Another woman under a lorry survives

Photo by Neil Hammet, 18 October 2011

Witness Neil Hammet took this picture yesterday by London Bridge Station. This is the junction of Joiner Street with Borough High Street. He reported on the London Fixed and Single Speed Forum, subsequently re-reported on Londonist,

Suddenly people started shouting "Stop! Stop!" and I could hear a rapid crunching/popping noise.

Turning round I saw an articulated lorry, driving toward the bridge.

On her back, knees bent and feet on the front bumper, was a lady who was being pushed along the ground by the lorry - her bike was just going under the front wheel which was the crunching/popping noise.

The driver was looking around him at all these people shouting "Stop! Stop!" and shrugging - his reaction was "they cannot be shouting at me", so he kept going.

It was probably all over in seconds, but it seemed to be a long time before he finally decided that the people (including myself) who were waving/pointing at him, the lady and shouting, did mean that he should stop.

The lady cyclist probably got pushed 2-4 metres, hard for me to judge and I'm wary of exaggerating.

When he stopped lots of people rushed over and escorted the lady to the side of the road, she was fine, just shocked, she said that she thought she had made eye contact with the driver at the lights, but then he'd just driven straight into her/over her bike.

She then went to sit down on some steps as a PCSO ran over.

The truck driver was out of his cab by now, and circling his vehicle taking photographs.

Not once did he approach the cyclist, didn't speak to her at all- he must have taken from her ability to walk that she was ok.

Maybe he is under orders not to apologise for accidents lest it be taken as an admission of fault, but still-  if the cyclist had not had the presence of mind (amazing, under the circumstances) to get her feet on the bumper the driver would have been standing there having killed her.

So it's happened again, another female cyclist in a miraculous lorry escape. On 11 July a woman went under a lorry, with her bike crushed, on New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, but escaped almost unharmed. The lorry crossed her path turning left into Queen Victoria Street. I recall seeing a photo of that incident as well but can't find it now. In that case I think the woman got trapped under the high part of the lorry trailer and got out before her bike went under the back wheels.

This latest incident follows hard on the heels of the death of Min Joo Lee at Kings Cross on 3 October. Olaf Storbeck predicted this death in April 2011. From the Islington Gazette report:

Min Joo Lee, a 24-year-old fashion student from Korea, was pronounced dead at the scene after the incident at 11.40am on Monday.

She is the third cyclist in five years to die at the junction, which joins Euston Road, Pentonville Road and York Way.

The driver of the heavy goods vehicle, a man in his 60s, was treated for shock at hospital.

The woman is believed to have become caught under the wheels of the truck.

Dr Odeh Odeh, 32, a surgeon at St George’s Hospital, Tooting, who witnessed the aftermath, said: “I saw a mangled bicycle lying in the road with a body next to it. It was a horribly graphic scene – many people were staring in shock. It is not something you ever expect to see.

In 2006, Emma Foa, 56, died after her bike was in collision with a cement mixer lorry at the same junction. [Slightly incorrect: it was nearby, at the junction of Goodsway and Camley Street]. Cyclist Madeline Wright died in 2007 near King’s Cross Station after a collision with a lorry.

A spokesman for Transport for London said: “We are extremely sorry to hear of the death of the woman following a collision with a HGV in Euston Road. More needs to be done to prevent serious harm befalling London’s cyclists, and TfL is working with other organisations across London to tackle this serious safety issue.”

The spokesman said it was the 13th cycle death in London in 2011 compared to 10 last year.

The other 12 deaths have been, courtesy of Olaf Storbecks's tabulation:

1. Gary Mason: Sandy Lane South, Wallington, killed by van
2. Daniel Cox: Dalson Junction, killed by lorry
3. Tom Barrett: A40 at Northolt, killed by van
4. David Poblet: Tanner Street, London Bridge, killed by lorry
5. Paula Jurek: Camden Road, killed by lorry
6. Gavin Taylor: Mildmay Grove North, Islington, died after colliding with parked car
7. Female cyclist: Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, killed by lorry
8. Thomas Stone (age 13): Bell Farm Avenue, Dagenham, killed by car
9. Male cyclist age 62: Layhams Road, Bromley, killed by car
10. Paul McGreal: Hackney Road, killed by lorry
11. Johanna Bailey: Cavendish Road, Lambeth, killed by van
12. Sam Harding: Holloway Road, killed by bus after getting knocked off by car door

As the TfL spokesman says, more certainly "needs to be done to prevent serious harm befalling London's cyclists".

There are clearly massive problems at the major junctions around all London's main rail stations for a start. These are places lots of cyclists go. We needs an urgent, concrete and comprehensive action plan to tackle these. Not more contemptible weasel words from TfL about "balancing" or "reflecting the needs of all road users".

Why do we make no progress on the issue of lorries and cyclists in London down years and decades? As I have said before, it is because we have a hold of the wrong end of the stick. The (main part of the) answer is not educating lorry drivers and cyclists to be better aware of one another. It is separating cyclists and heavy vehicles, whose drivers can't necessarily see them, by design. Designing so that drivers and cyclists don't take risks, or when they do take them, the consequences are slight. Prioritising the movements of pedestrians and cyclists. The Dutch concept of sustainable safety.

Unfortunately such thinking seems to be as far away as ever in London. TfL's latest cycling-related idea seem to be to effectively pay people for cycling, in an inducement scheme. As Croydon Cyclist says,

It gives two pictures, on one side TfL want to make the traffic flow for motorised vehicles as quick as possible, but on the other side they want to get people out of their cars and onto the streets which they have just put fast-moving and dangerous traffic on to.

I think, unfortunately, this scheme could work. People are quite inclined to accept material inducements to do dangerous things, particularly in difficult times. We'd better get ready for more tragedies.

On Southwark Bridge, for a change

This is a sort of postscript to my last piece, on the third Blackfriars Bridge flashride. After the flashride, some of us went to the bar above the Young Vic, to discuss Danish versus Dutch cycle engineering and such fascinating topics, and after that, I needed to find my way back to Blackfriars Station. Not having a clue about the roads of London south of the Thames, particularly the SE quarter (did you know, by the way, that there used to be S and and NE London postcodes as well?), and not inclined to consult maps and iPad, both of which I was carrying, I got lost, and, happening upon Cycle Superhighway 7, decided to follow it to the City, which I had never done before. This took me across Southwark Bridge, which I had not cycled across in recent times. I was impressed, and those who read this blog regularly will know that I am not often impressed by London cycle infrastructure.

Southwark Bridge, photo by Alan P

For Southwark Bridge now has concrete kerb-segregated cycle tracks on both sides painted Superhighway blue. These have narrowed the carriageway to one not very wide motor lane in both directions, which should limit motor speeds. The pavements have, I guess, not been altered from how they always were, and are generous.

This all looks very progressive to me, almost "Dutch". Now a little bit of searching of photos on Flickr has shown me that the concrete segregation was in place before the blue CS7 markings were put down, so I don't actually know when the segregation was done and if it was part of  the Superhighway plan. Certainly in 2004 all Southwark Bridge had was very narrow painted advisory bike lanes, with two motor lanes northbound and one southbound. This image suggests the segregation might have been built in 2007, well before the Superhighways programme started.

Discussion of this subject on A Grim North has suggested that the segregation was not put in primarily to benefit cyclists, but to reduce the capacity of the bridge to lengthen its life. This does not seem to make too much sense, as the bridge previously had a reputation as "the car park bridge" as, according to Wikipedia, coaches used to park there. This parking was presumably in the inside northbound lane, and on top of the advisory cycle lane, reducing the bridge to two lanes: all the old photos I have seen show double-yellow lines in the southbound lane. If the parking was evenings only, and the bridge really operated as three lanes during the day, then, yes, the segregated cycle tracks could have reduced its capacity during the day. So this would be a case of, as so often, the best cycle facilities in the UK coming about accidentally, for reasons other than the desire to create good cycle facilities, as with the Cambridge Guided Busway.

In this case, it does not matter. The result has been to create the best crossing of the Thames for London cyclists, and it made sense to direct CS7 this way. At the north end of the bridge Queen Street is closed, and motor traffic has to turn right or left onto Upper Thames Street, as shown below. Cyclists on CS7 thus have a clear run into a largely traffic-free Queen Street, and then King Street, via another bollarded road-closure, right up to Gresham Street, in the heart of the City: altogether one of the best bits of cycle route in London. This is very much a Dutch city-centre pattern of combining segregation, in places where there is no sensible alternative, with strategic closures of other streets to motor vehicles (sometimes termed filtered permeability for cyclists), or use of one-way street networks, with cycle exceptions, to provide almost traffic-free cycling on the remainer of a route.

Looking from Southwark Bridge towards Queen Street, photo by Alan P

Now again, none of this really came about through strategic planning for cycling. The closure of Queen Street to motor vehicles was part of the Ring of Steel response in the City to Irish republican terrorist attacks in the early 1990s. Again, the best stuff for cyclists in the UK was not done specifically for them. But the combination of this and the segregation of Southwark Bridge did make this the best route for CS7, though, foolishly, the superhighway officially stops at this junction, and the blue lanes do not continue into Queen Street. For this combination of reasons, this is the best-implemented and most attractive part of Boris Johnson's sorry, rather less than half-hearted, Cycle Superhighway project.

In further discussion on A Grim North, it is commented that the segregation on the bridge is poor, with high, unforgiving kerbs, and the tracks too narrow to allow overtaking of slower cyclists. I would say that it would be possible to overtake another cyclist on these tracks, particularly if you rung your bell and got them to move in as far as possible, but it is certainly true that the kerbs could have been done better. Here is a new cycle track in Assen, which I photographed on the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain study tour in the Netherlands in September. I have referred to this one before: it is the secondary cycle track, for the benefit of which Assen moved the canal two metres sideways. Being new, I take it to represent the state-of-the-art of Dutch design. You do see slightly different designs all over the Netherlands.

Track along the south side of the Vaart canal, Assen

The fact that this is a two-way track is not relevant here. The outer kerb is in fact fairly high, and vertical, but the inner one is low and chamfered, allowing a possible run-over on to the pavement. This, incidentally, also makes the track usefully permeable to disabled buggies and the like. Accommodating the needs of the disabled is a significant, and generally overlooked, purpose of Dutch cycle infrastructure. Clearly this is not a very similar environment to central London; nevertheless, lessons can be learned. Note the shiny new lifting bridge on the canal in the background. The Dutch are always building bridges. There are loads of bridges across the canals of Assen, and all of them have cycle provision. Either they are cycle-only bridges, or they have cycle lanes or tracks. And you never get parking on Dutch bridges. The Dutch have twigged that space on bridges is too precious to devote to parking.

Despite the general wateriness of the Netherlands, crossing water on bikes there is now never a problem. It has been a problem in the not-so-distant past: here is Mark Wagenbuur's intersting video on the history of the Berlagebrug in Amsterdam. In 1984 Dutch cyclists had to fight for cycle provision on this bridge. They won.

One thing that comes up repeatedly in discussions of Dutch cycle infrastructure by British cyclists is that they don't understand how very new it is. This means that those who last visited the Netherlands perhaps 20 or 30 years ago really don't have much relevant knowledge (another reason to suggest they go on a study tour). Virtually all Dutch cycle infrastructure has been replaced, or radically improved, in the last 30 years, and David Hembrow suggests that most Dutch cycling is now done on infrastructure that is less than 15 years old.  The Berlagebrug incident was perhaps a turning point from which the modern Dutch infrastructure-driven cycling renaissance can be dated. The incident also shows that this renaissance, in its early days in the 1980s, was far from secure. The Berlagebrug didn't recieve cycle lanes until 1982, but they were threatened by a change in political fashion only two years later. The cyclists in Amsterdam stood up to that threat. This is a salutary lesson to the cyclists of London today: it shows how similar our situation is with Blackfriars Bridge now.

It may be that TfL don't think good cycle provision on Blackfriars Bridge is necessary, because they have done CS7 and Southwark Bridge. This is a mistake, because cyclists need a dense grid of safe routes if mass cycling is to come about: this was a vital lesson the Dutch learned in the 1980s. It doesn't all need to be kerb-segregated (Berlagebrug is not), but it does all need to join up properly, cycle space needs to be uninterrupted by parking and taxi and bus stopping, and all the junctions need to be safe, all factors conspicuously factor lacking at Blackfriars and throughout London. There are few enough Thames crossings as it is, and none dedicated to bikes. Boris Johnson could have spent £60 million on a cycle bridge across the Thames, but he chose to spend it on a ridiculous cable-car project instead. The city of Amsterdam injected a fair amount into the London economy by getting London architects to design the magnificent Nescio Bridge across the Amsterdam-Rhine canal, possibly the longest dedicated cycle bridge in the world (which, surprisingly, only cost £6.5 million in 2005 – how do they do huge infrastructure so cheap when it seems to cost us thousands to put in a few cycle stands?). It's a pity that our talented people are not able to exercise their design abilities on cycle bridges for our city, which so pointedly needs them – and not just across the Thames, but also across the Rivers Lea, Brent, and many rail and motorway corridor barriers.

But I wish to end on a positive note. Cycle Superhighway 7 at the City end is a little blue oasis in the general cycling inferno that is London. It is a start. It gives a glimpse of what we could do and what we could get. The key elements are there: dedicated, uninterruptible space for cycling, sensible junction and signal design*, and integration with de-trafficked streets. We need to keep pressing at all levels of government pointing out the good examples like this, showing how removal of motor vehicle space and motor through-routes have improved, not impoverished, the city where they have been implemented, and explaining that the Cycling Revolution requires this sort of streetscape to become the norm, not the exception, and that this would be good for all Londoners. The odd historical reasons we have got here notwithstanding, we have here a start.

*Post-script: OK, in my desire to end on a positive note, I was too positive here. As Cyclists in the City points out today, the junction at the north end of Southwark Bridge is a nightmare at busy times (compare the picture he has used with the one I used). Though not as bad as what is proposed for Blackfriars, it is still poorly designed, with masses of blue paint, but vehicles still allowed and encouraged into the left hand-lane, allowing no space for cyclists.

A new kind of protest for politicians to understand

The third Blackfriars flashride gets going from Upper Ground on the south bank 

The Blackfriars Bridge protest ride on Wednesday has already been excellently covered by ibikelondon, Cyclists in the City, and the London Cycling Campaign blog, so I need not repeat too much of what has been written and pictured there. Zefrog produced an excellent set of photos of the event despite the technically-challenging low light conditions.

Suffice it to say that the organisation by LCC was exemplary, as was the facilitation of the event by the Metropolitan Police. Between 2,000 and 2,500 people took part, making it the largest cycle demonstration ever held in the UK. I have no doubt that, were LCC to call a repeat, even more people would take part next time. The word is spreading more and more; more and more cyclists, pedestrians and public transport users are understanding how regressive are Transport for London's policies for its roads, at Blackfriars as well as all over London, prioritising motor vehicle throughput at virtually all costs, and those people are willing to stand up for an alternative vision of "safe streets for people": a demand merely that our main streets be designed in a way that would be regarded as standard and uncontroversial in virtually any other Western European capital.

On a gloomy London autumn evening, colourful flashriders fill the bridge. Photo by Joe Dunckley.

Politically, the most important aspect of Wednesday's demonstration was the presence of senior representatives from all four main political parties. These included two mayoral candidates: Brian Paddick for the Liberal Democrats and Jenny Jones for the Greens. Ms Jones' commitment to cycling is well-known. Ex-police chief Paddick did not have a particularly striking policy emphasis on sustainable transport last time he stood for Mayor, but, as the Bible says, "There is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner that repenteth..." Also present were Assembly Members Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem), Val Shawcross (Labour, vice-chair of the Assembly Transport Committee), and Andrew Boff (Conservative).

Boff's position is perhaps the strangest of all of those involved in this. He is supposedly the Mayor's (Boris Johnson's) awkwardly-titled "Ambassador for Championing Cycling in London" (though he does not call himself this on his current profile page on the GLA site). Boff has already expressed his opinions on the Blackfriars situation at length, and I have criticised them at length. Now here he is, the man who is supposed to be advising Boris Johnson on promoting cycling, publicly protesting against the cycling infrastructure decisions of TfL, which is run by his boss. So what is going on here? Either Boff is giving Johnson advice which is being ignored, in which case, I think he should resign from this strange non-position as "Ambassador etc." (has he already done so, without telling anybody?), or, TfL are ignoring Johnson, in which case Johnson is a failed Mayor and TfL is out of control, which is very serious for everbody. Perhaps Boff just trying to be everything to everybody. He certainly does not endear himself to me when I read this elegant prose on his Twitter feed (11 October, the day before the protest):

The LibDem evisceration of the best part of the localism bill shows that we're in coalition with a bunch of statist shits. Role on 2015.

However, this is off the point. My point here is that this is a kind of protest movement that is new. Here is a phenomenon with which it may take politicians and civil servants some time to catch up: what I might call a technical protest. That is not to say that it is about anything trivial or minor. Far from it, these are lift-and-death issues, and that is why they stir passion. But what I mean is that environmental protest in the past has been very much "Stop that", Down with the other", "Not in my back yard", etc.: rather black and white, crudely and simplistically for or against something, with demands that are easily captured in a sound-bite. But here were 2,500 people protesting on the very technical subject of road design. They don't like the design that Transport for London want to implement, and they want something else, and they know what they want. They are not arguing simply for lower speeds, not simply for segregated cycle lanes, but for a whole design package: one that includes these things, but also better streetscape, more pedestrian space, fewer lanes of motor vehicles, better design of junctions and cleverer signal systems to get cyclists, pedestrians and motorists safely through them. This is complicated stuff. This is not like the roads protests of the past, which were either attempts to block the construction of bypasses, or generalised demos against everything to do with car-culture (as in the "Reclaim the Streets" movement).

This is  new phenomenon which can only have come about in the internet age. It depends on a spreading of knowledge of detailed, technical aspects of the design of public space in a way that is comprehended by a large number of non-specialist people, though pictures, descriptions, animations. This may make the professionals in the fields affected very uncomfortable: they may resist being taken to task by amateurs who they feel lack the understanding of the subject that they have trained long and hard to gain. Or, alternatively, they could embrace the far higher level of public dialogue that this promises on the aspects of urban design which are so crucial to our environmental wellbeing.

It is because we now have websites like that of the LCC, like View from the Cycle Path, like the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, and others, that people can be mobilised to support particular detailed visions, future projections of what British public space could look like, when they see that what is being suggested would be so much better than what they are being offered by politicians and professional planners. I think this is really the case: I don't think those at Blackfriars, on Wednesday, in general, were just "anti-car". They were protesting positively for something very particular: a new settlement of space and priority in the city vis-a-vis walking, cycling and driving. Part of my evidence for this is the considerable number of people who have seen LCC's Blackfriars design and said they are joining the campaign because of it. They were not conviced before that the campaign was doing anything particularly effective, but this has convinced them.


As I say, one likely first reaction from transport professionals to the emergence of such a technical protest movement is the negative one: a blank refusal to engage, and a closing of professional ranks. We see this with the response to Cyclists in the City's letter to Network Rail, asking them to look at the LCC design. Simon Kirby, the Director of Investment Projects at Network Rail, a state organisation, and one of the chief drivers for the Blackfriars changes, replies first by talking down, telling our correspondent a series of suck-eggs things of which he is obviously already aware:

As you’re aware we’re currently rebuilding Blackfriars railway station to provide for growing passenger numbers, longer trains and more frequent services. 

The coming years will see substantial growth in the number of people using Blackfriars station, and changes need to be made to the road network around the station so that it can cope with an increased volume of pedestrian traffic. 

The road junction north of Blackfriars bridge is owned and maintained by TfL. As such they have taken the lead in designing and delivering a new road layout to accommodate all road users over the coming decades.

And then by simply shutting the door on discussion:

We’ve worked closely with TfL to ensure their road layout is compatible with our station designs and we fully support their plans.

And that, insultingly, is it. Simon Kirby and Network Rail obviously have not looked at the LCC plans, or in any way considered such alternatives. He makes no attempt to justify the current TfL and Network Rail plans for the streets on any grounds whatsoever. He makes no attempt to explain how these plans are better for rail passengers than LCC's alternatives. He would have a tall order trying to do so, because they are obviously far worse. So Network Rail is here opposing the interests of rail passengers and refusing to enter into any discussion of the street design around their station. This is simply a professional closing of ranks, insulting the intelligence of the public, and hoping that these annoying people will shut up and go away.

Successful politicians of the future will have to wise-up to the new reality of technical protest in regard to the streets and other aspects of the environment. They will have to realise that large numbers of people can now understand the need for sophisticated solutions to complex problems. It's now no longer a case of the technocrat, or politician, telling the people who are baying for some crude solution that "It's not that simple". It's the other way round: the well-informed populace explaining the details to the politicians: a clear new phenomenon of the Information Age. The successful politician of the future will not necessarily understand all the details themselves; Boris is clearly no grasper of technical detail. But they will be able to sense when their "experts" need to be told that they must listen to others who know a thing or two about their subject as well.

The cyclists of London have thrown down a gauntlet with the Blackfriars protests. And whatever happens at Blackfriars over the next months and years, this is not going to go away. For of course Blackfriars is only a symbol, and only at beginning. As LCC sys:

Throughout the summer, we've been keen to emphasise that the campaign over Blackfriars is part of a bigger, more widespread push for a people-friendly London.

And in the New Year, the London Cycling Campaign will be officially launching our Go Dutch campaign, voted for by our members, which will be pressing all the mayoral candidates to take London along the pathway towards safe and convenient cycling, and a truly people-friendly urban environment.

This means addressing every bad junction and every busy road, so they're safe and convenient for Londoners of all ages and experiences who want to cycle.

In the coming days and weeks, we’ll be fleshing out the principles for what this means for London’s main roads, and in the New Year we’ll be publishing more exciting graphics and designs, showing what fantastic public spaces so many major locations in London could be.

So TfL will know that whenever it plans to revamp a road or a junction in its old style (and the next example is likely to be the King's Cross junction, where cyclist Min Joo Lee was killed on 3 October): they can expect lots more of the same trouble. They can expect their designs to be challenged in a high-profile way. They can expect bigger and bigger protests, more people questioning the competence of their designers, more politicians coming over to our side. It may not happen with Blackfriars, and it may not happen with Kings Cross, but at some point they will be forced into the 21st century. Cyclists and pedestrians of London, now that you have a clear strategy, you will win, as the cyclists and pedestrians in the Netherlands did in the 1970s. Keep it up.

Let them hear your voice at Blackfriars this Wednesday

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 4, scene 3, 218–224

Can people-power achieve a modern, civilised urban design for the Blackfriars intersection? Please help make it happen.

Progress on making the roads of the UK, and particularly of London, fit for walking and cycling has been more or less stalled for at least 30 years. But now, I think, we may be on that tide which should be taken at the flood. We have reached a moment which could be our equivalent of that at which the Dutch, through mass, popular action, reversed their slide into motor-centric city planning in 1973, with the launch of their Stop der kindermoord ("Stop the child murder") campaign.

There is a confluence of several factors. There is a growth of cycling in London, confined mainly to the middle-classes and to inner-Londoners, it is true, but a growth, nevertheless, that is bringing with it an upswell in support for more investment in cycling, plus an understanding, gained from the common experience of these people, who are knowledgeable and well-travelled, of what is being achieved in other countries in making major cities people-friendly, but not being done in London, and a disgust that our authorities are not using the knowledge that exists to tackle the deadly danger that cyclists and pedestrians face on our streets every day, preferring instead to serve an outdated car-centric socio-economic model of the city that does nobody any good.

As Tony Raven, a London Cycling Campaign (LCC) member who happened to be on the scene of the latest sickeningly predictable and avoidable cyclist death in London commented:

“It only takes four deaths to shut down the whole rail network until the safety issues have been addressed, but after tens of cyclists nothing changes and the carnage goes on.”

Another factor is that we now have an organised campaign in the UK for proper cycle infrastructure (and for the pedestrian-friendly planning that goes with it): the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. This has changed the game in terms of what cycling organisations are now asking government for. No longer are they asking merely for ineffective tweaks around the edges of a hostile road environment, which may perhaps just be noticed by dedicated existing cyclists, but which would do nothing to achieve mass cycling. The Cycling Embassy, and other groups now thinking along similar lines, are demanding a complete re-think in the way cycling is accommodated in our citiess, in line with the policies which have been shown so spectacularly to work in the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Italy (and even in places in New York and Paris). One established, and major group which is now thinking along similar lines is the LCC, with a new campaign slogan Go Dutch.

And, of course, another factor which has galvanised and concentrated action has been the extraordinary intransigence of Transport for London, headed by Mayor Boris Johnson, over the re-design of Blackfriars Bridge. This has led to two "flashride" protests by cyclists on the bridge, organised by LCC and backed by CEoGB and other groups. The first, in May, organised in about 48 hours, saw hundreds of cyclists take to the road in protest. The second, in July, attracted at least 1000 protesters, and gained major national news coverage.

The third Blackfriars Bridge protest will take place this Wednesday, 12 October, at 5:45pm, starting from outside the Doggets pub on the south side of the bridge. We are aiming to make this far bigger than the earlier protests. We want everybody who cycles in London, anywhere, ever, and every pedestrian and public transport user who is dissatisfied with the way the Government and TfL refuses to prioritise their movements in the city, preferring to prioritise instead the movements of those in cars, to join us. This is far bigger than cycling: it is about the whole way our precious urban public space is used. Car drivers have had it all their own way for far too long.

In July I wrote a post on this blog that suggested that cycle activists, rather than fighting ineffectually over scraps dropped from from the "big man's table" of motorised hegemony, for such tiny measures as advanced stop lines and the like, which will never do anything to move the UK towards the kind of cycling culture seen in the Netherlands and Denmark, should up their game, and rather be thinking about, and working on, designs that would completely transform our roads. They should be seizing the initiative, taking the best international ideas and adapting them to British towns and cities to make the wider public to think creatively and fundamentally about the whole purpose being served by our streets.

To aid this process, the Cycling Embassy organised a study tour in the Netherlands to find out exactly how the Dutch have achieved their world-beating cycling rate of 28% of all journeys by bike. Staff at the London Cycling Campaign have been on a trip to the Netherlands as well. And now the LCC have done exactly what I called for: they have seized the initiative and come up with a visionary and far-reaching re-design of Blackfriars that puts cyclists and pedestrians first (their visualisation shown at the top of this post). This is Blackfriars as it might be re-engineered by Dutch or Danish urban planners.

LCC’s radically different road layout features protected cycle lanes and safe turns with cyclist-specific traffic lights, as well as convenient crossings for pedestrians. 

750m sq of easily accessible public space would also be opened up outside the Unilever building for recreation or other purposes.

The design team was led by my friend Richard Lewis, an urban planner who has studied Danish infrastructure design. He currently works for the London borough of Newham, but he used to work for the Borough of Brent, where he drew up a very forward-looking public realm guide (little of which has so far been implemented in Brent, unfortunately).

Here's the comparison of TfL's plans with LCC's for the north Blackfriars junction:

TfL design

LCC design

The TfL design is for a 1970's style urban motorway junction where the movements of cars are prioritised and speed is encouraged, creating unnecessary danger created for all road-users. Pedestrians (who are present in huge numbers outside the station, and for whose convenience the whole layout should have been designed) are led a merry, and long, dance to get from A to B, and cyclists have inadequate space, with no real protection, and have to attempt to cut across fast-moving lanes of vehicles to make simple manoeuvres.

The LCC design represents something far closer to modern, state-of-the-art, European city centre street design, with two compact, simple T-junctions, through which motor vehicles are forced to drive slowly and carefully. Pedestrians have direct, fast crossings on their desire-lines, and flows of cyclists are separated out and taken through the junctions separately and safely, using capacious cycle tracks and lanes, without having to cross lanes of moving traffic. In addition, lots of space is actually saved. There can be no argument that "we don't have space for this".

If you wish to see more detail on how it could actually work, LCC have made some animations that demonstrate the possible flows of bikes, pedestrians and motorised traffic through the junctions in their design. Though LCC's Going Dutch policy is not, as yet, fully-formulated, this is a professional and compelling piece of work, and the Mayor and Transport for London would be very foolish to dismiss it out of hand.

I am sure this design is not perfect and that not everything has been thought of. It is not exactly how I would have designed it, and I could query fine details. For example, I would not have included the advance stop areas for cyclists at the junctions. The Dutch have perfected cycle-friendly junctions, as I saw on my recent trip with the Cycling Embassy, and advanced stop areas have no role in modern Dutch design for major junctions with cycle segregation, because cyclists are never required to get to the front of lanes of motor traffic (as they are shown at the front in LCC's "street-level" visualisations). In modern Dutch design for busy junctions, cyclists are taken to the junction in segregated tracks and kept to the right (our left) of all motor lanes, then given safe passage using their own all-green cycle phase while all motor traffic is held. The LCC design seems to be borne out of a desire to compromise between the Dutch paradigm and UK traditions, but this is not necessary. Cyclists will never wish to use the vehicle lanes if the cycle track flows are correctly prioritised in the signal sequence.

But these are details, that I don't want to get into a "People's Front of Judea" versus "Judean People's Front" type of argument about them. I am willing, and happy, to support this design. This design is vastly better than anything that has ever been built on a similar road junction in the UK, and is a great publicity tool for getting the Going Dutch message across to the wider public. It provides a basic concept, or set of concepts, that cycling, pedestrian and urban design campaigners can rally around. Of course there would be tweaks if TfL actually agreed to re-think their design from scratch and go for something like this. But I have got what I asked for when I called for campaigners to produce a transformative design. We now know basically what we want, and everybody who sees it can examine it and discuss it and debate its merits.

So please, whether you cycle in London or not, whether you wish to cycle in London or not, even if you drive through central London, but want to see a simpler, calmer and more humanised environment with better public space and safety for all (and probably less congestion because fewer vehicles would be attracted to the centre of the city), then please support the campaign for a better Blackfriars. If you possibly can, please join with us this Wednesday on Blackfriars Bridge for a peaceful demonstration to send an unmistakable message to City Hall that Londoners demand new thinking, not only on Blackfriars, but on all main roads and junctions in London. 

We know what we want: we want modern, people-friendly streets. We want a safe environment for all, and we want an equitable balance of space and priority for all transport modes. We know how these things can be achieved. They have been achieved elsewhere and could be achieved in London, if only our politicians had the courage to think differently.

Political will can be like a chain of dominoes. Once politicians get the message that public opinion is not what they thought it was, that there is a new tide flowing, then all the old obstacles and objections can fall down one after another almost instantaneously, and a whole new situation can be created, where everybody finds they are actually on the same side. The Dutch people created a whole new situation in 1973 with their campaign to "Stop the Child Murder". A flood tide of opinion created then by a confluence of circumstances changed roads and urban design policy completely, and the Netherlands has never looked back. I hope Londoners may now do likewise, and take their tide at its flood as well.

Boff on Blackfriars

I mentioned in a previous post, in passing, the lengthy interview that the Mayor of London's "Champion for Promoting Cycling", Andrew Boff, Conservative London Assembly Member, gave to The Bike Show on Resonance Radio, on the vexed issue of the redesign of Blackfriars Bridge.

What caused the debate: 1000 cyclists on Blackfriars Bridge (ITV coverage)

That interview has now been treated by another blogger, cyclerdelic, who has transcribed parts of it. He makes some good points: principally, if Boff claims, as he seems to, that it would be bad for the economy of London to do too much to facilitate cycling and de-facilitate motor traffic, like, say, giving the whole of one Thames bridge over to cycling (a "ridiculous" idea according to cyclist Boff) then really he needs to produce some evidence for it. It may seem to him to be "common sense", but "common sense" is in the mind of the beholder, and, at least half the time, it is dead wrong. According to Jan Gehl, the famous Copenhagen "Cities for people" architect and guru, as reported on ibikelondon:

The benefits [of prioritising the bike in a city] are clear on many levels, not least in terms of economy. Danish research has found that for every KM cycled, society saves 30 cents. For every KM driven, society looses 20 cents. Biking is not just about having fun and being ‘green’; it pays, too.

No wonder Copenhagen is doing so well economically. It has a 37% modal share by bike, compared to London's 1.5%.

What Boff says in his interview strikes me as very contradictory in a number of ways. He freely admits that he feels Blackfriars Bridge is dangerous to cycle on, and he wouldn't use it. It is not on his commute, but, if it was, he says he would go another way round. (Boris does commute across Blackfriars Bridge.) But then he doesn't seem to be certain that Transport for London are actually taking the wrong decisions on Blackfriars. He spends quite a lot of time proposing that the main issue is the secrecy with which TfL arrives at its decisions, and how it hides its evidence and decision-making process from the public, and from the Assembly Members. He says he thinks there is a possibility that TfL is taking exactly the right decisions, for good reasons, but the problem is secerecy and TfL not explaining itself properly.

Now, this may just be a way in which Boff is trying to be diplomatic and avoiding attacking the managers of TfL too explicitly. But it sounds very odd to me. For though having a process of secret and unaccountable decision making is very bad, what is far worse is the bad decisions themselves, when those decisions have killed people, specifically, the two cyclists killed on the bridge in 2006, and seriously injured others. After those deaths, a report by TfL itself recommended that the speeds on all the London crossings shared with cyclists should be reduced to 20 mph as a cycle safety measure. Boris Johnson has stated he disagrees with this advice and is ignoring it (or, rather, in the latest version, he has been advised by persons unknown that it is bad advice, and he is ignoring it).

What Boff is saying sounds very like what all politicians say just before they massively loose elections: "Our policies are right, we just haven't done enough to explain them". In other words, the problem is not what we're doing, its just the way we are presenting it, and the public doesn't understand our reasons. Politicians in power often adopt this arrogant attitude, and it always leads to the public giving them a bloody nose shortly after.

It doesn't seem to occur to Boff here that if he feels Blackfriars Bridge is dangerous to cycle across, then that proves conclusively that TfL have failed cyclists here, irrespective of any shortcomings of their explanations to the public or politicians. It seems that, though a commuting cyclist himself,  Boff doesn't actually believe that main roads in our cities should necessarily be cycleable, if that conflicts with the requirement, in his world-view, of allowing sufficient motorised traffic to "keep the economy healthy".

He also states that there are many people who will never cycle, however safe you make the roads for them. This is undoubtedly true, and the same argument was put to Mark of ibikelondon by Eric Pickles in his famous "rubber knickers" interview. But this argument is always over-sold in this country, and it is always pushed by those who are resisting making cycling safer and more attractive. If 37% of journeys in Copenhagen are made by bike, that shows that most people in Copenhagen are prepared to cycle for at least a few of their journeys, and many others use cycling as their main mode of transport, or for a good proportion of their journeys. If you make cycling attractive enough, most people will use it some of the time. Those who will never use it, or can never use it, under any circumstances, are a small minority. But London, at its modal share of 1.5%, is currently at the opposite pole, and the argument that "some people will never cycle whatever you do" is actually totally irrelevant to policy, and an excuse for not addressing the issues. The issue in London is allowing the majority who want to be able to cycle the opportunity to do so in safety and comfort. Nobody is talking about preventing those who need to use motor vehicles from doing so. Nobody ever says that you shouldn't invest in railways because "some people never take the train", or not invest in roads for cars because "some people will never drive". This line is transparently foolish.

Where I agree with Boff 100% is in the final section of the interview, where he strongly criticises the current political system in London (set up by the Blair government), with an executive Mayor who has an almost impossible job in being expected to manage so many separate and different technical areas (transport, policing, culture, planning), who is forced therefore to rely too heavily on unelected, unaccountable apparatchiks that he alone appoints, and who is effectively democratically unaccountable himself after he has been elected for 4 years, with a largely pointless and toothless elected Assembly that has one opportunity a year to reject or accept a budget, and then spends the rest of its time lamely scutinising decisions after the fact. This is a bad system, and it tends to bad decision-making and corruption. London deserves better.

But I come back to this point about the economics of providing for cycling as against providing for cars, as the logic is so bizarre. Why should giving over a large part of Blackfriars Bridge to cyclists (and pedestrians) impact the economy of London adversely? This is implying that somehow we just happen to have a distribution of priorities on London's bridges at the moment that is economically optimal for the city. Is this likely? Perhaps not, perhaps the economy would do even better if we gave cars more space. If this is the case, is it not wrong that we have a whole bridge across the Thames (the Milennium Bridge) devoted to walkers? Surely TfL is being irresponsible with the economy of London if it does not immediately evict pedestrians from the Millennium Bridge and hand it over to cars (those little electric cars that the government is doing so much to push as the "future of transport" might not be too heavy for it, and, if they are, then why not strengthen it?). Where does this "logic" end?

In Boff's long interview, I keep wanting to ask, "Well, OK, but what is your solution?" He doesn't seem to have one. As a just a politician, just someone who happened to get elected, he tells us, he can't be expected to be an expert on anything in particular, that's why we need the "experts" at TfL to explain their decisions better. The reasonable man, of course, believes in the authority of experts – a concatenation of famous sayings by famous people that I just invented. But no-one in this programme approached in any way proposing a solution to the "Blackfriars Problem". People seem to be too afraid of having an opinion that could be contested by "experts".

London Cycling Campaign has just voted that its future policy should be "Going Dutch". If that is the case, why didn't LCC's Charlie Lloyd, interviewed before Boff, launch this new policy in this programme by proposing a Dutch solution to Blackfriars? We know what the Dutch solution would be, as David Hembrow has helpfully told us, providing numerous examples to prove his point. And it's not rocket science, it's not something you need a great expert on transport to explain to you. The Dutch would give cyclists their own ample, dedicated, safe and separated space on the bridge, and signalise the junctions at the ends so that cyclists could go in the directions they needed to go with a minimum of delay and with no interaction or negotiation with motor vehicles or pedestrians at all. Golly, how come they can think of that when all the great experts at TfL can't? Perhaps it's living below sea-level that concentrates the mind. Now, what's the purpose of that big shiny metal thing that spans the Thames near Woolwich? Perhaps there's hope for London yet.

A discreditable transition

Last Friday's mass protest rides on Blackfriars Bridge were the biggest cycling protests the UK has ever seen, so far as anyone can discern. Estimates of number on the 6pm LCC flashride vary from 500 to 1000, but it appeared to be at least 1000 to me. The bridge was packed with cyclists, who rode slowly from the south to the north bank and then back again between 6:15 and 6:45pm. Most of these then cycled along Upper Ground to the Critical Mass meeting point by Waterloo Bridge, and about 7pm, a huge stream of cyclists consisting of the combined groups went back up Upper Ground and slowly crossed Blackfriars Bridge again on the Critical Mass ride. I stood at the southern end of the bridge with the cyclists stopping the flow of traffic from the south, having the traditional banter with the black cab drivers, with their usual sprightly repartee, such as, "You're not allowed to hold me up, read the f---ing Highway Code!" and "You say you want safer roads, well why don't you all wear f---ing helments!"(that one is a favourite of theirs, of which the logic seems to them unimpeachable), for the duration that it took to get all these cyclists through, and I thought there must be at least 2000 cyclists in the protest at this stage. They could not all fit on the bridge at once.

The Blackfriars flashride heading south, with a foolish motorcyclist trying to push in

Nice slogan on Gerhard's bike

Video of the southbound flashride by smsm1986 on YouTube

Aerial view of the protest, on ITV's London Tonight

The Critical Mass proceeded through the City of London and north-east, via Old Street, into the borough of Tower Hamlets. This is not an area that I and the Vole cycle to very often, and the Vole was intrigued to encounter a remarkably similar-looking rodent about 5 metres long painted on an exposed internal wall of a demolished building.

A meeting of rodents in Tower Hamlets

I haven't been on a Critical Mass for many years. I noted how for many of the young male participants, it is a kind of "extreme sport". They relish holding the traffic at the junctions, and the argie-bargie with the taxi drivers and other motorists, often seeing to obstruct motorists trying to get in and out of side turnings quite gratuitously. The colourful cavalcade, which included some bizarre bikes and get-ups, wound back westwards through Bethnal Green and back to the City, where I left it, diving into Bank tube with the Brompton and Vole.

Bank tube station at 9 pm was certainly a different experience to the same place at 6 pm. At the earlier time, it had been so horrendously packed, strained and over-capacity that it took me about 10 minutes from getting off the train to get out of the station. The only practical method was to climb up all the stairs – quite an effort with the folded Brompton. As I came out, I saw they had closed the station to incomers, as the situation inside had become quite impossible. And this I presume was a normal Friday 6 pm at Bank Station, with nothing special going on. This set me thinking how the growth in commuting cycling into the City in recent years must be in large part due to the horrendous conditions on public transport. It is clearly not due to work by Transport for London or the City Corporation in making cycling conditions any better. So we have a "cycling revolution" in London that, in so far as it exists at all, is due to "push" factors rather than a positive "pull" to cycling, which is not all that healthy. It may be a benefit to the city that more people are cycling (at least on the main commuter routes, if not elsewhere in London), but it would be nicer if people were choosing to cycle because cycling itself is pleasant. Otherwise, it is doubtful whether the Utilitarian "Sum of Human Happiness" is being increased.

The protest was covered well in the Evening Standard (thanks in no small part to a canny press release put out by the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, who officially supported the protest, the only national cycling organisation to do so (CTC, where are you?)) and on BBC and ITV news.


The BBC new item on the Blackfriars protest, uploaded to YouTube by grsmith06

BBC had the better coverage, giving airtime to Mark Ames, of the ibikelondon blog, and also Publicity Officer for the Cycling Embassy, who cogently explained the issues over Blackfriars. The TfL view came from Ben Plowden. Ben Plowden is TfL's "Director of Better Routes and Places". His previous title at TfL was "Director of Intergrated Programme Delivery", which job involved "bringing together key projects including walking and cycling, road safety and smarter travel". Ben Plowden is not to be confused with the environmentalist Stephen Plowden, best known to cyclists for his work with Mayer Hillman on slower speeds. Ben Plowen is clearly not interested in slower speeds (any more), despite his present and former Orwellian job-titles at TfL. For here, in this BBC news item, he is claiming that the Blackfriars scheme, increasing the number of vehicle lanes and raising the speed limit from 20 to 30 mph, is somehow all being done for the benefit of pedestrians using Blackfriars Station!

People in public life often make political transitions, for example, MPs who "cross the floor" of the House of Commons. But few can have made such a discreditable transition as Ben Plowden. For he was the first Director of the Pedestrians Association (now Living Streets), heading that organisation from 1997 to 2002. In 2001 he said "We are trying to make streets places people can enjoy." Presumably by "people" he did not mean "motorists who want to drive at speed". Carlton Reid has highlighted some of the other things Plowden said when he was in that job. And yet now, this same Ben Plowden is seriously telling us that because the 20 mph limit on Blackfriars Bridge was only put in place as a temporary measure to facilitate the lorries making deliveries to the building works at the station, it is now a good idea to raise the limit back to 30.

It is hard to know where to begin with this argument. The point is that though that may have been the reason it was actually done, there are many other reasons why it was a good idea and should have been done anyway – as must Plowden know, from everything he said in his earlier job. And the changes that have taken place since have re-enforced the need for the lower limit, not removed the need for it. The increased cycle traffic since the limit was introduced, doubled since 2006, and now the largest part of the peak-time traffic on the bridge, perhaps in part because of the lower speed limit operating on this bridge, is a huge argument for 20 mph being kept – as is the history of cyclist deaths on the bridge when it had the higher limit – as is the huge increase in the number of pedestrians entering and exiting Blackfriars Station, which TfL is expecting to be 58% of the total number of people going through the junction in the future. How are these pedestrians going to benefit from a higher speed limit on the bridge and more traffic lanes? Plowden is talking dangerous nonsense, and with his intelligence and his background and experience, he must know it. How else, then, to describe the behaviour now of this erstwhile pedestrians' champion than "discreditable"?

Of course, I don't know what goes on behind the closed doors of TfL (and they are very closed to cycle campaigners). It could be that Plowden still secretly holds all the beliefs that he once espoused, and is fighting desperately to get a more progressive policy out of the motoring dinosaurs at Palestera House, "towing the line" in order to hold on to his job, because he believes he can do more by staying in there and fighting for pedestrians' rights than by walking out. It may be he thinks that TfL's policies towards non-motorised road users would be even worse without him there to act as a counterbalance. Maybe one day, in the distant future, he will write his memoirs, and tell us all about this terrible time in his life, when he was so torn between expediency and belief.

But it doesn't look like this. It looks as if TfL is as pro-car and anti pedestrian as it could possibly be, with Plowden in charge of  the laughably named "Better Routes and Places" (is Blackfriars held to be one of those?). For another example of this, see TfL's determination to harry and incommode pedestrians by introducing widely the Pedestrain Countdown system on signalised crossings, discriminating, as the Green Party's Jenny Jones points out, against "less agile Londoners and people with children". For yet another example, see TfL's horrific designs for the new Henley's Corner in Barnet. If Plowden is really fighting the pedestrians' corner in TfL, he is failing totally. If he had the slightest consistency or integrity, he would resign from his job, telling the world the reasons for his going. His present position gives a depressing example of conduct in public life – a career gone sadly awry.

Call for an ongoing Blackfriars protest from Friday

THIS POST REVISED SINCE FIRST POSTING DUE TO A CHANGING SITUATION

All cyclists who wish to protest about Transport for London's outrageous, high-handed and undemocratic action in proposing to commence their re-engineering of Blackfriars Bridge this weekend in a way that will be massively damaging to cycling, and put cyclists' lives at risk, involving raising the speed limit from 20 to 30 mph and adding extra vehicle lanes, should join London Cycling Campaign's Flashride protest on Friday 29 July 2011 at 6pm, starting on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, outside The Doggett's pub. The ride will be a go-slow across Blackfriars Bridge and will probably then proceed to Waterloo Bridge before returning to Blackfriars. This ride will incorporate and replace the Critical Mass ride normally held on the last Friday of the month.

There are likely to be further Flashrides at times and dates to be announced. It now appears that TfL's works on the bridge will take several months, and we need to keep doing this to need to make sure Transport for London understands that this is not going to go away. So be ready to take part again next week, or whenever.


As well as the London Cycling Campaign, all the well-known cycling bloggers are advertising these protests, as is the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain and hundreds of Twitter feeds. Do not worry that you may be part of a small, fringe, ragtag bunch. These protests will be huge, and consist of all types of cyclists from all walks of life. They will show how mainstream cycling has become in London, and that the authorities cannot ignore our legitimate fight for decent treatment any more. They could turn out to be a turning-point for cycling in the UK, if we all play our cards right.

It is not exactly clear what TfL do plan to start building this weekend. Jenny Jones of the Green Party suggests that they might be going to implement their original plan with no cycle lanes at all. That would mean that all the lobbying and writing to TfL over the past six months by hundreds of cyclists, plus the campaigns of LCC and the bloggers, have been totally ignored – a waste of time. And of course the interventions of the London Assembly and even the minister for cycling have also been ignored.

Please come on Friday and subsequent dates and give the Mayor and Transport for London something they cannot ignore.

Blackfriars: have we run out of democratic options?

I have been following on this blog what I have called the Battle for Blackfriars, though not so extensively as has the wonderfully-industrious Danny on his Cyclists in the City blog. As I wrote before:

The "Battle for Blackfriars" has become totemic of the struggle to establish decent treatment for pedestrians and cyclists in the way that major roads in London are engineered. If the campaign on Blackfriars fails, TfL will probably try to impose the same engineering style on all the Thames bridges, and, by extension, all other major road junctions in London under their control.

The state of play now is that the London Assembly has finally managed to take a vote on the Blackfriars plans. The first attempt to debate the issue, on 8 June, using a motion proposed by the doughty Green Assembly Member Jenny Jones, which called for retention of the existing 20 mph limit, was scuppered by a Conservative walk-out in protest over an unrelated issue. The fury this aroused from transport campaigners seemed to take the Assembly Conservatives by surprise, with their spokesman, Andrew Boff, forced on to the defensive. The result was, last week, an even better outcome than could have been predicted in June. Jones re-tabled her motion for 20 July, but Boff negotiated a re-wording as follows:

This Assembly notes the decision to revert to a 30 mph speed limit on Blackfriars Bridge. We also note the recent decision of the Corporation of London to consider plans for the whole of the City of London to become a 20mph zone, and understand that if they take this decision they would be likely to ask Transport for London to agree to make TfL roads 20mph. This Assembly asks that the Mayor instructs TfL to implement a full review investigating the practicalities, advantages and disadvantages of a 20mph limit on Blackfriars Bridge . The review should include previous TfL reports, such as that on 20mph speed limit on London's Thames bridges and also the effect of such a change on all road users (including pedestrians) north, south or on the bridge itself. Meanwhile, TfL should keep under review the decision to revert to a 30 mph speed limit on Blackfriars Bridge. We also urge the Mayor to revisit the plans for the bridge with particular attention to cyclists making right turns when exiting the bridge at either end.

Amazingly, in a tremendous victory for people-power, a vindication of a determined campaign by the London Cycling Campaign and others, the assembly voted unanimously to support this motion. Andrew Boff came up trumps by bringing all the Conservative AMs with him in supporting the motion. Though the motion only mentions cyclists at the end, the press release issued by the Assembly, in quotes from Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Caroline Pidgeon, and Boff, lays heavy emphasis on the desire of the Assembly to see a new Blackfriars that caters properly for cyclists. Pidgeon:

A third of the peak time traffic across Blackfriars Bridge are cyclists and we already know that they are at significantly more risk when travelling across bridges than they are on similar city roads. That’s why we want Transport for London (TfL) to take a robust look at the safety of all users on Blackfriars Bridge and for the Mayor to use the facts to put safety first.

And Boff:

I am staggered that so many cyclists use Blackfriars Bridge, if it was on my commuting route I wouldn’t because it is too dangerous. I hope a full review of the new layout and speed limits on the bridge and the publication of all the relevant data will result in a sensible solution that will address the needs and safety of all users.

Boff is a cyclist who clearly understands how the danger issue is at the base of the problem we have in promoting cycling to Londoners. His reworded motion, that was passed, is perceptive in its recognition that there is not only an issue with speed, but with the fundamentals of the engineering of major roads like this, and their junctions. Dr Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners and an experienced cyclist, was badly injured attempting the right turn at the northern junction even with the current 20 mph limit in force. So clearly 20 mph, though perhaps a convenient campaigning rallying-cry, cannot be the main solution for making our main roads and junctions cycle-friendly. As I have argued before, cyclists need to be campaigning clearly for a total physical re-design of the road space and junction arrangements in places like Blackfriars, preferably on Dutch models, not asking for painted scraps of space.

While the Assembly has no power to make the Mayor do anything on this issue, it would seem to be hard for him to ignore the wishes of all his party in the Assembly. Only a couple of weeks ago, Johnson was arguing, incredibly, that since average peak hour motor vehicle speeds were already below 20, a 20 limit is not needed – totally missing the point that it is out of peak hours when the traffic speeds up that cyclists and pedestrians need the most protection. But in the same speech, Johnson also hinted, delphically, that he did not think everything was fine with TfL's current plans, stating that his observation as a cyclist using Blackfriars was that:

more work needs to be done on cycling over Blackfriars Bridge and the accessibility of cycling over Blackfriars Bridge.

So that would seem to be opening a space for a rethink, and the vote by the entire assembly, including his party members, for just such a rethink would appear to give him exactly the opportunity he needs for calling the plans in again, while in no way losing face.

So that was the relatively rosy way things looked up until Monday, 25 July. At least rosier than they had looked for some time. Until a press release appeared on TfL's website. This talks about the large increase in pedestrian traffic expected from the opening of the rebuilt Blackfriars Station, and the goes on:

The new design accommodates the huge increase in demand from pedestrians whilst improving facilities for the estimated six per cent of people who travel through the junction by bicycle.

That has been achieved without severely affecting other modes of travel, such as the bus and taxi passengers who will account for around a fifth of those using the junction (11 per cent and eight per cent respectively).

Analysis by TfL shows that usage by cyclists through this junction is predominantly for travelling to and from work and is therefore concentrated during traditional 'rush hour' periods, particularly in the morning heading northbound and in the afternoon heading southbound.

Vehicular speeds are predicted to be at their lowest through the junction during peak time, at an estimated speed of just 12mph, creating a much improved and safer environment for cyclists to pass through.

From the evening of 29 July to the early morning of 1 August one lane northbound and one lane southbound will be restricted, with work continuing throughout the night to complete the works as quickly as possible.

So TfL really are not listening. Really. They are not listening to anyone but themselves on this. They are not listening to the Mayor, who is their boss, they are not listening to the London Assembly, they have not listened to the 600 people who have written in to complain about their plans, mostly from a cycling perspective, they have not listened to a peaceful physical protest by cyclists on the bridge itself, and they have not listened to the LCC's petition presenting photos of 2000 cyclists.

Despite the fact that Conservative Assembly Member James Cleverly, a particularly close colleague of Johnson, having been his Ambassador for Youth, has said that it will now be “very difficult” for the Assembly motion “to be ignored or thrown out by TfL or the chair of TfL (the Mayor)”, that is exactly what Johnson seems to be doing. He is doing nothing, despite his statement of 13 July that "more work needs to be done on cycling over Blackfriars Bridge". What the hell is going on here? Does Johson think that that "more work" should be done after TfL have changed the bridge according to their current plans? If so, he is being utterly neglectful of his duty to ensure public money is spent responsibly and efficiently. 


What appears to be going on is that while Johnson vaguely, and in the briefest manner, hints on this issue in directions to please all parties, while, as Cycle of Futility points out, he is probably much more taken up with the extent to which he could be mired in the police–News of the World affair, as effective chief of the Met as well as a peripheral member of the Chipping Norton Set and

once a dodgy News International journo himself, being fired by The Times for manufacturing a quote

as well as more vexed by the increasing competing pressures of satisfying the International Olympic Committee and keeping London moving in 2012 – while all this goes on, TfL's bureaucrats are just getting on with what they wanted to do all along at Blackfriars, as fast as they can, working all night over this coming weekend, in order to make the whole job a fait a complet before anything else can happen.

I have a part-remembered quote in my head, from Shakespeare, I suspect, about bad things happening under cover of darkness, but I cannot authenticate this now. Anyway, this is the point: on Blackfriars we seem to have run out of time, and run out of democratic options. What are we going to have to do? Lie in front of the bulldozers? Have one last protest ride on Friday? Lay some wreathes on the bridge in memory of dead cyclists?

I really don't know.  I hope that whatever happens, there will be two things in the future: firstly, a new-found unity in political campaigning in the cycling community, and secondly, a realisation that getting lower speeds is not necessarily the politically easiest nor the most effective thing to do for cycling. I think many cycling campaigners are a bit fixated on 20 mph because they see it as an "easy win". Just stick up some signs saying "20", OK – what could be easier? But perhaps it is not that easy. As Cycle of Futility says:

Unlike Tower Bridge, the road layout at Blackfriars lends itself to driving much faster than 20mph, which people will do. Enforcement of the limit will be rare, and as I saw today, consequences in those cases where it is enforced minimal. We need to stop devoting our energy to tinkering around the edges like this and start campaigning for proper infrastructure – yes segregated cycle lanes, but this as part of a package of properly designed streets, not huge urban motorways.

I note from both the comments of Boff and Johnson that, interestingly, some cyclists on the right of the political spectrum seem to have an inkling that this is correct. They are not convinced that campaigns on speed in itself, in isolation, will take the wider public along. They can see that the real issue is road design. Redesigning roads to re-humanise them should be a campaign that can win the favour of pro-cycling politicians of all parties.

A grey protest for a greener city?

There has been, as readers of cycling blogs, websites and Twitter feeds based in London will know, a lot of frustration and anger around at TfL's intransigence over the Blackfriars Bridge re-design. So far, protests from everybody from ordinary cyclists to London Assembly Members have not achieved the results we want. There are various shades of opinion amongst cyclists on what exactly they do want. For these, see earlier posts in this blog, or many posts in Cyclists in the City or Cycle of Futility. All are agreed, however, that cyclists, the majority traffic on the bridge at peak times, do not want what TfL are offering, which is raising of the speed limit to 30mph, an increase in the number of general vehicle lanes, and maintenance of the dangerous design of the junction at the north end of the bridge, which has cause two deaths and additional serious injuries in recent years.

Thanks to the efforts of those campaigners shown in the YouTube video posted here yesterday, the issue has now gone closer to the top of government, with cycling transport minister Norman Baker promising to talk to TfL, though he has no control over them. While we wait to see if this, and LCC's photo petition, achieve anything, naturally there has been much discussion amongst cycling bloggers on what further direct action can be taken to keep up the pressure. There was a "flashride" protest on 20 May, where 300 people cycled slowly across the bridge with "20mph" signs, round the junction, and then to the TfL headquarters. Organised quickly by LCC through social media sites, this showed what can be done.

I have been mulling this over, in the context of other cycling events that have occurred in London recently, the Tweed Run and the World Naked Bike Ride, and think I have come up with a concept that merges all these. The idea is to keep doing a Flashride on Blackfriars Bridge, every week at the same time. Publicise it so it grows bigger and bigger. But the "gimmick" would be that it would be the reverse of the Naked Bike Ride; rather than looking whacky, as most cycle protests do, it would emphasise the normalisation of cycling: everybody on it would be dressed in business suits. Not fancy dress, not Boris Johnson wigs, just straight, serious, everybody in formal suits.

Because this is a movement starting in the heart of London, the City of London, no less, at Blackfriars Bridge (but which could grow) give it a distinctively City of London feel. Emphasise that fact that cyclists are not scruffy, left-wing, homespun veggie types, but concentrate on the new face of cycling, the mainstreaming of it; establish an idea that cycling is the new establishment method of transport, not a fringe activity carried out by fringe-types. So we combine a protest on the specific issues at Blackfriars and the specific attitudinal problems in TfL with a general media assault on the image of cycling.

Danny (Cyclists in the City) wrote recently:

When I have met Conservative opinion leaders and politicians and when I have sat down banging my head on the table (virtually) opposite the many conserative (smaller c) councillors in the City of London, they have tended to type-cast cyclists as left-wingers, not part of their core constituency, not 'people like us'. 

What I think neither the Conservatives in the London Assembly nor most of the Members (councillors) in the City of London realise is that their transport agenda is alienating a sizeable slice of people you might consider to be the Tories's core constituents: People who work in the Square Mile, who might live in the more prosperous parts of London and might own an SUV or two. These are the same people who book black cabs to get home after a gruelling deal into the middle of the night.

And as one of the respondents to this post wrote:

Yeah, Mr Johnson – like me. Partner in a big 4 accounting firm, resident of leafy Surrey market town, wouldn’t blink at spending over a grand on a bike, own a landrover and a convertible, clean-shaven, don’t own a pair of sandals, meat-eater, take foreign holidays, sometimes by air.

Why would you want to alienate me just because, partly for convenience, partly health benefit, and partly a deeply buried green conscience, I prefer to get around London on a bike?

This is the message we need to get to Boris and other politicians. This movement is middle-class, middle-England and mainstream. Even if we are not middle-class, middle-England and mainstream, we can pretend to be. Now, while I think it would be great if we could have a different kind of really broad pro-cycle and pro-pedestrian protest movement in the UK, equivalent to the Dutch "Stop the Child Murder" campaign of the 1970s, and maybe that will come in time, I don't think we are at that stage yet. I would love get all the mothers and young children of Barnet massed outside the Town Hall in Hendon baying for Brian Coleman's blood and demanding safe streets for the kids to cycle on, but I can't see that happening for a while. No, in London, at the present stage, we need need to work with what we have got, and we need to do something different and distinctive: distinctive to the place that is the City of London, claimed financial capital of the world.

The advantages of my idea are that it would be stereotype-busting, and memorable, and media-friendly. It would be repeatable, and exportable (other cities could copy it). It would be it's own "brand", as the Tweed Run is. Its deliberately grey image would not only confront social stereotypes about cyclists, but also the victim-blaming "cyclists need to dress as high-vis Christmas trees to remain safe" mentality. This would be normalising cycling dress with a City flavour.

Now I can see some practical problems. Those who commute a long way may find it hot or impractical to cycle in formal clothing, but maybe they could keep part of it in panniers and partially change before the protest. Maybe some people could get to work first and change there. One could allow compromises, the uniformity needn't be prefect, cycle helmets could be allowed, but even so, we could still create a new, unexpected image for a cycle protest.

As protesters, we shouldn't be afraid of causing a level of inconvenience and disruption to London. This is a a just cause. People die because this stuff is not right. That's what we are protesting about. Not like the selfish London Taxi Drivers Association, threatening to bring London to a standstill over the issue of their exclusion from the Olympic Road Network in 2012, which is just a protest about private, commercial interest. Cyclists are now standing up (actually, sitting down) for their own rights, plus those of pedestrians, and of the great mass of people who want to cycle on London's streets but can't, because of the appalling conditions. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and decades of timid and deferential cycle campaigning have not got us very far.


"A grey protest for a greener city." Who's up for it?