French affairs

Having just visited Geneva by train, I have passed through Paris. There is much more to say about cycling and public transport in Geneva, which is very interesting, and less well-known to UK audiences, so more on that later, but for now some brief observations on Paris.

When I first visited Paris in the early 1990s, there was little cycling there, comparable to London at the same time. Then came a certain amount of segregated infrastructure, mostly created with the aid of strips of rubber bumps in the road to semi-segregate the space, later came some better segregated tracks, and in 2001 the Velo scheme, which I saw the very beginnings of, at a time when something similar was first being mooted for London. I noted at the time that the Paris hire stations had often been located to take advantage of the segregated tracks, of which there were far more than there were (or are) in London, and that this was a significant factor in their success as I observed it. Nobody else discussing the subject in the UK seemed to be aware of this factor. I more recently wondered whether the London scheme would succeed by comparison, both on the grounds of lack of infrastructure, and the demographic differences between central London and central Paris, central Paris being far more residential.

It seems that my caution was too great, to the extent that the London hire scheme does seem to be succeeding to some extent on its own terms, though TfL are desperately talking it up all the time and not talking about the fact that it has never achieved the number of trips that was anticipated for it.

I last visited Paris in 2009, and was struck buy the way cycling had taken off there, some years down the line from the commencement of the velos. This seemed to be despite the fact that the city remained basically cycle-unfriendly, with little space for bikes, high traffic volumes and speeds, a lack of infrastructure, compared with the conspicuously cycle-friendly north European cities, and a preponderance of one-way streets from which cycles were generally not excepted, thus making for round-about journeys. At that time, Paris seemed to have pulled significantly ahead of pre-Borisbike London in cycling terms.

Visiting Paris, albeit briefly, again now, my subjective opinion was that cycling in Paris has not advanced over the last few years. It seems to have flatlined. The fashion for the rubber studs seems to have gone and some or all of these semi-segregated tracks have been removed. The have not been replaced with anything better, and nothing substantially new has been introduced to improve the attractiveness of cycling. In other words, the gains that accompanied the introduction of the velos have not been sustained because there has not been an aggressive programme of continual improvement of the cycling environment. The gains from the hire scheme have run their course.

Chaotic streets scene at Paris's Gare du Nord: could be London's kings Cross, Paddinigton, etc. etc. Quality space could be made for cyclists here, but hasn't been, and there are no cyclists to be seen

This is undoubtedly what we will see in London without a significant change of policy from TfL and the government (which looks unlikely). With the current failure to invest in serious improvements to the cycle environment and infrastructure, symbolised by the senseless Cycle Superhighway concept and the even more senseless Biking Boroughs, coupled with Boris’s dual mad ideas of “treating all modes equally” and “smoothing the flow”, which both amount to de-prioritising walking and cycling, we will see, at most, another year of increasing cycle use, with the introduction of casual usage of the Boris Bikes, and then we will see cycling in London flatline at below a 2% modal share. London needs to learn from places where cycling and walking policy is working, such as Copenhagen, Münster and Geneva, not from places where it is not, such as Paris and New York, easier though it may be to relate, conceptually, these cities to London.

On the public transport front, Paris clearly leads London. They have had the investment over the long term that London has not. I saw from this poster in the RER (urban and suburban rapid transit trains) that they are now having a public debate on new orbital suburban rail lines for the Paris region. 

Poster advertising public debate in Paris on new suburban rail options

Orbital suburban rail is the most yawning gap in London's transport network, particularly north of the Thames. The last orbital rail lines to be built in central and North London were the Circle Line of the Underground, and the North London Line (now branded as part of the London Overground), both completed before 1910. Obviously, London has expanded hugely since 1910, and both these orbital lines are now much too far inside the metropolis to be considered "suburban" links. Bizarrely, the rail network of North London has in fact not changed significantly since the suburban Underground lines were completed, before 1940. Since then, the outer London suburbs have been excellently connected to the centre, but disconnected from each other, the only public transport between them being the buses. The excellent London branch of the Campaign for Better Transport (the charity previously known as "Transport 2000") has come up with a well thought-through idea for a North and West London Light Railway, but neither TfL nor the DfT has shown much interest in it, which is sad. The failure to create serious public transport infrastructure in the outer London suburbs serving modern needs, which are as often for orbital journeys as radial ones, particularly north of the Thames (south Londoners at least have the London Tramlink) is a significant contributory factor to London's environment falling behind that of its peer cities in Europe. While the massively expensive Crossrail project trundles on, to be completed – when? – I haven't the slightest idea, London's first attempt at the concept of putting full-size trains underground for a long distance (and it only essentially duplicates the Central Line of the Underground with more capacity), Paris has had lines A and B of the RER since 1977, and line E, the fifth line, was opened in 1999.

Line D of the RER at Gard du Lyon: double-deck underground train: London has nothing to match the spectacular scale of the engineering of the RER

On a lighter note, on my journey back to England, I noticed that Eurostar’s free magazine, called Metropolitan, is advertising the World Naked Bike Ride under What’s on in London (perhaps it shoud be what’s not on.). They translate “in your birthday suit” as en tenue d’Adam ou d’Ève. In a sensible mention, they point out the serious purpose of the event, to highlight cyclists’ vulnerability on the roads. No equivalent event in Paris is mentioned. (I note that the London WNBR this year has the semi-official stamp of "Team Green Britain". Does that mean we will be seeing the Transport Secretary of the Climate Chage Secretary on it? Probably not.)

As one speeds through northern France, towards the tunnel, the flat landscape is dominated by electricity pylons: a transmission grid probably taking part of France's nuclear-generated electricity to England; since Mrs Thatcher's privatisation of our electricity supply, the French state company EDF (Electricité de France) seems to have taken over a large share of our supply. As one emerges from the tunnel in Kent, the landscape is dominated by huge multi-layered barricades of steel fencing around the tracks, built to keep illegal immigrants out. France – a nation of transmission; England – a nation of barricades.

Welcome change on by-laws

I am back now from a visit to Switzerland and France, which was very interesting. More on that later, but first, this piece of news from The Independent. According to this article

Hundreds of miles of cycle routes could be created across England following a move to make it easier for councils to scrap outdated local laws.

Bicycles are banned by-law from parks, seafront promenades and other public spaces in many parts of the country, forcing cyclists on to busy routes as they make their way to work.

Grant Shapps, the Local Government minister, will tomorrow announce he is telling councils they no longer have to receive permission from Whitehall to remove restrictive by-laws.

The initiative is part of a government effort to remove the red-tape facing many councils and to devolve decision-making to local communities.

But Mr Shapps said it would also have a spin-off by improving cyclists’ safety and encouraging people to use bikes.

He told the Independent: “There have been some crazy by-laws in place from the year dot stopping cycling from taking place. This should enable local people to scrap laws stopping people from getting on their bikes."

“Everyone is interested in looking after themselves and their health, as well as the environment, and cycling succeeds on both of those fronts.”

He urged town halls to re-examine their by-laws to identify routes away from busy roads that can be opened by to cyclists. 

Mr Shapps said some authorities had already taken the step, including:

*Canterbury, where cyclists were allowed on to the promenade around Herne Bay as part of the National Cycle Network;

*Worthing, where the council also opened the promenade to cyclists.

*Harrogate, where cyclists will be able to use designated routes across the Stray, open land in the town centre, following changes to by-laws coming into effect next month.

Making it easier for local authorities to create cycle routes on the non-highway land that they control is certainly a step in the right direction. Making it easier will not, automatically, cause local authorities to create well-designed off-road cycle facilities that will integrate satisfactorily with the road network and not cause problems to pedestrians. This does rather depend on the local political will being present, having the correct impetus from local campaigners, and the presence of competent officers who understand cycling and can design usable, well-thought-through schemes (a very limited resource). In the past, even when, under the existing legal regime, councils have decided they wish to create cycle routes through open spaces and parks, and have pushed it through, the results have all too often been virtually useless from the point of view of encouraging utility cycling, because of mis-conceived arrangements like this being put in place.

This ludicrous cycle-blocking gate is one of a couple to be negotiated in a few hundred yards on this parkland "cycle route" in the London Borough of Hillingdon. This is adjacent to Park Road and Western Avenue, two huge dual carriageways connected by a motorway-style intersection on which cyclists should not be expected to have to cycle. Yet the other choice cyclists are being given is this. Sorry, Hillingdon council, it ain't going to work. This is why you have less than 1% of journeys in Hillingdon by bike.

One of the examples mentioned by Grant Shapps was the promenade in Worthing. Here is an account of the gestation of that route from The Argus of 5 August 2009.

The Government has sanctioned a change in bylaws to allow cyclists on Worthing prom between Splash Point and George V Avenue from August 28.

The borough council hopes new signs will be in place by then, allowing the 12-month trial to start.

The issue has divided Worthing, with views for and against evenly split.

Critics believe the promenade should be for walkers only, and fear an accident similar to one which happened about 15 years ago when a woman pedestrian suffered brain damage in a collision.

The council was forced to pay out more than £100,000 in damages and the cycle lane between the Lido and George V Avenue was scrapped.

But cycling campaigners said far more cyclists have been killed and seriously injured on roads since then.

The council has decided on mixed use of the promenade instead of a designated lane.

Councillors also rejected calls for a speed limit, claiming it would be unenforceable.

Jim Davis, chairman of Worthing Cycle Forum and Worthing Revolutions cycling campaign group, said he was very pleased the trial was going ahead.

He said: “Obviously we now need to focus on promoting safe cycling. The whole point is to enjoy the prom and not to treat it like Manchester Velodrome.

“The problem with having a speed limit is it calls for additional signage. It is also difficult to police and enforce.

“What's needed is a campaign to make people aware that the prom is for everybody.

“The prom is there to enjoy, not to get from A to B quickly.

“I am anticipating some small conflict, primarily because it is something new, allied to the fact that people will remember the regretful incident 15 years ago.

“But we must also consider how many cycling casualties there have been on our roads.”

Mr Davis conceded that it would take only one “idiot” on a bike to ruin it for everybody and scupper the trial.

Coun John Rogers, the borough's cycling champion, said: “It is great news, something people have been waiting for for a long time.

“We have a start date of August 28 but we must first get the appropriate signage up.”

He said the trial would be monitored and a report presented to the council after a year.

Coun Rogers warned: “If people want it permanently they have got to behave themselves.”

Coun Bob Smytherman said mixed usage was a “recipe for disaster” and feared for youngsters walking into the paths of cyclists.

The list of comments and opinions here are the typical ones you will get when discussing any of these off-road cycle routes anywhere in the country, from seaside promenades to Hampstead Heath and the Royal Parks. In the two years since this discussion, I have heard of disasters in Japan, New Zealand, and other places, but not Worthing, so it appears Cllr Smytherman's fears were misplaced. Strange how he also seemed not to be worried about youngsters walking into the path of cars. And it is interesting how they had to go back 15 years to find a case where a pedestrian "suffered brain damage" in a collision with a cyclist. I suspect they would not have had to go back so far to find a case of a cyclist being killed in a collision with a motor vehicle in Worthing. And it is interesting how that caused the council to close a cycle route. How often does it happen that a road gets closed to motorists because one of them kills a cyclist? It never does. Another thing that never happens is that people like Worthing's so-called "cycling champion", Cllr. John Rogers, suggest that motorists, or indeed pedestrians, or public transport users, must "earn" safe or convenient infrastructure by "behaving themselves". When did you ever hear a minister declare "We will build no more sections of trunk road or motorway until all motorists stop exceeding the speed limit, using their mobiles while driving and knocking down pedestrians and cyclists", or a councillor declare "No more bus stops for those unruly passengers who won't queue properly but push in". Cyclists in the UK have this unique distinction: so undeserving of basic human considerations are they, as a species, that they must "earn", by "good behaviour", the facilities they need. No wonder we are stuck on the 1% mode share.

I am not a great supporter of "shared space", and believe that, for off-road facilities, if cycle flows are expected to be at all high, as indeed they should be, if a facility is successful, that cyclists should be segregated from pedestrians. This does seem to be the norm in the high-cycling states on the continent. We get it sometimes in the UK, such as The Broad Walk, Hyde Park, a well-established example, or on Brighton sea front, where they have the added weird markings as shown here. But at least they don't have the Hillingdon mantraps.

While Grant Shapps' announcement is to be welcomed, hopefully the government is not imagining that the creation of cycle routes through parks and on promenades is "the answer" to safe cycling, as it clearly is not. In the London Borough of Brent, for example, while more routes through parks would be welcome, and, indeed, the difficulty of changing bylaws has been given by the council as an excuse not to have made more progress on this, all the routes through parks and open spaces that could be imagined would not actually do much for cycling here, because, after a very short distance, for almost any useful cycle journey in Brent, the cyclists is going to have to go on to a big, nasty road. The urban landscape is cut up by railways and waterways, and the only ways through from one neighbourhood to another are the bridges that take heavy traffic on the main roads. In any environmental context, it needs to be understood that utility cyclists are normal people and they need to go to the places that normal people need to go to, such as schools, shops, workplaces, libraries, all of which are in general connected up by the main road network and cannot be accessed in any other way. To really encourage cycling, as they have done in other European states, you need whole route solutions for real journeys, and you need to make these safe, convenient and conflict-free (vis-a-vis motorists and pedestrians) from one end to the other. Isolated local interventions, UK style – a bit of an improvement here, a bit of an adjustment there, "pepper-potting", as Freewheeler calls it, won't work. You need end-to-end quality.

Routes through parks, on promenades or across open spaces, on towpaths, or, indeed, on minor roads, while making a contribution to a good cycling environment, if well-executed, don't generally provide end-to-end solutions for real journeys. The main roads still have to be tackled.

Blog posts that have impressed me today

Mr C at MCR Cycling of Manchester has written a piece which thoughtfully draws parallels between the promotion of waste recycling and the promotion of cycling, showing "the limits of elective behaviour change".

Over in Copenhagen, unfortunately, they are suffering from a new bout of "road safety promotion" – that strange phenomenon which seeks to place the responsibility for avoiding crashes squarely on people trying to negotiate the roads without being encased in a metal box, rather than attempting to mitigate the source of danger, the fast-moving and carelessly-operated metal boxes themselves. This is what Mikael Colville-Andersen calls classic "ignoring the bull messaging", i.e. the car as the "bull in society's china shop". That latter post is a "classic" and worth a read if you have not read it before.

Finally, if you are familiar with the documentation that has gone with cycle campaigning in the UK in recent years, you will likely have seen before the photograph that Freewheeler of Waltham Forest, in his usual brilliant fashion, looks into closely, establishing its vital true context. It turns out, it was really quite misleadingly used, and this sheds a light on CTC's understanding of cycle facilities and safe cycling conditions. Another great public service done by Freewheeler.

I am off for 5 days to Geneva now, to see CERN. I will leave any readers with something almost as remote from cycling in the borough of Brent as it is possible to get, though in fact the picture was taken from Brent.

This is the North America Nebula, NGC 7000 (the only NGC number I can ever remember), with the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) to its right, some 1800 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus, taken early on Wednesday morning. I am very pleased with how this image has turned out, as it was taken with relatively cheap equipment: an ordinary 66mm ED refractor, focal reducer, and a Canon EOS 400D DSLR (astro modified by removal of the IR filter) and with internal light pollution filter, that I bought 2nd hand for £350. Plus of course the mount – that was the expensive part. Also it was taken with only 28 minutes exposure in 2 minute subexposures from highly light-polluted Edgware with the sky already lightening towards dawn. Yet it is the best picture I have achieved of this object, which just shows how good the commercial DSLRs are now: almost as good as CCDs.

You can see the full-size image here if you wish. My other astrophotograhy is on this site.

MP talks sense on cycling

According to This is Gloucestershire:

MP AND keen cyclist Martin Horwood has hit out at "rubbish" cycle routes around Cheltenham.

He said the worst were in Albion Street and Lansdown Road which he said were so ridiculous they were virtually impossible to use.

He said: "My all-time favourite is in Albion Street which allows you to cycle around in front of a bush for three seconds and then lands you straight in front of oncoming traffic.

"I work round the corner and have never seen a cyclist daft enough to use it.

"A close runner-up is in Lansdown Road where the cycle lane, if you can make it out at all, invites you to leave the road, scythe through the middle of any unfortunate pedestrians, nearby bus shelter or pedestrian crossing and then sends you shooting straight into a traffic junction."

He said areas which are for use by cyclists should be paved differently and separated from the road by a kerb instead of being marked by paint.

He said: "I would like to start building the core of a real cycle network across Cheltenham and abolish the pointless collection of painted lines that everyone ignores.

"Even though this will be expensive enough to limit us to a few new cycle lanes a year, in 20 years' time we will have a decent set of cycle lanes instead of exactly the half-baked rubbish we have now."

I am amazed. This is the first time I have read such an accurate and coherent critique of standard UK "cycle infrastructure " (otherwise known as "cycle difficilities") from such a high-profile person. For "Cheltenham", read any town or city in the UK. Our cycle infrastructure is a national disgrace and an international joke. The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, as I have mentioned before, has been set up to try to address the root causes of this. It is ridiculous that the nation that once gave the world railways and tar macadam cannot arrange a sensible bike path in the 21st century. Many in the UK cycling world, however, react differently to the failure of our authorities to create usable dedicated infrastructure for cycling. Rather than press for it to be done properly, they insist that it will never work (contrary to all the international experience), that therefore cyclists should not ask for it in the first place, and that they are better off without it. The codicil to the Cheltenham story is that the treasurer of Cheltenham Cycling Campaign is the famous John Franklin, author of Cyclecraft and similar works, and perhaps the UK's leading opponent of cycle infrastructure (amongst cyclists).

He said: "Cyclists don't want cycle routes. The best thing is the general road network which should be made more suitable."

This is no surprise to those who know anything about Franklin. He claims to speak for cyclists, but he does not. He has not been elected by anyone (except perhaps Cheltenham Cycling Campaign). He has not analysed the opinions of cyclists nationally, and his viewpoint is an extreme one, but one that has exercised a bizarre authority and hold in the UK cycling world over the years. Franklin's views and influence, and what is wrong with them, have been analysed extensively here, here, here, and here (and probably other places that I haven't spotted as well).

Back to the poor cycle facilities of the UK, and how they could be made better. Here is an example from near my house, in the London Borough of Brent.

Kingsbury Road, north Brent

Actually, this is quite a good example, by UK standards. It is quite attractively done. It is a decent attempt to re-use an unnecessarily wide stretch of pavement (probably deriving from the filling-in of a service road at some time in the past) in a shopping street by reallocating it to cyclists. It is a reasonable distance from parked car door-opening, it leaves pedestrians with enough space, and trees and necessary street furniture have been usefully retained. Now, this facility did make Warrington Cycle Campaign's Facility of the Month page once, but that was because the phone box seen in the distance here had not, at first, been moved off the track, which it now has.

No, the problem with this bit of cycle infrastructure, as with most in the UK, is that it is too small-scale and incoherent. It is finished almost before it is started. It only runs for a couple of hundred yards, at most, before we meet the famous "Give Way" markings and tactile paving so familiar to all UK cyclists as indicating the limits of each disconnected, unsatisfactory bit of infrastructure. In this case, this is the view looking the other way.

More of the Kingsbury Road cycle track

The pavement continues on from here, just as wide, for anoher 300 yards, with no change of character. It would have been perfectly possible to continue the track as far as Kingsbury underground station (which would have been very useful), or further. But that was not the intention of the planners. For reasons I cannot fathom, their intention was that cyclists should be re-directed at this point on to the road, at this pelican crossing. Here the road is typically a congested channel of moving cars with only a small gap between them and the parking. Now most seasoned urban cyclists can handle conditions of this type quite easily, as I can, but the point is, that, if you are going to do so, you might as well do so for the whole length of the road, and get into the mode and mental state of controlling the traffic in the "primary riding position"for a good length of time, rather than schizophrenically diving off the road for a hundred yards to share the pavement-level track at slow speed with shoppers, prams and old people who wonder (forgivably, but unheedingly) onto it and into your path, before giving yourself more unnecessary danger by riding unpredictably (to a motorist, who probably is unaware of the cycle markings) off it again into the road and changing mental mode again totally to one of "controlling the traffic". It is this bittiness, this schitzophrenic "we're part of the traffic, no we're not, were mixed up with the pedestrian flow, no, now we're a fast vehicle again" issue that is the main failure of typical UK small-scale and incoherent cycle facilities, and what brings them into disrepute. It is the problem underlying most of what is seen on the Warrington comedy site. My friend Paul Gannon, who had lived in The Netherlands for a time, used to refer to this as "toytown infrastructure".

The Kingsbury track has pedestrians on it most of the time because they are, understandably, not expecting cyclists. That's because there are few cyclists on it, because the facility doesn't work well. And so it goes, in circular fashion, reinforcing the design failure. Better cycle tracks, of which there are one or two examples in London, lower the track to a level below that of the pavement, thus clarifying the pavement/cycle track distinction.

Walkers on the Kingsbury track

A better-designed example, Royal College Street, Camden Town

The Royal College Street example is much longer, about 500m of continuous, uninterrupted track. This is long enough to work and to make a difference. Sadly, this is the longest continuous high-quality cycle track in London. To make a big difference to the cycling experience, such tracks need to run for miles.

Here is another example in my area, but just over the border in the Borough of Harrow. This is a supposed cycle bypass facility for a very fast and dangerous roundabout, Queensbury Circle.

Cycle track by Queensbury Circle, Harrow

This cycle track is only a few dozen yards long. There are five such, on all the corners of the five-armed roundabout. Each little bit on each arm ends either at a pedestrian crossing, or just ends with nothing. They do not connect up with any other cycle facilities on the roads. What is this supposed to do?? I have talked to Harrow Council officers about this, and they (non-cyclists, of course) think that it is a good facility. But I have never seen any cyclist use it (there are very few cyclists in this area anyway). It is totally unusable. To use it a cyclist would have to become, effectively, a pedestrian. But to do this is to abandon the advantages of having a bike (speed and efficiency), and not gain the advantages of being pedestrian (small footprint, manoeuvrability, better attitude on average from motorists, and not being encumbered with a bike). Cycling can never be made to work by making cyclists hop on and off their bikes ever few yards, dodging on to the road and off it all the time. Having to get back onto the road typically creates more danger from motor vehicles than staying on it all the time. The other unsatisfactoriness with these attempted "solutions" is that they take the cycle space away from pedestrians, not motorists, who already have most of it. At Royal College Street the space for the track was taken out of the road. But in the Queensbury example above it is seen that the pavement has been completely replaced by the cycle track. So where do the pedestrians go? They are actually supposed to be behind the cars on the left, on the pavement behind the service road. Which means they have to keep crossing service roads to get round the junction, which makes it more dangerous for them. They prefer to occupy, of course, the space that has been painted as the cycle track. But it doesn't matter, because the cycle track is meaningless, being unused by cyclists, being unusable. And yet the (non-cycling) officers and councillors think this is a good cycle facility. Unfortunately, they lack the most basic clue about how a good cycle facility would actually work.


It is possible to satisfactorily resolves the conflicts between pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles at roundabouts. The Dutch have been working on this for decades: see this post by David Henbrow for the details. It is not very expensive and does not require huge engineering. It does require some engineering, and it would also require changes to the UK's Highway Code and possibly legal changes as well. You can see how it needs to work from this video of a roundabout in The Netherlands.

Note how the Dutch solution is smooth, large-scale (or maybe "appropriate scale") and continuous for the cyclists, not bitty and start-stop like the British attempts. Note also the important point that the Dutch track operates one way only, in contrast to the Queensbury one, in the direction of flow of the motor traffic, for logicality and predictability of movements for all road users. Note the carrying into effect of a simple principle that the slower road user is always to the right (would be left in UK), so, counted from the right, we get pedestrian space, cycle track, road. Predictable and logical, unlike the illogical mix-ups usually invented by UK planners when they attempt to get to grip with bike and pedestrian flows.

The need for legal changes before we can get this sort of thing here arises because it is necessary to establish, as seen in the Dutch video, and explained in the Henbrow link, clear legal priority for the cycle track where it crosses the arms of the junction. UK law on this point is currently muddy. Most experts think, however, it does not allow priority for cycle tracks over roads that they cross. But this is critical to making cycle tracks work, both at roundabouts and other types of junctions. Which is where we come back to our MP for Cheltenham. He clearly has some understanding of these matters. Can he start to persuade his parliamentary colleagues that local authorities need more help to create workable cycling solutions? They need the correct guidance, the correct standards, and they, and cyclists, need the support of the Highway Code and the law in making the facilities work. We are about 50–60 years behind the Dutch at the moment in this field. They could save us a lot of effort and give us, er, a crash course, to use an inappropriate phrase, if only our national politicians would let them. But if we go on thinking, with John Franklin, that we know all the answers in the UK, we'll keep getting further behind.

No cycling in lift

My partner Helen captured this on her phone in a lift in Coventry station. The sign in the middle says "Riding of Cycles Prohibited". Cyclists here in the UK are used to encountering "No Cycling" signs everywhere, but this really takes the biscuit. If you are not allowed to cycle in a lift, where are you allowed to??!

It reminds me of the developers of the Brent Cross Cricklewood Development who, in early discussions with Brent Cyclists and others, proposed the idea of a cycle route through their site that would be linked to the road (the A5) via a lift. The general ridicule which ensued from this cased them to back down and propose a spiral ramp (another poor solution). But that they could even conceive of such a thing shows how unbelievably far from understanding utility cycling many of the most powerful people in Britain are.

Then this also puts me in mind of Boris Johnson's ludicrous Thames cablecar project, that, unbelievably, looks as if it might really be built (I'll believe it when I see it). This has been well-critiqued here. Boris finds it too difficult to get the tubes to work well (they operated without problems on all lines for only one day last year), or to build cycle highways that bear the slightest relation to that name or are of the slightest use, but thinks it is a good idea to spend more money than it would take to fix these problems on a techno-folly on an epic scale that will do nothing for the basic transport needs of Londoners. Unfortunately it looks as though construction will be started this year, so it would be too late for Ken Livingstone to stop it, were he to be re-elected in 2012.

Cycle campaigning moving up a gear – flashmob and the Cycling Embassy

It has been an interesting couple of days in cycle campaigning for me, having attended two unique events.

The first, on Friday, was the "Flashmob" protest at Blackfriars Bridge. Accounts of this event have been published on ibikelondon, Dave Hill's Guardian blog, and Cycalogical.

In what may be a significant change of tactics, London Cycling Campaign organised this quick-response protest against the intransigence of Transport for London's highway engineers, who seem determined, under Boris Johnson's direction, to make life worse for everybody who walks and cycles in London. The issue has come to a head in repeated attempts to re-design Blackfriars Bridge and the junctions at either end of it. A temporary scheme, corresponding to the redevelopment of Blackfriars Station, has been in place recently, with a 20mph limit on the bridge. Cyclists have now become the majority of the traffic on the bridge in peak hours. TfL's proposed redesign takes the speed limit back up to 30mph, gives cyclists paltry 1.5m painted cycle lanes, and makes the right turn towards the City at the north end very difficult, amongst numerous other backward steps for non-motorised road-users. The issue has been treated extensively here.

The London Cycling Campaign has previously adopted an extremely conciliatory, kitten-like attitude to the Johnson administration, which has been systematically making London's roads worse places to walk of cycle, with its policy of "smoothing the flow" (of motor vehicles) and generally bowing to the motoring lobby. This is despite Johnson being a cyclist, and introducing the Hire Bikes (which were an idea of the previous mayor). Johnson's flagship cycling policies, the inaptly-named Cycle Superhighways and the Biking Boroughs, are both scandalous, confused and mis-conceived wastes of public money.

A young participant on the flashmob ride: emphasising the demand for London's streets to be made safe places for all to cycle

Pushed, I rather suspect, buy the harder attitude of some of the cycling bloggers mentioned here, LCC on this occasion, for the first time, exploited both its own channels and social networking ones to mobilise cyclists for a one-off street protest. Cyclists took up a whole carriageway and cycled at snail's pace across the bridge and back before a brief demo at TfL's HQ Palestra House on the south side. The event was not unlike the long-standing Critical Mass rides that occur once per month in London and similarly obstruct normal traffic flow, but this was an obstruction with a more specific purpose.

In my opinion, LCC, despite being quite clear about what it does not want in places like Blackfriars, is still a bit ambiguous about what it does want on busy roads like this, and this is not helping its campaigning. I don't think the focus on the 20mph limit ("Keep it twenty" was a chant head at the flashmob) is the right one. Even with low speeds, large volumes of aggressive motor traffic tend to push cyclists out unless they have protected space. I don't understand why the first chap interviewed in the video on Dave Hill's Guardian blog (who is not a spokesman for LCC, but an independent blogger) pointedly avoids endorsing the interviewer's suggestion of "segregated lanes for cyclists", preferring the vague formulation "space for cyclists". Space for cyclists needs physically protecting if it is to have the level of subjective safety necessary to attract more of the type of traffic shown in my photo, whether the limit is 20 or 30. Generous segregated cycle lanes (more correctly termed "cycle tracks") are exactly what this bridge would have in any city in The Netherlands or Denmark, and in many other cycle-friendly cities in Europe.

Continuing this theme, on Saturday I attended the second meeting (and the first outside London) of the newly-formed Cycling Embassy of Great Britain (CEoGB). This curiously-named embryo association of like-minded people is the start of something I have long believed we needed in the UK: a national campaign for high-quality, effective cycle infrastructure.


Now we do have many national organisations that advocate for cycling already in the UK, such as the CTC, Sustrans, British Cycling, and the Cycle Campaign Network, also known as Cyclenation, as well as LCC, which, despite being "local", is large enough to have a national influence, so why the need for another one? Basically, because none of these have ever campaigned consistently for what we really need to achieve high cycling levels in the UK: high-quality cycle infrastructure. That cycling will never move beyond its current totally marginal position in the UK transport landscape without serious engineering measures to facilitate it, separating it from the fast and heavy motor traffic that intimidates most potential cyclists off the roads, is utterly obvious to me, but seemingly not to most who have made policy in these organisations in the past. A new organisation is necessary because these organisations have failed to perform this vital function over a long period (more than 120 years in the case of the CTC), and they probably will not start to do so without some external pressure. In trying to represented the interests of their members, who are, broadly, touring cyclists in the CTC, sports cyclists in British Cycling, and commuters in the LCC, these organisations have lamentably failed to capitalise on the potential for utility cycling to be made mainstream in the UK with the right conditions.


The CEoGB is to be a group:

free from the burden of history, legacy and ties, created to work in partnership with fellow organisations and charities in Great Britain, mainland Europe and around the world trading ideas and experiences in how to promote cycling and make cycling infrastructure work in urban and rural contexts

Its purpose is to research internationally-proven, effective cycling solutions and lobby for them to be introduced in the UK. It has to be a campaign at a national level, because efforts to improve cycling conditions at a local level in Britain are so often stymied by inappropriate national traffic standards, laws and regulations that are ill-adapted to creating an attractive cycling environment. The CEoGB's focus will be, distinctively, on high-quality infrastructure as the key to achieving increases in cycling, not on training, regulation, and behaviour-change, the areas that have been favoured by previous cycle campaigns. The failure of these campaigns is sufficiently indicated by the modal share that cycling has in all journeys made in the UK today: about 1%, compared to 30–40% for the highest cycling countries.

The CEoGB started as ideas on the web, and in blogs. These ideas are not new. Many of them were propounded in Camden Cycling Campaign (CCC) when I was involved with it in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The CCC at that time successfully campaigned for some of the best cycle infrastructure ever introduced in London, but political will ran out and, stymied by the local administrative disconnects in London, it was not extended far enough to make a great difference. The CEoGB has now come off the web and is a real pressure group, a determined group of intelligent and informed people. It seeks not to supplant any existing cycle campaigns or organisations, but to add something new and essential to the cycling landscape. I think it represents an idea whose time has come.

"Ambassadors" from the CEoGB gather at Manchester Piccadilly on Saturday before exploring the local cycle facilities

The Big Society

The best day on BBC Radio 4 is Friday, as this is the day Radio 4's two best programmes are broadcast. These are The News Quiz and Any Questions? The former often contains cutting political points disguised in humour, the latter the same without the wit. Yesterday both dealt with "The Big society" following David Cameron's conference speech. Both asked "What actually is it?" and the panellists on both came up with good replies. I particularly liked Andy Hamilton's (News Quiz) vision of the elderly fireman you had to carry up the ladder and then he forgets what he went up there for.

Claire Fox on Any Questions? had a good critique of the principles and practice of the Big Society. For the Conservatives,  Ian Duncan Smith came up with one of the most meandering, blather-ridden contributions I can recall on the program, to try to explain what the government meant by the phrase.

Nevertheless, there are a number of important points I can think of relating to the big society idea which no-one made (not even the gratutiously offensive Dr David Starkey), so here they are.

It is a very fine idea to empower people to take a more active part in their communities and in society as a whole, but it must be understood that what people actually want is always political at some level, and usually controversial. People in general don't and can't go around just doing vague "good" for no motivation and no reward. For most voluntary activities, people's motivation is that they want to change things, for the better as they see it. If government wants a Big Society, which I take to mean encouraging what is usually called "civil society",  that is, collaborative unpaid productive activity, then they have to understand that this means letting go of the centralisation of power that is such a big feature of the British political system. There is little sign of the present government wishing to do this, as there was of the last, which of course went hell-for-leather in the opposite direction.

The things people working in voluntary organisations in the civil society generally want are actually mostly annoying to government – that is their purpose! What about trade unions? Surely they are a classic example of Big Society organisation, but I don't hear Cameron praising them! Then there are people who organise protests through the green movement. I put a fair amount of my time unpaid into campaigning for better facilities for cyclists, to encourage a modal shift towards greener travel in the UK. I do this because I believe in it. I haven't got time to be a part-time policeman or fireman as well. This kind of activity is, I believe, core Big Society stuff, but somehow, not what Cameron or Duncan Smith are thinking of. People do these things because they want to effect change, but they are generally frustrated by the unresponsiveness and centralisation of the British state. The only way to encourage people to take a more active part in their society is by giving them more actual power, which means democratic and institutional reform.

To take a pretty uncontroversial example, a group of people near me want to improve the local park, and organise an annual festival there to raise money to try to do so. They want the council to contribute to this and to be an equal partner. But councils in England have no power to do anything much. They are so completely circumscribed by national legislation, they basically have no independence and cannot raise much of their own cash or decide how to spend it. This is totally contrary to the model of real localism I see operating in France, Italy and other EU countries. One of the main things we need to encourage a Big Society, which will generally mean local activism, is to liberate local councils, allow them to spend money, raise it, and make mistakes. We also need local authorities at a much more local level to deal with these little issues like park and roads. The London councils covering 200,000 people plus each are totally inappropriate as the lowest level of government. We need something more like parish councils, covering something like a single London postcode, true local government, with genuine powers. If the present government starts to concede things like this, I will conclude they are serious about the Big Society. Otherwise it is all wind, like Blair and Brown's meaningless "stakeholder" rhetoric.

The government seem to want a kind of cuddly, fangless Big Society which doesn't press for change and which is non-political and non-controversial. They do not seem to be thinking about radical civil society, they seem to be thinking about something to do with running essential services. Get real! Civil society can't run the essential services. The essential services require people who will be totally reliable. You can only get this by paying people the proper wage through a full-time job with a proper contract, implying the threat of dismissal if the job is not done right. This is basic, economic common-sense. Does Cameron possess any of this?

The only definite suggestion I have heard coming out of the government's Big Society talk is that of Special Constables (part-time police) getting reduced-rent council housing. The Big Society idea has thus already become utterly confused. This would not be volunteering, it would be paying indirectly for a job to be done in the normal way. You can't make people volunteer. As soon as you try to coerce them using financial levers like reduced rents, or other benefits, you are operating the normal employment market economy again in disguise. Volunteering means what it says, it has to be unpaid, so it has to be what people want to do for their own reasons. It cannot fill gaps in basic government functions.

There is much mileage in reducing the legislative bureaucracy that prevents individuals from doing useful things voluntarily, like helping out with activities in schools without being jumped upon as a suspected pedophile, or in guaranteeing organisations and people in them against being sued when they try to do environmentally-helpful things like fixing people's bikes, or organising rides or walks or hikes on which people maybe could get run over or fall off cliffs. The state could reduce the fear of consequences of things going wrong for people organising things like this, and this would help make society a bit bigger.

The basic trouble I suspect is that Cameron et al see the Big Society in opposition to the Big State (that they always accuse New Labour of believing in), and don't acknowledge the State as being an integral and central part of Society. Thus is their intellectual confusion born, and from this proceeds the emptiness of their slogan.