Great Divides

The Great Divide Ride on 25 March, highlighting the brutal severance of north London for cycling by the barrier of the North Circular Road, attracted about 80 cyclists from Barnet and adjacent boroughs: quite a turn out for a cycle protest in the outer suburbs. A special mention should perhaps go to Mustafa Arif, Campaigns Coordinator of the London Cycling Campaign, and his wife, for cutting short their honeymoon to come on the ride: true dedication – though it was in Mustafa's patch. A splendid planning job done by the organisers, Toby Jacobs and David Shannon of Barnet LCC, the work of the ride leader Charlie Holland (of Kennington People on Bikes) and the marshals (particularly memorable was Patrick Field racing up and down the side of the pack like a bullet on his recumbent, telling motorists "We'll only hold you up for two minutes") meant that the event went off safely and largely free from stress. Cycling on the roads and junctions tackled on this ride is not normally so stress-free. None of them have anything resembling satisfactory facilities for cycling, except possibly the first, and most easterly, crossing of the North Circular we used, Pegasus Way, a new, largely traffic-free, bridge, part of a new housing development in New Southgate.

Ride gathers at New Southgate Station, in a car-park graced by a strange, out-of-place Victorian ironwork relic
(picture by Shaun McDonald)

As a resident of Brent, and previously of Camden, only closely familiar with the western part of Barnet, the thing that struck me was that the crossings of the North Circular are in fact a lot less bad on the eastern side of Barnet. There are several bridges and underpasses in this area that allow one to cross the road without negotiating mega-junctions. As you go west, things get steadily worse, with the newly rebuilt Henlys Corner junction with Finchley Road (which Boris Johnson, bizarrely, in his current transport manifesto (page 35) seems to claim as an improvement for cyclists) creating a severe test of vehicular cycling confidence, with its new left-turn only lanes, that few would like to see their child or grandparent attempt. And this is but a taster for the true spaghetti-junction awfulness of the Brent Cross interchange with the A41 further west, the Staples Corner East roundabout, the start of the M1, and the Staples Corner West junction with the A5, on the Brent border. This latter was tacked by the mass ride from every possible direction, going round the roundabout, over the flyover (taking both lanes), and round the peculiarly pointless West Hendon gyratory system.

In the Hendon area: not the Tweed Run (picture by Shaun McDonald)

Staples Corner East roundabout (picture by Shaun McDonald)

The ride did not go further into Brent. Perhaps that is for another day. Suffice it to say that Brent is even worse than Barnet, with no, legal, practical crossings of the North Circular for cyclists for two and a half miles west of Staples Corner, until you come to Harrow Road. That junction is hardly a dreamy place either, but at least it is a simple signalised crossroads, or pair of crossroads, with no badly conflicting traffic movements. Between Golders Green Road, the last "easy" signalised surface-level crossing of the North Circular in Barnet, and Harrow Road, is a distance of four miles: four miles of a Berlin Wall like curtain across the borough of Brent that demands great determination by cyclists attempting to cross it, either by tackling the dangerous junctions head-on, or negotiating an indirect, slow, illegal way via pavements, pedestrian overpasses and underpasses. This Berlin Wall explains very largely the extraordinary drop-off in cycling rate in Brent between the southern wards, like Queens Park, where it is up to 4% of trips, to the northern wards, like Kenton, where it is down to 0.5% of trips. A fall-off would be expected anyway, or course, when going out of easy commuting range of central London, but the collapse of cycling in Brent at the North Circular barrier is visible and sharp. No other borough has such large differences in cycling rates between wards.

"Taking the lane" on the A5 flyover at Staples Corner West (picture by Shaun McDonald)

A game young rider. Shouldn't he be able to get about this area on his bike without all these people to protect him? (picture by Shaun McDonald)

The Great Divide Ride finished with a picnic in a huge grassy open space, the centre of the Staples Corner East roundabout: a spot that can be made to look, strangely, almost idyllic in a photo, when you cannot hear the roar of motor vehicles from all around and above you, and taste the particulates in the air. It takes a lot of walking on very narrow footbridges and paths to reach.

Not a bad spot for a picnic: Staples Corner East

Gathering on the hill for the final photocall

Video of the ride compressed into 7 minutes, by Shaun McDonald

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There are many Great Divides. There are physical Great Divides like the North Circular Road, that isolate communities. Then there are attitudinal Great Divides, such as those between cyclists and non-cyclists, in how they perceive the road environment. And there are Great Divides between cultures, between how different societies approach similar problems and come up with radically differing solutions.

The Great Divide Ride pre-publicity attracted the attention of Dutch cycle blogger Mark Wagenbuur, inspiring him to put up a post Huge roads do not have to be huge barriers, contrasting the junctions on the North Circular with a comparable trunk-road/motorway junction, Goyplein in Utrecht, built about the same time (1971). Ample, comprehensive and direct cycle path provision, fully separated from the roads, was part of the original Dutch design even then, and this was before the Dutch became really keen on cycle infrastructure, in the 80s and 90s.

At this time, the thinking of the UK government seems to have been that cycling was an old mode of transport that would disappear over time naturally, and that it should not be facilitated, as to do so would create a dangerous mix of slow cyclists and fast motor vehicles on the roads. So nothing was constructed for cyclists when the North Circular junctions were built, and, despite a change of rhetoric since then, there is nothing now: save for a few pathetic "shared use" pedestrian facility conversions – conversions of facilities that are inadequate even for pedestrians on their own, as Charlie Holland has pointed out.

Mark Wagenbuur wrote:

I recently came across a video of a crossing of London’s North Circular Road. The way cyclists have to maneuver through traffic, some of which heavy goods transportation, is shocking to anyone I believe. But if you are familiar with the situation on Dutch roads even more so.

So a Dutchman thinks that the conditions cyclists have to endure to make what should be simple journeys in the North London suburbs are "shocking to anyone". Here is a cultural Great Divide. For they are clearly not shocking to most British people. If they were really shocking to them, they would be changed. When British society became shocked at the exploitation of child labour under terrible conditions in the 19th century, things were changed. Why is it not shocking to most British people that children, like the boy pictured above, cannot (normally) cycle between adjacent suburbs of North London without having to cycle through junctions that have 40 mph design speeds, and actual speeds often in excess of this, full of motor vehicles including heavy lorries, where their risk of getting killed will be very great indeed? This shocks me, it is a scandal to me, as it is to Mark, but not to most British people. Why?

The violence of motor vehicles evident on the infrastructure on the Great Divide Ride. Pedestrians clearly need these barriers, but cyclists are given none. Cyclists are trapped on the wrong side of the barriers, given training and helmets and told to "keep their wits about them". (Picture by Shaun McDonald)

Physical barriers are used to separate one lane of motorists from another, because of safety, but the same consideration is not applied to cyclists. (Picture by Shaun McDonald)

To understand the lack of shock about the shortage of safe provision for cycling in the UK we need to consider separately two sections of British society: the 1% who cycle, and the 99% who do not. The former probably are shocked, or have been shocked, in the past, but it has worn off to an extent. It is hard to go around permanently shocked by the daily reality you see around you. It is not a very sane state to remain in for long. Cyclists in Britain have to adapt to survive, or they give up cycling, and become part of the non-cycling 99%. They become used to the conditions, and many come to believe that these conditions are natural or inevitable in some way, and cannot be changed. This is just a standard human mental coping strategy.

Dissatisfied cyclists may lobby by writing to their representatives, or writing to newspapers, but they discover, maybe over years and decades, that this results in little change, and it becomes dispiriting to keep on at such an apparently lost cause. They may join and support the activities of cycling organisations, but they find that even such organised lobbying has little effect on government, when it is on behalf of a widely-despised 1% of the population. They may also find that such lobbying efforts are often partially undermined by differences of opinion on appropriate solutions between different cyclists and groups. This is because the mental effects of the brutal road conditions are pernicious: they create their own mindset, where cyclists have to become hardened, to adapt, to survive – they have to transform into that mythical beast, the "vehicular cyclist", and in some cases they start to imagine that this is what cycling, fundamentally, is all about, this adaptation and hardening process – that is is a thing any cyclist must go through, and that, fundamentally, protection from motor traffic is not what cyclists need. This is another coping strategy. It is the one adopted by our cycling mayor, Boris "keep your wits about you" Johnson. So many people who start by wanting to "change the world", in cycling terms, end up by concluding either it is unchangeable, or does not need changing.

Then we have the 99% of the population that does not cycle. If they think about the problem at all, they mostly think, I suspect, that there is some "other way round". Many think, incorrectly, that cycling is legal on pavements. Others think, incorrectly, that it is legal to cycle in parks (it is not in any Brent parks or in most Barnet ones). Others may think that there is a "cycling network" that works, but they don't know about it because they have never looked for it. They may think that cycling on minor roads for the whole length of a typical cycling journey is practical, and that cyclists don't need to be on the major roads and junctions at all. They may have seen the bits of cycle lane around the place, and, because they haven't actually cycled, not discovered that the routes are not practical, they don't go where people need to get to, and that they are massively discontinuous and flawed.

Often some people in power, and some people in power who sometimes cycle, have similar ideas. A week after the Great Divide Ride I was at a Barnet Cyclists meeting at which the MP for Chipping Barnet, Theresa Villiers, spoke. She is a Minister of State for Transport, and she regularly cycles, or did until a recent accident in which she broke her collar bone (I wish her a speedy recovery). In discussion on the Great Divide Ride and the North Circular junctions, particularly Henly's Corner, though she expressed some sympathy with the points raised, and admitted that we need big improvements to London's cycling infrastructure, and that we could usefully learn lessons from other places (the Netherlands, obviously), she seemed to think that:
1) Shared facilities, as in the new staggered sheep-pen crossings for pedestrians and cyclists at Henly's Corner, are a sensible solution for many cyclists, and,
2) That cyclists don't need to use the A41 or the A5 to get to central London from Barnet, that there are other ways.

Well, there are other ways, in the sense that it is always possible to go round three sides of a huge square five miles across rather than take the direct route, and go up and down at least 100 metres of unnecessary elevation, but is that a way to ever get people cycling to work? No, I think not. I think people will take the bus or train or car instead. This  ignorance of the physical infrastructure characteristics of "her patch"of London, from the point of view of a cyclist, was what I found most disappointing in Teresa Villiers' responses. An important point is that North London is hilly, and the straight, direct routes, the A5 and A41, are the flattest routes.

She had not actually seen the new Henly's Corner, so was not fully conversant with the issues there (but "Why not?" one might ask). But she was in favour of "cycle infrastructure", and thought the crossings at Hyde Park Corner rather good. I have to admit they are better than they were ten years ago, but regarding these constricted, low-priority, semi-shared, already grossly over-capacity crossings as decent cycle facilities just shows how low our standards are in this country.

The Great Divide Ride was one of a series of protest rides held recently in London to highlight the dire state of our cycling infrastructure. It followed on the heels of the Blackfriars flashrides and the Tour du Danger. At least it generated some new discussions with some different politicians, it created some local publicity, and it sent a message to the world (including the cycling world) that London cycling is not just the City, it is not just Hackney and Southwark, but "We are here, we are up here in the northern suburbs, and we have a terrible cycling environment, and can't we have a bit more attention please from government, TfL, media, Sustrans, and anyone who will listen, really?"

The next big event in London will be The Big Ride on April 28, just days before the mayoral election, the results of which will surely have a huge impact on how cycling develops all over London in the next four years, and there is also on that date a Scottish equivalent, the Pedal on Parliament. Be there, or there, or keep riding round three sides of that square.

Join the Great Divide Ride this Sunday

The Great Divide Ride is coming up this Sunday 25 March.

The ride will be a good-natured protest highlighting the issue of the division and impermeability of the boroughs of Barnet and Brent for cycling because of the North Circular Road. Particularly it will be highlighting the rebuild of Henly's Corner by TfL last year, which made it much more dangerous for cyclists. The policy TfL carried into operation at Henly's Corner is the same single-minded prioritisation of motor traffic flow above all other considerations, especially pedestrian and cyclists safety and convenience, that is evidenced also in their recent changes at Blackfriars, and coming up at Kings Cross. We can expect more of this, at more junctions all over London, unless we can make them see that a large number of Londoners are not happy with this agenda.

If you have any doubt about the issues around the North Circular, Barnet LCC have made this brilliant video showing just what the protest is about, including what it is like to cycle at Henly's Corner and Staples Corner. See also the letter to the mayoral candidates asking them for their views on the issue.



Though primarily a north London event, we expect to be joined by cyclists from all over London. It should be quite a carnival, and, with a large group, which will be thoroughly marshalled, negotiating some of the worst junctions in London should be easy even for children (who are welcome to come if they are up for something like a 20 mile round trip from Brent). We expect media and quite a bit of publicity. The ride ties in both with The Times's Cities Fit for Cycling campaign (which is calling for redesign of Britain's most dangerous junctions) and LCC's Love London, Go Dutch campaign, which is calling for London's streets to be "as safe and inviting for cycling as they are in Holland".

The ride will start at New Southgate Station at 10:00 am, but you could also join one of the two feeder rides from Brent and SW Barnet:

1) Start 9:00 am from the forecourt of The Crown pub, Cricklewood Broadway. Ride will be led by Mustafa Arif (mob. 7966 924728).

2) Stat 9:00 am from Kingsbury Station. Ride will be led by David Arditti (mob. 07866 456390)

After uniting at New Southgate we will head back west, crossing the North Circular about 10 times, finishing around lunchtime with a picnic at the "secret park" in the centre of Staples Corner (no, I've never been there either).

So get your picnic together, and I hope to see you there.

The Great Divide Ride will allow you to cycle safely with your children through junctions like Staples Corner West. Take the opportunity: it could be a once-only occurrence.

'Cities fit for cycling' flashride and debate – the Ship of State moves

I have not yet reported on the 22 February protest ride organised by ibikelondon, Cyclists in the City and the London Cycling Campaign, in advance of the Commons debate on cycle safety inspired by The Times's Cities fit for Cycling Campaign.

Well the ride was a huge success – as we knew it would be. Cyclists, for the first time in my 26 years of riding in London, are now prepared to stand up (or sit in the saddle) and be counted, and are not prepared to let the status quo continue. I arrived at the top of Duke of York steps to see a picturesque sea of winking red lights from the throng of riders gathered below on The Mall. There were clearly hundreds here, though all of them were not in view.

Looking down on the start of the ride from Duke of York Steps

The ride took off, and wound its way very slowly down The Mall and into Horse Guards Road, then headed for Parliament Square, turning right at the Palace of Westminster, down Millbank, across Lambeth Bridge, then back along the south side of the river to Westminster Bridge, across the bridge, past St Stephen's Tower (Big Ben) and up Whitehall, to Trafalgar Square, and back to The Mall. Police on bikes did an excellent job of keeping impatient motorists, taxi drivers and motorcyclists at bay, and of minimising conflict, and the LCC marshals also did a sterling job in keeping the ride together.

The police estimate was that 2000 cyclists took part. This is a similar number to that on the last Blackfriars flashride, but this ride felt symbolically and emotionally far better, and just more like an important historic moment. It was a protest ride in the right place, winding round the centres of power, Westminster and Whitehall. It was enthusiastic and noisy (previous flashrides had been quite quiet). It included MPs, London Assembly members and councillors. It was a ride riding a national wave of publicity and concern over the issue. Everybody on it, from "almost never cycle" people on bikes in their ordinary clothes, to long-distance touring cyclists and road racers in their usual get-up, knew why they were there and what they wanted, united in pushing the messages that cycling needs to be made safe, and that the way to make it safe is to build "cities fit for cycling". No more victim-blaming, no more persecution, no more putting the burden of taking all the protective measures on to the cyclists, no more letting motorists get away, literally, with murder, no more road designs that ignore cyclists – the slogan Cities fit for cycling encapsulates the point: it is the environment and the law which need changing, not the people on the bikes. The point was made, and made to people who matter, as subsequent events proved. It felt like a turning-point.

The ride was noticed, and had its effect on the debate next day. Several of the MPs taking part in the debate had been on the ride. The debate, attended by 75 MPs, has already been widely reported and commented-upon. Of course, those MPs attending were largely those converted to the cause already. But it proved that a surprising number have been converted to the cause, and a surprising number either are cyclists already, or know that they want to be, and would be, if the necessary measures to increase safety on the roads were taken. The Prime Minister's disarmingly honest statement on the afternoon of the flashride that

Anyone who has got on a bicycle – particularly in one of our busier cities – knows you are taking your life into your hands every time you do so...

had already galvanised the debate. There was mercifully little of the traditional UK pantomime of "cyclists should do more to protect themselves" and none of the equally-traditional comedy number "cyclists must get their own house in order and obey the law before we spend money on them" (when was that argument ever used against any other social group?). The MPs here basically understood the agenda that The Times has been driving home: our streets on which cyclists have to ride are not fit for purpose. And they, broadly, recognised that fixing the situation was going to cost a good deal of money, and take much time and political determination. There was also a recognition we has been here before – the National Cycling Strategy of of 1996 had aimed for 10% of trips to be done by bike by this year, 2012 – and a feeling that the same failure must be avoided, at all costs, this time around.

I can pick out a few problems with the debate. There was quite a lot of harping on the "safety in numbers" fallacy, which just confuses the debate on cycle safety. I've written about this in detail before. Basically, my position is that "safety in numbers" is a kind of illusion resulting from the fact that the places that have both large numbers of cyclists, and good safety for cyclists, also have much better physical conditions, either through separated infrastructure, or motor traffic removal. As the Director of SWOV, the Dutch institute for road safety research, says:

I do not expect that a greater number of cyclists will on its own result in a risk reduction for the cyclist....Policy that only focuses on an increase in cycling and at the same time ignores the construction of more cycling facilities will not have a positive effect on road safety.

The trouble with the "safety in numbers" concept is that, though it contains a grain of truth, there is certainly a correlation there, it is basically unhelpful for forming policy, as it encourages a view, that UK cycling organisations have often come dangerously close to suggesting, that all you have to do is to encourage and train as many people as possible to cycle on the roads, and the roads will then automatically become safe for cycling, and we will have solved the problem of how to create a mass cycling culture without all of that annoying, expensive, dedicated cycle engineering clutter that those silly continentals put in. As David Hembrow puts it (in his now miraculously resuscitated blog)

Cycle training can help a few nervous but keen individuals to cycle in a hostile environment. However, it's not something which scales to support the entire population in cycling for a significant proportion of all journeys. 

Talk of "safety in numbers" just distracts attention from the real, hard-engineering measures that are needed to create mass cycling in an advanced industrialised nation. As I say, it just confuses the debate, and it did indeed confuse some MPs' advocacy of the cycling cause in the debate. It is an idea we need to move beyond.

Then there was the "strict liability for drivers" issue, another thing where there is a bit of a correlation with high cycling levels in various countries, but we get the causation, again, the wrong way round in this country. Driver liability is an insurance technicality, legal small-print, if you will, which really cannot affect people's real-world, moment-to-moment decision making on the roads. It can have little effect on safety. It was introduced in the Netherlands after they already had mass cycling based on good infrastructure. It came as a consequence of that. It doesn't itself create, or significantly contribute to, mass cycling, anywhere. It's another distraction.

Then there was the minor distraction raised of "the need for showers and workplace lockers" – whereas a characteristic of mass cycling based on good infrastructure is that it is relaxed, not fast and furious, and people dress for their destination, not for their mode of transportation. These things again should be seen as largely irrelevant to what we are trying to achieve.

Then again, there was a lot of mixing up of cycle sport with "cycling as transport" in the debate. Unfortunately, because the one word "cycling" in English covers both of these quite different and largely unrelated areas, this usually happens. (The Dutch have two different words.) This was all the more understandable in view of the impending Olympic Games, and I do not entirely discount the possibility that some people may be inspired to start cycling, either for leisure or utility, as a result of media focus on the sport, and I recognise this to be a good thing. But unless we follow up this burst of enthusiasm with real change on our roads, to make people continue to cycle, by making it a pleasurable experience for them to do so, we will be back to how we were within a year or two. So: cycle sport, nothing wrong with it, but not really the issue here.

So there were these bits of foolishness and confusion in the debate. But overwhelmingly it was on the right lines. There was a huge amount of concern by MPs at avoidable deaths and injuries of their constituents while cycling, and a recognition we have both to physically put our roads right, and get prosecution and sentencing of road traffic offenders right. Ian Austin talked memorably about "the derisory sentences drivers [who kill] receive". Julian Huppert came down to the hard facts of the case when he said that "£10 per person per year is needed to turn Britain into a prime cycling nation".

Ben Bradshaw, a Labour ex-minister who has been involved with cycling at the parliamentary level for many years, noted, from his experience of government, how getting action on cycling tended to be dogged by two things: firstly, a failure of the different government departments that need to be involved – treasury, transport, environment and local government, and health – to collaborate, with what he described as conflicting cultures between the departments, and, secondly, the presence of so many disparate voices from the cycling lobby. This last certainly has been a problem in the past, but my sense now is that cyclists are far more united now in calling for the measures that really increase safety and cycling numbers. I think the flashrides have been evidence of this.

MPs merely having this debate doesn't actually get anything done. Cyclists, and The Times, still do not have any of what they are asking for. Delivering those is down to the Prime Minister, who knows that cycling in the UK involves "taking your life into your hands', and his senior ministers, particularly the Chancellor, and the Secretary of State for Transport. There was nobody at the debate who could deliver for the government. Under Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker was really the fall-guy for this debate: he was in clear, and embarrassing, difficulty, trying to justify the record of the coalition so far – that of his government, that had abolished the already meanly-funded Cycling England quango and not replaced it with anything coherent, and which had nothing to offer but £11 million per year for training cyclists in techniques to avoid getting squashed on the roads by negligent drivers and lorries that shouldn't be there in the first place, and a Local Sustainable Transport Fund that mixes £15 million for a paltry few cycling schemes of questionable quality with far too much other stuff. Everybody, including him, seemed to know that this is just not action on a scale that is going to work. He candidly revealed his "envy" for the "fantastic" cycling environments in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands. He knows that they achieved it by spending about 80 times his total expenditure, per person per year, for forty years. He knows what is needed, but can't yet deliver it.

So the onus remains on cyclists, and their supporters in the media and politics, to keep pushing to put cycling's supporters in the government, like Norman Baker, (and maybe David Cameron himself?) in a position where they can deliver what is needed. In the London Cycling Campaign, our next step, apart from the Go Dutch petition, will be a protest ride on 28 April, which should be the biggest ever. If you can possibly get to central London to take part in this, wherever you live, start planning to attend now, please. If you don't live within cycling range, there are always trains, coaches (and, dare I say, cars), and Boris bikes at the London end!

There remains much to do, and we are not close yet to getting the demands of even The Times's too-modest manifesto. Nevertheless I think the national debate has decisively changed. If this were a war, this would not be the Beginning of the End, but I think it could be the End of the Beginning.

I'll finish by going back to the start of the Westminster flashride. I arrived at the top of Duke of York Steps. As I took photos from the top of the steps, many pedestrian passers-by, all types of people, asked me what was going on. It was difficult to explain quickly, but I told them it was a peaceful protest to highlight to MPs the need for better safety for cyclists. Everybody I spoke to was 100% in favour of the protest when I told them this. All agreed that this protest was a great thing to happen, even if it did get in their way temporarily.

These people were not cyclists. These reactions, more than anything else, lead me to think that a rubicon was passed on the night of 22 February 2012. The vast ship of public indifference to cycling safety and cycling conditions in the UK, that campaigners have been pushing and shoving at for decades, getting nowhere, had started moving. Almost imperceptibly, over the winter of 2011–12, it had started to slide down the slipway into the river. The Times campaign had given it a welcome shove, but their effort was dependent on those of many others who had toiled away long before.

The ship may yet stick temporarily, and may require many more a hard shove, but I have no doubt it will enter the water, now that it has started moving. In the bar afterwards we toasted the moment. The Vole celebrated with tea.

The riders grouped at Duke of York Steps after the ride

A view from the cycle path

Unfortunately David Hembrow has deleted from the net his famous blog A view from the cycle path. This breaks many links within this blog, so I apologise for that, but it will probably not be possible to fix them. It would not make much sense to try, as I referenced his writings so often, so good were they, that trying to expunge the references would reduce the sense of past posts.

David's explanation for his action is here. It is, however, extremely hard to see what he expects to achieve with the deletion of a blog which was widely referenced by cycling websites worldwide. Far better would have been to simply end work on it, close it to comments and leave it on line – as was done to another famous cycling blog, Crap Cycling and Walking in Waltham Forest, when its author decided to give it up.

All on-line content runs a risk of plagiarism, mis-quoting and malicious distortion. This is a fact of the net with which we have to live. But it is a marginal fact of the net. Most re-use of material on blogs like this is done respectfully, with acknowledgement, and in a constructive spirit. It is particularly sad that A view was deleted just as the ideas in it were gaining a wide acceptance and understanding amongst cyclists, non-cycling opinion-formers, and even some policy-makers in the English-speaking world, as shown in The Times's Cities fit for cycling campaign, and last week's parliamentary debate – of which more anon – and also shown by many smaller snippets all the time, for example, this one from the Southern Daily Echo, where the editor of a provincial newspaper has picked up on A view and treated it as an authoritative source on cycling in the Netherlands – which is was. Few blogs attain this status. It attained this status because it was so well-written, so concise, and presented the issues so clearly and logically, and it was so well-researched and factually accurate.

The good news is that Mark Wagenbuur, who contributed quite a bit of material to A view in recent times, has set up an new blog, Bicycledutch, and reinstated some of his also excellent and enlightening material, originally published on A view, there. Unfortunately, though, Wagenbuur's contribution was only a small one, the vast bulk of the material on A view was David Hembrow's, which is now unavailable unless he decides to re-publish it in some other form.

I would still like to appeal to David publicly, here, for him to reconsider, and reinstate A view from the cycle path as a an open resource, even one that is never updated again.

If he does not, well, I will continue to campaign for Dutch-style, high-quality cycle infrastructure in the UK, as I, and others, did long before A view form the cycle path appeared, and made our job a bit easier. The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, in particular, will continue with this work. It was in large part inspired by A view, and I am sure it will continue to grow as a campaign and gain more influence. The current London Cycling Campaign Go Dutch campaign for the mayoral election was also strongly influenced by A view, and though we can all argue until the (Friesian) cows come home about the details of exactly what cycle engineering we are promoting, and I will continue to discuss these details here, and criticise LCC where I think it sensible to do so, the fact is, this campaign is on the right lines, as are other, smaller local campaigns around the country, in a way that such campaigns were not a few years ago. Much of this is down to A view from the cycle path.

So we continue to work away at it.  I think it is not necessary for cycling campaigners, or those for more liveable cities, to constantly set their cause back by falling out amongst one another. It is not necessary for successful campaigns to self-destruct, and it is not necessary for the promoters of more and better cycling in the UK, or anywhere, just as they are winning the battle for public opinion, to seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

Response to "Cities fit for cycling" from Barry Gardiner MP

Our household has received a reply from Barry Gardiner, MP for Brent North (Labour), to our letters on The Times's Cities fit for cycling campaign. This is not actually a reply to my letter, but to one from my partner, which she sent after mine, but seems to have got a reply first.

It says:

Dear...

Thank you for your letter regarding cycling safety in London.

I agree that much needs to be done to make the UK's roads safer for cyclists. With public transport charges increasing and London's pollution problems continuing, cycling is both responsible and economical. The Government should look to support those who wish to cycle at every available opportunity, whether it be improving road layout and signage or educating drivers and cyclists themselves.

It is a real concern to me that the numbers of cyclists being killed or seriously injured is going up. It is not good enough for the Road Safety Minister to dismiss as 'rubbish' the concerns that his government's decisions have made our roads less safe for cyclists. It was reckless of the government to cut road safety budgets and funding for speed cameras while abolishing  Cycling England, allowing longer HGVs on our roads and ending national targets to cut deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

I have recently written to the Secretary of State for Transport, the Rt Hon Justine Greening MP, about the issue of cyclist safety and the Times' cycle safer campaign in particular. I will, of course, forward any response as soon as I receive it.

In the meantime, if there are any other matters you wish to bring to my attention, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Barry Gardiner
Member of Parliament for Brent North

I would say this is a good and substantial reply, though one senses that our Barry perceives an opportunity to make political capital from attacking the current government on this, when the situation we are now in is the result of a long-term historic failure by governments of all parties to treat cycling properly. He does seem to have a grasp of the issues, stating things in the correct order, giving "improving the road layout" as the first priority for supporting "those who wish to cycle" (who are not necessarily "cyclists"), before "signage or educating drivers and cyclists themselves" (though I am not sure what signage is supposed to have to do with it). But I note no commitment to signing EDM 2689, which he has still not done (67 MPs have, as of today), and no commitment to attend tomorrow's debate.

If you are in London, don't forget to come to the flashride outside Parliament today: 6:15 Duke of York Steps. A big turnout in the rain will be even more convincing.

Why is cycling party-political in the UK?

The list of MPs who have signed Early Day Motion 2689 supporting The Times's Cities fit for cycling campaign (58 at time of writing), analysed by party, shows clearly the strange, and perhaps unique way, in which cycling is a party-political issue in the UK.

Here is the breakdown of signatories, as a proportion of party numbers in the Commons:

Lib Dem 17/57 = 30%
Labour 31/256 = 12%
Conservative 5/305 = 1.6%
DUP 2/8 = 25%
Plaid Cymru 1/3 = 33%
SNP 1/6 = 16%
SDLP 1/3 = 33%

Of course cycling is political, in general sense: it must be, since deciding what to do to facilitate it involves taking decisions over taxation and resource allocation that advantage or disadvantage different people. That's politics. But with a Labour MP 7.5 times more likely than a Conservative MP to sign this motion, and a Lib Dem 19 times more likely, it is clear that cycling must be a party-political issue in the UK.

This is very sad, as there is no reason that cycling should intrinsically be associated with the political left, and it does not appear to be so, generally, in other countries. In the Netherlands, so far as I can see, it appears to be agreed pretty much uniformly across the political spectrum that cyclists should be made as safe as possible. Why is this not the case here?

It was a surprise that a right-of centre, "establishment" newpaper, The Times, should come out with the highest-profile pro-cycling campaign yet seen in the British media. And yet it should not have been, because there is no obvious association between cycling and the "big state", or with philosophies of social democracy or socialism. There is, indeed, an intuitive converse association, the bicycle being a facilitator of personal independence, industry and individualism, every person on a bike being, in a sense, a single unit of free enterprise. And the rhetoric of Conservative politicians has often recognised this, most famously in Norman Tebbitt's "He [his unemployed father] got on his bike and looked for work", often misquoted as the motto "Get on your bike".

So what has happened here, and can it be changed? The Conservatives, in a sense, do support, must support, the individualism, the personal freedom of the "man on the bike". But they have got more involved, historically, with the freedom of the "man in the car". As the party most associated with the upper classes, as those classes graduated, in the early years of the 20th century, from the fashion of bikes to the fashion of cars, so the Conservatives moved with them, and the bike became more associated with the "working man", who was naturally represented by the Labour party. And yet this was not a simple, nor a uniform story. It was the Labour Government that removed speed limits in 1930, and a visionary conservative  Minister of Transport, Leslie Hore-Belisha, who reintroduced them in 1934, together with the driving test and other road-safety measures, and promoted probably the best cycle facilities the UK ever had.

But, broadly, in the post-war period, the Conservatives came to regard the motor car ever more as a symbol of personal freedom and individual life-success, and while not anti-bike, probably thought of the bike, if at all, as something that had just been left behind in the technological march of history, like the horse-drawn plough. Conservative mentions of cycling came mostly in backward-looking idealisations of Britain, as in John Major's re-quoting of George Orwell's "Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist". When an "ecological left" arose at the radical edge of politics in the 70s and 80s to take up a space previously occupied by a state socialism widely regarded as discredited, it took up the bike and thus, by repulsion, pushed right-wingers further from it. In the new century, the appearance of prominent Conservatives, notably Boris Johnson and David Cameron, who, on the surface at least, seemed to espouse cycling, for a combination of traditional Conservative reasons and a desire to get in on the Green bandwagon, led some rashly to suggest that when these men took power, the roads status-quo would shift. They were sadly disappointed.

The practicalities of the accommodation of personal transport in the public space of our dense, old cities are clear to all. There is a certain amount of space, and to re-prioritise the bike means that space must be gained from somewhere, and the big area from which it can be taken is the space currently used for moving and parked motor vehicles. The extent to which this must reduce the space for cars is generally exaggerated, because space is typically used very inefficiently on our roads at the moment, and there is much wasted space in over-wide traffic lanes that could be reallocated, when combined with the complete redesign of streets from one side to the other, in a way that in fact does not reduce motor vehicle capacity very much. Likewise, there is no need to decimate car parking in redesigning cities to be cycle-friendly. The Dutch have not done this, and their car ownership rates remain high. It is the space at junctions that is at a premium. At junctions, cars generally spread out into multiple lanes to fill the space, and this squeezes cyclists out. It is the space and time at junctions that cyclists need that will always be the biggest source of contention.

But contention for space on the roads there is, and a major factor here is that the political right has convinced itself that motor traffic is inextricably associated with economic growth, and hence prosperity, and hence quality of life. The negative influences of motor traffic on that quality of life may be apparent to them as well, in terms of pollution, ill-health, noise, ugliness and alienation, but these are weighed-up as being less important in the end. These downsides are, in their minds, associated with the complaints of those hair-shirt prophets of doom who have always been, in the past, proven to be wrong, and the best interests of the majority do seem to them to be tied up with continuing to prioritise motor traffic.

There is also the geo-political aspect: British Conservatives are heavily influenced by the American social paradigm, which the policies of Eisenhower, after the Second World War, inextricably linked to personal motorised independence and economic dependence on the roads, though the urban sprawl and despoilage of the countryside that this entailed in a small country like the UK certainly upset a traditional shire Conservative faction. On the other hand, as the main examples of advanced industrialised countries that have re-habilitated the bike are on the continent of Europe, in countries that have espoused more left-leaning social market systems than the UK, and in some, though not all, cases, are closely associated with the European integration project, this also makes Conservatives mistrustful of the idea of the state siding more with the cyclist.

Can things change? The statistics on EDM 2689 suggest they are not changing very much. One change has been apparent for a number of years, which has been the increasing number of middle-class commuting cyclists in London, associated mostly with the financial, legal and media industries. This, indirectly, has given rise to The Times's campaign, as one of them, their journalist Mary Bowers, was nearly killed by a lorry. Danny, the Cyclists in the City blogger, is always pointing out how big cycling has become now amongst employees and bosses of the City's financial institutions, and how this is clearly having an effect, at least on the local roads policies of that staunchly conservative (with a small c) body, the Corporation of London.

But Cameron, strikingly, never took the cycling thing forward after he became PM, indeed he seemed to have ditched it much earlier, and he put the primitively pro-car and pro-big-lorry Philip Hammond in charge of transport, replacing him, for extraneous reasons, with the possibly marginally more enlightened Justine Greening late last year. And Greening still has to work with a Road Safety Minister, Mike Penning, who hasn't the slightest clue about either cycling or road safety.

The cycling portfolio is held by Lib Dem Under-Secretary of State Norman Baker, whose achievements cannot be said to have been conspicuous. Yes, he has made it easier for local authorities to change by-laws forbidding cycling in parks, and there has been a change of policy on the (entirely common-sense) idea of allowing cyclists to contraflow on one way streets where signs are put up to allow this. But this government's sustainable transport initiatives have failed to target cycling, mixing it up, in the funding competition, with bus and tram schemes. Because facilitating cycling always involves taking difficult political decisions, if you don't give it its own pot of cash, but make it compete with other so-called "sustainable" modes, it will always loose. Boris Johnson did exactly the same in London, abolishing specific cycling funding to the boroughs, replacing the category with obtuse "corridors" and "neighbourhoods" labels for pots of money that allowed councils to back away entirely from the difficult choices around cycling, going for spending the money instead on general street-prettifying schemes, labelled "public realm improvements", that have no effect on modal split. And Boris Johnson's personal association with cycling comes across as rather more a manifestation of a traditional English eccentric type than as part of any real political shift of the right towards cycling.

And yet cycling should not be "of the left". Cycling is free enterprise. It needs facilitating by infrastructure the state must provide, it is true, it always has needed this, it is dependent on proper roads or cycle paths, but motor transport is similarly dependent, and, of course, far more cash-hungry. Facilitated, cycling becomes a prominent component of transport in economically successful and advanced societies, as wealthy cities across the world, from Geneva to Copenhagen to Tokyo, testify. The associations between cycling, freedom, efficiency and free enterprise can never be entirely submerged by the Anglophone right's concept of "roads for cars". The right is opposed to a "nanny state": but creating the conditions where children could again realise the transport independence through cycling they once had in the UK would be a massive de-nannying liberation for our kids, and their parents. Then there are the purely economic arguments, that building cycle infrastructure is cheaper than not building it. And of course, Conservatives are supposed to want a strong, independent state. The state is less independent if it dependent on imported oil.

The best way into the cycling agenda from a Conservative perspective would seem to be an emphasis on allowing people more transport choice. The status-quo makes people feel they have no choice but to use their cars for many inappropriate journeys. Allowing people more choice over all aspects of their lives is supposed to be a Conservative principle. Choice is not a simple matter, however. The investment choices that the state makes affects the choices people can make on a daily basis. The state has no choice whether to invest in transport, it has to. But it has a choice in how it divvies up the cash. At the simplest level, that's all The Times campaign is pointing out.

It is easy to argue for investment in cycling from a Conservative perspective, indeed, The Times is doing just that, but the list of signatories to EDM 2689 show that few of our current crop of Conservative politicians have grasped this point, preferring to remain, if one notes capitalisation, more conservative than Conservative. A political opportunity if ever there was one?

And the next cycle protest...

The next protest, for your diaries, should be a major one. This Wednesday, 22 February, a "flashride" will take place in Westminster, to hopefully increase awareness amongst our MPs, the evening before their debate on The Times's Cities fit for cycling manifesto, of the strength of feeling on the subject of cycle safety. We hope to show MPs how many people are highly dissatisfied with the past performance of parliament and successive governments on the issue.

Meet at the bottom of Duke of York Steps (between Waterloo Place and The Mall) at 6:15pm for a 6:30pm departure. The ride will go via Trafalgar Square, Whitehall, Parliament square, Lambeth Bridge, Westminster Bridge and Birdcage Walk before returning to Duke of York Steps. It is being supported and promoted by London Cycling Campaign, the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, and all the major London bike blogs. It will be an orderly ride and protest, with the collaboration of the police, and will be safe, non-confrontational, and fully-marshalled. The media should be there. Do try and come. The more people we have, the bigger the impact. Particularly if you don't cycle regularly, if you would like to cycle in London but are too worried by the conditions, come and add your presence. We want people of all types, ages, and walks of life, to send a message to our MPs that we want cycling to be normal. And if it is to be made normal, it has to be made safe.

Come, preferably, in ordinary clothes. Don't let non-cycling MPs get the impression it just them again: a separate breed, other people, in funny clothes and plastic hats. I reckon cycling protest will make more impact the more ordinary the cyclists look. But that's just my idea. Come however you like; just come. Help keep up the momentum generated by The Times campaign. Even if you think they haven't got their campaign exactly right (few cyclists would agree they have, though probably few of those same cyclists would be able to agree on what an "exactly right" campaign would be), support the protest (and write to your MP as well if you have not already done so) as the best chance for many years of getting some change for the better for UK cycling. The symbolic media and photogenic impact of a Parliament Square filled with cyclists should not be underestimated.

As others have pointed out, the last time MPs debated cycling properly was 1996, when there was supposed to have been established a National Cycling Strategy which would get 10% of journeys by bike by 2012 – this year. The strategy totally failed, of course, as cycling is currently at about 1% modal share nationwide – slightly lower than it was in 1996. The reasons for that failure have been extensively analysed on this blog before. We may see failure again, of course, but somehow things look more promising to me this time round. There is a much wider understanding now of exactly what the problem is (it's subjective safety), and what the solutions are: thanks to better availability of information, better campaigning, by the organisations mentioned above, and just experience. And there is greater imperative from the high cost of fuel, the high human and economic cost of casualties, and the costs of an obesity epidemic. There also seem to be more influential people cycling than there were in 1996, though this is largely an inner-London phenomenon.

Meanwhile, it is reported that

David Cameron will hear radical ideas for making Britain’s cities safer for cyclists at a Downing Street conference tomorrow.

Architects, planners and designers from around the world will suggest ways to improve overall city design.

Sounds good. But the report continues:

The urban design conference will serve to underline the appreciation inside Downing Street for Scandinavian policymaking in general and Danish popular culture in particular.

Speakers include Bjarke Ingels, a Danish architect whose innovative designs include the “8 House” development in the Danish capital, built in a figure eight, with a cycle path and pedestrian walkway that winds up to the 10th floor.

Carlo Ratti, an Italian architect and engineer and senior Fulbright scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will talk about the “Copenhagen wheel”. The device, fitted to the back wheel of a bicycle, stores electricity when the cyclist brakes and releases it to help to climb hills. Connected to a smartphone, it can also tell the rider about traffic and pollution.

Oh dear. A lot of geewhizzery. OK, there may be some value in these ideas, but they remind me of a phrase (to change subjects totally) near the beginning of Gordon Jacob's classic textbook for composers Orchestral Technique: "We are more concerned here with what might be called the roast beef of scoring rather than the confectionary". Unfortunately it sounds like this urban design conference will be about the "confectionary" of its subject rather than its "roast beef". It sounds like it may not be sufficiently concerned with the basic, mundane, established urban design principals that have allowed cities across Europe, led by those in the Netherlands, to open up a huge gap with those in Britain over the last 40 years in terms of their cycle and pedestrian-friendliness.

What the conference should be about is the kind of straightforward stuff that As Easy As Riding A Bike covers today, in an excellent explanation of how the Dutch signalise segregated cycle tracks at junctions to completely separate cycle and motor traffic flows. They've been doing this for decades, but almost nobody in the UK seems to understand it. Even "the UK's National Cyclists' Organisation", to judge from this page on their site, is thoroughly clueless in this area. I don't think we particularly need the futurism of some fashionable Danish architects if we are to get Cities fit for cycling, we need the boring, basic Dutch past first.

Dutch "simultaneous green" junction for bikes and pedestrians, Assen