Pie Fight

Cycle lanes bad for cyclists?

Interesting article on this and other cycling issues in teh Guardian.

Making the UK more cycle-friendly

A very informative article by Matt Seaton about how to make cities more cycle-friendly. Note at the bottom of the following clip the stats on cycling on Stockholm, which is colder and rainier than the UK, but has a 15% modal share for cycling. It's also worth seeing Seaton's other articles.

Just 1% of all journeys in Darlington are made by bicycle. As Lougheed says, almost cheerfully, "You can't really go much lower than that."

The national average is 2% "modal share", as they say in the jargon of transport professionals, meaning that 2% of all journeys are made by bike. A few towns, such as Cambridge, York and Richmond-upon-Thames, where, historically, cycling has been popular and local authorities progressive, have much higher numbers. But they are notable exceptions. Even in gridlocked London, despite impressive recent improvements in the centre of the city, the national figure of 2% applies.

The reason Lougheed is actually quite chipper about his job is that Darlington recently became one of six towns in Britain to be selected as a "cycling demonstration town", designed to set an example in how to transform urban sprawls into two-wheeled havens (the others are Aylesbury, Brighton, Derby, Exeter and Lancaster). Under this scheme, part-funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) with matching cash from each local authority, the towns will get £1m a year for three years, all to be spent on promoting cycle use. If there's any way that cycling can be made a serious part of Britain's transport policy, Darlington, it's hoped, will be the place to find it.

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The sorry history of cycle use in Darlington is one of low investment and poor infrastructure. There were some cycle routes but, says Lougheed, "They were a classic case of good idea in theory, but which took you nowhere, so that you end up thinking [they] may as well not have been built."

Cyclists themselves are all too familiar with the bad old bike routes - the ones that seemed like a particularly unfunny practical joke by some disgruntled traffic engineer. The problem of idiotic cycle lanes has had a doubly unfortunate effect: because they're badly designed, cyclists don't use them, but then councillors ask transport officers why on earth they should fund more when the ones they already have don't get used. "We're paying heavily for bad infrastructure," agrees Cycling England's Phillip Darnton.

Under the new scheme, Darlington's transport team plans to put in nine or 10 "radial routes", running from the periphery right to the centre. The problem with Darlington, explains Darnton, is that it's a perfect example of old-school town planning - a pedestrianised centre (which excludes cyclists), surrounded by an inner ring road that is a busy dual carriageway (presenting a formidable obstacle to pedestrians and cyclists alike). The new radial routes will reassign priorities where they intersect the ring road, and will make all the formerly pedestrianised areas dual use. The philosophy here is that cyclists can coexist perfectly safely with walkers, European-style; where it is clear that an area is dual use, cyclists automatically adjust their behaviour, slowing down and riding sensibly. In addition, there will be more parking, including secure lockers in the town centre car parks.

"The object is to create boulevards rather than traffic corridors," says Tim Crawshaw, the council's chief designer of the public environment. He admits that part of the aim is to make Darlington "more prosperous" as well as a better place to live.

You can see the vision here: Darlington's population, mainly employed in the service sector, will be cycling and walking around the town, enjoying a new cafe society and lively street life. The object is to turn Darlington into an Amsterdam or Utrecht of the north. But what about the weather? Wouldn't today's freezing fog put off these putative new cyclists?

"Look at Stockholm," Lougheed replies. "It's colder there, and rains more, but cycling there has a 15% modal share. That instantly ends the argument." But would a figure like that really be achievable in Darlington? Not any time soon. "The difficult thing is that you build the infrastructure and promote it," says Lougheed, "but it takes years for people to change their habits." Their target is a much more modest 3% - a threefold increase - by 2011.

Who needs an erection anyway?

Bad news for biker boys?

Safer cycling in London town

Following up on the two recent links to articles about how dangerous cycling is in London, what do you do?

My personal pet peeve is cars that don't use their turn signals. The way I figure it, bikes can be hard to see, so I can understand if cars sometimes turn across us or cut us off. But we are always looking for them; so long as we have reliable information about what they are doing or are about to do, we'll take the necessary actions to protect ourselves. With turn signals, the onus is still on us to protect ourselves, but at least we're not in a minefield of false information.

Realistically, though, many drivers just don't like to use their signals for what they consider obvious turnings or turnings that aren't that big a deal to other cars. Is it possible to alter that? I would argue that in the long term, creating a climate where it is clear that cyclists have rights of the road would be a good step along those lines. But it'll take a lot of public education, and I suspect that Brits are quite hostile to that - unlike, say, Scandinavians, who seem to have some success in mass alteration of behaviour, including that related to diet.

The best solution would be to have cycle lanes and lots of them, and to keep cars out of them. How feasible is that in an old city with lots of narrow-ish roads and a whole hell of a lot of traffic, particularly if adding cycle lanes actually slows down that traffic?

Cycle lanes are important becuase in the short or even medium term, it's very difficult if  not almost impossible to radically change the public's behaviour simply on an appeal to their good will. Motorists aren't going to suddenly start using their turn signals simply because we tell htem it's a good idea and will save lives. Force of habit (and the fact that they don't really give a shit about cyclists) will always win out. So rather than change people's culture or ways of thinking, we need to change the environment in which they do that thinking. The changed environment - one in which cyclists are clearly given higher priority, and are seen to be given such - will then stand a chance of changing attitudes - ie, changing the culture of our roads.

Making it harder to cycle

Lionel Shriver, the woman who wrote the much-celebrated (and Wendy-endorsed) book about hating her son, has a pretty sharp and funny piece in today's G2 entitled "London - the city that hates cyclists". In it, she attacks one of the banes of my own life, the ten-foot cycling lane. I mean, what the fuck?

I will say, though, that the marked "suggested bike paths" are a great help. Following the little white biker does make me feel much safer and far less traffic-stressed.

I had no idea about this great west side bikepath in New York. We could certainly use a few of those here.

An economic analysis of cycling's safety

Economics and cycling? Now that's sexy stuff.

What's most interesting her observation of just how fucking dangerous cycling is in London:

But is this why Londoners are belatedly taking to the green asphalt? We know it is not. They do it because it feels safer - which it is not. Mile for mile, you are 84 times more likely to get killed travelling by bike than by Tube. Cycling is also about 14 times riskier than going by car. But if you are cycling, you feel that you have more control over your fate. And economists know that makes all the difference to the way people evaluate risks.

But I also like the fact that she looks at the larger picture when asking whether or not cyclists should abide by traffic laws:

So, a happy vindication, then, for the inner economist, and the cyclist? Well, yes and no. The trouble is that we cyclists suffer from our own variant of the "control" theory of risk. Namely: we don't think it's dangerous to go through traffic lights, or ride up one-way streets, or cycle on the pavements. Just so long as we are the ones doing it.

This has never been a very easy theory to defend to the world at large. With so many more cyclists pouring on to the streets, it's getting downright impossible. Economists would call it a case of rising "negative externalities".

When I am one of few cyclists breaking the rules I may ignore the broader social costs: the reduced tolerance of cyclists by other road users, for example, or the accidents caused later by those enraged motorists we left at the lights. Now everyone's doing it, the costs afflict us all. Think global warming, as applied to Highway Code-breaking.

My theory is that you do what you think is best for the greater good - and I think presenting an image of cyclists as a bunch of people to whom the law doesn't apply, either to hold them back or to protect them, makes us less safe from lazy or inattentive drivers. We're not seen as a legitimate part of the traffic flow, but would seem more so if we were better about abiding by the laws.

Bike-ola

The Tower Hamlets Wheelers