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Arakawa segments/routes and barriers on parking

nadperona

Cruising
Sep 2, 2020
9
4
I noticed that during early mornings, arakawa's barriers are still open. Does someone knows the time/hour the barriers are close?

I want a route without any obstruction when cycling..
 
From rough memory, they have been up between 10 AM and past. IIRC there was one early ride I did with @luka last year and I thought they were down before 8 AM, but he would likely know better than me.

I did find this gem trying to research it:

But several accidents are caused each year by reckless cyclists who speed into pedestrians.

Lol, caused by reckless cyclists. Probably several are, but by a wide margin a whole lot more are avoided by reckless pedestrians. People with their dogs off the leash. People walking on the wrong side in the wrong direction completely against the flow of all other people. People blocking the entire path across. Baseball/highschool Kids riding bikes 5-6 side by side (isn't that per se illegal in all of Japan unless otherwise posted and even then it can only be two?) Almost every casual cyclist listening to music and/or reading their phone while cycling (both illegal).

The awareness of basic life safety when and around cycles is astonishing in Japan.
 
The awareness of basic life safety when and around cycles is astonishing in Japan.
I assume you mean the lack thereof?
I counter when riding alone by playing loud music over a speaker and a 1,200 lumens light when riding in the dark so that pedestrians know I am coming from a long way back. I've still managed to have a number of avoidable accidents.
It's funny, because if you look at pre-school children, teachers seem to go to enormous pains to have them cross roads while raising their hands to alert traffic to their presence, so it's not like people aren't taught something about road safety.
 
Some are always shut. Some open outside working hours. But I think the weekend they close early, as the baseball kids arrive quite early.

Most of the gates are up near the spaceship. But most of them you can just ride through without slowing too much if you have a good aim.

the near accidents I have had along there are always to do with people making sudden u turns without bothering to look.

a few weeks ago it was a rollerblader. You should have seen all his limbs waving around insanely after I yelled and he realized he was about to be mowen down.
It was a good lesson for him to be more observant of his surroundings.

actually the only near misses I have had have all been with other wheeled people. Never pedestrians.
 
I assume you mean the lack thereof?
I counter when riding alone by playing loud music over a speaker and a 1,200 lumens light when riding in the dark so that pedestrians know I am coming from a long way back. I've still managed to have a number of avoidable accidents.
It's funny, because if you look at pre-school children, teachers seem to go to enormous pains to have them cross roads while raising their hands to alert traffic to their presence, so it's not like people aren't taught something about road safety.

Yes.

And I have never seen any of the pre-school kids in my two daughters classes paying attention to alert traffic to their presence. 4+ years of drops offs/picks ups, 90% by me, seen well over 2,000 instances of kids near cars and I can count on less than one hand how many ever appeared to acknowledge a car, or bike.

The look both ways before you cross rule doesn't seem to be taught here. Its been a challenge getting that instilled in them.

At least at our local hoikuen and middle school and others around Machiya it doesn't seem to be taught at all so the persistence of poor awareness through adulthood doesn't seem that shocking after all.

On Arakawa last year I had a middle school girl in the middle of a weekday, like 12 noon, biking North from Adachi steer her bike 90 degrees across the wide path from the other direction, directly into me. I went into the grass and baseball sand but didn't fall. I wondered afterwards if this was a suicide attempt, I really hope not and that she just wasn't paying attention. That is what scared me enough to basically ride almost 100% indoors on a trainer.
 
sad to hear that Japan (Tokyo) has no cycling specific tracks to fully avoid accidents. Dubai city itself has many cycling tracks. popular ones are 300km (Al Qudra) loop and 8km (Nad Al Sheba) loop.

 
That is what scared me enough to basically ride almost 100% indoors on a trainer.
It is why I avoid city riding as much as possible. Once I'm on the trails in the mountains, there are no cars to contend with. I think this is a large part of the reason for the increase in popularity of gravel and mountain biking. I know it is for me, anyway.
 
It is why I avoid city riding as much as possible. Once I'm on the trails in the mountains, there are no cars to contend with. I think this is a large part of the reason for the increase in popularity of gravel and mountain biking. I know it is for me, anyway.
yes, however some people like speed than climbing.. unfortunately, also not all has the luxury of being close in the country side..
 
I noticed that during early mornings, arakawa's barriers are still open. Does someone knows the time/hour the barriers are close?
The Arakawa emergency access road (note: it's not a cycle path, however much it might seem so) is 80 km long, and has two sides. Which section is 'yours'?
I want a route without any obstruction when cycling..
As the philosopher Jagger noted: You can't always get what you want.

Goodness knows how many rides I've done along Arakawa in the last 15 years. Probably hundreds. More than most, perhaps; not nearly as often as some others. It holds no appeal for me any more, but I'll do it again once in a while.

GATE UP!

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There are occasional news reports of some local - possibly channeling their inner 'Australian motorist' - sprinkling nails or thumbtacks in the gaps at the gates, just to mess with cyclists. I commute into Tokyo along National Route 246 – at least no one there is deliberately trying to cause me injury.
 
I want a route without any obstruction when cycling..
My memory may fail me, but it says that the path on the right bank of Edogawa was unobstructed.

I'd like to recommend Dōshi-michi, but yesterday it had a great number of motorbikes (including one with a completely flat rear tyre) and it stank of exhaust fumes. Luckily I didn't have to go along it for long. Let's say: OK other than on a holiday.

I counter when riding alone by playing loud music over a speaker and a 1,200 lumens light when riding in the dark so that pedestrians know I am coming from a long way back.
And so that oncoming cyclists are dazzled from a long way back, because somebody has to do the dirty work of crashing into those pesky pedestrians.
 
sad to hear that Japan (Tokyo) has no cycling specific tracks to fully avoid accidents. Dubai city itself has many cycling tracks. popular ones are 300km (Al Qudra) loop and 8km (Nad Al Sheba) loop.

They are wonderful tracks, but the wind was punishing. It was nice cycling in Dubai, though.
 
There are occasional news reports of some local - possibly channeling their inner 'Australian motorist' - sprinkling nails or thumbtacks in the gaps at the gates, just to mess with cyclists.
That bastard was from my home city, Melbourne, which seems to have a reputation for being particularly unfriendly to cyclists. I thought Mark Beaumont had trouble there when he was making his world circumnavigation record attempt. He did, but it wasn't through nastiness, just ineptitude as a driver crashed into his support vehicle. Still, sorry cyclists, for the behavior of some of my countrymen, who don't deserve the "o" in that word.
 
They are wonderful tracks, but the wind was punishing. It was nice cycling in Dubai, though.
Yes, wind is crazy but maybe on winter days. My friends tried to complete 200km route on Al qudra yesterday but stopped at 130km. They said, wind was crazy.
They still manage to at average of 34kph though.

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Respectful yet unsolicited river navigation information:

The "left bank" and "right bank" of a river are defined as for an observer on a boat floating downstream, toward the sea.

Going toward the sea, the bank on your left side is the left bank.

Going upstream, the bank on your left side is the right bank.

As the Arakawa and Edogawa empty south into Tokyo Bay, the east ('Chiba') side is the left bank.

Blue distance markers show 右岸 (ugan: right bank) and 左岸 (sagan: left bank).

荒川右岸 32.8㎞.JPG

It's been five years since I've felt the need to respectfully make this correction, but if it one day prevents miscommunication among friends looking for each other on opposite sides of a river I think it's worth being thought middle class.
 
They're doing "roadworks" on the cycling road between Kuramaebashi-dori & Rte.14. It's not bad; just a minor detour.

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Arakawa is my go-to riding place because it is so convenient. However, as others have pointed out, one has to be careful, especially on the weekends and when riding in the dark, since there are runners in the middle of the road with no reflectors or any lights. But the most memorable almost-accident was when I was riding to the most left side of the road as I should, and a guy is running in the middle of the road, coming towards me. When I pass by him, and I had to slow down because there were some barriers, the guy suddenly turns and hits me; his reaction was to push me away, and my back wheel came all the way up, but somehow I managed not to crash. The guy didn't bother to stop or apologize, he just moved on...

Speaking of which, I should ride later today there, when it's cooler...
 
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