If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen that I had issues with a Stagecoach bus driver on Tuesday. I reported him to Stagecoach and to the police. By Thursday evening Stagecoach had written to me saying they had conducted an investigation, the driver would be disciplined and the company would be “issuing a reminder to all drivers of the importance of observing designated areas for cyclists.”
I didn’t want to press charges on the driver, but I wanted it officially noted that he felt it was OK to use his bus as a shaking fist. A work-based warning shot across his bows may make him a more careful driver in the future.
He had used his bus to cut me up on John Dobson Street in Newcastle. When I tackled him about this and suggested he might have had deficient eyesight - his bus twice encroached in a cycle reservoir - he got shirty and shouty. Fearing further aggression, perhaps with an accelerator pedal, I took a photograph of the driver.
He had a bus full of passengers but he got out of his vehicle and had a go at me. Another cyclist was in the green cycle box beside me and volunteered to be a witness, should I wish to lodge a complaint.
I’ve never complained to a bus company so had no idea whether the matter would be ignored or investigated. It was investigated, and promptly. I read on the Twittervine that not all bus companies take such matters as seriously as Stagecoach but if you’ve been on the receiving end of some dodgy “professional” driving it’s definitely worth reporting it to the driver’s employer.
Here’s the email I got from the managing director of Stagecoach North East:
Further to your correspondence on Tuesday 6 December, I can confirm that we have now carried out an investigation into the issue you raised. This included viewing CCTV footage taken from the vehicle involved.
We expect extremely high standards of our driving team. If we have evidence of poor driving we will put in place re-training or, in serious cases, take disciplinary action.
Following our investigation into this matter, we can confirm that the driver on this occasion did not meet the high standards we expect of our staff. I would like to apologise for this. As a result, I can assure you that the driver will now be dealt with through our disciplinary procedure.
In addition, we are also in the process of issuing a reminder to all drivers of the importance of observing designated areas for cyclists.
I would like to reassure you that the safety of our employees, passengers and other road users is our absolutely priority. We have a comprehensive training programme for our professional driving team that is amongst the best in the bus industry. This includes extensive training before any driver gets behind the wheel as well as on-going training. This includes specific guidance on ensuring the safety of pedestrians, cyclists and other road traffic.
Our 8,000 buses in the UK cover millions of miles every week and the vast majority of journeys run smoothly. However, with such a high volume of journeys there can be incidents involving our services. While some of these are caused by the actions of our drivers, it is fair to say that some incidents can also be due to the actions of other road users.
I hope we have demonstrated by our swift response and investigation that we are a responsible company, and that where cases such as this are brought to our attention, we take them extremely seriously.
Your comments are welcome (
Nov 28, 2011
Roads Were Not Built for Cars
I’m writing a book about roads history and will be focussing on the period 1880-1905, which saw the Bicycling Boom and then - pop - the start of Motoring Mania.
You can learn more about this free e-book in this pitch:
The book will be free to download online. I chose this publication model in order to get the book seen by as many eyes as possible. You may know that Victorian cyclists did an awful lot to rehabilitate the use of roads - and helped to get them sealed, too - but this isn’t terribly well known outside of cycling. I’d like to change that. Producing a print book would make me more money but it restricts readership.
The book sprang from the ‘history of the Road Fund’ research I did for iPayRoadTax.com. I then happened upon characters such as William Rees Jeffreys, an official with the CTC who started his 50 year career in getting better roads in Britain as a cyclist and who never forgot his roots.
In a 1949 book he wrote: “Cyclists were the class first to take a national interest in the conditions of the roads.”
Researching deeper and I found Rees Jeffreys wasn’t the only cyclist to have made a lasting impression on highways. In the US, the Good Roads movement was a nationally significant political force and without 30 years of campaigning it’s fair to say motoring wouldn’t have hit the ground running when it came to infrastructure.
If I can rehabilitate some of this history, and turn just a few peoples’ heads, I’ll be happy.
Your comments are welcome (
Nov 22, 2011
Mass motoring was soooo last century
You don’t have to be a statistics boffin to see the flaws in this projection. Clearly, the UK’s love affair with motoring is tailing off. It has reached its peak and it now appears to be on the classic downward bell slope.
However, the RAC Foundation which uses the graph in its new report ‘Keep The Nation Moving’ - has ignored the downward slope and plotted a weird v-shape to make the graph go sky-wards. Why? To lobby for the building of more roads (and for road pricing to pay for some of it).
The graph was based on this similar graph from the Department for Transport:
It was the RAC Foundation which added the weird v-shape projection.
On either graph, look at the early 1970s. Traffic demand flattened out, and this was in a major league global oil crisis. The latest figures don’t show a flattening out of demand, they clearly show a reduction in demand, and the drop started before the recession.
If the graph continues on that bell slope (we probably need another two or three years to be absolutely sure) we won’t need more and more roads. Roads are incredibly expensive to build and - long-term - even more expensive to maintain. If it’s likely we won’t need them, why build them?
Why can’t the DfT - and RAC Foundation - see what’s starting to become apparent in this graph? Mass motoring was soooo last century. We’ve reached ‘Peak Car’ and ‘Peak Asphalt’; ‘Peak Oil’ has either been and gone or is just around the corner. We shouldn’t build yet more roads, we should be investing in ways to get even more people out of cars, on top of the ones who have already decided bumper-to-bumper congestion isn’t for them.
Government transport departments are notoriously bad at predicting the future. In the 1820s, the stagecoach ruled, no Government department predicted the rise and rise of the railways. In the early 1900s, no transport minister said the future would belong to the motorcar. Trains were the future and that’s where the majority of spending was placed. Motorists had to fight tooth and nail to get funding for roads (a fight made easier by 30 years of work by cyclists, of course) and, as I document on iPayRoadTax.com, motorists paid for some road improvements via road tax and the Road Fund. This ended in 1937 and from then on everybody - most of whom were not motorists - started paying for roads, via national and local taxation (bit of a coup for motorists, hey?)
Today, the DfT and Government ministers - again - can’t see the writing on the wall. They assume the Car will be King for ever. History says this will not be the case: stagecoaches were replaced by trains; trains were replaced by cars. Wise transport planners and politicians would be planning for ‘what next’? Instead, as the graph shows, there are very few wise folks in charge of transport planning.
The policy wonks at the RAC Foundation are not dolts, they do see some of the writing on the wall. In the latest report, ‘Peak Car’ is introduced as a concept but rapidly dismissed:
“Intuitively [Peak Car] is plausible. It is impossible to envisage a time where all an individual’s waking hours are spent behind the wheel of a car. The thirst for more travel will be quenched long before that. This is an area which requires much more study.
But, significantly, ‘peak car’ does not remove the impact of ten million more people – who between them will drive four million more cars – in the UK in little more than two decades’ time. Whichever way you look at it, the result will be: more congestion.”
The RAC Foundation even realises there are transport options which don’t involve privately-owned metal boxes taking up public space, but it’s “other people” who need to get out of their cars, not “us”:
“Of course if a sizeable number of us found an alternative to using our cars, then our worries about the jams and their consequences – including the impact on our collective carbon footprint – would evaporate. We could spend our time, trouble and money addressing other issues. It is crucial that we encourage people to substitute their car use with something else where possible, but the evidence suggests that while such measures can reduce demand for personal motorised travel, they are not enough to stem the tide of congestion.
“Realistically, it is difficult to envisage many trips longer than five miles being transferred away from the car to walking or cycling.”
And the RAC Foundation - like other parts of the roads lobby and - always stresses that railways are “subsidised” while spending on roads is “investment”, and motorists “pay for the roads”.
“Railways and buses – on average – cost the taxpayer money in subsidy: 15p per passenger mile travelled on the train;67 6p per mile per passenger on the bus. By contrast, drivers of cars and lorries contribute a net 7p per mile to the Exchequer in fuel duty and vehicle excise duty alone (excluding VAT). Even if public transport were an answer, would it be one we could afford?”
The RAC Foundation also appears to be in favour of taxation opt-outs. All motoring taxes should be spent on motorists:
“There is no sign of government accepting the logic of ring-fencing a higher proportion of road tax revenue, particularly in the present economic circumstances. In part, the continued inability of 34 million drivers to get a fairer deal is a symptom of the lack of both a single, coherent consumer voice for motorists and a regulator to ensure that motorists get the service from the road network that they have paid for. There continues to be no formal recognition that road users are paying a great deal in return for the use of an asset – and, in contrast to the situation with our other utilities, far more than it costs to provide that asset.”
Why do Government’s oppose such ring-fencing? Because if motoring taxation was ring-fenced, all hell would break loose. Interest groups of all creeds and colours would start demanding “their” tax contributions should only go to fund “their” projects. Society does not work that way; cannot work that way.
There are no taxation opt-outs: married couples without kids cannot strike out the amount of tax that pays for schools; pacifists cannot strike out the amount of tax that goes on defence spending. And motorists can’t successfully demand that the money they give to the Government is given straight back to them in the shape of smoother, less congested roads, or more of them.
Smoother, less congested roads would be wonderful for all road users, not just motorists, and such infrastructure – a shared national resource – is paid for by all taxpayers, not just motorists. The public highway is, by definition, for the benefit of the public, not a sub-set of the public.
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I’m interested in this stuff because I’m writing a book on the history of roads (and the forgotten contribution cyclists made to the roads of the UK and the USA). In the UK, only 1 percent of roads were specifically built for motorised vehicles. Add motorway-style trunk roads into the mix and you get 13 percent of UK roads which are mainly motorised vehicles only.
The majority of roads were not built for cars.
In the 1880s, cycling bodies in the UK and USA were the first bodies to push for road surface improvements. In the UK, the Roads Improvements Association paid for road trials of surface treatments, including asphalt and organised the first conferences on roads. The RIA was started as part of the Cyclists’ Touring Club. In the US, cyclists were even more influential. US presidents used to attend the AGM of the League of American Wheelmen.
Motorists clamour for the blackstuff but they need to thank cyclists for its adoption.
I’d like to build to world a home, and furnish it with love
Grow apple trees and honey bees and snow white turtle doves I’d like to teach the world to cycle in perfect harmony
I’d like to buy to world a bike, and keep it company
I’d like to teach the world to cycle in perfect harmony
I’d like to buy to world a bike, and keep it company
It’s the real thing[bike], what the world wants today[bicycling]
It’s the real thing[bike], what the world wants today[bicycling]
Mark Cavendish’s victory in yesterday’s world road race championships put him - partially - on the front covers of the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Times. And the BBC asked Could cycling become the UK’s second-favourite sport, after football. Were he to follow up his Copenhagen sprint with a similar burst of speed at the London Olympics his place in the pantheon of British mainstream sporting greats will be for ever secure.
In 1893, an American sprinter was lauded for the same talent: A.A. ‘Zimmy’ Zimmerman had an explosive kick that saw off his rivals for most of his short career (1889-1896). He won the first ever ‘official’ road world championships and did so upon a Raleigh bicycle.
Zimmerman was one of the earliest professional sports stars. When he started riding for Raleigh, he wasn’t a pro, as - technically - this wasn’t allowed; he was a “maker’s amateur”, which amounted to the same thing. Raleigh owner Frank Bowden paid Zimmerman in diamonds, complained the National Cyclists’ Union, a racing organisation opposed to the payment of riders. Zimmerman had a huge following in the US and Europe. By 1894 he was openly a professional for Raleigh, was paid a fortune and made even more money from prizes and appearance fees. He also became one of the first athletes to license his name: there were Zimmy cycling shoes, Zimmy toe-clips and Zimmy clothes.
Raleigh sponsored him because speed sells. A famous poster of Zimmerman shows him astride his bike, in front of a sign listing his career wins to date, and watched by two cyclists in the touring garb of the day.
Frank Bowden - like Pope Manufacturing’s Colonel Albert A. Pope in the US - recognised that to sell bicycles to the masses, you have to stress speed.
Raleigh was still stressing speed in 1932, even when selling utility bikes to women.
Speed is still important. But not in the sweat-fest sort of way, all head down and Lycra. One of cycling’s key advertised advantages, from the 1890s to today, is the ability to go door to door, swiftly. Cycle routes which steer away from the fastest A to B routes may direct cyclists away from busy, motorised traffic but it’s not just sport cyclists who want to follow ‘desire lines’, the shortest and more desirable routes.
In the UK, dedicated cycle routes are often circuitous, interrupted by junctions where cyclists do not have priority. They can add precious time to journeys. For cycle paths to be effective, they must be not only made safe for hesitant cyclists, they must be made fast. By fast, read direct.
Copenhagen does this well. Traffic lights propel cyclists on a ‘Green wave’: pedal at 20kmh and you hit green for much of your journey. The green wave is set to work best towards the city centre in the morning rush hour; and away from the city centre at 12 to 6pm.
Those who use their bikes to get to work want to arrive in the least time possible. If bike paths are provided, they need to be very wide, and well designed. In 1996, the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, writing about bike paths, said:
“The fast cycle commuter must not be driven off the highway onto a route that is designed for a 12-year-old or a novice on a leisure trip, because if that happens, the whole attempt to enlarge the use of the bicycle will have failed.”
The ‘fast cycle commuter’ does not just mean a sports cyclist on a carbon road bike. Dutch roadsters can be pedalled fast, and so can Boris Bikes. Any well serviced bike with correctly inflated tyres - even dual-suss Bicycle Shaped Objects – can reach giddy speeds, especially downhill. For some people, bicycles may be ‘aids to walking’ but if bikes travelled no faster than pedestrians, why cycle at all?
At Interbike, I met up with Joe Breeze, one of the founding fathers of mountain biking. We talked about cycling and speed. He may have built the first designed-for-the-job clunker (it was Gary Fisher who helped popularise the name ‘mountain bike’) but Breeze got into the bike biz to spread his love of utility cycling, cycling from town to town. His father built race cars in California, but rode to work on a bicycle. Breeze Jnr started racing bikes to prove what Bowden, Pope, Zimmerman and others had been promoting: that bicycles are fast.
“In the 1970s, I saw road racing as a stepping stone. Bicycles in America were seen as a children’s sidewalk toy, for riding round your neighbourhood only. I saw cycling, through my father, as a way to get somewhere. And through racing you could show people how quickly you can get from A to B. Maybe there’d be a little squib in the newspaper about it the next day and people would go ‘oh, you can get from A to B in a short amount of time.’”
In ‘The Art and Pastime of Cycling’ of 1893, journalists R.J. Mecredy and A.J. Wilson wrote:
“The faculty for enjoying rapid locomotion is one which is implanted in the human breast from earliest childhood, and the fact of one’s unaided efforts being the active cause of this locomotion enhances the pleasures derived from it.”
In 1878, Gerard Cobb, president of the Bicycle Union and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote that cycling was “primarily of commercial importance” but was also of practical benefit:
“…the ease with which a bicycle can be driven, the distance it enables its riders to cover, its speed…added to its durability and comparative cheapness, render it by far the best form of road-locomotion for all to whom economy, whether of time or money, is object. As such its use is daily extending among professional men of all classes [and] working men are getting more and more to use them for their daily transit to and from work.”
Speed - to and from work - remains important. A survey of Copenhagen bicycle users found that the number one reason people ride is because it’s faster than any other mode of transport. Fifty-five percent of Copenhagen riders said they bike because it’s fast. Only 9 percent of Copenhagen bicycle users ride because it’s deemed good for the environment.
So, when pushing for dedicated bicycle infrastructure we must always bear in mind that today, and in the past, speed has always gone hand in hand with convenience. Make cycling slow and it loses a big part of its appeal.
I have certainly borne this in mind with the latest version of the Bike To Work Book (112 pages of bicycling goodness, available below or for iPads, free). This has lots of advice on why cycling doesn’t have to be a sweaty affair and to beat cars in major cities you don’t have to get hot under the collar: cars often crawl along, whereas bikes sail past the jams. The section on commuter challenges points out you don’t have to stress out to beat cars in town. Speediness does not equate to excessive perspiration (sweating is cited by many people as a reason not to cycle).
But I beefed up the cover lines, adding: “You can get around town QUICKER by bike.”
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Click on the page to read in full-screen, and hit left or right arrows to navigate through the book.
In media interviews on Friday night - the night of the - Ben Plowden talked about the redesign of the junction on the northern half of Blackfriars Bridge. This is where a bike lane is being squeezed and an extra car lane installed. Cycling groups are dead against this redesign, and so are pedestrian groups. The London branch of Living Streets (formerly known as the Pedestrians’ Association) said TfL’s plans would result in a “motorway-style road layout.”
Ben Plowden’s family and work background suggest he’d be a staunch opponent of Transport for London’s plans for Blackfriars. From May 1997 to July 2002 Plowden was director of the Pedestrians’ Association. He was the organisation’s first full-director and it was he who led the change to switch the name of the org to Living Streets.
Plowden’s grandfather was an important civil servant who rode his bike to work and wrote an anti-car polemic in the 1970s (The Motor Car And Politics 1896–1970, William Plowden) that was radical at the time, and is still radical today.
But Plowden Junior is not opposed to TfL’s plans. In fact, he’s very much in favour of them. But then he would be: he’s the Director of Better Routes and Places at Transport for London. Is he toeing the company line or does he really believe it’s a positive move to remodel a wide bike lane to make more room for cars and lorries?
Let’s examine some of his views. But not from Friday’s TV and radio interviews, from the earlier Ben Plowden, the Ben Plowden who didn’t have a well-paid executive job with Transport for London.
We need to put pedestrians first in urban transport planning. Over the past 40 years, our towns and cities have been brutalised. Urban streets have become routes designed for one function only - to carry as much traffic as possible. The result is public spaces designed by engineers and dominated by the noise and danger of cars and lorries.
Creating places for people…will require strong and enlightened local leadership.
If you want people to go somewhere and spend time and money, you have to give them a safe, attractive and people-centred environment.
Roads need to be re-designed to reflect the fact that they are social and cultural spaces as well as traffic routes.
In 2002, shortly before he moved to TfL, as Director of Integrated Programme Delivery - he wrote:
For thousands of years…streets have also been places for movement. People walking, riding horses and later bicycles, or travelling in coaches and buses. And goods being carried on people’s backs, by horse and cart or lorry.
But the arrival of mass car ownership and the dawn of the Motor Age transformed the character of roads and streets. The movement of cars and lorries has become their primary function. Motorised traffic has literally driven out all the other jobs streets used to do. What the Danish architect Jan Gehl describes as the ‘life between buildings’ has been ruthlessly suppressed.
The new primacy of the traffic function of streets has had a number of effects. Villages, towns and cities have been reconstructed to accommodate cars and lorries. Roads have been widened, junctions re-modelled and space given over to moving and stationary traffic.
The noise, stench and physical danger of traffic make being outside unpleasant or even impossible.
It is not just the environment that has been re-designed for traffic. Planning and highways departments in most local authorities are staffed and structured round the need to keep traffic moving. The education, training and career structures of transport planners and highway engineers are orientated towards designing, building and managing road infrastructure. Few people in national or local government have the skills needed to think creatively about the use of streets as anything other than traffic routes.
The most important requirement is local political leaders with a clear sense that streets are for people, not just for traffic.
Hear, hear!
If only the Ben Plowden of 2011 could tune back in to the Ben Plowden of ten years ago. Reducing a bike lane and adding a car lane is not something the younger Plowden would have countenanced. Clearly, wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age.
Halfords has today said its like-for-like bike sales in 13 weeks to 1st July have risen 11.5 percent. No doubt its sales will increase even further in the current quarter because of the blanket advertising on ITV4’s coverage of the Tour de France. But I feel the company is missing a trick. Why limit itself to just a Boardman range of bikes? A Gary Imlach bike range would be a perfect fit for Halfords. They could flog the range on the highlights part of the Tour de France coverage, seconds before the man himself appears. Why should Chris Boardman get all the product plugs?
The first model in the new range would be an electric bike, with integrated hair drier for that cycle-coiffure that few can pull off. suggests the bike range would have to come ready-fitted with mirrors, too. Good point.
The advert copy for this new bike range could go something like this…
“I knew I’d had a good day’s fronting a sport show when they had to crow-bar me off the set…”
“Light blue is not a colour, it’s a frame of mind.”
Got any more suggestions?
PS I think Gary Imlach is the best presenter on telly. His scripts are first-rate, his humour biting, his hair…gravity-defying.
I’m in favour of separated paths for cyclists. I’ve been hammering on about it for the best part of 25 years, with editorials on the subject in the mags I founded such as BicycleBusiness (in issue number one, August 1999, I waxed lyrical about the “tendril-like spread of cycle infrastructure”) and On Your Bike, the non-Lycra magazine for newbie cyclists. More currently, I have an 8-page feature in the second issue of Cyclingmobility magazine on the sometimes excellent bike infrastructure in Taiwan.
But ‘build it and they will come’ is only a part of the solution to getting more Brits on bikes and it’s very possibly not even the biggest part. The perception of cycling as a sweaty, slow, outgroup thing to do is a huge barrier to cycling in Britain, and building a hyper-connected, Dutch-style cycle infrastructure, door to door, still wouldn’t get Brits on bikes en masse. Of course, more people would start cycling if road danger was removed by physical separation but probably not in the numbers that would be required to satisfy Government return-on-investment equations.
When new roads are built, cars quickly clog up these roads. Similar doesn’t happen with cycle infrastructure in the UK, even high quality cycle infrastructure. Partly this is because even the best, protected facilities are short - and a network with gaps won’t be used as much, but a joined-up network can’t be built overnight - but it’s also because there are many other barriers to cycling. ‘Danger from motorised traffic’ is always close to the top of the list when folk are asked why they don’t cycle but there are many others on the list too, and some of them could be just as important.
In the US, grannies are being attracted to motorcycling in record numbers despite the dangers. Some even tote their grandchildren. They are far from blase about the danger but recognise that the trade-off is worth it.
Two of the fastest-growing segments of the motorcycling population are women and riders 55 and older.
Kathy Hilstein of Arroyo Grande is one of those new riders. She called herself a “back seat” rider until 18 months ago, when she bought a Harley-Davidson Street Glide three-wheeled cycle.
Now, the petite and youthful 52-year-old grandmother rides daily, including shopping trips and toting her 9-year-old grandson Cruz Sumner around the area.
“It’s my way to relax. It just takes away all of the stress,” she said, admitting she was terrified of motorcycles until she and fiancee Dave Cantua rented one a Hawaiian vacation.
Now it’s her favorite pastime, and she rides alongside Cantua, venturing as far as Laughlin, Nev.
“I try to be aware of my surroundings constantly, but it doesn’t keep me from riding,” she said, adding her bike gives her a new-found freedom. “I don’t like to wait until he gets off work to go riding.”
Now, if a US granny can get over her fear of riding a motorcycle on American roads, why wouldn’t a British granny get over her fears of riding a bicycle on British roads? It can’t just be because motorbikes are fast and can accelerate away from danger; this acceleration probably adds to the danger, motorcycling is far more dangerous than cycling.
Bit Zen, I know, but British grannies don’t ride bicycles because they don’t ride bicycles: the UK culture for riding bicycles was wiped out in the 1950s.
To rebuild that culture it will take separated bike paths, yes, but an awful lot more, too.
In 2009, Peter Zanzottera of UK transport consultancy Steer Davies Gleave told the Scottish Parliament: “People love cycling but hate cyclists.”
In the UK, and in many other countries, cyclists have a bad reputation. Cycling may be good for the economy, good for waistlines, good for unsnarling traffic, and good for the planet, but when a UK politician hears cyclists calling for dedicated infrastructure, nine times out of ten that politician pictures a cyclist running a red light, or buzzing pedestrians.
This is a mistaken perception but it’s a prevalent one. Cycling in the UK is perceived as - and is - tribal. In the Netherlands, there are lots of people on bicycles, not lots of people who would call themselves cyclists. For cycling to go mainstream in the UK, it needs to become more “normal”. This is already happening, albeit slowly.
London’s ‘Boris Bikes’ are being used by people who otherwise might have taken the Tube or a taxi. In Darlington, the Beauty and the Bike scheme (a scheme part-funded by the Bike Hub levy, of which I’m involved) is showing that cycling doesn’t have to be all about Lycra, testosterone and helmets. Yes, the teen girls in that Dutch bike scheme want bike paths (”It’s the Infrastructure, Stupid”) in Darlington but the very fact they are cycling in Darlington, despite the dire cycle infrastructure, is slowly creating a culture of everyday cycling in Darlington. It’s not just ’safety in numbers’, it’s about making normal cycling visible, trendy even.
Because cyclists are inherently tribal, groups are solidifying, especially in the blogosphere: there are those who say cycle numbers will only increase if cyclists are separated from motorcars, and there are those who say cycling on roads is far from a danger-fest. Both groups are right. But both groups (of which there are many sub-divisions) are coming at this from the point of view - shock, horror - of cyclists. This isn’t always helpful because, well, cyclists aren’t exactly loved by mainstream British society.
To those who hate cyclists, calling for infrastructure to protect cyclists is like calling for nicer prison conditions for pedophiles. That’s a deeply shocking thing to say, and no doubt it will be plucked out of its context and quoted back at me, but we have to recognise we’re often despised to a degree out of all touch with reality. Even a picture of Kelly Brook riding a bike in a flouncy dress and heels can’t stop hate comments against cyclists in the Daily Fail.
If we’re hated, and our calls for infrastructure are going to continue to fall on deaf ears until our numbers increase, perhaps we could learn from what happened in the Netherlands? Not just by pointing our engineers and politicians to examples of great cycle infrastructure, but perhaps trimming back the cycling message altogether and going with a more broad-brush approach?
For instance, why do we feel there should be separated lanes just for cyclists? Why not also lanes for roller-bladers? Or pogo-stick users? Daft parallels, of course, but you have to put yourself into the shoes of a city planner or a politician. They get it in the neck about law-breaking cyclists, and to provide better conditions for cyclists - you know, who don’t pay for roads or bike lanes - is not something that will curry favour with the majority of their constituents.
Critically, increasing bike modal share will involve cyclists partnering with other groups. Other groups that also want cars tamed.
One of the reasons for the success of the automobile has always been the united front - at least in public - put on by what was once self-styled as Motordom and which we now know as the ‘motor lobby’. By singing from the same hymn sheet, the disparate parts of the motor lobby was able to steam-roller the not-at-all organised opposition.
By joining forces we could be stronger.
Tacking cycling aims to wider societal aims was one of the ways that cycling’s modal share was increased in the Netherlands. Post WWII cycle usage didn’t drop as far or as fast in the Netherlands as it dropped in countries such as the UK, but nevertheless, the writing was on the wall: cycle use was on the way out.
In the 1970s, the Stop de kindermoord campaign helped create an atmosphere in which Dutch politicians and town planners could do more for cyclists, arresting the decline. . This was a safety campaign by a loose coalition of cycling groups but Stop de Kindermoord didn’t major on cycling. Its focus was on protecting children from harm, and that harm came mainly from motorcars. Tame the cars and children’s lives would be saved. Tame the cars and cycling is more pleasurable. Win/win. [There's now a British, 2011, 'Stop the Child Murder' group. It's on , naturally].
Likewise, the success of Sustrans in the UK, an organisation created by cyclists and largely still run by cyclists, can be attributed to its broad appeal. When it lobbies local Government or negotiates with landowners or goes cap in hand to grant making bodies for funds to extend the National Cycle Network, it doesn’t lead with its cycling credentials, it talks about routes for people, people on bikes, people in wheelchairs and people on foot.
Intelligently, like Stop de Kindermoord, Sustrans also pushes for better travel conditions for children. Which local politician could possibly argue against ’safe routes to school’? By lobbying for routes that protect children, Sustrans is very successful at getting localised traffic calming. But schools are dotted here, there and everywhere. Join up the dots between schools and you have an urban cycle network. Sorry, an urban active travel network, designed for walkers, wheelchair users and, oh, coincidentally, a few cyclists.
Cycling groups who want to get more cycling in their locales need to buddy up with pedestrian groups, with wheelchair user groups, with child safety campaigners, with NIMBY organisations fighting urban sprawl. Don’t just fight for better conditions for child cyclists, fight for better conditions for all children. With cars tamed, human powered transport can flourish. And the taming is better done collectively rather than tribally.
Explicit encouragement for specific modes - the creation of dedicated infrastructure for cyclists, for instance - is important in some locations but it’s essential cars are tamed everywhere. Not every road needs a bike path, but every road needs slower, more carefully driven cars.
Be loud. Be proud. Stand up for cycling. But be aware that not everybody shares our passion. If we push for dedicated cycling infrastructure as the be all and end all of cycling promotion, we’ll achieve a lot less than if we had a broader objective, an objective shared with other, non-cycling, city dwellers.
“The cars and motorbikes believe that they have priority. They drive in the race without paying attention to the riders. We are the principal actors but we get less and less respect…On small roads like that that car could have waited before going past.” Sandy Casar, FDJ team
[UPDATED - see base] David Hembrow has a very popular blog. He’s the cycling campaigner who worked to improve conditions in Cambridge for 10 years before he moved his family to the Netherlands. He takes potshots at the UK’s dire cycling infrastructure. He’s almost always right: cycling in the UK, especially in cities, can be a fraught experience, especially for ‘nanas and nippers’.
In his he criticises the cycling conditions prevalent in Wiltshire (specifically Stonehenge) and Northumberland. Now, Stonehenge is a famous disaster area, ringed by busy roads that shame this country, but Northumberland is pristine cycling country and maligning it in the same breath as Stonehenge is wholly unfair.
David quotes a Dutch website which says that “Northumbria has the most beautiful, well marked cycle paths” which “criss-cross through the area and take you to interesting places”. David asks: “I’d like to know where they are.”
Er, pretty much all over this fine county, David.
He agrees that Northumberland is a “lovely area, but when we were on holiday there, all our cycling was on roads…There’s a lot of exaggeration about.”
Exaggeration? If anything, Northumberland is undersold.
Miffed, I left a comment on David’s site:
David, I was with you until your Northumbria comments. We live in Newcastle so we regularly take family cycle trips in Northumberland.
Out in the sticks you’re riding on roads, but you will see maybe just a couple of cars per day. In the College valley, motorists have to pay to get permits to drive through, and there’s a limit of 12 per day.
To get from Tynemouth out into the depths of the countryside, follow the Sustrans Reivers Route. Much of it is traffic-free in Tyneside because of the many former mineral line cycle paths. Once past hot-spots such as Ponteland the motorised traffic drops off massively and Northumberland becomes wonderful cycling country, on or off road. Tourist literature doesn’t do this part of the world justice, and is definitely not exaggerating.
Now, Stonehenge and environs is different, and truly awful, but don’t put ‘Northumbria’ into the same category.
My kids have been cycling quite happily and safely in Northumberland since the age of 6.
Northumberland would be a great destination for Dutch families and their bikes.
There’s separated infrastructure from the ferry to the mineral lines. Some of it is not up to Dutch standards but so long as the cyclists don’t try to reach Newcastle, they’ll be alright.
I’ve written about family cycling in Northumberland for National Geographic Traveller. Extract here.
I’ve also written about the Netherlands for NGT, and waxed lyrical about family cycling there, but you don’t have to go to the Netherlands to experience the perfect cycling holiday: Northumberland is stunning, and very lightly travelled.
The Reid family has been on many day-trips into Northumberland (cycling from home) and three week-long jaunts (again, cycling from home). Here are pix from some of those trips.
Kielder water
Josh on a boardwalk by the North Sea on the Sustrans Coast and Castles route.
Ellie on the traffic-free path near Druridge Bay on the Coast and Castles route.
The hill descent near Ryal, not a car in sight.
On this particular road near Bewcastle I don’t think we saw any more than two cars in about three hours of riding.
Josh seems to be enjoying himself. This is near Clennell Street, on the way to Kielder.
Let’s play “Spot the car”. It’s a long game when you’re in the depths of Northumberland
The cycle path skirting Kielder lake. The biggest danger around here isn’t motorists but midgies.
Well-surfaced, well-signposted cycle route on Tyneside, thanks to a network of former mineral lines.
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Lesson learnt: Don’t ever point out flaws in the arguments raised by David Hembrow. Even a little. In the comments section of his blog he says: “There’s no opinion here, just statements of fact” and “this is the truth.” After reading the National Geographic Traveller article about cycle touring in Northumbria (”…pictures on your link which show helmeted cyclists on gravelly paths…”) he wrote:
“You are willing to take risks with your children that other people don’t see as acceptable to take with theirs.”
Risks? By cycling in Northumberland? Apparently so:
“Just like everything else, cycling on “lonely roads” also carries a risk. A large proportion of the total crashes that cyclists have are single party crashes. If you were to have such a crash, or if you were to have a medical emergency in a sufficiently remote place it is possible that you would never be found.”
Such a risk seems to be confined to the UK:
“You are willing to take risks with your children that other people don’t see as acceptable to take with theirs. This doesn’t happen in the Netherlands. No-one sees cycling as a risk…”
Perhaps David will again accuse me of non-contextual editing - “you have quoted back to me half of one of my sentences out of context in order to try to continue a pointless argument” - even though he’s happy to lift partial quotes from my comments:
“However, thank you for proving my point both with your words: “Much of it is traffic-free”, “Once past hot-spots”, “so long as the cyclists don’t try to reach Newcastle”…
When I suggested his comments about my parenting skills (”You are willing to take risks with your children…”) weren’t terribly kind or accurate, he was in no mood for compromise:
“There’s no opinion here, just statements of fact. I’m more going to “retract” this than I am to retract that the grass is green.”
I’m happy to retract stuff. David was upset that, in the bio above, I said he so hated the cycling conditions in Cambridge he moved his family to the Netherlands. I’ve changed that to the description he suggested.
To put all of the quotes here into their full context it’s well worth reading , but don’t expect a happy ending. David ends the discussion thus:
“please stop the bullshit. I’m bored of your arguing, bored of your pretense, bored of your paranoia and simply don’t believe that you can really be this stupid.”
Sadly, David is no longer OKaying my comments on his blog even though two commenters - including ‘Freewheeler’ - have been let through to write comments disagreeing with me. Debate is good: we can’t all agree with each other all of the time. For the record, here’s the comment, written yesterday, that David won’t OK:
Here we go again, folks assuming I’m anti-seperation.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
On my blog, a commenter sides with David and then launches into an attack on the “old guard of cycling advocacy”. He then suggests I read Dr Dave Horton’s work. I replied that I know it well because I published a huge article of Dave’s and promoted it widely.
My original point was to suggest David revise his views of Northumberland. I thought it unfair he lumped it in with the awful busy roads around Stonehenge, and implying that tourist boards exaggerate about their localities. Some might, but Visit Northumberland doesn’t. I said if anything, it undersells the place. 25 miles from Newcastle and you can be on roads where you may see 2-3 cars all day long.
Northumberland really is a wonderful place for family cycling, and Dutch cyclists could ride off the ferry and straight into the depths of Northumberland on traffic-free paths nearly as good as found in the Netherlands. David doesn’t seem to know this and was unwilling to do anything other than to selectively list some of my quotes and turn them back on me.
He wanted to prove that Newcastle has poor cycle infrastructure, a point I would be in full agreement on.
But the first point was about Northumberland.
None of this needed to spiral into the kind of abuse I later got.
I have been civil and respectful in these postings. I also revised some text that David took a dislike to on my blog (I am always ready to admit to my mistakes). What did I get from David? I’m “stupid”, “vain” “boring”; and full of “pretense” “paranoia” and “bullshit”.
Was any of that called for? Is any of that *ever* called for?
