taking the minutes sort of missed that it was all a bit tongue in cheek and so wrote it up and then it just kind of got carried forward by people because it was in the minutes. Because in this supposedly council branded "cycling friendly city", failing to plan cycling into brand new infrastructure would never happen, right? Sigh.

So what should you build if not Shared Use Pavements? Well obviously as cycle campaigners had been telling you from the start, plan in the cycling from er... the start! But that's obviously too late and so you have now made it harder for yourselves. From right now you need to halt, do your proper consultations and get back to the drawing board. As punishment you need to build segregated cycle lanes everywhere. And lift your ridiculous ban on cycling on these routes.

Gnaaaayyyyaaar.

Yours sincerely,

Bike Gob