CycaLogical

Where Did All the Money Go?

2012-03-15T14:41:00.001-07:00

With £200M, you could make a serious difference to cycling in London. Hundreds of miles of segregated routes, safe junctions, the whole nine yards.

Right?

Well, it might surprise you to learn that Boris Johnson claims to have spent exactly that sum on "cycling safety of one kind or another" whilst in office.

Where did it all go? Even if you count the Cycle Superhighways that comes to nowhere near £200M. And they are so inadequate in terms of safety that although the blue paint has barely had time to dry, they are already subject to a safety review. Johnson cancelled much of the remaining LCN+ work, and the CSHs to date have cost about £40M if memory serves. So what has he got to show for the other £160M? Cycling has got more dangerous over recent years, on an absolute and a per-trip basis, after a long downward trend in casualty figures (see here).

Boris has in the past accused Ken Livingstone of wasting money. In my book, Boris has wasted £200M. Not only has improved safety not been delivered in terms of casualty rates, the infrastructure doesn't feel any safer, and I'm really struggling to think of any improvements on the roads I ride that have been made in the last four years. Except the new layout of Lambeth Bridge, but that was done at the same time as the bridge was resurfaced, involved nothing more than different white lines, and therefore cost close to nothing if you don't count design costs. Well, closer to nothing than £160M, anyway.

Which leads me to one conclusion. Somewhere in London, there is a cycle lane that's paved with gold and studded with diamonds. Let me know if you see it.

On Red Light Jumpers

2012-03-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

For the benefit of Mike Penning, and anyone else who knows nothing about the subject of people who jump red lights...

I don't jump red lights. Mainly because I don't think society works very well if people pick and choose the laws they want to obey. And I wish more drivers thought the same way. And cyclists as well, for that matter. But I also think that junctions are (with very few exceptions) not designed with safety of cyclists in mind, and that could be one reason why a significant number of cyclists choose to disregard junction signals.

Not all cyclists jump red lights, and cyclists are not the only road users that jump red lights. The Transport Research Laboratory reported in a 2007 London-based study that 17% of cyclists at the studied sites violated red lights. However, 39% of the time, vehicles encroached into advance stop boxes, which is also a traffic-light violation, and at some sites, the number of motor vehicles violating a red light and continuing all the way through the junction (as opposed to just creeping over the stop line) exceeded the number of cyclists guilty of the same behaviour.

So which is worse - a cyclist busting a red light, or a motor creeping into an advance stop box? Well obviously, it's the lawless cyclist rather than the hapless put-upon motorist making an honest mistake. At least, that's what it looks like when you have a car-centric view of the world. To most car drivers, busting a stop light is a cardinal sin, because of the obvious extreme danger it causes. Traffic engineers have spent the last 50 years designing most of the hazards out of roads so everyone can get around as fast as possible, and as a result it is clear in most situations who has right of way. If you can't rely on your right of way, then you have to drive slowly and carefully and be observant and prepared for the unexpected. Then you might have to interrupt your phone call and concentrate on driving instead.

Let me just correct what I wrote in the previous paragraph. Traffic engineers have spent the last 50 years designing most of the hazards out of roads for motorists. Most road junctions do little to make cyclists safe, and many are downright dangerous. It therefore follows that most junctions, including light-controlled ones, are hazardous to cyclists, and that gives rise to a very important moral distinction. Let me first propose three moral principles which shouldn't prove controversial. First, it is important to respect the law. Second, it is important to respect the safety of others. Third, you have a duty to ensure your own safety. For a motorist at a junction, there's no dilemma: if you break the law by running a red light, you endanger others and quite possibly yourself. For a cyclist at a junction, if you respect the letter of the law at a UK road junction, you can quite easily find yourself in a situation that endangers you, because of the poor safety characteristics that are engineered into the junction. Furthermore, too often you encounter drivers that do not respect the law. They drive too close to cyclists, encroach into advance stop boxes, overtake dangerously, left-hook you, and so on. So it makes sense to get the heck out of this concentrated collection of hazards toot sweet, as the French have it. It's a sad fact that most collisions happen at junctions. It's possible to use the moral defence of self-preservation, provided of course your actions pose no significant danger to others: at some junctions the risks of being mixed up among a pack of accelerating motors are higher than the risks involved in carefully crossing the junction against the lights.

Part of the reason motorists don't like cyclists jumping red lights is because they don't see the moral dilemma I've described and they don't appreciate that junction signals are designed for the safety and convenience of motorists, not cyclists, and can actively endanger the latter.

Let's get back to why traffic signals exist in the first place: to ensure traffic flow by giving a clear right of way, so there is no need for each vehicle to slow down and negotiate with other vehicles at the junction. The idea of an inalienable 'right of way' is a somewhat unfamiliar one if you're a cyclist. To be safe, you have to assume that your right of way will be violated. You have to ride carefully, be observant and prepared for the unexpected all the time, because although most drivers respect the rules of the road, there are enough that don't to make the highway an extremely dangerous place indeed if you assume that all drivers will respect your right of way. If I assumed I could cross all toucan crossings when the light was green in my favour, I quite literally wouldn't be alive today.

In other ways when you ride a bike, your perspective is a little different to a driver's. The reason advance-stop boxes are there is to allow cyclists to get ahead of other traffic, in a position where they can be seen. If the box is full of cars, that becomes difficult, and cyclists can end up unable to reach the front of the queue and in dangerous positions. To a car driver, an advance stop box is a meaningless few yards of empty space. To a cyclist, it can be the difference between life and death.

There are a few differences between a cycle and a motor violating a red light. One is that if a cyclist does it and gets it wrong, many or all of the consequences - often severe ones - will be on the rider. Even a collision with a pedestrian is likely to leave the cyclist in a bad way. Because of this there is a Darwinian law that the reckless riders don't last long, so we're mostly left with riders who run red lights but are careful about it. By the way, there's no evidence that cars are crashing in significant numbers trying to avoid red-light jumping cyclists. (There's one important caveat that I'll get to later, which is that there is one road user even further down the food chain than the cyclist - the pedestrian.)

Another difference between cycles and motors disobeying signals is that cyclists have more freedom to do so. If you're in a car, you can't go through a red light if the car in front of you doesn't, but on a bike you can usually filter to the front of the queue. It's not necessarily restraint that is stopping motorists from jumping red lights, it's also lack of opportunity. If you take offences that motorists are easily able to commit, there's a high incidence - according to the RAC Foundation, 31% of motorists admit to using hand-held mobiles whilst driving, and 50% admit to speeding in 30MPH zones.

So you could summarise so far that the opprobrium directed at red-light jumping cyclists has an element of double standards about it. Motorists are guilty of many dangerous behaviours, it's just that red-light jumping isn't chief amongst them. Meanwhile, it's cyclists that disproportionately at risk from the dangerous behaviour of motorists.

Among cyclists, there's more than one kind of red-light jumper. There are reckless racers, who will barrel through a pedestrian crossing against a red light and expect everyone to get out of the way. This is clearly dangerous and stupid, and no-one should condone this kind of behaviour. Then there are the amber-gamblers, who will ride through a junction without stopping if the lights have just changed against them. Again, this is dangerous, particularly if there are pedestrians or other cyclists around. (But it's not as dangerous as motorised road-users doing it.) Next, you have a more cautious breed, who slow down or stop at junctions but proceed if the way is clear. Getting more cautious still are those who jump a light because they consider it safer to do so having made a careful assessment of the risks. And lastly, there are those Pashley riders who are, in a curiously unfathomable and sedate way, undeniably above the law.

A couple of final thoughts. There are those who say that cyclists busting red lights gives everyone a bad name and generates hatred toward cyclists. I don't really buy that argument. It implies that cyclists have to be beyond reproach, otherwise they deserve everything that happens to them. People who hate cyclists will always find reasons to justify their views: if cyclists instead of jumping lights are hanging around at junctions, they'll hate them for slowing them down and getting in the way. The fact is that cyclists should not be judged as a group. Cyclists are a cross-section of society, as are motorists (indeed most are motorists), and as such have no more or less propensity to break the law or deliberately endanger others than in society generally. The difference though is, being equipped with less hardware and less protection, they are less of a threat when they do break the law.

Tooting blog

2012-03-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

There's a new blogger in South London, "Traffik in Tooting", covering Tooting and Wandsworth, home of two Cycle Superhighways. Should have plenty to write about then.

Gary Mason's 'Accidental' Death

2012-02-29T02:45:00.000-08:00

On last week's Top Gear, the presenters went out around the test track to prove that you can do other things while driving. Clarkson attempted to drive while sewing a button onto his shirt, and May attempted to drive while in a sleeping bag. All very jocular, tongue-in-cheek stuff, and not intended to be taken seriously.

And it is true to say that the mechanical act of controlling a car - accelerating, braking, steering - is a simple one. However, on a test track, there are few hazards. There is no oncoming traffic, no side-roads, no pedestrians, no cyclists - in fact nothing unpredictable. Even in a race, where you clearly couldn't sew on a button, other drivers' line and speed are for the most part entirely predictable.

Driving safely on the public highway is a very different proposition, because it requires you to read the road ahead and behind, anticipate possible hazards. Pinch-points requiring traffic to merge. Traffic lights that may change. Junctions where traffic may emerge. Cars in front that may change course or speed. Cars behind that may attempt to overtake. Pedestrians that may step into the road. Blind corners. Bad weather. Poor lighting conditions. There's also the need to expect the unexpected: to anticipate in order to avoid collisions caused by other drivers doing stupid or illegal things. Clearly, to do all this, you would struggle to sew on a button whilst keeping the required level of awareness.

Unfortunately, many drivers behave as if they're on a test track rather than a public highway. They behave as if everything on the road is predictable. If it's a road they know, they assume it's exactly the same as last time they drove along it. Because of this, they leave little margin for error. They think that because it is physically possible to drive in excess of the speed limit, then it is OK to do so.

If you believe that when you're in charge of a potentially dangerous machine, you have a duty to do everything in your power to ensure that your machine doesn't cause death or injury, this kind of behaviour is grossly irresponsible. But the law doesn't think so. In law, if a pedestrian steps into the road and is hit by the car, it's the pedestrian's fault for stepping into the road, rather than the driver's fault for failing to anticipate and avoid the collision. In law, you have to prove that the driver was doing something illegal that caused the collision. And that is often very difficult to do.

Take the case of boxer Gary Mason, who was killed last January whilst cycling. At the inquest, collision investigators estimated the driver had been driving at between 25mph and 48mph at the time of the crash, and he had been going at between 36mph and 41mph in the lead-up to the collision. He failed a police sight test on the day of the crash. The light on his speedometer wasn't working.

The junction in Wallington where Gary was killed is a dangerous junction because of people like this driver. They turn from Woodcote Road into Sandy Lane South, and because the junction is at a gentle angle, if there is nothing in Sandy Lane South it's possible to cut the corner and make the turn without slowing down. On a test track, that would be the 'racing line' and the correct thing to do - after all, you're in a race and supposed to be going as fast as you can. Because this is a public road, you're not supposed to do this: there could be pedestrians crossing the road, or cyclists in the road, and at 40 MPH say, you would have little chance of avoiding them if you saw them. And at 6AM on a drizzly, dark morning such as when Gary was killed, you might not see them. Especially if your sight was defective. The road markings at the junction encourage drivers to make a proper right turn and slow down, and there are hazard lines that you're not supposed to cross. The driver in this case said he would cut across the road markings “eight times out of 10”.

Gary's family, in a repeat of many similar instances of motorists killing with impunity, is not satisfied with the verdict of accidental death. His sister Paulette Stewart said “Gary was a wonderful man and father, well loved by all and was taken from us through the reckless driving of Mr Zanelli...Gary’s death...was clearly avoidable.” The family are preparing a civil action against the driver.

What will happen next? Usually at junctions where there's been a fatality, councils act. They'll perhaps put in traffic islands to make it physically impossible to cut the corner, and slow traffic down. Possibly they'll put in high-viz bollards to stop motorists crashing into the new islands. Maybe they'll uprate the speed cushions along Sandy Lane South. All this will cost money. But there will still be thousands of similar junctions where motorists behave dangerously because they aren't physically prevented from doing so, and there is no enforcement against them doing so. There's two quite close to where I live in fact, at which I've witnessed a couple of near misses.

Fuel Duty - Will Osborne Blink First Again?

2012-02-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

You can tell it's nearly budget-time. Quentin Willson is on the telly again, banging the drum to postpone (again) the rise in fuel duty. Well, it worked last time - Osborne chickened out having first said there was no money for fuel tax cuts. There's a 3p rise due, and that's on top of the recent increase in the oil price. As usual, the BBC doesn't include any balancing opinion on what we could do instead of spending money subsidizing fossil fuel use by those fortunate enough to be able to afford a car.

Willson argues that postponing the rise (in effect reducing fuel duty in real terms) will magically create money from nothing. He reasons that if people can afford to put fuel in their cars, they will drive around spending money willy-nilly with small businesses, thus stimulating the economy and creating treasury income in the form of increased VAT. Challenged by the interviewer on where the money to fund a fuel duty cut is going to come from, he responds with an imperious final devastating sweep of logic: "the money doesn't have to come from anywhere: in the long term we'll cost the treasury no more."

Have you spotted the catch yet? Unless fuel suddenly becomes free, it's still going to cost money. Quite a lot of money: 135p - 145p/litre depending on your preferred flavour, and it could go up further in response to the expected military strike against those naughty Iranians. So if people start driving more, then more of their money is going to be spent on still-expensive car-juice - which won't generate many UK jobs, and a significant share of the money will go to the unsavoury regimes in some of the countries where oil originates. The regimes we seem to end up fighting expensive wars against - wars funded by taxes like fuel duty.

Now it's clear that people are driving less these days. Does it automatically follow they are sitting at home doing nothing and spending nothing? Is car travel a prerequisite for any type of consumption? Has Willson not heard of public transport, or internet shopping, or even local shops and restaurants you can walk to?

Meanwhile, in other news, the Association of Train Operating Companies reports that motoring is an unaffordable luxury for young people squeezed by tuition fees and youth unemployment. And fuel poverty is killing 8000+ people a year - more than die on the roads. Those two groups aren't going to benefit from any cut in fuel duty, because they can't afford a car in the first place, let alone the fuel to put in it.

So, if the Chancellor has any spare cash down the back of the No.11 sofa, should he be handing it out by lowering fuel duty? If you want to stimulate the economy, there are probably better ways that result in more of the spend generating UK jobs, and generate a long-term return on investment. Fuel duty cuts will benefit the wealthy most: those who drive high mileages in thirsty cars. If your goal is to help the hardest-hit, maybe you would like to lower transport fares for young people for whom cars are just posters on the bedroom wall. Or you could insulate homes, reducing our fossil-fuel dependency and helping those for whom cold can kill.

Cycling Safety - Westminster Hall Debate

2012-02-25T16:55:00.001-08:00

2000 cyclists turned out on Wednesday 22 Feb 2012 to signal their support for the cycling safety debate at Westminster Hall the following day. You can read the transcript of the debate here and the second half of it here.

Other bloggers have commented favourably on the debate, on the enthusiasm and passion expressed by MPs for cycling.

Sorry folks, but I'm not persuaded. Talk is cheap. Debates count for nothing. All the major parties have had nothing but warm words for cycling for a decade and a half, but have delivered little. That's partly down to lack of investment, partly down to the wrong investment, and partly down to lack of will.

Lack of will first: Labour in its 13-year term first ignored cycling, then procrastinated about it, and then ran out of time. I think Adonis, Labour's last transport minister, would have done good things but didn't have long enough (or perhaps didn't move fast enough) at the helm. In the debate Ben Bradshaw (Lab) - who I think is very promising - warned Norman Baker of the "cultural problem in parts of the Department [of Transport] and in local government, which are still, in many cases, dominated by the road lobby". Baker countered "I do not believe that there is a cultural problem in the Department." In my humble opinion, it's likely Baker is either covering up the truth, or he's extremely naive. There is a cultural problem at TfL - we see this in sharp relief in the decisions taken that have resulted in deaths at Kings Cross and Bow. You'll see the same cultural problem in highways departments up and down the country. It's hardly likely the Department of Transport has changed its world view in the last year and a half, especially with Philip Hammond in charge.

Wrong investment next: Ian Austin (Lab) pointed out that £5 per head of population per year had been spent in London for 10 years. It's almost unbelievable that you could spend that much - let me just work it out on a ciggy packet - 8 million x £5 x 10 years is £400M - and end up with so little. Then there were the Cycle Demonstration Towns. The idea that any research needed to be done on cycling is a little ridiculous. There are plenty of demonstration towns on the Continent - they've done all the hard work figuring out what works - all we need to do is copy them. Next let's look at Boris's efforts. Cycle Superhighways have cost around £10M each. Thats considerably more than £1M/mile. You could put in segregated paths for that kind of money, instead of just paint.

Last, lack of investment. I pointed out in my post on a Norman Baker interview that the danger of getting rid of ring-fenced cycling funding and delegating which transport modes to prioritise to local councils was ill-advised and likely to lead to less funding for cycling. In that interview, Baker said, "I think local councillors want to do some of these green things. They’ve got the same objectives.” It looks like my prediction was right. Julian Huppert (LD) enthused about "a new local sustainable transport fund that is worth more than £500 million. Every local authority applied for money from that fund, and 38 out of the 39 successful bids included cycling aspects." What he didn't say is what those 38 'cycling aspects' were or what they were worth. Luckily, this information is revealed in this parliamentary answer:

11. Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): How much of the local sustainable transport fund and the funding for the growth strategy for cycling and walking will be spent on cycle safety in the next financial year. [95959]

Norman Baker: During 2012-13, £11 million pounds will be spent on Bikeability and £8 million will be spent through the growth strategy on off-road infrastructure for cyclists. Funding to local authorities for cycling through successful local sustainable transport fund projects is at least £15 million in the forthcoming year. Approximately 40% of the measures funded relate to infrastructure or training, both of which will help cycle safety.

So there you have it. £15M, which is, if you're trying to get a nation to cycle, bugger all. It's 25p per head of population - less than 1% of what gets spent in the Netherlands. In fact I spend more than that on wiping my nether regions! Baker's Lib Dem colleague Julian Huppert does seem to get it though: he pointed out, "I want to see that [sustainable transport] fund grow and I want a clear message from the Minister that schemes with lots of cycling in them are more likely to be successful. We need to increase substantially our national spend on cycling infrastructure, and that would be one way to do it. Local authorities are investing in some of these schemes, but they need to do more." He's saying exactly what I alluded to above: you cannot leave it up to local authorities to prioritise cycling, because they don't.

In my view, the only encouraging thing to come from this debate is that the arguments in favour of cycling are well-understood by members of all political parties: the health, environmental and economic benefits were all covered, along with its efficient use of energy and roadspace. Segregation was called for and Rob Wilson (Con) said, "The main thing that will increase the number of cyclists in our towns and cities is better safety...simply painting some white lines on the road is just not good enough". There was no clear party political line, although it's worth pointing out that the Tories who are actually influencing policy - on the London Assembly and in the Department of Transport - don't have such enlightened views.

In any case, there is a difference between the arguments being well-understood and those arguments winning out when there is competition for budgets or conflict with vested interests. We have a cycling Prime Minister and a cycling Mayor of London, but there's no sign of a new golden age of cycling. The recently departed Transport Minister Philip Hammond was totally clueless about cycling; at least his replacement Justine Greening knows one end of a bike from the other. However, she's been notably silent since she replaced the Jag-driving Hammond: is this the prelude to a change of direction, or will we get the same old pro-car policies with a softer tone?

The fundamental problem is that allocating roadspace to cycling involves tough decisions that will anger the motor lobby, who want free car parking rather than cycle paths. In the past, politicians of all colours have chickened out when faced with those dilemmas. Even though we're in a time of supposed austerity, we're still spending billions on new road schemes, and billions on extra tunnels for the HS2 rail scheme to placate a small number of electors in Tory shire constituencies. A tiny fraction of those sums would make a real difference to cycling, but only if correctly applied. You could spend lots of money on cycle lanes that are used as car parks half the time, and disappear altogether just when they're most needed. Justine Greening, if she so chooses, could go down in history as a minister who was bold enough to make the vision of mass cycling a reality, and in doing so and could bring massive savings and economic benefits to the NHS, the Department of Transport, and the wider economy. We live in hope.

Cycle Superhighway 7 Collision

2012-02-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

Over the next few posts I plan on taking a look at the CSH7 junctions that are first up for review by TfL. You can see the priority list for all CSH junctions here; the junctions I'll be looking at are:

Balham Station
Clapham South
Clapham Common/The Pavement
Stockwell Gyratory
Oval Triangle

Because I actually ride through them, I know all these junctions pretty well . Unless I miss my guess, TfL don't, except through a car windscreen. They will either do a paper-based exercise, or they'll turn up in the middle of the day when traffic is quiet and there's few cyclists around. Their analysis will therefore be impoverished and compromised. But hey, some good may come of it, and some public money will get spent.

What they won't be looking at yet, and probably not ever, are the minor junctions, like, let's pick one at random, College Road. I was riding past this morning and what did I see? The aftermath of a minor crash, in which the cyclist was fortunately not seriously hurt as far as I could make out.

The problem with these minor road junctions is there are a lot of them, and at each one there is a chance that a vehicle will encroach over the give-way line into the cycle lane. This can cause you to T-bone into the side of the vehicle, or in trying to avoid doing so to swerve or brake, either of which could cause a crash. Alternatively, you may get left-hooked by a vehicle trying to turn left across the cycle lane from the major road into the side-road. A third possibility is a vehicle turning right across your path, either not knowing that the cycle lane is there, or not seeing a cyclist in it. There are a lot of large vehicles on the A24, so there is a good chance a vehicle on the other side of the road won't see cyclists until it's too late. Typically, a right-turning vehicle will have to wait a long time for a gap in oncoming traffic. They see a narrow gap and accelerate hard to make the turn. By the time they see there's a cyclist in the gap, it's too late to avoid a crash.

The solution is quite simple of course: ban turns into and out of these side-roads, and where that's not possible, minimise the traffic and eliminate the hazards of turning traffic: ensure that sightlines are good and there are safeguards to avoid the types of crash I've described. They've actually done this on most of the side-roads between South Wimbledon and Colliers Wood although this is not yet part of CSH#7.

Parliament Flashride

2012-02-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

A pretty good turnout - my guess is around 500 [Update - according to Cyclists in the City, the police reckon 2000] - on a dreary but not too wet or cold February midweek evening, to show support for cycle safety in advance of the parliamentary debate tomorrow (23 Feb 2012). The ride started with slow but steady progress from The Mall towards Parliament Square.

Then over Lambeth Bridge and along Lambeth Palace Road:

Back over Westminster Bridge:

Then round Parliament Square again and along Whitehall.

The police, mainly on bikes, were a reassuring but unobtrusive presence. One I think had a minor collision when a car attempted a random U-turn having got in amongst the cyclists.

The ride was covered on the BBC TV news in the evening with a couple of brief interviews with some of the riders.

What always surprises me is how quickly the cycles evaporate when the ride is over: riding back over Lambeth Bridge was just like any other weekday evening; no more bikes than usual.

Well done everybody; see you next time.

Bike of the Day

2012-02-22T05:38:00.000-08:00

Make unknown.

Spotted in Covent Garden. Owner wants to hang on to it judging by the heavy-duty chain used to lock it up.

Oil Prices

2012-02-21T04:17:00.000-08:00

With oil, if it's not one thing it's another. Remember Libya? When that was all sorted out, the oil price was supposed to get back to normal, and the poor squeezed motorist would be able to get back to burning off the remaining supplies in his Range Rover. Now it's Iran that's the culprit for the oil price back above $120/bbl. The fact is, much of the world's oil originates in countries that don't have stable Western-friendly democracies. Which means that even with ordinary luck, oil supply is a bit like Tube travel - most days there is some disruption.

In an oil-dependent country like the UK, oil prices have a very real effect on the economy. We've already seen motorists driving less in response to high fuel prices and economic pressures, and there's a real danger that an oil price spike could tip the economy back into recession. I've pointed out before on this blog that a sensible move would be to aim to make the economy less dependent on oil so we're less vulnerable to the chill winds of geopolitics. In the recent past, the Chancellor has done the opposite, cutting fuel duty and giving the signal that high oil prices are a temporary aberration. Surely sooner or later they'll get the message that unreliable supply coupled with rising demand from the middle classes of China and India spell irreversable decline for any economy that's designed around cheap oil?

It would seem pretty hard to argue against the idea that to achieve economic growth we need to substitute oil-fuelled travel with alternatives, yet this government don't seem to have any policy to tackle oil dependency. HS2 benefits are too far in the future. Public transport fares are rising and some services are being cut. Electric car takeup has been disappointing despite the £5000-per-car government subsidy, with a little over 1000 sold so far compared to the 8500 grants that were available. Cycling is an alternative that could be available to a huge number of people at low cost, but for most people the lack of safe cycle routes puts them off. With the right investment, that could be reversed: we know it can be done from experience in Continental countries, and the side-benefits in terms of improved public health, lowered carbon and particulate emissions and better neighborhoods are huge. All it will take is a bold and far-sighted politician. Unfortunately, in the UK at least, that's an oxymoron.

Flash Ride Tomorrow (22 Feb)

2012-02-21T03:18:00.000-08:00

There's another of LCC's Flash Rides planned for tomorrow (22 Feb). These have been orderly events with marshals and police in attendance, and this one should be the same. The plan is to ride from The Mall to Parliament Square and back, assembling at 6:15 and leaving a quarter of an hour later. The intention is to show MPs that the following day's parliamentary debate on cycle safety matters.

While you're about it, don't forget to sign the LCC's Go Dutch petition and The Times's campaign if you've not already done so, and get a friend to do likewise.

Remember this. There is a mayoral election this year and a national newspaper on-side: there's not been a better opportunity to make a difference for a long time.

TfL Junction Cycle Safety Review

2012-02-09T06:21:00.000-08:00

Boris has re-announced the junction review he was stampeded into because of the outcry last year over the fatalities at the Bow Roundabout.

The review includes junctions on the existing Superhighways, plus 150 major junctions on the TLRN (Transport for London Road Network). For most improvements we'll have to wait till after the Olympic Games, cuz after all cycle safety is a lot less important than the ability of the big cheeses and corporate sponsors such as Dow Chemical to cruise from their Mayfair hotels to the Games venues in their BMW limos without delay.

But enough carping about the timetable, time to carp about the whole misconceived process.

Currently, almost all cycle routes in London are crap. If you improve the junctions, you'll have better junctions, but still connected by crap cycle routes - intermittent narrow, advisory lanes punctuated by parked vehicles. Anyone with an ounce (25g) of sense can see that reviewing hundreds of junctions and digging them up is going to cost a fortune if you do it properly. That's a waste of money if you end up with cycle routes that taken end-to-end are no more appealing. I'll be difficult to improve junctions measurably without impacting traffic capacity; therefore you will create a situation where you've reduced traffic capacity without providing an alternative (subjectively safe cycle routes) to tempt people out of their cars.

What we need instead is a strategy that involves more than just junctions, and it must involve more than just the TLRN. We need to end up with a network of cycle routes that enables people to cycle to work, school or the shops in subjectively safe, pleasant surroundings via routes that are easy to follow and don't take them ridiculously out of their way. This will involve all the things they do in countries that do it successfully: filtered permeability to reduce through traffic on minor roads, shared spaces, and where the route follows a major road, segregated lanes.

Next, let's look at the steering group that has the job of overseeing the junction review process. It consists of:

TfL
Freight Transport Association
Living Streets
London Cycling Campaign
Roadpeace
SUSTRANS
Road Haulage Association
Institute of Advanced Motorists
London Technical Advisors Group
Metropolitan Police Service

So, we have not one but two representatives of the haulage industry. They have no real interest in cycling, but a lot of interest in traffic flow.

Although the Institute of Advanced Motorists does good work around safety, it is at the end of the day a motoring organization.

TfL are responsible for the mess we're in now. As I pointed out before on this blog, there is a real risk that they simply cannot make the change from thinking exclusively about traffic flow to thinking about cycle safety. They don't have the skills, the mindset or the track record, plus there's a lot of skeletons in their cupboard (like the safety reviews they've ignored for Bow and Kings Cross) that they'd rather keep covered up. In other words, will they be more concerned with dodging blame?

Metropolitan Police Service - on the one hand, they have first-hand experience of having to deal with the consequences of TfL's handiwork. If they spent less time attending serious collisions, they could spend more time cracking crime. On they other hand, the Met is a pretty car-centric organization, and there are many in the service who don't take cycling or cyclists seriously. If you don't believe me, ask Martin Porter.

Sustrans is one of the few organizations that have a creditable record in terms of implementing cycle routes, so are a welcome group member.

Roadpeace are solely focused on safety, so again it's good to see them.

Living Streets are in favour of safe, enjoyable, attractive streets, so there is a common agenda with cycling, although they are a pedestrian organization and their strategy makes no mention of cycling. There is a natural 'active travel' partnership between walking and cycling, but we should bear in mind that TfL has recently taken a 'divide and rule' approach at Blackfriars Bridge and Euston Circus, increasing pavement widths while failing to allocated space for cycling.

London Technical Advisors Group as far as I've been able to ascertain looks to be an organization of local borough engineers. As such, they have a somewhat-less-than-sparkling track record on cycling issues (with some exceptions), and there may be hidden agendas.

Lastly we have London Cycling Campaign. While it's had a somewhat ineffectual history, mainly oriented to vehicular cycling, and failing to stand up to TfL, it's recently campaigned far more effectively and is now advocating Dutch-style infrastructure.

My main concern is this. The three 'non-motorised' organizations are all charities, and have limited resources. There appears to dearth of professional experience of implementing quality cycle infrastructure as found on the Continent (this is not disrespectful of Sustrans by the way, it's just that most Sustrans infrastructure is off-carriageway and where it's not it's often compromised by the intransigent and car-centric attitudes of the local authorities that have to sign off the designs). This is hardly a recipe for success.

I'm going to leave you with this thought. One of the junctions up for review is the Stockwell Gyratory. This is a junction that was re-engineered as part of Cycle Superhighway 7, and TfL regarded it as evidence of their generosity towards cyclists that they'd removed a lane of general traffic on one side of it and put in a cycle lane. Two years on, it's regarded as so inadequate it's up for priority review. That truly is a damning indictment of TfL's failure in respect of cycling and in respect of stewardship of public money.

More Damned Lies and Cycling Statistics

2012-02-07T16:16:00.000-08:00

Simon Jenkins in the Standard seems to have written exactly the same article that Andrew Gilligan did yesterday in the Telegraph. Maybe they've been hacking each others phones? Both articles sound rather like sour grapes: they're afraid that The Times' campaign on 'cities fit for cycling' may be onto something.

Jenkins starts off claiming the roads are safe, casualty rates are getting better even if the absolute numbers aren't, and, as if it were the clincher, "in 2010 the number [of cyclists] killed fell from 13 to 10." Wouldn't it be terrible if the number went up to, say, 16 in 2011? Anyway, for more detail I refer you to the answer I gave earlier.

Jenkins, like Gilligan, then goes off on in ill-informed polemic about Exhibition Road and shared space and stuff. He finishes by saying:

"Remove lights, repave crossings and 'spill the city into the street' and drivers slow of necessity. Dutch experience supports this. But it needs someone with guts to do it in London. The pity is that the regulation-loving, public-spending Times can only resort to more control. The real message of the street is that control is unsafe, that less is more."

Jenkins has forgotten something (as well as knowing very little about the subject). Exhibition Road cost £30M, courtesy of the largesse of Kensington and Chelsea council taxpayers. Removing lights and repaving crossings isn't as cheap as you think, and in any case, it's not a solution you can use on major routes unless you really want to disrupt traffic flow. That's really getting into the realms of fantasy. If Jenkins had bothered to read the shared space literature, he would know that space only gets shared where motor traffic volumes are low enough. And if he knew anything about the Dutch experience, it's not about less control. On the contrary, there are lots of controls both to keep motor vehicles away from cycles, and to keep motor vehicles out of residential areas - the shared spaces that he seems to think are free-for-alls. In fact, as I write this I'm realising it will simply take too long to refute and correct all the nonsense in this article - it's like trying to review an article about brain surgery written by Katie Price.

Load of Bollards

2012-02-07T15:22:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a problem with bollards at the junction of Wimbledon Hill Road and Worple Road in Wimbledon. The local paper reports:

"Bollard to blame for recent Wimbledon crashes...eight accidents happened in exactly the same way since the middle of November."

Drivers are warned that the bollard may jump out into the road without warning. It should not be approached.

[I promise you I am not making this next bit up, but maybe the local paper did]

"Councillor David Dean...said the council needed to remove the bollard, which protects pedestrians standing on a traffic island."

Quite right, Councillor. Pedestrians are much softer and less likely to cause damage to vehicles.

Councillor Andrew Judge said:

“This junction is very busy so we have added new road markings already to highlight the presence of the traffic island and further road markings will be provided to guide right-turning traffic safely around it."

How's that de-cluttering thing going, by the way? Naked streets, anybody?

Things to Do While You Drive - #52

2012-02-07T07:45:00.000-08:00

Read the paper.

Trafalgar Square, 7 Feb.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Cycling Statistics

2012-02-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

A strangely incoherent article from Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph today. He tries to argue that cycling is getting safer in London, and this "fact" is inconvenient to those who want to blame Boris Johnson. Unfortunately, the statistics he uses don't match his argument. Whatever his argument is. See if you can figure it out, and if you can, please let the rest of us know.

Gilligan starts off:

"It’s certainly hard to think of any policy area where official interventions have been so inept."

Right there with you so far mate...

"The vast majority of British cycle lanes are either totally pointless or actively dangerous."

Sounds familiar to most cyclists...do go on...

"As a 100-mile a week London cyclist myself, I travel every day through places where TfL should do more."

Should do more? Is that the same as "inept and actively dangerous"?

"But 'carnage' there is not."

Maybe you'd like to define 'carnage' for us Andrew? As the Times points out, over 27,000 cyclists were killed or seriously injured in the UK over the last decade. I guess that must be a teddy-bears' picnic, not carnage. But irony aside, road collisions are the leading cause of death for young people, and cycling is the second most dangerous mode of road transport, after motorcycling. Nationally, at a time when the overall casualty rate for road transport is going down, the rate for cycling is going up. How is that not cause for concern?

"to say that the deaths 'went up by 60 per cent' last year, as various bloggers and journalists keep doing, is narrowly right – but broadly misleading."

Maybe you'd like to visit the bereaved partners, family and friends of that 60% - it's only 6 people after all - and explain that they've been mislead? The point surely is, those deaths should not be in vain. It seems to me pretty callous to suggest that we should do nothing about Kings Cross or the Bow Roundabout, when those locations (among many others) are 'actively dangerous' in Gilligan's words, and have been assessed as being so by TfL's own consultants.

"Allowing for the rising number of trips, the trend [in serious injuries per 100,000 trips] is, as you can see, clearly down."

What?? Down over what period? The figures Gilligan quotes are as follows:

2002 0.36
2003 0.36
2004 0.28
2005 0.25
2006 0.24
2007 0.29
2008 0.27
2009 0.24
2010 0.26

Gilligan says it would not be valid to compare two years. He doesn't tell us what he is comparing though - he just says the trend is down. While there was a downward trend until 2006, since then (as you can clearly see) the figures have gone up and down in a pretty unpredictable manner. In fact, averaged since 2004, the injury rate on the same basis is 0.26 - so the 2010 figure is the same as the long-term average since 2004. Does that look down to you? And remember we're talking about a casualty rate per trip set against a background of rising trip numbers. In that time the number of deaths and serious casualties has climbed from 340 to 467. If those trends continue, it's likely that one in three people killed or seriously injured in London in 2025 will have been riding a bike. Would that qualify as 'carnage'?

"I’m sorry if that doesn’t help the people trying to diss Boris Johnson, but there it is."

On this blog, we're not trying to 'diss' Boris in particular (you're so 'down with the kids', Andrew. I thought the Telegraph was a quali'ee newspaper). We're totally equal-opportunities in our dissing, y'get me? We're also not driven by statistics. We're driven by the desire to do something about the needless human cost, by the knowledge that our city could be so much better if more people cycled, and by the awareness that the reason more people don't cycle is not because of statistics but because of the all-too-obvious dangers that anyone can witness if they venture very far on a bike. And Boris has done next to nothing to alleviate those dangers (not that Ken Livingstone's record is much better).

Bishopsgate Fatality

2012-02-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Various sources report the first London cyclist fatality of the year (the 10th in the UK) at Bishopsgate, a man in his 60s, who in a collision with a coach on Friday 3 Feb 2012. The coach driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.

Mike Penning "road safety" minister commented,

"The year-on-year rise in the number of cycle casualties may be due to the increase in cycling we have seen in recent years but we will continue to monitor these figures closely as we work to tackle this important issue."

For those of you who don't speak gobbledegook, a rough translation is "we are watching them die". Here's a thought: instead of monitoring the figures closely, you could actually do something. You can monitor the figures until you're cross-eyed, but it's not going to change conditions on the ground. Another collision in Bishopsgate is the continuation of a depressingly predictable pattern, and the historical figures tell a very simple and stark story. You don't need to be Stephen Hawking or Nostradamus to figure it out. And in what way does "the increase in cycling" in any way make the situation less serious? The fact is that Bishopsgate has always been a dangerous road for cyclists, in common with many others, and the reasons it is dangerous are very simple and well-known: you have cyclists "sharing" space with large, fast-moving motor vehicles. The "issue" (a mealy-mouthed euphamism if there ever was one) has been successfully tackled in mainland Europe. As Cyclists in the City pointed out, no-one died on a bike in Paris last year.

Danger Denial

2012-02-03T04:10:00.000-08:00

The cycling blogosphere is getting very excited about The Times' new campaign, "Cities Fit for Cycling". This has been coming for a while. When I started this blog, the press attitude to cycling varied from indifference to outright hostility (see James Martin). However in the past two years or so there's been an observable change. The Guardian started a Bike Blog in 2009, and Ross Lydall's regular articles in the Standard have kept cycling issues on the radar. Even papers that previously scoffed at cyclists for being arrogant, lawless loonies with questionable fashion sense have softened their line somewhat.

The Times has gone a step further, devoting most of yesterday's (2 Feb 2012) front page together with a 2-page spread to an eloquent and well-informed polemic on cycle safety. And in case anyone thought they weren't serious, today they've followed up with another front-page lead story. The campaign is in response to the tragic serious injury to one of its journalists, Mary Bowers, at the end of 2011. Which goes to show that you can only kill and injure so many people before someone starts to notice: sooner or later someone in a position of power and influence is going to be affected.

The excellent David Arditti points out that downplaying the danger issue did cycling a disservice. He has a point. When I started this blog, some cycle campaigners were behaving rather like climate-change "sceptics", desperately searching for scraps of evidence to back their optimism that cycling was either getting safer or wasn't actually that dangerous, in the hope that if disbelief were suspended long enough, you'd get a critical mass of cyclists that would bring a 'safety in numbers' effect. However, there comes a point where optimism becomes denial, and denial becomes delusion. The release of more figures today show that cycling in London has been getting more dangerous since 2007 both in absolute and relative terms (I'll discuss why in another post).

Back in 2010 I suggested that the superhighways and hire bikes would generate media interest, and wrote:

"people will die on the Superhighways. Tourists will die on hire bikes. That will make the news. There'll be an outcry over the carnage, there'll be finger-pointing and safe cycle routes could become the flavour of the month."

Mercifully, my second prediction hasn't come to pass (yet), but my first one tragically has, with two deaths at the Bow roundabout. So in a perverse, round-about way, the Superhighways may yet lead to safer cycle routes.

However, we shouldn't assess our poultry inventory just yet. The forces of darkness will be planning how to frustrate, obfusticate and obstruct the move for better cycle routes. Much work remains to be done. Although the Coalition's red-tape reducing initiative is taking away some barriers to implementing cycle infrastructure, many still remain. I hope you haven't forgotten last week's political storm in Westminster about restricting parking. Imagine what will happen when people can't park in cycle lanes any more. Many businesses still believe that a lot of their trade is dependent on nearby free parking, and the benefits of cycling on local shops are under-appreciated. The minister in charge of road safety, Mike Penning, clearly hasn't got a clue, suggesting that the main safety problem is red-light running by cyclists (according to the Transport Research Laboratory, that doesn't appear in the top 10 collision causes attributed to cyclists).

What cycle campaigners need to do next is figure out how to trim the sails to take advantage of a following wind from the media, bearing in mind that there are choppy waters ahead and we're nowhere near port yet. But enough with the hackneyed sailing metaphors. Many Tories, like Penning, are either totally ignorant or suspicious of cycling (after all, the bicycle is a relatively new invention and you have to allow a couple of centuries to elapse to let the concept sink in). But the government tend to follow where public opinion goes, so if there's a sniff of political advantage, they may yet change horses - especially as they know they'll never win an argument against bereaved widows and children. However, public opinion is fickle, and the motor industry and other vested interests have vast PR resources at their disposal. Therefore it is necessary to get commitment now rather than allow the issue to go off the boil. Perhaps the best result would be to de-politicise the issue along the lines of a Royal Commission with the goal of getting UK cycle safety on a par with the best in mainland Europe, all parties committing to abide by its recommendations.

Euston - We Have a Problem

2012-01-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

You know that thing where your partner comes home and you know s/he's had a haircut, but you can't tell the difference? Or it looks a little bit worse than it did before, but you know that a lot of expense has gone into it so you don't like to whinge too much?

Well, it's a bit like that with TfL's latest 'improvements' to Euston Circus, where Tottenham Court Road meets the Euston Road. Currently, this is about the busiest, most complex junction you could imagine. It has a lane for every day of the week in each direction.

TfL are taking out lanes at the junctions, widening pavements, and simplifying the junction for pedestrians. What they're not doing is making it any easier or safer for cyclists. In fact, if anything it's worse.

Let's take a quick look through the blurb:

"Euston Circus is dominated by road traffic..."

No shit, Sherlock.

"...and with increasing numbers of pedestrians and cyclists using the area, these designs will provide a significant improvement for existing users and for the anticipated growth in the number of users in the future."

By users, presumably you mean drivers? Cuz there ain't nothing new here for cyclists, beyond a couple of advance stop boxes that will a) be full of cars most of the time and b) be difficult to get into because two of the three have no approach lanes, and c) there's the same amount of traffic crammed into fewer lanes than before. How does that add up to an improvement?

"The Mayor’s vision for improving public spaces in London will ensure that our streets, squares, parks and green and water spaces are fit for a great world city, are enjoyed by everyone who visits them and most importantly, help improve the quality of life in the capital."

Enjoy? Quality of life? You can't use those phrases in the same sentence as "Euston Road". This is the most polluted place in the most polluted city in developed Europe!

"The key objectives of this scheme are to deliver improved facilities for pedestrians and cyclists, whilst minimising the impact on motorised traffic including buses."

Ah yes. I thought there was a catch. Now there's some improvements for pedestrians. The pavements are wider, so they can be lonely as well as depressed. There are fewer crossings, so they can get away from this brutal assault on the senses a bit quicker. They'll be able to get to University College Hospital more conveniently to get their lung conditions treated. But for cyclists, there isn't anything worthwile...because of the overarching priority of traffic flow.

Remember Kulveer Ranger's words, calling for "a step change in the way engineers think when planning road layouts. Historically our roads have been designed with motorists in mind. But that must change and the Mayor intends that with thousands more Londoners taking to two wheels their needs be given greater consideration than ever before." That fell on deaf ears then.

Nothing short of proper Dutch-style paths will attract new cyclists to Euston Circus. But if that's not on the agenda then at least there should be measures to ensure cyclists who do use the junction are safe? Well, there aren't any. Bear in mind that a cyclist has to cross the Euston Road at some point if they are going north-south, and there aren't a lot of options. If you work in let's say Fitzrovia and you live in Kentish Town, that would be an ideal cyclable distance. But the prospect of Euston Circus will be enough to put Lance Armstrong off cycling. Is it that unreasonable to expect to be able to cross a junction - a junction that is impossible to avoid without taking an unreasonable detour - by bike in safety? TfL think so, which is why they come up with crap like this, and they justify it with their usual bleating about traffic flow (cyclists aren't traffic you see, they just get in the way). Crap that is supposed to cope with "anticipated growth" in cycling, but whose only effect will be to crush London's aspirations for healthier, greener and cheaper transport between two lanes of fast-moving traffic.

Let them know your views.

Parliament Square

2012-01-25T15:53:00.000-08:00

Gosh, it's all about Parliament Square at the moment. The protesters have been kicked out, and according to Colin Barrow, Westminster's soon-to-be-ex leader, it's great that everything's back to normal:

"For too long local people and tourists have been unable to fully enjoy the square. This is a tragedy and the sooner this historic site can be enjoyed by the public the better."

And Boris chimed in:

"I think it was high time that a world heritage site was properly protected from what was basically vandalism, and it had become an eyesore... you can't have the continual desecration of a world heritage site."

"Historic, world heritage site": this poetic language conjures up images of medieval castles, moats, tranquility, children buying wooden swords and plastic helmets lovingly made in a Chinese sweatshop. In short, exactly what the Gothic-revival architects had in mind.

And now the area has its own bike hire docking station. Councillors overruled their own officials, who had suggested that the blue bikes would be harmful to the "character and appearance of the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square conservation area and to the setting of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey world heritage site."

Hang on. Am I missing something? Heritage? Character? Setting? Enjoyed by the public? Is this the same place described by the Hansard Society in its report "A Place for People" as "a national disgrace" in which "the public appears only to be tolerated?" The report goes on, "what should be one of the world’s greatest civic spaces is a noisy, polluted, inaccessible place, seething with traffic and pedestrians and pockmarked by fortress-like security."

Goodness. You'd never have thought it. And it's nothing new.

"Parliament Square has never really been an open, accessible, public space. Its size and
shape has altered over the years but the prioritisation of traffic over people has been a
constant theme..." In the 1930s, the police opposed taking down the railings around the square, suggesting that an "open square would only be useful for vagrants and, ‘in my view, the removal of
these railings would attract a most undesirable, unclean person to this spot’. In addition,
he feared children might treat the square as a playground."

Bloody hell!

"As the Square was largely used as a crossing point some police officers were concerned that when guiding traffic, it would become difficult to manage pedestrians crossing at new points if access was more open. Others expressed fears about the prospect of large numbers of people being able to
congregate outside Parliament, thereby causing a nuisance."

Ah, but that was the 1930s. Attitudes are much more enlightened today. It's not all about guiding traffic anymore...it's about traffic flow. Boris Johnson rejected the redevelopment of Parliament Square because of "the potential impact on traffic." Thank goodness we have a Mayor whose commitment to a World Heritage site is such that he continues to let visitors enjoy it in the comfort of a car. The last thing we want is our precious heritage being taken over by a large number of undesirable, unclean pedestrians, smelly cyclists and children. They'd probably bring tents and folding chairs and stuff, and then we'd be back to where we started with those protesters. This kind of thing is exactly what would happen if the World Squares project went ahead and pedestrianized the south side of the square and brought traffic restrictions on Abingdon Street, which our dear Mayor has fought against. Thank God for St Boris, for saving this England, this green and pleasant land!

[All stand for the National Anthem]

West End Commission

2012-01-23T15:48:00.000-08:00

Contrite Conservative councillor Lee Rowley - who declared War on the Motorist in Westminster and lost - is desparately trying to surrender whilst hanging onto his job, and the Standard has very graciously given him a platform to plead his case. "Getting parking right in the heart of London is difficult...we have listened", he wheedles. In the same way that you listen when someone threatens to punch your lights out for taking their parking space, rather than the open-minded, democratic consultative type of listening. Strangely enough it's this latter type of listening that the newly spot-free leopard Rowley is now proposing. About bloody time, you might say.

"We have announced a new beginning - the West End Commission. We want groups, business owners and individuals, for and against our parking plans, to join us in an honest, open debate...[to] give a strong, fresh and independent perspective. We will invite a range of people, from the Standard's editor" (aha! No wonder they've given him a column) "to representatives of London's cabbies, to help us with that work." Cyclists as well perhaps? Strangely, cycling seems to have slipped Rowley's mind, as the word doesn't appear once in his article. Thankfully he hasn't forgotten cabbies though - which is a good job seeing as they're responsible for a very substantial contribution to central London traffic. I'm sure they'd be happy to see congestion reduced as long as they continue to have free rein on the West End's streets. Unfortunately though, it's going to be rather difficult to address congestion and improve the public realm without reducing the number of cab journeys.

On the other hand, retailers would like to see more car-free days because they boost sales. But of course if you close roads you create congestion...unless you have a strategy to reduce demand - something Westminster has never been good at. Does this mark a turning point? I very much doubt it. I don't think they want to learn lessons from European cities that manage their roads for the benefit of all, not just a small number of drivers. Westminster want to reduce congestion, but only because it is a symptom of their failure to manage the roads properly. But they're still trying to figure out a way of reducing congestion without limiting car use. Have you spotted the flaw yet? Their only hope is the closure of the Straits of Hormuz sending oil prices skyrocketing...and with supreme irony, HMS Westminster is on its way to stop that happening.

Westminster Parking and Congestion

2012-01-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

When Westminster Council first proposed their scheme to charge for night-time parking, this blog commented that they were doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. They were hiding their fiscal acquisitiveness under a fig-leaf of concern for congestion - and bear in mind they opposed the original London congestion charge.

Westminster has now backed away from the proposal, following a storm of opposition. This shows both the best and the worst sides of democracy: on the one hand, the ability of people to influence politicians even in safe constituencies, and on the other hand, the failure to get to grips with problems whereever the solution threatens vested interests. In China, they can do this kind of thing.

Westminster now say "a commission will be set up to look at new ways of tackling congestion". There have been people suggesting that congestion isn't a problem in Westminster at night. Well, I was there at 10:30PM on Friday, and there was gridlock in Chandos Place and traffic backed up all along the Strand.

It's pretty clear that trying to tackle congestion by limiting supply is going to be politically problematic: that's why all political parties (with the notable exception of the Greens) are shy of even discussing road-pricing. That's partly because the media won't allow a sensible debate: they always reduce the issue to the lowest common denominator, the short-term effect on the individual motorist, and ignore the fact that the current situation is hardly ideal for anyone.

What Westminster have done wrong is their proposal looked like the persecution of ordinary people to subsidize the council tax of Westminster residents. Poorly-paid night workers who couldn't afford to live in Westminster, paying a huge stealth tax. That was the narrative, anyway. And the West End would supposedly have become a ghost-town at night, theatres and restaurants empty because people couldn't afford the parking charges. So poor workers, rich business people and middle-income customers were united.

However, none of this changes the fact that while cars may bring people and business into central London, but they also damage business and make the city a much less attractive place. There are many London cafes and restaurants with tables outside. Those tables aren't a very attractive proposition if you're breathing in diesel fumes, shouting to make yourself heard over the traffic noise, and getting bumped from time to time by pedestrians who are squeezed onto a narrow strip of pavement. The pavement has to be narrow so the cars have enough space to park while allowing free traffic flow.

Meanwhile, we have London's most under-used asset: the bike hire scheme. It costs £15M/year to run, but only brings in less than £3M. Most people don't use the scheme because they don't think cycling is safe in London. But here's something a little surprising: only 15% of those who actually use the scheme think it's safe, according to a leaked TfL internal document. It seems that people like the concept, they like the idea of a fun, healthy, fast way of getting around. They report niggles to do with poor software and unavailability of bikes and docks, but the main downside is the lack of safety and the fact that "London is not a cycling city" (only 21% of cycle hire scheme members think it is, nearly 4 years into a Cycling Revolution). That's because it's a motoring city - or it would be if the roads system wasn't so manifestly unsuitable for motoring: it's a city that aspires to be a motoring city, but will never make it.

If Westminster want to develop a credible plan for tacking congestion, they first need to acknowledge the problems that traffic brings to the area. They need to focus on the positive things that less traffic would bring to the city; on the benefits for business, employment and quality of life. Or the increased transport choice for the vast majority who don't drive in the centre of the capital: faster buses, unhindered by congestion, and cycle hire being a realistic choice for those without nerves of steel. B But such concepts are anathema to the Tories, who don't like the idea of any restraints on motoring, from bus lanes to speed cameras. They are ideologically wedded to the motor car and they don't like the idea of cycling becoming more of a problem than it already is.

Pyramid Schemes

2012-01-19T13:59:00.000-08:00

A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business venture that although it promises participants something of value, doesn't of itself generate any value and instead relies on new entrants to the scheme to provide the value to those already enrolled. So the goal is to recruit new members rather than to generate value, although some business activities may be performed along the way.

Some schemes rely on recruits to sell things like kitchen products or water filters to their friends, and if they recruit their friends as sales people, they get a commission on the sales of people they've recruited. This works pretty well for people at the top of the pyramid, who get a percentage of all the layers below them, but the people at the base of the pyramid make at best a small amount of money, and depending on how the scheme is structured, may even lose money. The reason pyramid schemes don't deliver the promised benefits for the vast majority of participants is because the pyramid needs to grow and each layer is much bigger than the layer above, following a geometric progression. Very quickly, the number of new recruits needed becomes larger than the number of people in the world. But a successful pyramid scheme has to hide its unsustainable nature and the costs to most of its participants behind a compelling business proposition offering prospectively great benefits.

Pyramid schemes came to mind when I heard about the Silvertown Link tunnel. Boris is trying to recruit us: Lots of jobs! Less congestion! Easier, faster journeys! Sounds great - gimme some of that! Except of course one of the benefits - easier, faster journeys - will also mean more journeys. Which will mean that the roads feeding the tunnel will need to be widened to accomodate the tunnel traffic. Which is good! It'll mean more jobs! Less congestion! Easier, faster journeys! Sounds great - gimme some of that! Except, of course, for each of these widened roads, we'll need to widen the roads that feed them, and build new ones, to accommodate all those easier, faster journeys. Good! Yet more jobs! More journeys! Less congestion! Until you run out of land. You can't build any more roads. Then all those journeys aren't easy or fast any more. And there's nowhere to park at the end of your journey. And all the motorists who've paid into this massive pyramid scheme and voted for the politicians who promised them easier, faster journeys, have lost their money and are really no better off - and a lot are worse off if they live by one of the new roads and have to suffer the noise, danger and pollution. The only people who've benefitted are the road-builders (so we got the jobs at least).

As with the kitchen product/water filter schemes, what's amazing is how gullible people are. Decades after it was clear that if you built a new road, it would just require more roads, we still have politicians promising to solve the problems of the roads by...building new roads.

Bow Roundabout - Again

2012-01-16T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Grumpy Cyclist points out that TfL's description of its Bow Roundabout redesign doesn't quite match the video they've produced to illustrate the idea (above). They talk of an 'early start' green phase for cyclists, but the video shows that motor vehicles and cyclists set off at the same time - and in addition there is a separate cycle-control light that goes red, stopping cyclists who are not already in the advance stop box from proceeding into it when motor traffic has green. Grumpy Cyclist also suggests that this is no different to a normal advance stop box. In a sense it is different because there is a separate set of lights before the advance stop box, meaning that crossing the stop line would feel rather more like busting a red light than it usually does (although legally there's not much difference, and as I'll point out later, not much difference in the way the box fills up with motors). The fact that the first and second sets of lights turn green at the same time is not in itself important as time and distance boil down to the same thing: what matters is whether the last cyclist can get past the A12 exit before the first motor vehicle tries to make a left turn across them. Will TfL allow a sufficient combination of time and distance to make sure that happens. If they do, then in theory, there should be no left-hooks, because cycles will either be in the advance stop box safely in front of the motor traffic when the lights go green, or they'll be held at the red cycle-control light, and therefore will never be in the dangerous position of being alongside left-turning motor traffic.

In practice, there are a couple of reasons why this won't work, and one compelling argument that it is cynical and disingenuous to suggest it increases cyclist safety.

It won't work because at busy times, motors will continue past the first amber light and be held in the advance stop box at the second light which will be red by the time they reach it. This will mean there are left-turning motors in the advance stop-box alongside cycles, so when the signals turn green, we'll have exactly the situation we have at the moment, only worse because cyclists have already been forced to the left side. With motors in the advance stop box, there will be limited space for cycles, so they will tend to queue if there are enough of them. This will be intensely frustrating and will tend to encourage cyclists to avoid the controls. They could do this legally by walking across the stop line at the cycle-control light, or illegally by riding across it. Some cyclists will simply take the general traffic lane on the basis that it's quicker and safer than the alternative - you can't be left-hooked if you take the left-hand general-traffic lane.
At quieter times, imagine the following scenario: a slow cyclist arrives at the cycle-control light just before it changes, and proceeds into the advance stop box. Meanwhile, an HGV arrives at the first lights just as they change to green, still rolling at about 30MPH. The HGV catches the cyclist but doesn't see him, and makes the left turn, getting both of them into the next day's Evening Standard.

Why is it cynical? We've got to the point where TfL have been forced to take action because there is an increasing number of cyclists and too many deaths caused largely by dangerous driving. Rather than increase safety while preserving the speed and convenience of cycling (remember they're supposed to be encouraging cycling as a transport mode), they've come up with a solution that means cyclists have two sets of lights to go through, thus slowing their journeys. Motor traffic, by contrast, is only minimally affected, because although it has two sets of lights to get through, they are synchronized so there's only one stop necessary. And if cyclists react to this increased delay by jumping the cycle-control light or taking the main traffic lane, TfL can sneer and throw their hands up, saying that cyclists are just ignoring the safety scheme, and no doubt a judge would find contributory negligence in the case of a cyclist involved in a collision. In effect, this scheme is likely to end up criminalizing cyclists. It is hardly, in Boris's aide Kulveer Ranger's words, "a step change in the way engineers think when planning road layouts". It's the same old car-centric crap we've had for decades. Of course, a small delay would be a reasonable trade-off for safety if it were not for the fact that reasonable tradeoffs between cyclist safety and motor traffic journey speed almost never get made. Iinstead, along entire routes cyclists are continually forced into the same dilemma: either accept delays whose root cause is too many motor vehicles monopolizing the available roadspace, or take risks, and more often than not, it's a case of choosing which risk is the least. At most junctions, the road is designed to stack motor traffic and there's no space set aside for cyclists. You could wait at the back of the queue; in which case you'll have impatient motorists trying to pass you when the lights change. Or you could try to filter to the front of the queue so you're more visible and get away first: in that case you risk not making it to the front before the lights change. Filter on the left and you'll be in a blind spot squeezed between the kerb and vehicles. Filter on the right and you're at risk from oncoming traffic.

So, anyway, I digress. How to fix the Bow Roundabout design? To stop the advance stop box filling up with motor vehicles, there will need to be an 'advance red' phase at the first set of general-traffic signals. That will go red first, and the second signal will stay green for as long as is necessary for traffic already in the advance-stop box to drain out of it (under normal conditions). I don't think that will actually affect traffic flow compared to the scenario where all drivers correctly anticipate the lights. Or do TfL model assuming that vehicles ignore advance stop boxes?

Next, there's the problem of how to eliminate left-hooks during the green phase. That's impossible to do if you have cyclists on the left going straight on, and motors trying to turn left across them. Which is why the LCC design uses toucan crossings. You simply cannot fix this junction to be safe for cyclists without changing the way motor traffic uses it. Limiting cyclists to a short green phase is ducking the problem, and is what Kulveer Ranger describes as "designed with motorists in mind", rather than designed for a cycling revolution.

Centre Point

2012-01-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

Bow Roundabout Redesign

2012-01-12T15:28:00.000-08:00

Transport for London has proposed two alternatives for the Bow Roundabout, following the two fatalities of cyclists at the junction last year.

I won't go into the detail here as you can read about it here and officially here; suffice to say that the first and preferred plan involves on-carriageway cycle lanes with some physical separation from the main traffic lanes, and junction signals incorporating an 'advance' green signal enabling cyclists to set off before other traffic. It only seems to cover one approach to the roundabout and one quarter of the roundabout itself.

What immediately jumps out is that this approach will protect cyclists against left-turning HGVs only if:
1. they manage to get to the front of the traffic queue before the lights change;
2. the advance stop box isn't blocked by motor traffic;
3. they get away smartly. How smartly they have to get away will depend on the light timing of course, but remember traffic flow at these junctions is very sensitive to signal timings so TfL will likely be setting them more for Eddy Merckx than your granny.

If you arrive at the junction with the lights green, the blue lane guides you to the left of the general traffic lanes and you emerge into the roundabout in the most vulnerable position. Ideally in this situation, if you're going straight on, you should be staying in the middle of the left-hand general traffic lane.

The other proposal is to remove one general traffic lane from the flyover and replace it with a cycle lane, separated from the motor traffic by islands at 40m intervals, described rather chillingly as "to deter motorists from using the cycle lane to undertake" . While this option has the obvious advantage that you don't have to negotiate the roundabout, there is the problem of getting onto the flyover, which requires crossing a couple of traffic lanes. They've quite neatly solved this by having what's basically a signalised crossing, allowing cyclists to cross the lanes from left to right while motor traffic is held at a red signal. (This is what they haven't done at Stockwell on the CSH#7, where to get into the cycle lane taking you round the gyratory you have to cut across two lanes of moving motor traffic at your leisure.) Again the question is timing: long phases will slow cyclists and encourage them to take the riskier option of the general traffic lanes instead. So TfL would need to allow frequent cycle phases. That combined with the removal of one flyover lane I imagine would have a significant effect on traffic flow. Will TfL go that far?

Of course, the flyover is no use if you want to to turn left or right up the A12. However, this is unlikely for most cyclists: the A12 is an unappealing prospect (and apparently cycling is prohibited, although there don't seem to be any signs prohibiting a cyclist from turning onto it at the roundabout).

LCC's proposed an alternative involving off-carriageway lanes and toucan crossings. This would seem safer (less danger of the HGV left-hook) and likely no slower than TfL's roundabout option. It might also be no slower than the flyover option, as that route would involve the same number of signalised crossings. It also has the advantage of facilitating pedestrians who fancy visiting the Bow Flyover Muccy D's.

Which option is best? I suspect it's a little early to tell, but so far I'm thinking the flyover option is the best of the TfL offerings, providing the light phasings are right, but I suspect they won't be. On the plus side, both schemes are a lot better than almost any other junction in London, but then the bar is pretty low. Let's not let two deaths be in vain: we should be insisting that conditions are as good as you'd get at Dutch junctions.

Remember to write to TfL to make your views known: looks like there's no formal consultation at this point but there's a contact page at the bottom of the scheme page.

The Mayor - Still Idling

2012-01-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

Boris has been moaning about idling again. Unfortunately, his commitment to reducing engine idling stops short of actually enforcing the law. He's now launching a publicity campaign. Remember, this is the same Boris Johnson that criticized the previous Mayor for spending too much on publicity. And Johnson's campaign is as likely to work as it was last time he mentioned it about a year ago, since when I've noticed no discernable change in driver behaviour, and I've seen no sign of the promised taxi rank marshals. It's taken decades to get cigarette smoking rates down, and it's taxing and banning smoking has had a lot more effect than simply talking about it. But with smokers, it's only their own health they're affecting. Should we stand idly by (geddit?) and allow lazy motorists to put other people's health at risk, while spending scarce public money on advertising? It might be fair enough if Boris's publicity was warning drivers that they'll get fined - and actually recouping some of the advertising spend by fining the polluters. Instead, it's the rest of us Londoners picking up the tab both for the publicity campaign and for the health service bill resulting from air pollution.

The Age of Consequences

2012-01-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

"Families forced to follow green zealots' new recycling diktats", froths the Daily Mail in a typical article about the supposed 'trash fascism' (should that be trascism?) sweeping the nation. "...the scheme is too complex and homes simply don't have the space to deal with the myriad bins, bags and boxes...strict regulations have been introduced as councils come under growing pressure to cut the amount of household rubbish they send to landfill...threat of European Union fines if they fail to hit EU targets...bin police who can impose £100 on-the-spot fines...increased penalties of £1,000 and criminal records..."

Mail readers, of course, have far more important things to think about than to bother their heads about recycling ...such as Demi Moore's gaunt frame, whether Kelly Clarkson's dress can contain her ample curves, and Christina Aguilera's fluctuating weight.

These dietary issues are, as it happens, an apt metaphor. When Kelly Clarkson eats cake, it doesn't simply disappear, and it's the same with rubbish, as the residents of Gilberdyk, East Yorkshire are finding out. They've got a curvaceous mountain of rubbish next door, and it's surprisingly causing one or two problems..."the smell from the tip has become unbearable and is affecting house sales, the vermin (rats, not estate agents), the litter...Up to 100 wagons per day - large wagons, eight wheelers - are running through the village spreading litter, dirt and muck." Who'd have thought it? Certainly not the Mail readers who'd rather chuck the considerable detritis of their over-packaged, fragranced, disposable lifestyles in a big, big bin and have it collected once a week and dumped as far from their net-curtained suburban abodes as possible.

In the modern world, there are now so many degrees of separation between an action and its consequences, it is easy to see restrictions like compulsory recycling as infringements on our liberties. When we buy a new phone or pair of jeans say, we don't see the sweatshop conditions it's been made in; we don't see the communities whose water supply has been poisoned with mercury from the mining that yields the raw materials that end up in our new gadget. When we chuck our old phone in the bin, we don't see the cadmium gradually leaching out of the battery into the river where swims the trout we'll eat in that nice gastro-pub next week. As nice middle-class folk, we can afford to live in nice places where most of the consequences of our actions don't actually affect us. We don't like the idea of battery hens or crated veal calves, but we do like cheap eggs and meat. In other words, wilful ignorance.

The separation of actions from consequences happens on three dimensions: firstly, along the value chain from production to destruction, as we've seen above. The second dimension is scale. If we drive to the shops in our Range Rover, that's not going to make a blind bit of difference to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. But multiply all those trips up over a lifetime, and by a population of hundreds of millions of drivers, and pretty soon you're talking big numbers. The third dimension is time. We have trouble associating the cigarette we just had with the lung cancer or heart attack in 25 years' time. We have as much trouble imagining our great-grandchildren blaming us for climate change as plantation owners imagining their offspring a few generations hence being embarrassed by their ownership of a couple of well-treated slaves.

When people drive, they can put to the back of their mind all the consequences of doing so. One journey doesn't make any difference, and if I answer my phone while driving, I'll be careful. Oh no, a bloody traffic jam. God, this air smells pretty foul (coughs). [1 clutch-pumping hour later] Finally, foot down at last. It was an accident caused all that chaos. Why can't people be more careful? Need to really push on now, b*gg*r the speed limit I'm in a hurry...80...90...get out the bloody way you dozy old codger! And you behind me - quit tailgating me - back off you nutter! [phone rings]...

Maybe some people don't like cyclists because they make them think about the consequences of driving; the consequences they like to deny or bury at the back of their mind. They are the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. The danger, the pollution, the climate change...you can ignore it all if everyone's driving - it's like there's no choice, and everyone and no-one's to blame.

For the last ten or twenty years, we in the West have been pushing the growingly significant and unpleasant consequences of our increasingly profligate lifestyles further and further away from us. We've been consuming more and more, without regard to the impact of our consumption on the planet and its people, and also without regard to how to pay for any of it. Finally, the market - that wonder of capitalist economics that gave us all the excess in the first place - has called time on the orgy of consumerism, and governments and people all around the world are starting to wake up to the idea that actions do have consequences after all. The credit card must be repaid. We have to live within our means.

Unfortunately, this consequence thinking hasn't quite spread beyond financial debt to the other spheres of human activity just yet. Andrew Neill introduces his new Sunday Politics show in this blurb. He boasts of his prescience in forecasting in 2008 that "the Age of Plenty was over and that we were about to move into an era dominated by the Politics of Debt". He continues, "It would mark the end of debt-fuelled capitalism, debt-financed socialism - and debt-drenched consumer spending", and promises his new show will "test what [politicians] have to say against the new rigours of the Politics of Debt".

This will be interesting, because if Neill is right on this (and I believe he is), then it follows that institutions, services, policies, laws, and even values, that were forged while we were still partying in the Last Chance Saloon are likely to be ill-adapted to the post-consumerist Age of Consequences. Yet there's little sign of this concept gaining currency amongst politians or most of the media: the terms of debate remain the same. The Westminster parking restrictions are greeted with hysterical opposition, while the Tories are promoting weekly bin-collections regardless of the effect on recycling rates. The world has changed, but we haven't: we're still reading from a script that says there will be a short delay before normal service is resumed.

As I haven't mentioned cycling yet, let's have just a taste of what the post-consumerist world might look like. With the real-terms erosion of take-home pay, fewer people can afford cars, and those that can are counting the rising cost of fuel. Maybe we should be tuning our road layouts to favour cycling a bit, so that people can spend less of their hard-earned on oil and more in the local economy? Maybe we should be reducing packaging, so that local authorities can spend less on collecting rubbish? Maybe we should be encouraging and enabling people to live closer to where they work, so they don't have to travel as much, and can use active travel modes more? With people cancelling unaffordable gym memberships, maybe we should enable people to get excercise for free, by cycling and walking more? In short, should we be encouraging lifestyles with less negative consequences and more positive ones?

Kings Cross Protest

2012-01-10T02:47:00.000-08:00

A new group called Bikes Alive organized a protest at Kings Cross last night. The protest was relatively small, but very effective in bringing the junction to a halt, and causing what TfL would call 'considerable queueing' in the roads feeding into the junction. There were a number of police on cycles present, and the atmosphere was fairly orderly based on what I witnessed. I saw a taxi driver driving so close to one of the riders at the back of the bunch I thought there would be a (very low-speed) collision, but there wasn't, and there was a free and frank exchange of views between one protester and a police officer when the police tried to shoo the group forward.

Does this kind of thing work? Well, it's more effective than sitting at home watching the telly, and it's got some news coverage. And the group is planning repeats of the event. One perspective is that TfL claim the junction has to be the way it is to ensure traffic flow. If the junction is regularly blocked by protests, that won't be working too well, and it's difficult to see how the Mayor won't suffer politically.

Wimbledon Broadway

2012-01-07T17:26:00.000-08:00

My last post was a critical look at Exhibition Road, where you can see what happens when politicians throw money at roads hoping they'll turn into civilized places, putting expensive granite surfaces as if they were doing a bathroom makeover. And with roads as with bathrooms, if you don't address what flows through them, they remain very unpleasant places.

Unfortunately, the idea that you can create attractive streets where people feel relaxed and want to linger simply by tinkering around with road designs and without addressing through-traffic has currency in many authorities, including Merton. Wimbledon Broadway has recently had a lot of money spent on it, widening pavements, installing benches and the odd tree, and removing 'clutter'. The result of all this is cyclists have less parking (less railings, you see), pedestrians are a bit less cheek-by-jowl on the pavements , but it's still a very 20th century experience with multiple traffic lanes, and long delays if you wish to cross from one side of the road to the other. In short, not the best shopping experience.

For cyclists, conditions are somewhat improved (but then they could hardly have got worse).

Above: outside the station concourse there is a single lane heading southeast, compared to the two lanes previously, so there is more room to filter past the traffic. Also, some of the central perch-points, like the one in the centre of the picture, are flush with the road surface so it's possible to ride over them to overtake stationary traffic.

Above, between the station concourse and the Prince of Wales pub, there is a loading and parking bay. This says a lot about the priorities of the road designers. This space could have made an ideal cycle lane.

Above: opposite Next there used to be an advance stop box. That's gone, and there are now two narrow lanes making filtering difficult and dangerous.

Above, opposite the Prince of Wales, there's a taxi rank.

Above, still two lanes northwest opposite the station concourse, but the flush perch-point enables overtaking of queues, and the removal of the sheep-pen crossing seems to have widened the road. There's an advisory cycle lane between here and the Alexandra Road junction, and at that point there are two rather than the previous three lanes. However, the cycle lane brings you inside of a lot of left-turning traffic, which is a significant hazard.

However, this is still a decidedly car-centric place. Most parents wouldn't let their kids cycle in these conditions, and remember - this is the only place it is possible to cross the railway track without going a mile out of your way. So if you live, say, in the Ministers area with your kids and want to visit Wimbledon Common by bike, you have a choice - lug your bikes up a couple of flights of steps over the pedestrian bridge at Alt Grove, or this. Or you could ride down to Lower Downs Road, making a detour of well over a mile.

Merton Council have spent a lot of money bringing the Broadway up-to-date, and yet it's still behind the times. Successful high streets are pedestrianized, and in an area like Merton the town centre should have safe access for cyclists - a lot of people live within easy cycling distance. There are a lot of relatively quiet residential streets leading up to Wimbledon Town centre, but Merton aren't interested in leveraging this asset and giving residents safe cycle routes - there remains the intimidating barrier of the one-way system, which like all gyratories is a relic of a bygone era.

It is very clear that the facelifted Broadway has been designed without cycling as a priority. The improvements (such as they are) for cycling are coincidental rather than by fiat. But even with the improvements, conditions are still bad. Cyclists are still expected to mix it with two lanes of motor traffic, and drivers are changing lanes often, adding to the hazards. There is no roadspace given over to cycling.

Although there are some excellent individual bits of infrastructure in Merton, my overall verdict is there are not many similar boroughs in London that are worse for cycling (Westminster is the bottom of the barrel). That's because Merton don't consider cycling when they design schemes like the Broadway. Even though Merton is supposedly a Biking Borough. Cycling is not a transport mode at Merton, otherwise it would have been considered in the Broadway redesign. Cyclists are considered when there's a cycle scheme (which isn't often) but ignored most of the time. In fact, for most of the places in Merton that you'd actually want to cycle to - town centres, leisure centres - routes are discontinuous, illogical, or just plain absent. At Merton, cycling and road schemes are two different things. To give you an idea of how seriously Merton takes cycling, look at the cycling part of Merton's website. There's no nominated cycling officer. If you look at the Cycle Network link on the website, two of the 'proposed' schemes, Green Lane and North Road, have actually been in place for two years - which means no-one's bothered to update the website for at least that time. (The Green Lane scheme is crap by the way - see here for Cycalogical's take on it).

Exhibition Road

2012-01-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems the shared space to end all shared spaces has finally been completed, and it's the partial success that we predicted. Groups representing residents and the disabled have been complaining that it's difficult and dangerous to cross the road. Unsurpising given that there are still significant traffic volumes. Many drivers still assume they have right of way, again unsurprising given that this is still a through road where motor traffic dominates. If the point of a shared space is to blur the boundaries between road and pavement, and have some semblance of equal rights to the space between motors and pedestrians, then Exhibition Road has failed. In effect, this is expensive - very expensive - eye candy. It's not a shared space - it's a motor road with granite instead of tarmac. You could have improved the aesthetic experience much more cheaply just by making it an access-only road.

A council spokesman commented "Clearly pedestrians must exercise caution as they would when crossing any road." The council clearly don't get it. As a pedestrian, you exercise caution at a zebra crossing, but you have right of way. On Exhibition Road, the cars aren't giving way. The spokesman also claimed "traffic is restricted to a maximum speed of 20mph". That's a lie. There's a speed limit of 20MPH, which is a very different thing. Westminster cyclists report "Motorists are not slowing down or taking care as the planners intended, as well as going over the speed limit."

The most telling sign of failure (literally) is the council have had to put out signs saying "give way to pedestrians". Remember, the point of shared space is supposed to be that there is sufficient ambiguity as to who has right of way that drivers allow people to cross the road. So you don't need signs like this cluttering up your world-class streetscape. This clearly isn't happening on Exhibition Road, but this sign won't change anything.

Lastly - don't let anyone forget this cost in the order of £25M. That's the all-in cost of a 6-lane motorway of similar length.

Dangerous Sport or Mode of Transport?

2012-01-01T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dangerous sports and activities are pastimes indulged in by people who have the attitude that excitement and achievement are more important than simply living a long but possibly dull life.You know the kind of thing: swimming with sharks, canoeing up the Amazon, lion-taming, climbing frozen waterfalls, off-piste skiing.

Dangerous sports are characterized by the following:

1. Participants are very brave, in fact, bordering on the reckless or foolhardy.
2. They know what they are doing. They know the risks.
3. In dangerous sports, it's down to you to look after yourself. If you don't have the necessary level of skill, you shouldn't be doing it. Don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you if you come to grief.
4. You need special clothing and protective equipment.
5. You do it for the thrill. De-risking it will take away the excitement.
6. You cannot take away the risks. The sport is risky by nature.
7. Parents are regarded as irresponsible if they let their children take part.
8. The participants tend to be young men.

Regular readers will know already where I'm going with this one.

In European cities where cycling is a normal, popular mode of transport, it is as integrated into peoples' everyday lives and it has none of the above characteristics of a dangerous activity. and the authorities have gone to considerable lengths to protect cyclists from hazards.

In the UK, cycling by and large has all of the characteristics of a dangerous sport. Even though cyclists face risks that other road users don't, most of the time they are not considered worthy of any special consideration. That's because it's a dangerous sport: you know it's dangerous and it's down to you to look after yourself. Consider the most dangerous junctions in London. Cycling facilities are inadequate at best, and continue through badly-designed and non-existant and terminate at worse-than-useless. The attitude is that cyclists are simply there by choice on roads that are dangerous by nature. Cycling is risky, and just because there's the odd token cycle facility here or there doesn't change that basic principle. Roads exist for motor traffic; if you don't like it then choose a quiet route or better still get a car. Just don't come crying to us when you get run over. Especially if you're not wearing a helmet or a yellow jacket.

Boris Johnson's attitude and the Tory attitude in general come from the 'dangerous sport' school of thought. They are happy for people to cycle, as long as they look after themselves and don't expect any special treatment. For Boris, cycling is jolly good fun and he's keen for more people to enjoy it - but it's the attitude of the mountaineer evangelizing about his sport, rather than the attitude of someone formulating transport policy.

The 'dangerous sport' approach to cycling is most apparent in how cycling funds are allocated. Training is usually high up the list. Why? Why are cyclists expected to have a higher level of skill than other road users? The answer's pretty obvious: you wouldn't expect to go climbing the Matterhorn if you couldn't use ropes.

While it's true that you need to pass a driving test to get behind the wheel of a car, it's clear that this hardly a stern test of your ability or disposition to use the road safely. Traffic engineers are falling over backwards to protect motor vehicle users from themselves, and from others. Pedestrians aren't expected to have any special abilities, and are provided with segregated pavements and crossings. That's because pedestrians and drivers are expected to be just ordinary people with ordinary abilities trying to get around. Cyclists aren't. They are deliberately taking calculated risks, or else being reckless. Rather take responsibility for the external risks of cycling, the authorities want to put the responsibility for risk reduction on the cyclist, in a way they don't with pedestrians or motorists. Look at the discussions around the recent M5 pile-up, which was much less about drivers going too fast for conditions and failing to react to hazards, and much more about blaming external factors such as a nearby fireworks display or the weather. Contrast that with the victim-blaming that often accompanies reports on cycling fatalities. Then the questions are: what was she doing on the inside of an HGV? Was she wearing a helmet? Would better training prevent this from happening? And even when the cyclist has done nothing wrong, the death is often described as an unavoidable accident. The unstated assumption underlying all of these attitudes is that cycling is inherently risky, so accidents happen if you are irresponsible, or even if you're not.

It's got to be said that vehicular cycling campaigners aren't doing much to convert cycling from a dangerous sport into a trasport mode. Their attitude tends to be one of risk-denial (it's not statistically that dangerous and the benefits outweigh the risks), or risk management (the Cyclecraft view that by cycling skillfully and integrating with traffic you can stay safe). That approach is fine for people who want to cycle in today's road conditions, but it cements the idea that as a cyclist, risk is your problem and not the responsibility of traffic engineers. Another vehicular cycling argument is that better enforcement of traffic law would fix the problem. This implies again that there's nothing systemically wrong - it's just a few bad drivers causing the risk.

Cycle campaigners, traffic engineers and transport policymakers need to accept that cyclists are not the problem. And indeed motorists are not particularly the problem. It's the infrastructure, stupid. Everyone is behaving pretty much exactly as they do everywhere else in the world, and the results are exactly as you would predict. Motorists with average skills, sometimes in a hurry, sometimes impaired or distracted, sometimes reckless, and cyclists with average skills, sometimes in a hurry (but a lot slower), sometimes impaired or distracted, sometimes reckless: put the two together and see if you can figure out who comes out worse. It's hardly rocket science.

So if cyclists and motorists aren't the problem, what is? In any other situation involving systemic risk, there's a lot of effort made to reduce it. At a ski resort, the beginners are on the nursery slopes, the experts are on the black runs. At the zoo, the penguins aren't in with the lions. But on UK roads, there's little or no risk reduction for cyclists, especially at the most dangerous junctions where it's most needed. At work there's a whole raft of health-and-safety legislation to protect you. If you take a train or a plane, you can relax in the knowledge that there are multiple expensive fail-safe systems in place for your protection. In a car you have more airbags than you can shake a stick at, and armco barriers to gently guide you away from the trees should your concentration wander. Why then nothing for cyclists? Is it because they like risk? That's why the public think cycling is risky, and it's only when the authorities address the lack of consistent, continuous and visible commitment to safety that cycling will lose the status of a dangerous sport.

A Dangerous Legacy

2011-12-08T05:56:00.001-08:00

Sixteen people have died on bicycles in the capital in 2011.

Two of the most recent have been young women, at the start of their work career. The scale of the human cost is easy to appreciate. Friends and family facing a lifetime of grief. Parents having to bury their children, and denied grandchildren that will now never be born. At a societal level there are consequences too: years of education will not now bear fruit as a productive career. And all the people who have been touched by these deaths will likely think twice about cycling themselves.

In fact, young women make up a very small proportion of cyclists - TfL's 2008 report says that females under 25 account for just 2% of bike riders. This says a lot about how appealing London's roads are for cycling: you see plenty of young women cycling in European cities.

Young people right now are getting a pretty raw deal from society: education is becoming massively more expensive while employment opportunities are more limited. They are disproportionately bearing the costs of an economic mess they had no hand in creating. And older generations have burned all the cheap oil and ignored the threat of climate change, leaving a toxic and expensive legacy. Thanks, Mum and Dad!

Nowhere is this inequity between young and old more apparent than in London's car-centric road design. It's clear that the roads are set up to favour motoring, but that's choice that many young people are denied. They can't afford to drive, being saddled with debt from student loans and tuition fees, and expected in due course to pay back the national debt accumulated by their profligate forebears. Some young people who cycle are paying with their lives because traffic flow is deemed more important than safety; many more who might prefer to cycle, particularly as we've seen young women, are denied that choice because conditions are so hostile - a dangerous legacy dating from the time when people believed that motoring would free us all. It's been clear for decades that motor vehicles bring a huge number of problems to large cities - causing physical danger, environmental and aesthetic damage, and dominating huge amounts of space - yet in London, there's been only a glacial retreat from the values of the 'golden age of motoring', in contrast to many other cities. Here, the car still dominates and excludes other more benign forms of transport.

If cycling is a choice being denied, there's always public transport. Buses would get around a lot quicker were it not for congestion, caused by the unrestricted freedom enjoyed a small number of the better-off to drive or use taxis. And London public transport fares are rising (and they're already the highest in Europe), again as a result of the economic crisis that youngsters had no hand in creating.

Youngsters don't have the closed mindset and fixed transport habits of some older people. Getting them onto bikes is not difficult. They might keep the cycling habit into later life, making them healthier, and additionally they'd enjoy the low costs and freedom of cycling: in short, a lifetime of benefits. But the grey-haired car-dependent establishment don't cycle and don't want to cycle. They see cycling as a risky activity undertaken by marginal elements in society; an activity that can't be made safe, at least not without doing the unthinkable - slowing down motor traffic.

All Cycle Superhighway Junctions to be Reviewed

2011-11-18T15:28:00.001-08:00

A couple of days ago, after the news that the design of Bow Flyover Roundabout, scene of two recent fatal collisions, was to be reviewed, this blog commented:

"It's important that everyone realises that Bow is the tip of a very considerable iceberg. Fixing Bow, if TfL is minded to do it, won't fix any of the other more dangerous junctions."

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor's director of environment is today reported as saying:

"Work is beginning on how London gears up to move to the next level of cycling infrastructure and continuing to improve safety for cyclists. This includes a commitment from TfL to review all major schemes planned on TfL roads as well as to review all the junctions on the existing cycle superhighways."

Sounds like good news! After all the protests and news coverage, finally a result? Don't count your chickens just yet folks. Getting TfL to do something for cycling is like trying to get a teenager to tidy their room. With a lot of threats and cajoling you may be able to get them to make a reluctant effort if you stand over them while they do it, but you'll face exactly the same struggle next time, and the time after, until at some time in the future the scowling youth internalizes the need for tidiness and understands that it's not an optional part of life. Right now, like the teenager, TfL is much more interested in fast cars.

What exactly does "review all the junctions" mean? A quick look at CSH#7 on Google Maps reveals there are approximately 135 junctions between the start at Colliers Wood and the Stockwell Gyratory junction. I've counted all the minor road junctions. Are they going to review every single one? Well they should, because over that same stretch, there have been 41 serious or fatal incidents involving cyclists between 2000 and 2008 that didn't occur at the major junctions, and only 10 at major junctions (5 of those at the Stockwell Gyratory). And my personal experience of riding the route (which is I suggest rather more extensive than TfL's) suggests that the minor junctions represent very significant hazards, with motorists emerging from side-roads without looking, or turning right into minor roads across two lanes of motor traffic without being able to see cyclists coming up the blue lane.

Second, what does "review" actually mean? Is this "review" in the sense of a "review" of the Blackfriars Bridge scheme, where nothing much changed? In point of fact, there is less a need for reviews, than for TfL to stop ignoring its own experts. The BBC's Tom Edwards has revealed that there was a report produced for TfL highlighting the problems of CSH2 that said of the Bow Roundabout:

"Toucan crossings should be installed on the north and south sides of the roundabout. And "off-carriageway cycle lanes" should be provided around the roundabout, to "encourage less confident cyclists to use the route".

As Tom points out:

"someone made a decision to ignore the advice of TfL's own traffic consultants"

I wonder who that someone was, and if they sleep soundly at night? And I wonder if that someone will be involved in the "reviews"?

Quite simply, TfL cannot conduct the CSH junction reviews themselves. There is a clear conflict of interest: they cannot lead an impartial review of safety, when they know that the outcomes may well (and jolly well should, in my humble opinion) raise awkward questions of their individual and collective conduct and competence.

I pointed out a couple of days ago, the Bow junction, and indeed the other dangerous CSH junctions, are not the way they are because someone screwed up. They are that way because of TfL's priorities and approach to highway design. So it's not just the Superhighway junctions that need a review - it's TfL itself. There needs to be a change of agenda. The "traffic flow" imperative can no longer be allowed to trump "safety" in every critical decision. This is as much a cultural issue as an engineering issue, and it is very difficult to see anything changing while TfL is structured as it is and while the same faces remain. Anyone got a new broom?

Lastly, it's not reviews we need. It's action. As yet, there's been no commitment to actually doing anything about the dangers, and no indication of the terms of the reviews. The CSHs are broken by design, and it's going to take a considerable amount of investment to fix them. Boris is in a tight spot. On the one hand, if he tries to wriggle out of doing anything having blinked over the Bow tragedies, he will look like a ditherer, cynically trying to whitewash the blood off the road. On the other hand, if he commits to substantial changes, he is open to the charge of having misconceived and mismanaged the original CSH project, in doing so having wasted at least some of the near £40M spent so far.

Box Hill Cyclists

2011-11-17T09:44:00.001-08:00

The police don't really know what to do about cyclists in the lovely Surrey Hills. The car-dependent locals don't much like being held up by cyclists, and are not shy of venting their frustrations with the local police. Hence the appearance of a police leaflet, which read:

"INCONSIDERATE RIDING: If a person rides a cycle, on a road, without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road, is guilty of an offence. [sic] £1,000 FINE"

This generated a tirade of angry comments on the Cycling Weekly site from riders such as Kevin Blackburn:

"This smacks almost of harassment of cyclists - the Police have obviously had some complaints from held-up motorists, and decided to intimidate/encourage cyclists to stay away. £1,000 fine for cycling inconsiderately - how many times could that be applied to every car driver that cuts us up, doesn't indicate, gives us less than the EU regulation 1.5m passing, infringes the 'cycle advance' box at junctions, parks and drives in cycls lanes - I've complained and taken photos of cars in cycle lanes, and had it explained that they are only adbisory - no, any continuous white should not be crossed on a road!....and so on. Its not until a cyclist is hit that police do anything about car drivers, but here they appear to be being pro-actively undermining cyclists rights to ride as per the highway code."

Scroll down the comments, and Inspector Terri Poulton, writes:

"Hello, I am the local Neighbourhood Inspector for the Mole Valley area and thought it would be a good idea to touch base with you all about this.

I would like to apologise about the wording of the attached card which was produced by a local officer who genuinely thought it would be helpful. We live and learn!

Whilst I support the message about road safety - this extends to all road users; I have been very clear through the Cycle and Drive SMART initiatives in the local area that we want to support everyone in enjoying our area â€“ cyclists, drivers and pedestrians. You can hear me speak about Cycle SMART at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhBgVst2944

An increase in cyclists is putting more pressure on the local roads network but I want to focus my efforts on targeting the minority of poor drivers and cyclists. I hope this message is received as intended - an apology for the blunt, inappropriate card - but also a plea for understanding. Safety and tolerance is the key message and, above all, we want everyone to enjoy our beautiful area."

Tolerance - and grammar - are clearly not the strong suits of the "local officer" concerned. It's quite interesting to click through the YouTube link, because there's rather more talk in the piece about inconsiderate driving than cycling. Kay Hammond of Surrey County Council says, "It all started about 10 months ago...one of the biggest issues facing Surrey residents was antisocial driving." Tom Arthur of Surrey Police continues, "We need people cycling sensibly, we need them being considerate, but we also need drivers to be tolerant, and realise that it's a road for everybody." Andy Wright of the National Trust cousels against overtaking on the hill: "If you're following some cyclists up the hill, it literally takes you another 3 or 4 minutes to get up...it's [about] tolerance on all sides."

Fast-forward 2 months, and the BBC reports :

"Tensions between drivers and bike riders using the 2012 Olympic cycling route through Surrey have prompted extra police patrols...Residents near Box Hill, which will form part of the London Games' cycling road race course, said the extra riders were causing a nuisance...Surrey Police said there had been a "significant" increase in cyclists along the A25 and at Box Hill. 'We are taking any community concerns very seriously,' said Sgt Andy Rundle."

I wonder if Sgt Rundle is taking any compaints by cyclists seriously? What happened to "drivers being tolerant" ? It so happens I have been known to venture outside the smoke down to the Surrey Hills. And I can confirm that there are a lot of cyclists down there. I've not personally seen much inconsiderate cycling, although I'm sure there's the odd incident: the clubs don't tend to cycle in large pelotons and tend to break rides down into smaller groups. However, I'm not sure why there is such a difference in some peoples' minds between a group of cyclists and a line of traffic. It's all traffic, it's a pain, it's in front of you, and the only way of getting it behind you is by overtaking it, which should only be attempted when it's safe to do so. Some motorists don't think that way. These aggressive types believe that common sense requires them to overtake all cyclists, whether alone or in a group, immediately, regardless of blind bends, speed limits, narrowness of the road or oncoming traffic. This kind of behaviour can be seen regularly, is highly dangerous and illegal. But you won't hear of the police clamping down on it or educating motorists as to the finer points of the Highway Code in this regard. As the report says:

"Residents told the BBC some cyclists...were aggressive to drivers trying to overtake."

Aggressive's generally what you feel when someone storms past forcing you to swerve into a pothole or a hedge. And bear in mind the Box Hill zig-zag road has traffic calming. From the highway code [my emphasis]:

"153

Traffic-calming measures. On some roads there are features such as road humps, chicanes and narrowings which are intended to slow you down. When you approach these features reduce your speed. Allow cyclists and motorcyclists room to pass through them. Maintain a reduced speed along the whole of the stretch of road within the calming measures. Give way to oncoming road users if directed to do so by signs. You should not overtake other moving road users while in these areas."

The BBC didn't interview any cyclists about dangerous overtaking. Maybe they were afraid they might be too aggressive. Anyway, the report continues "Many [riders] are from local organised clubs whose riders cycle frequently around Surrey but there are also thought to be many from out of the area."

Outside the area? They're probably illegal immigrants. Better let the Daily Mail know.

"Mr Rundle said there had been a dedicated car and bicycle police patrol at Box Hill for a number of weeks.
'This isn't an issue solely of cyclists but an issue of increased visitors to Box Hill full stop,' he said.
'We are stopping motorists and cyclists and making sure that all road users are mindful that they are likely to encounter increased numbers of cyclists. It is a challenge the local police have to rise to and make sure that everyone is considerate of every other road user.'"

Goodness me. That sounds almost as if cyclists have an right to use these roads, and equal treatment under the law.That could actually encourage cycling...and then where would we be?

Alright, enough joshing around. In general I welcome more police, particularly if they're on bikes as they'll quickly find out what us civvies have to put up with. And there are a fair few coppers who are leisure cyclists. Hopefully the enlightened PCs outnumber the dinosaur officers like the one whose leaflet is at the top of this post. But there's something seriously wrong when an increase in cycling is greeted as if it's mainly a problem with cyclists, rather than a problem with drivers not tolerating cyclists and ignoring the Highway Code's guidance about how to drive when there are cyclists in front of them. If I write to my local police compaining about an increase in drivers or speeding and aggressive driving, I know the response won't be increased police patrols. It will be incredulous laughter, or protests that the police don't have the resources to enforce 20MPH limits. And probably a proposal to widen the road, legalise parking on the pavement, and a host of other measures to ensure traffic flow. While there are some cyclists taking risks and riding inconsiderately, they're very unlikely to kill anyone except perhaps themselves. If only the same could be said about risk-taking, inconsiderate drivers.

If it's a nice day this Sunday, I might just make a nuisance of myself and see if I can beat my PB up Box Hill. That'll show 'em.

Bother for Boris in Bow

2011-11-15T09:58:00.001-08:00

To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, the death of one person is a tragedy; the deaths of thousands is a matter of statistics. So it is that two tragic deaths at the same location in less than a month is sufficient to generate a flurry of media stories about the Bow Flyover roundabout. Statistically, two deaths so close together in location and in time is an anomaly as this location isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous junctions.

However, it does encourage journalists to ask serious questions of TfL about its whole Superhighways strategy. The approach is to route cyclists along the capital's busiest roads, and through its most dangerous junctions, while asserting that it's impossible to put in proper provision for cyclists at those junctions because it would have too much impact on traffic flow. Transport for London (TfL) director Ben Plowden promised to look "very closely" at the Bow junction. Why? TfL knew perfectly well how dangerous these junctions - fast, multi-laned affairs with a good sprinkling of HGVs - are for cyclists. Nothing has changed. TfL knew it had the choices it made didn't ensure cyclist safety, and it must have known what the consequence of that would be. It is easy for TfL and its ultimate boss Boris Johnson to maintain the the Blackfriars Bridge redesign has to sacrifice cycle lanes on the altar of traffic flow, given that it's not killed anyone yet, but it's not so easy to defend the Bow Flyover design in the face of the bereaved families and friends of the victims.

It's therefore important that everyone realises that Bow is the tip of a very considerable iceberg. Fixing Bow, if TfL is minded to do it, won't fix any of the other more dangerous junctions, and more people will die at those locations. There must be an acceptance that the two recent fatal collisions at Bow were not accidents. This was not one rogue road designer, an isolated error or a failure of process. The Bow junction is the way it is precisely because the designers followed TfL's rules and guidance on road design, prioritizing traffic flow and ignored the protests of London Cycling Campaign about the clear dangers. If these deaths are not to be in vain, TfL must accept that it has an institutional problem, a systemic problem, and to address it, it needs to push cyclist safety to the top of the priority list.

Fuel Prices - They Still Don't Get It

2011-11-15T01:15:00.001-08:00

It's a while since I last wrote about fuel prices, and not much has changed, but the campaign to lower the petrol price seems to have got even better organized. Unfortunately, they've still not addressed the fundamental problem at the heart of the matter.

When I last wrote, the oil price was at $98.45. I noted there were problems with the Alaskan pipeline and Norwegian oilfields that were interfering with supply. Since that time, the Libyan conflict has been and gone, and the European economies are forecasting lower growth - all factors that should either increase potential supply or reduce demand. Yet today (15 Nov 2011) a barrel of Brent crude will cost you $113.22. Pump prices are still hovering around the £1.40/litre level for diesel.

There will be a Commons debate about fuel prices today. What will they talk about? The fact that the Government changed the tax regime in the last budget, and that spectacularly failed to fix the problem? The fact that the relative tax take has been going down for a while: for every pound drivers spend at the forecourt, about 60p is now going to the Treasury compared to around 80p in every pound between 2001 and 2003? The fact that in the USA where fuel taxes are low, people are much more affected by underlying changes in the oil price (and complain about it a lot more) ? According to the debate's sponsor, Robert Halfon MP, families are being "crucified" by high petrol prices, and are in "fuel poverty" as a result. But I can't see much difference between "crucifixion" by petrol prices, and "crucifixion" by rail fare increases, or VAT increases, food price inflation, losing their job, or any other combination of price inflation or wage stagnation. It's all poverty at the end of the day. You would think a Tory would expect people to help themselves, as many people (and businesses) are doing by driving less and adopting lower-carbon forms of travel. Again, some people have no choice but to drive, and petrol price increases, along with electricity, gas and food price increases, are giving rise to real hardship. There's certainly a case to be made to help people in poverty, but it doesn't follow that a general cut in petrol tax is the best way of doing that, especially considering it will benefit rich car owners more than the poor. I've not seen much evidence that it's the best way to help the economy either. It will benefit businesses that use a lot of fuel. What about businesses that have invested in a lower-carbon business model, making the correct assumption that oil prices will continue rising? Why move the balance away from businesses that are succeeding? Why give the signal that if you're oil-dependent, you'll get bailed out by the government?

Lowering fuel taxes may give a small amount of temporary relief to motorists who have no choice but to drive and are spending a lot of their income on fuel, but it will also disproportionately benefit motorists who are not very hard-pressed, choose to drive big thirsty cars and can well afford to fill them up. Also, taxes will have to rise elsewhere to compensate, at a time when there are calls to lower them to stimulate the economy.

Instead of debating the cost of fuel, which is largely out of the control of the Government, we should be debating how we manage down the use of fuel. Oil dependency is the underlying problem, and it's what is delivering blows to the economy every time the underlying price of oil goes up. That's why a US military thinktank is saying that America needs to cut its oil use by 30% over the next decade. "I don't really see myself as a treehugger in any way. I look at it as an issue of national security," said Howard Snow, former deputy assistant secretary of the US Navy.

Whingeing about the pump price won't solve anything. Lowering fuel tax will cause people to think they don't need to change their driving habits, and we'll be having exactly the same debate come the next budget. Instead, we need to help businesses and individuals to use less fuel. Done correctly, this will have a much greater positive effect on the economy, because it will have a long-term effect and cause more cash to stay in the UK rather than going into the coffers of oil-producing countries.

TfL and Cyclist Safety

2011-11-11T16:10:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it's best to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. So it is with TfL and cycling safety. No doubt in response to a stream of negative stories, they've countered with a press release that purports to show how with its "huge range of practical measures", TfL is really spoiling us. Unfortunately, the box of Ferrero Rocher is pretty much all gold PR foil.

"I implore cyclists to stay safe, don't stay next to a HGV," says Boris, although he's not telling HGV drivers not to stay next to cyclists.

"While every collision is regrettable, it is encouraging that the proportion of cycling collisions on TfL roads that result in fatal or serious injuries has declined since 2008, indicating that the severity of collisions is falling."

Statistics served with a lot of backspin, it could be argued, since the London cyclist KSI casualty rate has in fact been rising for a few years now.

Let's take a look at the "vast array of improvements" TfL boast about.

"Additional guidance for highway contractors is currently being produced by TfL on providing sufficient space for cyclists at roadworks. This new guidance will ensure better consideration is given to vulnerable road users while street works are taking place across London and forms a key part of the Mayors new Roadworks Pledge"

Space for "Cyclists Dismount" signs, I think he means. Let's hope this is a U-turn from TfL's attitude up until very, very recently: "It is necessary to request that cyclists dismount between the peak [hours] as our works at these times take in a greater proportion of the carriageway at these times. This narrows the space available for vehicles and cyclists to share beyond the point that can be safely accommodated. We ask that cyclists dismount in order to ensure that they can safely pass through the area affected."

"A £100 million investment during 2010/11 in cycling schemes, which included a range of safety action such as the provision of ...new cycle lanes"

Lanes that are often narrow and/or advisory, sprinkled with parked cars, and become "ghost" lanes or disappear altogether at the trickiest junctions, when you need them most.

"blind spot safety mirrors at key locations along the Barclays Cycle Superhighway"

...which are necessary because TfL gave up on the idea that the CSHs should be "safe and continuous" at those key locations.

"advance stop lines at traffic junctions across London"

Ah yes. The advance stop box. Like a box of cheap chocolates, it's very likely to contain something you don't want. Like the one after Admiralty Arch at the Trafalgar Square roundabout. Another of London's most dangerous junctions. Often the approach lane is blocked. If you can't get to the ASL you'll be stuck on the inside of vehicles that may 'left hook' you. Go round the outside and your chances aren't much better, and don't think you can rely on vehicles letting you back in the queue if the lights change when you're trying to filter. If instead you just wait in the queue, there'll likely be someone behind you who'll be trying to overtake just at the most hazardous point. Even if you can get to the advance stop box, there is a good chance the box will contain a taxi or a car or both. All of which makes the advice that "Cyclists should take a visible position well in front or well behind a vehicle at traffic lights" seem rather Marie-Antoinette.

"encourage [HGV operators] to sign up to TfL's Freight Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) "

FORS is rather limited in what it can achieve. To be a FORS member, your drivers don't have to have any more training than the legal minimum, and can have as many endorsements as you like as long as they still have a licence. From the specification, killing a cyclist won't get you kicked out, (although there will be a benchmark to get to the Silver level of membership). To give you an idea, Thames Materials is a Bronze member.

As for enforcement against dangerous or intimidating driving by professional drivers, forget about it, unless you've been seriously injured. Report it to the police and you'll likely get a polite letter saying they don't prosecute unless there's a realistic chance of a conviction (and the bar is pretty high, believe me). According to the FORS specification, there is no mechanism to complain about a FORS member's drivers, and the Public Carriage Office, which regulates black cabs and private hire, will also ignore complaints about cab drivers. In short, Boris's exhortations to 'share the road' and 'look out for cyclists' are backed up by nothing but his winning smile, and have as much chance of being taken seriously as Silvio Berlusconi at a feminist's convention.
Now don't get me wrong. FORS is a good thing and we should encourage it, but it will mainly help good operators get better. Without legal sanctions, it will still be too easy for irresponsible companies to take advantage of the lower operating costs that come from dangerous practices and taking chances with peoples' lives.

"help fleet operators identify and compare different HGV safety technologies...a new Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) training module specifically written for freight drivers in London...worked with the Freight Transport Association to develop a Cycling Code for its members"

In other words, it's all good, but it's voluntary. It will be ignored by the cowboys, who will be able to speed about their business unmolested by the diminishing number of traffic police.

The fundamental problem with TfL's approach is that they don't adequately tackle the problem of keeping drivers, especially bad ones, away from cyclists. In fact, at the most dangerous junctions, where cycling collisions are most likely, they completely give up, reasoning that traffic flow is a higher priority than safety. Even good drivers have lapses of judgement and observation, especially on dark wet days, and if cyclists are mixed up in the general traffic flow those lapses can be fatal. In simple terms, TfL are putting up the curtains while there's still no roof on the house. The point is to generate more cycling, because it's good for the economy, good for the environment and good for public health. There is no way you can do that by training HGV drivers (worthwhile though that is). Even if 95% of drivers had a high standard of skill and a good attitude, the remaining 5% would be enough to put most ordinary people off cycling. What TfL are doing is making the roads marginally safer, but doing it in a way that is very costly and time-consuming. Which is nice for the few people who are actually happy to cycle on-carriageway, but hardly tempting to the large number of people who would like to cycle but don't feel it's safe.

Westminster Parking Charges

2011-11-06T15:29:00.000-08:00

Westminster Council don't win much approval on this blog, but the extended car parking charges and restrictions which will be imposed in the early 2012 gain a qualified nod. Westminster are doing the right thing - discouraging motor traffic - for the wrong reasons - to make money. Even though the policy is attracting considerable well-organized opposition, the Council are seemingly sticking to their guns although they have dropped plans to introduce the charges before Christmas.

Effectively, from January there will be no more free parking on Westminster-controlled streets at any time.

Westminster claim that the charges are necessary to deal with increasing night-time congestion. Which is interesting, coming from a council that opposed the London Congestion Charge. At Cycalogical, we're happy to forgive the sinner that repenteth, although we're a tad suspicious that the move has more to do with filling a hole in the Council's budget that any concern for the adverse impact of motor traffic on the capital.

By Westminster's own admission, this is a congestion charge. Unlike the actual congestion charge however, the proceeds won't go to improve public transport - they will go to keep council tax down for Westminster residents, many of whom are a lot more well-heeled than the average Londoner. Yet many more Londoners will be affected by the policy, which raises serious questions of democratic accountability. Most Londoners don't drive much into central London, so the effect will be broadly positive for them - less congestion equals faster bus journeys and a hopefully a better environment for pedestrians. On the other hand, people who have no option but to drive at night or on Sundays will be paying to park - a considerable sum for night workers. There will likely be displacement of car parking into neighbouring boroughs and possibly also onto TfL roads.

Businesses aren't happy with the policy. They see only the downside: the prospect that car-based trade will evaporate. In reality though, will it be that big a deal? Some erstwhile car-bound customers will switch to using public transport or cabs. Some will simply swallow the parking charges. Some may switch to nightlife outside Westminster. However, because this isn't a policy oriented to making the West End better for visitors (and therefore the businesses that depend on them), the Council don't have a good answer to the charge that new parking fees will kill trade. The policy would make more sense if Westminster acknowledged that congestion is just one unpleasant symptom of car dependency. If the streets of central London were more pedestrian-friendly, if there were more streets oriented towards dining, drinking, shopping and outdoor enjoyment rather than the passage of motor traffic, this would likely generate a lot more trade than would be lost as a result of parking or congestion charges. Indeed, it's businesses themselves that are calling for such a policy in Oxford Street and Regent Street. As it stands though, Westminster are opposed to cycling, opposed to 20MPH speed limits, opposed to traffic reduction or calming schemes, and ideologically opposed to anything that interferes with private motor traffic...except when they can make a couple of quid out of it.

Going Dutch - The Fightback Begins?

2011-11-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

LCC has at long last come around to the idea of segregated space with its 'Going Dutch' campaign. It was only a matter of time before there was a counter-campaign by those whose vehicular cycling outlook until recently held sway. Hence a post by Matthew Wright in the Guardian's cycling blog.

Wright doesn't go all-out to say that segregation is a bad idea. He starts by pointing out that in Holland "cycling facilities were so good that their use was obligatory and enforced by police". This is an allusion to the well-worn argument that the provision of segregated paths will whittle away at the cyclist's right to use roads. Fair enough if you like cycling on roads, but most people don't, which is why almost no-one (except me and you, dear readers) cycles in the UK.

He attacks segregated paths by casting doubt on their safety credentials:
"The safety of having separate lanes has often been questioned. Though there are many variables, and conclusions are contested, most studies suggest that separate paths, if anything, make cycling more dangerous, because junctions – where most accidents occur – are more complicated."

Are separate paths more dangerous? The research cited appears to be quite old, and any research done in the UK is based on the narrow, badly-designed, badly-maintained, badly-surfaced tracks, regularly punctuated with driveways and side-road junctions, and featuring jaywalking pedestrians, dogs, and the odd parked car. I'm not going to pick through every study because that would be futile - if the Dutch road system with its extensive use of segregated paths has the best safety record, there can't be too much wrong with segregated paths as such. But the reality is, it doesn't matter. Go to Richmond Park on a weekend, and you'll find thousands of people cycling on those dangerous off-road paths, and these are largely people who wouldn't dream of cycling on those safe, fluffy roads because for some bizarre reason they think they're too dangerous. Even if you showed them the statistics, they wouldn't believe you, because there is something inherently sphincter-spasm-inducing about being passed by a 3-tonne van with a couple of inches between its mirrors and your elbow. Nothing short of mass hypnotism will persuade most people to cycle on UK roads, because it feels dangerous, and it's gut feel, not statistics or probabilities, that people rely on to tell them whether something is safe or not. In the simplest possible terms, even if roads are safer than segregated paths, UK road conditions are the biggest deterrent to cycling there could possibly be. And it's UK road conditions that are pushing people into the car-dependent, sedentary lifestyle that is far, far more dangerous than cycling on a segregated path could ever be.

Wright then quotes Amsterdamize's Marc van Woudenberg as saying "Segregation is just one (important) part of bicycle policies in the Netherlands, complemented with integral spatial planning, traffic calming, bike facilities and effective traffic laws." Wright continues: "in reducing the Dutch approach to being mainly about paths, LCC is misrepresenting it. Their campaigns for a 20mph speed limit (widespread in the Netherlands), and the crucial issue of strict liability would make a more sensible centrepiece for Go Dutch."

So there you have it. Put the word 'Dutch' in front of all the UK cycling campaigns of the past couple of decades that have failed to deliver meaningful growth in cycling, and they will magically succeed and deliver a cycling culture. I live on a 20MPH road, and I avoid cycling on it whenever I can because no-one drives at less than 28MPH unless there's something seriously wrong with their car. 'Integral spatial planning' in London to most people means being able to park your car. Strict liability? Drivers don't go out intending to crash. They already know that a prang will push up their premiums. Read much more about why strict liability is irrelevant here. As David Hembrow (a Dutch-based cycling blogger that Wright doesn't quote, but I will) says: "[Dutch] Strict Liability came only after the majority of people cycled, and when there was already a very high degree of segregation and planning around bicycles."

Wright then points out, "LCC's emphasis on 'London's main roads' is also strange...why would you want to cycle in such noise, danger and pollution, when there are faster and more pleasant routes through back streets, parks and towpaths? This kind of route requires only some intelligent planning"

Back-street routes are what we have with the London Cycle Network. Even if you weren't perpetually getting lost on the LCN, it can hardly be described as 'fast'. There are hazards from frequent junctions (and the priority is usually against you), parked cars, and there's significant rat-running traffic to contend with. The phrase 'only some intelligent planning' seems to imply that a couple of weeks work by some contractors will sort it out. But I digress. Why emphasise main roads? Because it's very hard to avoid main roads if you want to follow a reasonably direct route, and you need segregation where there is significant motor traffic. Where traffic levels and speeds are low enough, you don't need segregation. That's how the Dutch do it. If you only use filtered permeability, 'home zones', and greenways to construct a cycling network, you end up with very compromised routes. It is not a vision of mass cycling: it's a vision of mitigation that isn't going to inspire anybody.

Wright then wraps up by saying:

"the biggest barrier on the road to creating a widespread cycling culture in the UK is tackling speed limits and a pro-motorist legal bias."

This is a real chicken-or-egg argument. The reason that speed cameras, speed limits and indeed any restrictions whatever on car use are unpopular in the UK is because we are so car-dependent as a nation, and as a consequence there are a lot more voters who are motorists than there are voters who cycle. Lower speed limits and cycle-friendly traffic laws are consequences of a cycling culture, not prerequisites. It is also a false argument. The biggest barrier to creating a UK cycling culture is the fear of traffic. This is demonstrated in survey after survey. Vehicular campaigners have been trying to civilize motoring for decades, successes have been few and far between, and there's no evidence that fear of traffic has become any less. Freewheeler has already documented why.
What is most toxic about opposition to Going Dutch is the fact that if cycling campaigners cannot present a single, compelling vision about how mass cycling can be achieved, then we won't convince the politicians or the public. And the fact is, the public understand segregation: I speak to many people who say they would cycle more if there were cycle paths away from traffic. It almost seems like it's only cycle campaigners who don't 'get it'.

Low Emissions Zone - Don't Breathe Easy Just Yet

2011-10-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

The next phase of London's Low Emissions Zone will start at the beginning of 2012. This was delayed by Mayor Johnson, but the threat of EU action has made the move inevitable.

The current LEZ covers larger commercial vehicles, but 2012 will see the emissions requirements extended to cover smaller commercials. However, it's interesting to see how some vehicles are more equal than others. Older minibuses belonging to schools and charities will fall foul of the rules, no matter how low a mileage they do. Similarly, pickups and vans belonging to businesses in outer London, which may cover few miles and operate away from the worst pollution hotspots, also get caught. Even private camper vans aren't exempt.

Now this would be fair enough if there were a no-exceptions, zero-tolerance attitude to pollution. But taxis - the class of commercial vehicle that is responsible (according to TfL) for 30% of central London's particulate emissions - are exempt. This is a bit of a choker for small businesses and charities that need vehicles but don't drive huge mileages. It's also a bit of a choker if you attend a school in inner London and you suffer from asthma, or if you're one of the estimated 50,000 people who die early as a result of air pollution in the UK.

Boris Johnson's air pollution strategy is simple. Try glueing it to the road, soaking it up with plants; anything rather than reduce it at source by forcing the taxi industry to clean up its tailpipe emissions, or by promoting alternatives to motor traffic.

Johnson said in answer to Jenny Jones' questions about the use of dust suppressants around air pollution monitoring stations, "It makes sense to deal with the [pollution] hotspots". This is nonsense. It's Johnson's attempt to dodge EU fines without dealing with the main underlying problem - too many high-emitting vehicles. People don't die from air pollution only near the monitoring stations. The high numbers from the monitoring stations simply give a picture of what emissions are like all over London. It's not like the monitoring stations are the only places to worry about, and 50 yards away the air is like a forest glade and vehicle exhausts are purer than a mountain stream. If the taxi fleet is emitting large amounts of particulates, then no matter where you happen to be, when a taxi accelerates past you, you'll get a couple of lungfuls of dirt.

The only way that Boris Johnson's air pollution strategy makes sense is if you consider that dead people don't vote, but taxi drivers do.

Uninsured Drivers

2011-10-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

It's good to see one of the first things the new Met Police Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, has done is crack down on uninsured drivers. Uninsured drivers are 5 times more likely to be involved in collisions than the rest of us, and are likely to have criminal convictions. It should be easy to take them off the road with ANPR technology linked to the insurance database. What's more, there are a lot of vehicles that are technically insured, but their drivers have lied about modifications to the car or about their personal history. Stop any car with blacked-out front side windows (and there are plenty of them around) and the vehicle insurance is likely to be invalid, because it doesn't conform to the construction and use regulations. No insurer would insure such a car.

The Met Police yesterday organized a crackdown with 1000 officers targeting uninsured vehicles. Different news sources have reported betwen 300 and 500 vehicles being seized. That doesn't sound like a very good hit rate to me, given that 1 in 7 drivers are estimated to be uninsured in London. To give you an idea, if you stand by a busy road like Kennington Park Road, you'll have in excess of a thousand vehicles passing you in an hour, of which over 140 will be uninsured. (That's assuming uninsured drivers clock up the same sort of mileage as other motorists and that they use the same routes, but even making pessimistic assumptions, it should be like shooting fish in a barrel.) Yet the Met achieved less than 1 vehicle impounded per officer per day. No-one in the mainstream press has questioned this hit-rate. I'd like to know what's going on. Did it take a day to file the paperwork on every car? Did they let off a lot of drivers with a caution and a friendly 'Mind how you go now' ? Did they spend a lot of time at the burger van on Clapham Common ? Or maybe there's something about nabbing one car in every seven that is a lot harder than it looks? Are there loopholes that enable drivers to slip through the net? I'd really love to know.

TfL Chief Speaks on Cycling

2011-10-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

It might surprise you to know, given Transport for London's less-than-stellar record on cycling, that its current Commissioner, Peter Hendy, rides a bike. Hendy recently delivered a lecture to the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics about cycling, which was part of a launch of a resource for planners on cycling called The Hub. The Hub is apparently largely stuff looted from the now-defunct Cycling England.
I'm going to take a quick look at some of the things Hendy said in his lecture:

"London has undoubtedly been the engine of growth in Britain and is where cycling has really taken off – up 150% since 2000. Nearly 150,000 people per week cycle on the 6,000 hire bikes through the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme. But while it's one thing to pedal round Hyde Park Corner or the Vauxhall gyratory in the rush hour, in outer and suburban London, there are plenty of quiet roads and routes that could be developed to help people leave their cars at home."

Well, that pretty neatly sums up the problem in London, where very few people cycle in comparison with Holland, Germany or Scandinavia. Hyde Park Corner and the Vauxhall Gyratory both figure in the Top 10 most dangerous junctions for cyclists, which is testament to TfL's failure to get to grips with the problem of cycle safety on main routes. Meanwhile, 'quiet' routes are still dominated by motor vehicles which is why people don't cycle there either - they desperately need 'development'.

Hendy's solution?

"...The Biking Boroughs Scheme to really try to develop local cycle hubs in places where the potential for a shift to cycling is greatest and resources can be targeted. These cycle hubs will become beacons of cycling excellence in outer London and act as catalysts for change in these areas. In pursuit of this, earlier this year, thirteen councils across London made successful bids for a share of £4million funding after pledging to put cycling at the heart of their local transport plans."

That's right. Money being dished out to boroughs like Merton, which really has very little clue about cycling. And of that already cheese-paringly small £4M slice of London's massive transport budget, Merton will receive £100,000. Over 3 years. To put that amount in perspective, one Government department, the Treasury, spent nearly £100,000 just on taxi fares last year.

So what's the £4M going to be spent on?

"more cycle lanes and other cycling infrastructure"

Ah yes - no doubt the kind of lanes that are usually blocked by parked vehicles and stop abruptly when TfL decide that 'traffic flow' is more important that cyclists' safety.

"This growth [in cycling] is driven by a number of factors. Across London, there are many more cycle lanes than there were 10 years ago and measures such as cycle zones at traffic lights together with safety mirrors give cyclists more confidence "

Confidence?? Gimme a break! Hendy obviously doesn't cycle in London very often, or he wouldn't be able to say any of that with a straight face. 'Cycle zones' at traffic lights are more often than not blocked by motor vehicles, assuming you can get to them in the first place. Quite often there is no lead-in lane, at other times the lead-in lane is blocked, and you can end up in the most vulnerable position on the left side of a queue of vehicles, any one of which may left-hook you without warning.

"Here in London, the London Cycle Network has carefully paved the way for today's cycling environment for over a decade."

That's about right - today's cycling environment is a pretty good indication of why so few Londoners cycle. The London Cycle Network is a random collection of difficult-to-find small blue signs directing you down roads where little or no effort has been made on cyclists' safety or reductions in motor traffic. There is almost no segregation from motor traffic. The routes are full of hazards just to make a cyclist's life interesting - pinch points created by pedestrian islands, speed cushions that cause traffic to swerve around whilst trying to overtake you, lines of parked cars that make you risk a 'dooring', or alternatively, the brave decision to 'take the lane' may elicit a friendly musical accompaniment of blaring horns from your fellow road-users. Hendy is obviously under the impression that the LCN is the reason more people are cycling in London. This is nonsense. The Wife used the LCN to take the kids to Wimbledon Park and was scared out of her wits by the behaviour of drivers, as a result I'm under strict instructions to avoid that route. The reasons more people cycle in London are: 1) Osama Bin Laden; 2) Sweaty, unreliable, expensive public transport; 3) 4 years of recession squeezing household budgets. LCN has improved conditions on parts of some routes, but as a network it sstill falls well short of what an average person would judge 'safe enough to cycle'.

"Safety is improving too: casualty rates are falling, from 60 per billion kms in 1980 to less than 25 today - still too high of course, but moving in the right direction."

Interesting use of statistics there. 25 is 41% of the 1980 figure (60). Comparing the total fatalities across all modes, in 2010 - 1857 - is 31% of the 1980 figure of 5953. So cycling has got relatively more dangerous compared with other modes. And what's worse, the absolute numbers of cycling casualties have gone up over the past two years, not down, despite the 'safety in numbers' effect that should be making cycling safer.

"In short, while more can and is being done to encourage cycling and improve provision, cycling is truly a serious mode that offers real benefits for the 21st century travel planning."

I guess by 'improved provision' he means schemes like Blackfriars Bridge? Anyway, let's cut to the meat and potatoes of the speech, which is where Hendy sets out a series of steps that could make this a 'Century of Cycling':

"1. Further improvements to cycle safety such as cycle lanes and traffic safety mirrors, cycle zones at traffic junctions;

2. Much more cycle training not only for cyclists – adults and children - but also PCV and HGV driver training to help reduce the 40% of cycling accidents that involve a heavy goods or passenger carrying vehicle;

3. Investing in more cycle parking conveniently located in towns and near bus and railway stations and providing easy to access journey/route planning information for cyclists;

4. Workplace and school travel planning to get the cycling culture ingrained into daily commuting and school runs;

5. Making cycling itself more attractive means overcoming come challenges such as: improving its 'reputation'; removing barriers to cycling; challenging misperceptions of 'danger'; using more green spaces to make more attractive cycle ways to encourage people to use the bicycle for leisure and commuting; and increasing the understanding of cycling design considerations amongst professionals and ensuring these are adequately reflected within scheme designs – particularly in road schemes.

6. Continuing with Sky Rides and similar schemes, not just in London but on a localised basis across the country to introduce and encourage cycling – around 400,000 people have taken place in these since their introduction in 2009."

Here's why none of the above will work. Cycle lanes and advance stop boxes don't work if they're of the low quality that's typical in London. Lanes need to be segregated - a word that Hendy doesn't use once. There's not much point in training people who aren't going to cycle - and the reason they don't is fear of traffic...which Hendy dismisses as a 'misperception'. That's right - when you get cut up at a junction, or a car passes you a cigarette paper's width away, you're deluded - it's actually perfectly safe. School travel plans? We've already got those, and they don't work, for the simple reason that most parents won't let their kids cycle to school when they've no choice but to mix with fast-moving traffic. Using green spaces? Great idea - until you consider what happens in Richmond Park at the weekend. People are perfectly happy to cycle in large numbers on the quiet segregated paths, but on the busy roads nearby that are devoid of decent cycle facilities, the numbers unaccountably fall off. And it's the same story with Sky Rides. People love cycling when there's not the constant threat posed by motor traffic. But if they cycle back through the Victoria gyratory system, they get a taste of the reality that commuting cyclists face every day - and they don't like it. So the bike goes back in the shed until next year's Skyride.

What next?

"Britain has a reputation for being a laggard in cycling in international standards: the Dutch, Danish and Germans are certainly well ahead of us at least in ridership for local journeys, but in at least two of those countries, their topography and quieter roads greatly incentivise cycling."

This is completely disingenuous. London is mainly flat, and the weather in Holland and Denmark is no better than in Britain. The UK really has no excuse for being behind other North European countries. As for quiet roads - the reason they're quieter is because people cycle. In any case, with segregated paths, traffic isn't the massive disincentive to cycling that it is in the UK. Segregation really is the elephant in the room that Hendy's very careful to avoid eye-contact with.

Hendy does have a parting shot:

"cycling is now part of transport planners' 21st century lexicon of solutions for improving urban spaces - giving town and city centres back to the people as shared and green space, instead of more roads for more cars, 'bringing the village back into the city'. "

Wow. Gimme some of that. I hope he's told his underlings at TfL. Maybe we can look forward to Parliamemt Square being pedestrianized?

Now I don't want to be too hard on Peter Hendy. The state of cycling in London can't be blamed on one person, even if that person is the head of the organization in charge of - er - the state of cycling in London. Hendy has political masters who are scared stiff of upsetting the status quo with any bold moves. On the other hand, if you look at Blackfriars Bridge, at King's Cross, or at any of the other cycling causualty blackspots, you see a pattern of cyclist safety being pushed aside to make way for more, faster motor vehicles. Even TfL's best efforts for cycling - the Superhighways - are in a different league to facilities on the Continent (the Blue Square Premier league, perhaps?), with little attempt to provide safe passage past side roads or through junctions, or even to consistently keep cyclists out of the traffic flow. Hendy's attempts to take credit for increases in cycling are particularly wince-inducing. I don't know anyone who's started cycling because they thought it had become safe. Some people feel safe on the Superhighway blue lanes, but that's in comparison with other cycling conditions in London, and the blue lanes disappear when you most need them, and only operate 6 hours a day, in what is increasingly a 24hr city.
I have no reason to believe that Peter Hendy is not a perfectly charming person - but he's in charge of an organization that has proved itself to be institutionally anti-cycling. Until we see signs that TfL takes cycling seriously, I won't be taking seriously anything Peter Hendy has to say about cycling.

King's Cross - Who's to Blame?

2011-10-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

The road system around London's King's Cross Station claimed the life of another cyclist recently. Fashion student Min Joo Lee died there on 3rd October.

The layout of the road system is the classic 'urban motorway' - fast, multi-lane roads with totally inadequate cycling facilities. It's a grim story of sheep-pen crossings and generally second-class treatment if you're on foot as well.

kingscrossenvironment.com - which is a general community website that covers all local issues, not just cycling or road safety - has some interesting history behind the current road layout. William Perrin writes that TfL commissioned a report on the King's Cross road system around 2008, and then tried to bury it. Perrin FoI'd the report, and summarised it thus:

‘road markings are faded and the crossing space is no longer clear'

‘it is notable just how aggressive vehicles are at this point’

‘auditors felt that casualties were inevitable...auditors felt that vehicle speeds should be reduced..the carriageway surface was uneven’

‘the key crossing location at the southern end of York way should be redesigned

The report called for ‘proper traffic calming measures’ and ‘enforcing/revising speed limits’ ... 'reduce traffic speeds around the junction by installing traffic calming measures'

So, in the TfL-commissioned report's words, Min Joo Lee's death was 'inevitable' given the existing layout, yet they did nothing about it.

It's not just TfL at fault however, it's also the labyrinthine system of bureacracy that means that different bits of this particular road system fall into the jurisdiction of TfL, Camden Council and Islington Council.

Fragmentation of responsibility and the absence of integrated policy at a city-wide level mean changes to even very localised road systems can be impossible to manage given the need to coordinate between multiple organizations, fund from different budgets and fit to different political priorities, plans and electoral timeframes. The result is that solutions have to be designed within the bureaucratic and political constraints, and without cooperation between authorities that are often of different political colours, nothing can happen. That's one reason the Cycle Superhighways don't work well: TfL have planned them along roads they control, which are often not the most sensible cycle routes. It's the reason why the cycle facilities stop when you get to cycle-phobic Westminster. It's also why local councils can't put in pedestrian crossings to help people cross busy roads.

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that the system of control for maintaining London's roads is broken by design. However, TfL can't wriggle out of ultimate responsibility for the mess that King's Cross currently is, because they didn't even try to sort it out. And we know from Blackfriars Bridge that TfL care little for pedestrians or cyclists, so the current layout of King's Cross might be one they actually prefer.

UPDATE: There was a report on BBC London News this lunchtime from Tom Edwards covering this story. TfL responded with talk of revisions to the junction for the 2012 Olympics...which will take into account "the needs of all road users". That sounds uncannily similar to the TfL-speak that I and others got in response to letters about Blackfriars:

"the safety of the proposals were assessed from the perspective of all road users including cyclists"

The End of Growth?

2011-10-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

One thing that both the Coalition Government and the Labour opposition have in common in terms of economic policy is the pursuit of growth (anyone remember what that is?), and the assumption that we'll somehow be able to grow our way out of the current mire. With the Government, it's the private sector that will magically take up the slack from public sector layoffs. With the opposition, it's more about stimulus - VAT cuts while still keeping half an eye on deficit reduction.

There are a few problems with that thinking. First, we've had no significant growth in the Western economies since the credit crunch, despite quantitative easing and Keynsian stimuli. Second, many economists are warning that there may be no meaningful growth for some years and that we're headed for a double-dip recession. Third, the growth that occurred prior to the credit crunch was in part fuelled by debt, meaning that the period of anaemic 'real' growth goes back further than headline growth figures suggest.

What exactly is economic growth? One definition is "the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of its members. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity which lowers the inputs (labour, capital, material, energy, etc.) for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand for goods and services."

Let's look at those enablers of growth for a second. Labour costs have been lowered over the past decade by the increasing relocation of labour-intensive work to low-wage economies. As countries like India and China develop, the cost of their labour will likely increase. Energy costs are also likely to increase, partly because of increased demand from emerging economies, and partly because of peak oil - the increasing cost of extracting oil, and the problem of supply being limited and starting to diminish. Material costs similarly will rise with increasing demand from emerging economies both for raw materials like copper. The cost of the ultimate raw material - food - will rise as the world population expands and as the emerging middle classes in China and elsewhere increasingly eat a meat-rich Western diet. The cost of capital is raised by the need to recapitalise the banks, and the banks' current unwillingness to lend.

That's set the scene. I hope I didn't scare you too much. I'm suggesting that even in the more optimistic scenarios that don't involve sovereign debt defaults or banks going bust, we're all going to have to tighten our belts and consume less for a good while. Indeed, former Prime Minister John Major said so recently on the Andrew Marr show. In very simple terms, in all likelihood we can't grow our way out of the current economic mess. Growth is at an end. That means that the traditional assumption of goods and travel becoming cheaper and available in larger quantities to more and more people needs to be ditched, and instead we need to start planning on conservative stewardship of our resources and a retreat from consumerism.

So what are we going to consume less of? Everyone has to eat, pay rent or mortgage and heat their home, and cutting down in those areas will be tricky. Travel is one area where discretionary journeys can be cut down, and people can travel less by combining essential trips, working from home more, and so on. Where public transport is an option, people can go car-free, taking advantage of car clubs for trips that really do require a car. And of course, this being a cycling blog, you would expect me to suggest that people use bikes. Now, the important thing is, this is already starting to happen. Petrol and car sales are declining, and bike sales are increasing. But as usual the Government is behind the curve.

The transition to lower car use needs to be supported by policy. But current policy still has the built-in assumption that more and more people will be driving further and further. We're building more roads . The Government still aims to convert us from fossil-fuelled cars to electric cars that actually cost more to run, despite the abject failure of that policy so far. They also want us to increase our travel costs by driving at 80MPH! Meanwhile TfL are still trying to increase traffic flow rather than turn roadspace over to the increasing number of cyclists.

It's time politicians of all parties stopped reading the public bedtime stories about how everything will get back to normal and there'll be a happy ending, and start planning on people having to do more with less. A good place to start is by moving away from our increasingly-unaffordable dependency on cars.

Foxed

2011-10-15T13:41:00.000-07:00

Isn't politics strange! It didn't occur to me that the affair of Defence Secretary Liam Fox's ill-advised advisor/best man/lobbyist could turn out well for transport. Fox's departure has resulted Philip Hammond being reshuffled into Defence and Justine Greening being appointed Transport Scretary. Which surely has to be good news - no-one can be worse than Hammond...can they? A quick Google turns up very little past form on Greening. She's only been an MP since 2005, and her website lists campaigns against Heathrow expansion and on improving the District Line. So far so good. She's even met Wandsworth Cycling Campaign in passing, it seems. Will she prove as green as her name? At Cycalogical we're not counting any chickens (geddit?) just yet...

Walk to Work

2011-10-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

The Government is suddenly concerned about the obesity crisis, and is suggesting we all walk to work. "The idea is to get off the bus or the Tube a couple of stops early and walk," said Anne Milton, Public Health Minister and former nurse. In other words, take your medicine, it's good for you, and don't complain about the nasty taste. If you work in London, you work in a city where most of the public space is specifically set up to benefit the least healthy forms of transport and discourage walking. Since Boris was elected, TfL has been busy re-timing traffic lights and re-designing junctions to get as much traffic flowing as possible and getting pedestrians out of the goddarned way. The capital's pavements are often narrow and crowded, and you're walking next to noisy, fast-moving traffic - hardly a pleasant experience. As an additional disincentive, London is one of Europe's most polluted cities, as a result of a long-standing reluctance to tackle emissions standards and traffic levels. In fact, walking in London is often so unpleasant you'll be wanting a large cappucino and a doughnut to cheer yourself up when you arrive.

Walking is a fine thing, but I suspect the Government don't have much idea of the real world of commuting. Walking is slow. Walking for a mile or two will make your journey take considerably longer, and with a public transport system that's dogged by delays, many commuters can't afford the extra time. Also, while walking is better than sitting down, it's also not the best way to burn calories.

I wonder why Anne Milton isn't pushing cycling instead? Cycling is a lot quicker than walking, it's quicker than public transport for a lot of journeys, and will save you money, which walking won't in most cases. Cycling a 5-mile journey will burn a lot more calories than taking the tube for 4 miles and then walking the remainder. But once again, it's the conditions of the public realm that put people off. Roads are set up for motor vehicles, and cyclists and their safety is an afterthought, if it's thought of at all.

One of Cameron's big ideas was to set up a 'nudge' unit to try to make things like exercise and healthy eating an easy choice. The fact is that London, along with most other UK cities, is set up to 'nudge' people the other way. It's all very well for Anne Milton to say "Londoners need to take responsibility [for getting more excercise]". It's about time the Government took responsibility and started creating the conditions in which active travel becomes the default choice for shorter journeys. The economic benefits of a healthier population will far outweigh the costs of the infrastructure. It's been done in Holland, so it can be done here, given the political will.

Decline of the Car - Again

2011-10-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

The mainstream press have been turning out more articles about the fact that the British, and Londoners in particular are driving less, and fewer of us have licenses. Andrew Neather is the latest, in the Standard. Cycalogical picked up the story in May from an Independent article.

There's more evidence just lately: various sources report petrol sales declining by 15% since the credit crunch, and more gloomy news from the car industry that September sales were down 0.8% on the same period in 2010 - which was itself hardly a vintage year. Crucially demand from private buyers fell 9.3 per cent. On the other hand Halfords, one of the few businesses to have a horse in both races, reported a decline in car-related business being compensated by robust bike sales.

And it ain't about to end any time soon. Although oil prices have taken a battering just recently, approaching the $100/bbl level earlier in the week before ending just over $106 today, the dollar has been rising in value which will negate some of the benefit to UK consumers. And the most optimistic scenario for the world economy seems to be low growth for some years, while the worst-case is complete armageddon, so consumers are unlikely to rediscover their profligate pre-recession spending habits for a while.

So the question seems to be, how long will the Tories persist in gearing their transport policy around the motor car, if more and more people are looking for lower-cost ways of travelling?

Greenwich Cable Car

2011-10-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that the estimated construction costs of the Thames cable car have been revised. Again. Upwards. The estimate has gone from £25M initially to £60M, and it will be paid for partially out of the rail budget.

It occurred to me that the point of this cable car is rather unclear. If it's being paid for out of the rail budget, then it must be a transport project, and on that basis it must stand comparison with other transport projects costing £60M. On the other hand, if it's simply a tourist attraction, then why is it being paid for out of our already stretched transport budgets?

To pass muster as a transport project, it has to deliver as many people as possible as fast as possible where there is demand for travel. The fares need to be reasonable, and you need connectivity.

I'm not an expert on cable cars, but a bit of googling indicates it's not the fastest mode of transport (gasp!). The world's longest cable car system, in Vietnam, achieves an average speed of around 20km/h over about 5km. The Thames cable car will run from North Greenwich to Royal Victoria Dock. That'll be handy if you live in North Greenwich and work near the Royal Victoria Dock, or vice versa, but it seems a safe bet that there's not a huge market for that particular journey. Will it be any use for other journeys? It seems unlikely. For any other journey you will end up changing at one or both ends, and the Jubilee Line stops at North Greenwich and crosses the river nearby giving a faster, better-connected option. I suspect there are very few journeys that will be faster given that the cable car run is a slow 1 km plus a walk at either end. On the other hand, the view will be better. That brings us onto the tourist attraction aspect. For tourism, you can set the fares rather higher, but for regular transport you can't charge much more than the cost of a bus fare for such a short journey, given the presence of alternatives. If the cable car is going to attract more tourists than people using it as transportation, which I expect it will, should it be subsidized or paid for out of transport budgets?

Another Cyclist Death

2011-10-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Another woman, another HGV. Rest in peace.

It seems that the details were so horrific that the original Standard report has been redacted and is now a succinct statement of her name and the location of the collision. The original said "witnesses tell of haunting images". There's a bit more here.

She is the 13th victim this year, and we're barely into the dark evenings. Statistically it's impossible to say if London is really becoming more dangerous for cyclists because there have always been considerable variations in deaths from year to year. However, it is possible to say that it isn't getting any safer, because TfL are doing nothing about redesigning dangerous junctions so that HGVs can't run over cyclists as appears to have happened in this case. Instead, they are trying to push more traffic through the Capital's streets, by cramming more lanes in (see the Blackfriars redesign for an example of this).

They are also altering traffic light timings. I've observed the danger of this recently at both Trafalgar Square and Lambeth Bridge (south side), which are both light-controlled roundabouts. The light timings are such that you regularly see vehicles coming round from your right even if the lights are green in your favour. This is partly because when the lights go red, the leading vehicle, and even the vehicle behind, often jumps the light. But it's also because TfL are so obsessed about getting as much traffic through the junction as possible they don't leave enough time for vehicles to clear when the lights change. This is particularly problematic for cyclists, because you will normally be at the front of the traffic queue in the advance stop box (if it's not occupied by taxis or motorcycles), and your safety relies on your ability to get away quickly in front of the general traffic and through the junction without getting overtaken, undertaken or cut up. If there are vehicles failing to give way, you have no choice but to cede passage, whereas larger vehicles can be more aggressive. The result is often you get sandwiched between vehicles entering the junction from two directions.

Multi-lane junctions roundabouts and gyratories are dangerous enough for cyclists by their very nature. Chuck in ASLs that are occupied by 4-wheelers, approach lanes that are blocked, as many lanes as possible, as much traffic moving as fast as possible regulated by super-aggressive lights phasing and you have a lethal cocktail of factors that are guaranteed to lead to tragedy.

Westminster - Congestion and Growth

2011-10-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

West End stores have called for a traffic ban in Oxford Street and Regent Street every Sunday, after seeing how well a similar scheme in Times Square has worked. The New York trial scheme has reportedly been so successful it has been made permanent and retail rents have soared along with visitor satisfaction.

Westminster Council have been playing around with the roads in the West End for a while now, returning some to two-way working and widening pavements, but it's all sticking-plaster stuff, and they remain full of traffic. That's because Westminster is ideologically opposed to doing anything effective about congestion or striking a balance between transport modes based on a vision of a city whose streets are attractive to visitors rather than simply attracting traffic jams.

Westminster Council's car keys will only be prised from their cold, dead hands. It doesn't matter that unrestricted driving is making shopping streets a place not to linger, or that it's increasing TfL's bus running costs and damaging bus journey times.

The Chair of the New West End Company, representing the retailers, said:

"Tackling these priorities could prove to be the deciding factor in the mayoral elections in May 2012. Other cities around the world have dealt with their traffic congestion. London can do the same."

Now isn't that interesting. Boris was elected on a ticket of tackling congestion by playing around with traffic light timings. It clearly hasn't worked too well in the view of these retailers - and remember these are business people, not environmental campaigners. It's time the Tories were honest with the public: the price of unrestricted car use is congestion. If you're not prepared to treat roadspace as a valuable resource that needs to be conserved and used sensibly and productively, the result is unpredictable journey times and streets where people don't want to be. Businesses increasingly understand that. It's time the Tories did too.

80MPH Limit

2011-09-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

Philip Hammond's crowd-pleaser for the Tory conference is a proposal to raise the motorway limit to 80MPH.

"the motorway speed limit ...is nearly 50 years old, and out of date thanks to huge advances in safety and motoring technology"

Unfortunately drivers abilities or reaction times haven't advanced much, and the laws of physics haven't changed. If you raise the limit to 80MPH, those drivers who are doing 80 today will be doing 90 instead. That's 30MPH more than that HGV that just pulled out into the middle lane...oops! Hammond had previously indicated that the 80MPH limit would be rigorously enforced, but somehow I can't see that lasting long, especially with the Government's police cuts and war on speed cameras.

"Increasing the motorway speed limit to 80mph would generate economic benefits of hundreds of millions of pounds through shorter journey times. So we will consult later this year on raising the limit to get Britain moving."

Let's see if we can tease out the flaws in that argument. Businesses value predictability of journeys rather than duration. HGVs will still presumably be doing 60MPH, so they won't benefit from the higher limit. But a lot of congestion is due to collisions. A higher limit will likely mean more collisions, and collisions between faster-moving vehicles will tend to be more severe. So any economic benefits from some faster journeys may be neutralised by increased congestion, less predictable journeys and the costs of more casualties.

Even ignoring collision-related congestion, faster journeys won't necessarily result from a higher limit. It may simply mean that drivers get to the next bottleneck quicker and spend more time queueing. That after all is why the M25 variable speed limit works - if people drive slower, they actually travel quicker. Traffic flow may suffer from the increased speed differential between vehicles - drivers wishing to pull out into another lane will have to allow a bigger gap, and drivers will need to keep a greater distance behind the car in front to be able to stop safely (something not all drivers bother much about). If the prospect of faster journeys attracts more drivers, that will mean more congestion.

Then of course there are the environmental considerations. Higher speeds mean considerably higher emissions. Philip Hammond pointed out on BBC TV news that transport emissions must be reduced but there's more than one way to do that - and suggested that rolling out ultra-low-emission cars would solve the problem. Maybe he's not been reading this blog, which has pointed out that the public are for good reasons about as enthusiastic about electric cars as the Pope is about gay marriage. And an 80MPH limit would actually make electric cars less attractive, as 80MPH in an electric vehicle will drain the battery faster than you can say 'lithium ion technology'. It's those outdated laws of physics again, you see. Maybe Philip Hammond should change them, which should be easy enough as he seems to spend a lot of time in fantasy-land.

How to Reduce Congestion

2011-09-27T15:51:00.000-07:00

Here's a poser. You have to reduce traffic congestion, but you're not allowed to build any roads or introduce road pricing. That's the question that's been asked of the all-party Commons Transport Committee. Let's see what they've come up with.

But first, a couple of thoughts. Building roads generally leads to more congestion, not less, as removing one bottleneck makes driving easier and, quicker, attracting more motorists until the dynamic equilibrium of the system is restored and you're back where you started. So that won't work. Road pricing by contrast seems to be the one solution that experts agree would ease congestion. It's only politicians that don't fancy their chances in convincing the electorate, which is why they've kicked it into the long grass.

The first idea the MPs have put forward is a tougher driving test.

"The overwhelming view from the evidence we received was that aspects of poor road user behaviour led to increased congestion...by directly causing incidents and accidents, often linked to safety issues; and secondly, by inappropriate road use, which is not necessarily unsafe, but which adversely affects the flow of traffic."

Quite right. Only problem is that if you make the driving test tougher, you don't tackle the bad habits of existing drivers. Instead you make it harder - and therefore more expensive - for young people to get a license. On the one hand, this is grossly unfair on a generation who is expected to pay massively more for their education, for housing, and now will be able to get fewer jobs that require them to drive, thus adding to the already large percentage of them that are unemployed. On the other hand, in terms of outcomes it's a great idea. Transport habits are cemented at a young age, so giving young people who aren't on a footballer's wage no option but to take the bus or use a bike would be a good thing for congestion and for the environment. And young people (young men in particular) are in general dangerously crap drivers, concerned with impressing girls, recklessly exploring the outer limits of their cars handing and speed capabilities, and generally learning by trial and error. So the fewer there are of them behind a wheel the better.

So what about those older drivers who passed their test when it was as difficult as scratching your butt and know as much about the Highway Code as Wayne Rooney knows about Baroque counterpoint?

"The MPs said motorists did not always keep up with updates to road signs and the law after they had passed their tests."

No kidding? Astounding!

"Changes to the Highway Code could also be placed more clearly on the DVLA website when motorists renewed a driving licence and be included in a leaflet with tax disk or licence renewal letters... "

I can see that going straight in the recycling...

"A free Highway Code mobile phone application is another way standards could be improved."

What, like Angry Birds?

Sorry, but improving your driving takes time, effort and commitment, and most people think their driving is good enough thanks very much and have no aspiration to make it better. The only thing that will change that, I suggest, is financial incentives and other rewards. For example, an advanced driving test, with the study and examination fees subsidized. An advanced test would likely lead to lower insurance premiums, and the Government could require professional drivers working in the public sector and all its suppliers to hold the new qualification. Other incentives such as the right to use the outside lane on motorways, differential speed limits (i.e. non-advanced drivers limited to 60MPH), and so on could be extended to advanced drivers.

Another suggestion the MPs made was this:

"the government to publish an assessment of traffic flow on the M4 in London since the bus lane was scrapped last November...the bus lane should be reinstated if evidence showed that, taking into account all travellers, it contributed to faster traffic movement."

About a year ago I predicted that closing the M4 bus lane would make journey times worse.

Roads Minister Mike Penning said "We will consider the committee's report carefully and respond in full in due course." We can't wait!

Roadworks

2011-09-23T04:40:00.000-07:00

I got a lovely email from Boris Johnson today, informing me of his new initiative to tackle badly-managed roadworks, including a website where you can snitch on the contractors that are making your life hell.
He says (with grammar not befitting a journalist):

I have just introduced new, tighter standards for roadworks and making it easier for you to tell us when you spot sloppy examples so we can take action to sort it out. You can report sites that don’t come up to scratch at tfl.gov.uk/roadworks

This rather smacks of the failed 'cones hotline' from the 1990s, and it's a rather desperate last throw of the dice by a Mayor that promised to sort out roadworks and, like everyone before him, has found out that actually doing it is a lot harder than talking about it. But at least it's a pleasant surprise to see that TfL have actually considered pedestrians and cyclists: the blurb at the website pledges that roadworks should:

Be tidy and safe with a clutter-free site so it is safe for pedestrians, cyclists and other road users
Take up as little road/pavement space as possible with a compact working area and eliminating the unnecessary use of cones, safety barriers and storage of materials

Crikey. It's a bit of a shame that TfL's own roadworks don't come up to scratch rather too often. I wonder if TfL are aware of how much contractors rely on cycle lanes as a repository for signs, cones and materials. They're probably expecting the website to get most of its traffic from taxi drivers and other important road-users, rather than troublesome cyclists whose journeys don't really matter. Browsers at the ready, folks!

Today's serious collisions

2011-09-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

Two crashes involving cyclists and large vehicles today, a bus and a refuse truck, at two of the most dangerous locations in London.

Reports say the first was at Vauxhall Bridge, and involved a cycle courier being rear-ended by an HGV. Police closed roads for investigation purposes (causing widespread chaos) which indicates it was serious, and the victim was initially described as in a critical condition.

The second was at Aldwych, where reportedly a cyclist undertook a bus that was pulling into a stop. The injuries were described as 'life-changing'.

What these locations have in common is large, multi-lane road system with relatively high traffic speeds and vehicles jostling for position - and poor provision for cycles. At Vauxhall, there is some off-carriageway provision but it's fairly unsatisfactory - you can end up in conflict with pedestrians as there really isn't enough space allocated to pedestrians and cyclists, and there are many crossings which make your transit a frustratingly slow experience.

Aldwych has a toxic mix of a one-way set-up, between three and five lanes, a bizarre taxi rank right in the middle, and four roads on the left. With all the roads leading onto it, the many lanes and the bus stops, vehicles are always changing lanes. Speeds can be high, and there really is no safe line for a cyclist, and no cycling provision whatsoever.

You might choose to draw your own parallels between these locations and the new, redesigned Blackfriars Bridge.

Cycling is Fashionable

2011-09-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Well, judging by the new Debenhams advert, which contains 10 seconds of jolly-fun-looking flowery Pashley-type action in a 40-second ad. No helmets, lycra or sweaty armpits in sight.

National Planning Policy Framework

2011-09-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was going to write a post lambasting the government's latest U-turn-in-the-making, the National Planning Policy Framework. But the Telegraph (along with countless others from right across the political spectrum) has already done a pretty good job, pointing out that with weak planning laws the UK could end up with urban sprawl like Ireland or Los Angeles.

And with urban sprawl you get more car-dependency because public transport doesn't work with low-density housing. It's bad enough in subsurban areas like Merton.

Paradoxically, it's car dependency that also eats up prime development land in towns and cities. In central Wimbledon there are two large Council-run car parks, plus ones at Centre Court and Sainsburys. The council car parks would be worth millions as development sites, and could provide housing located ideally for the town's public transport links.

The other effect is car-dependency creates areas where people don't want to live. Busy roads not only consume land for the carriageway, they also form a blighted corridor where noise, road danger and pollution mean people don't want to live or shop there. That's why the urban motorway of central Morden is such ghost town.

Yet a lot of the time car parking isn't even used. Above is a picture of the Kenley Road car park in Morden, taken on a Monday lunchtime. A handful of cars. Yet the council, rather than looking at under-used assets like this, want to extend Dundonald School onto a much-loved local park (Dundonald Recreation Ground), into the teeth of local opposition, in an area hardly blessed with a surfeit of green space.

Councils and the government need to wake up to the fact that there is usable urban land, but it can't be wasted on cars to the extent it is. It would be great if we lived in a country where there was plenty of cheap land and plenty of cheap oil, on a planet where a bit of CO2 would just warm things up nicely without causing extreme weather events, famines, and so on. Then we could build enough houses and lots of roads and drive everywhere. Unfortunately we live on a small, crowded island where land is in short supply, where oil is expensive, on a planet where climate change is a grave threat.

With that in mind, we have to ask ourselves whether we put housing first or cars first. Car parks do not pay their way in social terms, or even in terms of narrow economics: given the potential market value of a central Wimbledon plot, drivers are being massively subsidised.

The alternative is pretty simple. Communities that rely on public transport walking and cycling and less on cars enjoy a better local environment, have higher housing density yet feel less cramped and less urbanised, and are greener than car-oriented developments. Plus they are safer and healthier places because people get more excercise as part of daily life, and are exposed to less road danger and pollutants. They are also likely to be stronger communities.

Wimbledon Station Redevelopment

2011-09-13T15:37:00.000-07:00

Merton Council have an ongoing project to tart up the streets around the mainline station.

Let's be clear: this development was not undertaken to make Wimbledon cycle-friendly. Merton don't see cycling as a transport mode so it doesn't get much if any consideration in these kinds of schemes. That's why the revisions contain nothing for the less confident cyclist and won't attract new cyclists. won't make it easier for local people to cycle to local shops, and anyone wanting to cycle with their kids to central Wimbledon won't find conditions improved. It would make a lot more sense when planning expensive street-scene developments like this to take an holistic view of transport, and plan for the next 15 years - which is after all the duration of the LIP2, and a period in which Merton claim they hope to increase cycling. And 'hope' is the operative word - there's no strategy.

However, within the limited scope and terms of the station forecourt development, there are worthwhile improvements for active modes of travel - mainly pedestrians, but also for cycling. I hope with the above rant your expectations have been set at a low level, but you might want to lower them a couple of notches further just so you aren't too disappointed....

(Above) Cycling past the station towards Centre Court (south-east-bound), you notice the two narrow lanes that were there before have been reduced to one wider lane. There's no cycle lane marked, but it's a lot easier to filter and the traffic is likely to be slowed although TfL think there should be no.impact on traffic flow. There's a layby with parking spaces just past the station forecourt.

(Above) In the other direction on the same piece of road, there's a central island, but the kerb is flush with the road surface and the island has a gentle camber, so this will enable you to cycle over it and filter past on the right-hand side of the queue of traffic. There's a kerb at the crossing however so you have to cut in at that point.

(Above) More of the same; the 'virtual island' enables you to overtake the queue on the right, and on the left at this point there's a lead-in lane. (below)

(Above) Continuing north-west up Wimbledon Hill Road, there's a single lane rather than the previous two lane arrangement (you can still see where the previous markings have been erased). Hopefully this setup will calm the traffic somewhat.

(Above) The cab rank has been moved to the side of the station together with the disabled bays...

(above) ...and the station forecourt has been completely pedestrianised, with a bank of sheffield stands on the left there, which on a Saturday was loaded with a full complement of bikes (below). In other words, there's not nearly enough of them.

What else? The pavements have been widened and there's going to be a diagonal crossing (Oxford Circus-style) at the Alexandra Road junction.

In summary, the new road layouts do make it a bit easier to get through this area of central Wimbledon on a bike, but you still have to be a confident cyclist. You've still got large volumes of fast-moving traffic going past you in close proximity. There's more chance of snow in hell than of more girls cycling along this road to get to the nearby Ricard's Lodge school. And bear in mind this might be the last major work done here in the period up to 2026, by which cycling should have increased 400% to meet the Mayor of London's decidedly under-ambitious target. What's more, Merton's LIP2 aims to more than triple cycling over 2010 levels by 2015. You might have spotted the disconnect between Merton talking a good game on cycling, and what they're doing on the ground...

Lambeth Bridge

2011-09-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

Lambeth Bridge has just been resurfaced, and they've re-marked the bridge so it's actually rather better for cyclists. So, credit where credit's due, TfL have done two things right: 1. they've taken the opportunity of the bridge resurfacing to consider whether the layout could be improved (rather than re-marking it as it was and then later having to change it); 2. they've seemingly taken some notice of what cyclists are saying.

The main change is the northbound carriageway is wider, and the cycle lane is also wider. This has two effects: the northbound motor traffic tends to stay further away from the cycle lane, and there is more room in the lane. You can just about overtake other cyclists within the lane now.

Southbound they've removed the cycle lane, but I never found that much use anyway - there's still a bus lane and there's usually not much southbound traffic anyway so taxis can give you a wide berth.

Below you can see how it used to be:

...barely enough room for the double-red lines, and vehicles very close indeed.

Above you see the new lane, which is wide enough to accommodate the Darwin's Deli trailer, and the motors are rather further away.

Above, another view of the new lane.

Above: it's not all good news. The start of the bridge is still as dangerous as it was, and the cycle lane doesn't start for a few metres (I think they've actually moved the start point forward, which is a retrograde step). At this point, there's still a risk of a cyclist getting squashed under a left-turning HGV. However, to be fair, all they've done is resurfaced the bridge, and fixing the approach to the bridge will require some re-engineering of islands and pavements. And of course both the southern and northern roundabouts are problematic. So we're left with a reasonable-quality link between two very dangerous and intimidating junctions. The fact that I'm highlighting this as an welcome and unexpected improvement is indicative of how low the standard of progress is elsewhere, for example on Blackfriars Bridge, where the environment is actually being made worse for cycling.

Funding Future Railways

2011-09-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

The latest rail fare increases are predicted to average 8%, and over three years this rate of increase will compound to over 20%, leading to massive season ticket prices for commuters.

One of the advantages of private enterprises is they can borrow money off banks to invest in projects that will make them money in the future. By contrast, a enterprise in public ownership borrowing money will add to the national debt. In business, you borrow money so that you can invest in improving your products or services. Why would you borrow money? Well, assuming the business doesn't have enough cash to fund the investment, you need to. If you put the price of your current services up, they would no longer be competitive, so you'd likely go out of business before you could get the improved service to market.After all, why should your existing customers care about services they may not want or need in the future?

So, when the railways - which are private enterprises - need to invest in improved services for the future, they should be borrowing money. They should be able to get pretty good rates of interest - the railway sector is effectively a monopoly guaranteed a stable or increasing business, and with the price of motoring rising and other pressures, the future prospects are good (after all, increased passenger capacity is why they're investing). Yet the railways are doing precisely what a private enterprise shouldn't do - making their existing customers pay for future services that they may not even benefit from. The only reason they can get away with this is because there is no effective competition. Which rather begs the question: what is the benefit of having private companies running the railways, if they behave to all intents and purposes like a public monopoly?

If you are going to indulge in centrally-controlled cross-subsidy - which is what this government is doing by getting today's train users to pay for tomorrow's services - it would make far more sense to treat the whole transport sector as a holistic entity - which is what it is. By singling out railway users to pay a tax to pay for future transport investment, you create a perverse financial disincentive to use the most environmentally benign transport mode. Motorists should also pay this tax. That way, the playing field would be levelled in financial terms. There isn't a wholesale flight from the train to the roads is for two reasons:
1. it so happens motoring costs are currently also rising. But that's not guaranteed to continue.
2. there is nowhere near enough road capacity to absorb significant numbers of additional journeys.

However, if motoring costs were to go down, that could quite easily result in a significant displacement from rail to road - and with it, an increase in congestion, with its attendant costs on businesses. In that case, you would have reduced fare revenue denting the train companies' ability to invest, and additional congestion-related costs that aren't being used to invest in anything - skilled workers sitting in traffic jams is simply lost productivity.

Legal Aid Reforms - Creating Victims Twice Over

2011-08-31T16:11:00.000-07:00

It's bad enough being seriously injured as a result of someone else's negligence. It's doubly bad if you then cannot be properly compensated for a life that is permanently altered for the worse through no fault of your own
.
Yet that's the prospect for future road collision and accident victims under the government's shakeup of legal aid. Victims are the furthest thing from the government's mind - their first priority is saving money - £350M/year to be exact - and their second objective is likely reducing motor insurance premiums, because that's where the votes are.

According to The Observer, legal aid 'reforms' will abolish the success fee paid by the defendent's insurer, and will cap legal fees at a level that will make it no longer worthwhile for solicitors to take on complex cases. Simple then - don't have a complex accident.

The proposal is typical of a lot of legislation being rushed through by the present government, in that there's not enough thought given to the consequences. If injured people can't claim compensation, it's the taxpayer that will be picking up the bill in the form of NHS treatment and disability benefit. Except of course they're abolishing disability benefit for anyone who can make mist on a mirror, so the answer is even simpler - don't have an accident.

Actually, I'm only being half-ironic. If the government were serious about reducing the costs of legal aid to injury victims, the logical place to start would be to reduce the number of injuries. Yet they're doing the opposite - reducing the funding for road safety, doing their level best to discourage speed cameras (the most effective tool in reducing collisions), and jeopardizing traffic law enforcement through police cutbacks. About the only good thing that's happening at the moment for road safety is that drivers in general - and in particular the most dangerous drivers - are being forced off the road by high costs. If the effect of legal aid changes is to make motor insurance cheaper, then this will both make the roads more dangerous (by pricing dangerous drivers back onto the roads) and make life more difficult and expensive for the victims.

The other really significant change the government should make to reduce the legal aid burden is to make compensation claims simpler. Currently, there is no presumed liability in road collisions, so as an injured party it's up to you to prove your case - often tricky, as witnesses are not always available and the police spend little time investigating many road collisions. Strict liability would reduce the need for complex legal cases to be made, and would reduce the legal aid bill. Even without strict liability, there is plenty that could be done to coerce insurance companies to settle claims out of court, and to simplify the legal process. Additionally, all costs - compensation, NHS and disability benefits - should be reclaimed from the liable party. If it's wrong for the banking industry to be bailed out with taxpayer funds when things go wrong, the same applies to the motor transport industry, who are currently - as did the banks - making private profits while socializing the risks they create.

A Breath of Foul Air

2011-08-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

Funny how quickly the politicians react to riots compared to their torpidity in respect of air pollution, which kills far more people but in a way that doesn't grab the headlines or TV screens. TfL have proudly unveiled their "innovative measures" to tackle pollution, in response to the looming threat of EU fines, so let's take a quick gander at exactly what they are.

What they very definitely don't do much of is reducing the pollutants being emitted. Boris has been backsliding on cleaning up black cab emissions and on the central Low Emission Zone for a while, so these are in fact measures that Boris has delayed rather than anything he can claim credit for (even though Kulveer Ranger tries).

There is a new Clean Air Fund which will be spent initially on three measures: dust suppressant, which sticks particulates to road surfaces, an anti-idling campaign, and planters.

Dust suppressants are only effective on roads where they are applied, and clearly the cost of treating large numbers of roads would be considerable. The manufacture of the dust suppressant and the process of applying it causes pollution. And according to TfL, it only yields a 10% - 14% reduction in PM10 concentrations and has no effect on other pollutants such as NOx.

The anti-idling campaign involves employing 'eco-marshals' to ask drivers - mainly taxi drivers - not to leave their engines idling. It's not having much effect so far, as every single taxi at the rank on The Strand had its engine running last time I walked past (while holding my breath). Without fining drivers, it is difficult to imagine this having much effect. "The eco-marshals are existing TfL staff on secondment, two of whom are licensed London taxi drivers," boasts the press release. You can just imagine the banter, can't you, between the marshals and the taxi drivers who don't want to wear out their starter motors by stopping and starting their engines more than once a day. I wonder if the marshals will be using bikes to get around?

Planters are simply 6-ft high towers of pot plants by the side of roads, which have some effect in absorbing PM10s. Now let me guess: these planters will be about the width of a cycle path, which there isn't enough room for in a crowded city like London. I wonder if these planters will be in the road, or on the pavement? Here's an idea: why not turn Park Lane into a park? That should get rid of a few PM10s.

Of course, this Clean Air Fund is coming out of general taxation - no 'polluter pays' principle here. TfLs own figures claim that taxis are responsible for 25% of PM10 emissions in central London. But taxis aren't paying 25% of the Clean Air Fund. They'd rather someone else paid to clean up their mess.

What else are TfL doing to promote clean air? "An expanded bike hire scheme." Ah yes - that'll be the scheme that has singularly failed to get people out of cars. An expanded bike hire scheme has the potential to positively affect air pollution if people switched from taxis to bikes, but the traffic-choked, car-centric roads of central London, devoid as they are of segregated paths or even usable quiet routes are hardly welcoming for the novice cyclist.

The plain fact of the matter is this. There is only one sure-fire way of reducing emissions in London, and that is to reduce motor traffic. And that is the one thing that TfL isn't doing. In fact, with schemes like the Blackfriars Bridge northern junction, they're increasing motor traffic capacity at the expense of non-polluting transport modes.

North Road, SW19

2011-08-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

North Road, SW19 is one of the few places in Merton where you can park without restriction. As it's a few minutes walk from Colliers Woood tube station, you can guess what happens: commuters double-park down a large stretch of it. Or they did until now. Merton have now introduced a residents parking/pay-and-display scheme, and as a result, the area is now pretty empty of parked cars. That's good news for residents because there will be less traffic along their streets. There's a small benefit for cyclists as well - the volume of parked cars used to narrow the street to the extent that it was difficult for a cyclist and a vehicle to pass each other safely, whereas now that conflict is considerably reduced. What would have been better if they'd allowed parking on one side only, but in practice there seems to be so little demand that in practice it's not a problem.

Unhappy Birthday London Cycle Hire

2011-08-15T14:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I had the pleasure of a trip on one of Boris's blue barges, but an evening appointment pointed to the hire bike as the best option one day last week. I tried to pick up a bike in the morning, but got the red light from all three bikes in the dock. The terminal said 'Your key cannot be read at this time'. No clue as to why. So I phoned the call centre. They said my credit card had expired. Which it had, although they hadn't thought to send me an email notifying me that my account was unusable. So, I located a computer and checked my account. No clue on any of the screens that my credit card had expired, or that anything was less than tickety-boo with my account. Undeterred, I tried to enter my new card details. Three times, without success. So I phoned the call centre again. It turned out that attempting to use my key had resulted in my account being suspended, and when it's suspended, you can't enter a new credit card number. So you're screwed.

So let's summarize. When your credit card expires, as it will, you will get no warning from TfL. That event will silently render your account unusable, although you won't find this out from the self-care website. And you cannot rectify the situation - not without phoning the call-centre, anyway. I wonder how many people think it's the bikes or docking stations that don't work, and give cycle hire up as unreliable?

Oh, and here's the punchline. Because I'd tried unsuccessfully to enter a credit card number three times, each of those attempts resulted in an access fee being charged to my account - so I've been wrongly billed to boot. But at least my account now works, and that evening, I picked up a mount from just off The Strand. I've developed a technique of squeezing the tyres and spinning the wheels to check for obvious faults, and after rejecting four bikes with binding brakes or soft tyres, I picked a straight-looking bike. Unfortunately that proved after a couple of hundred metres of riding to have a bent left-hand pedal axle, and more worryingly, a totally ineffective front brake (a very common fault).

Meanwhile, over the water in Dublin, there's a happier picture with their cycle hire. They've had over 2000 journeys per bike, compared with 1000 for London (in the first year). The secret? "The quality of the service delivered by JC Decaux", according to a Dublin City Council spokesman. He also said that
development of cycle lanes will be part of the dublinbikes expansion. The council is in the process of developing a strategic approach for an integrated cycle network.

A strategic, integrated cycle network? Now there's a strange idea. Trust the Irish...

The Moral Collapse of Society

2011-08-15T14:02:00.000-07:00

If you're already sick of people moralizing about the riots, you can skip to my next post now.

It was a bit of a dilemma which way to choose to ride home on 'Riot Tuesday'. I'd heard rumours of youths gathering in large groups on Wandsworth Common, my usual route, but on the other hand, a route with lots of loot-able shops like the A24 might not be a wise selection either. Eventually I elected for the A24, on the basis that I could probably see trouble ahead before I reached it and could easily do a '180' if needs be. While you are undoubtedly more vulnerable on a bike, you're also more manoeuvrable, and perhaps less of a target (although at least one cyclist was mugged in the riots).

I'd also heard that Wimbledon shops were closing early so I took a quick turn round the Broadway one-way system to see what was occurring. There were a few young people hanging around, but no more than you'd expect on a sunny day in the summer holidays, and everyone was behaving pretty normally. There were I think four police outside the station, and most of the shops were closed.

When you ride a bicycle on the streets of the UK, you regularly come into contact with drivers who have little concern or respect for your right to go about your lawful business, no concern for your personal safety, and for reasons of selfishness, hatred or sheer bloody-mindedness are prepared to flout the law just because they can and because they believe they won't get caught. In other words, it's brought home to you regularly how much you depend on civilized, considerate behaviour and respect for the law, and how vulnerable you are when that breaks down. Maybe therefore, the riots are more of a shock for people who spend all their time in houses in nice neighbourhoods, or in the secure surroundings offered by cars and shopping malls.

I wonder what the aftermath of the riots will be. I prefer not to call them 'riots', because that word has a political overtone. There's nothing political for the most part about these disturbances; it's just amoral organized crime. But condemning the criminality doesn't give any insight into how it came about, what's wrong with society, and how such large numbers of people have such weak personal integrity and so little fear of the consequences of their actions. Maybe there's something marbled through the whole of society that leads to this. I can exclusively reveal that something is: Crap parenting/culture of impunity/elf 'n' safety/inequality/rap music/classical music/the X factor/lack of respect (respec?) for authority other than Simon Cowell/footballers/unemployment/immigration/'me too' culture of entitlement/illiteracy. Delete one or more according to preference.

Cameron has called for a 'new moral army'. Unfortunately when the establishment talk about morals, they usually mean other people's. Consideration, restraint and respect for the law have to be core values at the top of society as well as the bottom. Cameron's near-neigbour Jeremy Clarkson has praised the burning-out of speed cameras and advocated running down cyclists. Maybe his comments were just a bit of harmless fun (he's such a wag), but harmless fun is what some of the rioters seem to think about the riots. I wonder where they got that idea that law-breaking and arson are harmless fun? I wonder what Clarkson has to say about rioters burning stuff or running people down? For the middle classes, motoring law is an inconvenience that can be ignored; speeding fines are just taxes, and taxes are there to be dodged; expense claims are just part of your remuneration and there to be inflated with moat-cleaning and duck houses. Phones and computers can be hacked if it sells papers. If the rich and the media regard parts of the law as optional, irresponsible behaviour as 'a bit of a larf', and the only crime is getting caught, it's a bit much to expect the poor not to do likewise.

Morality is not just about the absolute red line of the law. It is also about the distinction between good and bad behaviour. Hard work, prudence, restraint, conservation of finite resources and the environment, and a healthy lifestyle are some of the values that should be promoted. But this is a Government that hitherto has set its face against intervention to promote 'good' behaviours. It's refused to use any of the levers of government to encourage healthy eating or responsible drinking; the Tory London Assembly members have refused to countenance a road user hierarchy that promotes a shift to healthy, active travel from car use. You can't go straight from being a libertarian to being a paternalist - surely even that is too much of a U-turn for Cameron to perform.

So what are our core values as a society?

It's four years ago that looting for personal gain (by the bankers) led to businesses being destroyed and livelihoods being lost. Then there was much talk of 'moral hazard'. Now, while the bonuses are back for the bankers, in contrast many young people languish on the dole queues while their more academically able and 'fortunate' peers face a lifetime of debt paying off student loans. Meanwhile, we have a culture of individualism, and one that doesn't disapprove of or condemn selfishness. The wealthy burn oil without consideration of the consequences for generations to come, and the media are happy to indulge their short-sighted folly by offering denial of the science that predicts those consequences.

What kind of people do we celebrate? There are plenty of people who put just as much back into society as they take out, and plenty of people who don't flaunt their weath. There are plenty of people whose artistic, sporting, charitable, intellectual and business achievements should serve as a good example to society. But those things aren't in the main celebrated in the media. 'Celebrity' has become little more than a synonyn for ostentatious consumption, for undeserved wealth, for self-indulgence, for offensiveness, aberrant behaviour and moral bankruptcy.

Profligacy too is endemic. The promotion of easy credit means being in possession of desirable goods you do not own and maybe won't ever be able to pay for is valued more highly than running your life sustainably and planning for the future. Being in debt used to be shameful: not any more. In fact it's promoted by governments desperate for economic growth and the material consumption that's supposedly necessary to achieve it. Meanwhile, governments are racking up unsustainable debts of their own because they lack the leadership to make the tough choices necessary to balance the budget. The waste isn't confined to money: there's a long commercial chain of transactions that keeps us blissfully ignorant of the consequences of our purchases, in terms of the natural resources consumed and the dangerous and inhumane conditions in third-world factories.

Having consumerism as UK society's main aspiration may have been workable in the days of high employment and rising disposable incomes, when consumer goods were getting cheaper every year. But today, particularly for many young people, the consumerist dream of the designer wardrobe and i-gadgets is not only out of reach but receding every year as inflation, unemployment and economic stagnation conspire with cuts to education maintenance allowances and tuition fee increases.

Now don't get me wrong. Getting Clarkson to shut up isn't going to change anything. But could cycling could play a part in changing society for the better? Maybe. Unfulfilled aspirations are dangerous, and certainly played a part in motivating the looting. Car ownership is in many ways the most damaging aspiration because it is the most expensive to fulfill as well as being the most environmentally harmful. The aspiration is reinforced not only by advertising, but also by the fact that the roads are so clearly designed around motorists, reinforcing the perception that motorists are at the top of the social tree...

Tragic Road Accident in Birmingham

2011-08-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

This tragic accident in Birmingham couldn't be prevented. The driver probably fainted, or perhaps was distracted by a spider, or perhaps just didn't see the three men. Whatever the cause, it's a great shame but it's just one of those things. There's no point in charging the driver with murder, because this kind of thing could happen to any of us after a moment in which we were distracted by the lure of free consumer goods.

Cycle Hire Washout

2011-08-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Craven Street docking station near Charing Cross Station was a touch damp after last week's heavy rain:

Barriers to Cycling Removed?

2011-08-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

I did a double-take walking down the passage between the Tramlink and Dorset Road in SW19 the other day. There used to be a metal barrier at the end of the passage which was designed to stop cyclists from colliding with pedestrians (see below).

The barrier likely caused as much conflict as it prevented, by forcing cyclists and pedestrians into a narrow gap and setting cyclists up at the wrong angle as they emerge from the path to be able to see pedestrians on the Dorset Road pavement. Anyway - the barrier's gone! And it's not been replaced with anything. On the photo below you can just see two or three patches of tarmac which mark its grave.

I hate to be a cynic, but I have a nasty feeling that something worse will take its place. I do hope Merton Council prove me wrong. (There's a first time for everything.)

Maiden Lane, Westminster

2011-08-07T14:08:00.000-07:00

Westminster Council have been digging up Maiden Lane for months now, and laying very expensive-looking granite setts. Below you can see the state it's been in:

On the plus side, the road's been closed to traffic so it's been more peaceful than usual. So what difference has this makeover achieved? Will we see cafe tables out on that widened pavement? Will the road be closed to through traffic, with just the odd bicycle trundling past? Will it be made 2-way for cycles?

Above you can see the old signage hasn't been changed, so cycling west is still prohibited (although interestingly, there is no one-way signs at the other end, so in theory you could walk your bike past the no-entry sign and then cycle west. However I'm sure this is not what Westminster Council intended).

Above you can see that all that incredibly expensive granite sett paving has been used for car parking. So you can't even see where all you're money's gone...except...

...someone's spilt something oily on it thus ruining the natural stone appearance and making it look like an East-End car repair shop, and to boot they've put some makeshift access cover, filled around with tarmac, thus making it a total eyesore.

On the plus side, there's not much traffic going down there yet, but that's because the taxis and van drivers haven't discovered that it's been re-opened yet.

So in summary, Westminster Council have taken a narrow, pedestrian- and cycling-hostile central London rat-run and transformed it into...a narrow, pedestrian- and cycling-hostile central London rat-run. And the cost of this? Well, I can only guess, but they've been working on it for some months so it could be well into 6 figures.

2011 Q1 Road Casualty Statistics

2011-08-05T07:12:00.000-07:00

Well, the road casualty stats are out again. Good news if you travel by car, as serious casualties are down 9% year-on-year. If you ride a motorcycle, you were 6% less likely to suffer a KSI (killed or seriously injured). Not such good news if you're a pedestrian - only a 3% reduction for pavement-pounders. The wooden spoon however goes to - guess who - cyclists, with a 10% INCREASE in KSIs.

The Quarter 1 results are even more pronounced: comparing Quarter 1 2011 with Quarter 1 2010, there was a 7% reduction in car-occupant KSIs, but a 4% increase for motorcyclists, 16% increase for pedestrians and a massive 26% increase for cyclists. You can't take one quarter in isolation and extrapolate because there are factors like poor weather that distort the trend, but nevertheless it's alarming and real people did die and were injured - these are not just statistics.

What's more alarming is the trend over the last couple of years. The number of pedal cyclists killed increased by 7 per cent from 104 in 2009 to 111 in 2010. The number seriously injured in accidents reported to the police increased by 2 per cent to 2,660.

If there were a 10% increase in cyclists KSIs every year, and a 10% reduction in KSIs overall every year, it would take about 10 years for the number of cycle casualties to overtake casualties for all other transport modes. Is that unlikely? Perhaps, but if cycling increases in popularity significantly and nothing is done to improve cyclist safety, maybe not.

Some might suggest the 'safety in numbers' effect should reduce the casualty rate per mile cycled. If so, that effect should already be operating in central London, so there may be no further gain to be had. In the countryside however, cyclists are still rarer than spotted zebras, and the roads have people like Rowan Atkinson crashing their cars into trees at high speed, blissfully unaware that there might be a cyclist round the next blind corner.

There's one conclusion that can safely be drawn. Britain's road system (and many of the drivers on it) is woefully under-prepared for an increase in cycling, and it is a national disgrace that the Government is prepared to stand idly by and allow a transfer of risk from the least vulnerable to the most vulnerable road users. It's time to get angry.

Cycling e-petition?

2011-08-04T10:40:00.000-07:00

From the Governments re-launched 'e-petitions' website:

e-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK. You can create an e-petition about anything that the government is responsible for and if it gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will be eligible for debate in the House of Commons.

Of course, e-petitions don't guarantee action, but they do guarantee a certain amount of publicity. If your petition gets over the 100,000 threshold, it goes to a cross-party committee which decides whether it is worthy of debate.

Most of the petitions on the website so far are the usual hang 'em and flog 'em type of thing, with a few oddball and niche items mixed in.

This could be a good opportunity to generate some debate and publicity around cycling. I daresay there are 100,000 people interested in cycling who would be prepared to sign a petition. So it is a question of formulating a petition that has broad enough appeal to attract enough signatories, and is likely to get past the cross-party committee. Maybe the LCC leadership can think of something?

Cavendish Road Fatality

2011-08-04T04:26:00.000-07:00

A 49-year-old woman is the 11th cyclist to die on London’s streets this year. A van collided with her bicycle at around 11am on Sunday 31^st July, on Cavendish Road in Clapham, part of the South Circular near Clapham Common.

Few reliable details have emerged, but it has been the subject of considerable discussion on various internet forums. The collision seems to have occurred near the junction between Cavendish Road and Poynders Road. The van was travelling south-east away from Clapham Common, but it’s unclear whether the cyclist was travelling in the same direction.

Witnesses writing on the forums give harrowing accounts:

“I am still in severe shock ... I keep thinking about her poor family.”

“To look at his [the driver's] face and see the horror of what he had just did will stay with me, his first reaction was to cover her modesty, by taking off his tshirt and putting it over her, I was touched by this. He looked sooo lost, tears come to my eyes just remembering his moments, some kind lady was sitting down with him and talking to him”

“i was taken in to a house after about 5 mins as i passed out from the shock”

“What we saw will stay with us forever.”

I’m not going to speculate on what happened but as a regular user of this cycle route, I do know that it is hostile for cyclists and there are many hazards. However, this particular stretch, unusually for London, does have an off-carriageway alternative in the form of a cycle path on the north-east pavement between Abbeville Road and the Poynders Road junction. Unfortunately, it’s not very obvious. Approaching from the south you could quite easily cycle past without knowing it was there. From the other direction, there’s a ‘shared path’ sign on the pavement but nothing more obvious. There are a number of separate crossings to negotiate at the Poynders Road junction to get back onto the carriageway, so staying on-carriageway is quite likely quicker and easier in many respects.

A couple of final thoughts:

Just reading the witness accounts is profoundly disturbing, and really brings home the horror of a fatal collision. I wish that Boris Johnson and TfL would read the testimony and perhaps they’d give more thought to whether a couple of seconds on journey times are a worthwhile tradeoff for compromised safety and its inevitable consequence: more bereavement, more wrecked lives, more traumatized witnesses. It’s also worth sparing a thought for the paramedics and police who, unlike the witnesses, have to deal with this kind of scene on a regular basis.

Do bear in mind though that any death is a terrible trauma. There are on average only around 120 fatal cycle collisions every year in the UK, whereas there are 111,000 heart attacks (not all fatal, but those that aren't often have life-altering consequences). By cycling, you are massively reducing some of the biggest risks you face (fatal illness as a result of a sedentary lifestyle) and only marginally increasing your chance of dying on the roads.

#1 Hero and Hardman of Cycling

2011-08-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

Eddy Merckx? Bernard Hinault?

No, it's Arturas Zuokas.

The Mayor of Vilnius. In Lithuania.

Cycalogical salutes you!

2011-08-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

Norman Baker is telling Londoners to ‘travel differently’ during next year’s Olympics, by which he means walking and cycling (and in London, cycling really is different). Why this sudden love affair with sustainable transport? The tubes and trains will be chock full of sports fans. The roads will be totally unable to cope, their capacity being reduced by the ‘Zil lanes’ which will ferry corporate sponsors and assorted 'big cheeses' and expense-account Games hangers-on from their five-star central London hotels. And of course the buses will crawling along on those super-saturated roads trying to handle the overspill from other forms of transport.

It’s a shame that this Government and its predecessor didn’t start to get the sustainable options into some sort of usable (let alone attractive) state so that asking people to use them wouldn’t come as such a shock. For the majority of people – people who can cross the road safely and drive a car, but aren’t skilled in the arcane arts of vehicular cycling - asking them to cycle to work in London is like asking them to eat cabbage soup. They may know it’s good for them but it doesn’t look very appealing and if you try it, it can leave a nasty taste in the mouth. In fact it can be so unpleasant that it can put you off for life.

So what are the Government going to do to make cycling attractive during the Olympics. Are they going to set up special ‘Olympic cycle lanes’ so that people can get through central London with confidence, knowing they aren’t going to be battling with HGVs and aggressive motorists to get round Piccadilly Circus, Parliament Square or Trafalgar Square? No, thought not. They're just going to allow the other options on the transport menu to be so unpalatable that cabbage soup is the most appealing.

Debt, Deficit, Pensions, Tuition Fees and Other Stuff

2011-08-02T15:44:00.000-07:00

The US Government has finally agreed to lift the federal debt ceiling. All over the developed world, the recovery is looking more and more anaemic. Historically, countries have been able to run a deficit in perpetuity on the basis that economic growth would keep the total sovereign debt at a manageable proportion of GDP. Is that about to change?

Note that despite the increasingly pessimistic growth forecasts for western economies, and despite the IEA's release of emergency oil reserves, after a brief dip the (Brent crude) oil price is hovering near the $120/bbl level again.

The big problem with economic growth is that it's linked to increased energy - and therefore oil - consumption. Increased oil consumption will feed through to an increased oil price, which will act as a brake on economic growth. This negative feedback loop that means that economic growth is unsustainable without a major shift towards renewables - that's without considering the imperative of addressing climate change. Meanwhile in China and India, a middle class is developing that aspires to own cars, air conditioners and all manner of energy-consuming appliances, adding to the upward pressure on oil prices.

Meanwhile in the UK, we have a generation of young people who will be entering the world of work with a £80,000 student debt on their shoulders. They'll also be paying top whack for housing. If they do get on the housing ladder it looks unlikely they'll be enjoying the kind of house price growth we've seen over the past couple of decades. Then they'll be supporting an increasing population of older people. On top of all that, they'll have to save for their retirement, and unlike previous generations, their savings won't be growing unless the economy does - which right now it ain't, and it doesn't look like it will for some time.

It may be a message no-one wants to hear, but it seems increasingly likely that we've seen the peak of living standards in this country. We've been on a decade-long consumer binge, running up our private and state credit cards and using up the oil. Now, quite literally, it's payback time - unfortunately the generation who had been drinking champagne all night have left their children with the bar tab.

What has all this musing about economics and the 'jilted generation' got to do with cycling? Well, if we don't 'green' the economy, there won't be any growth. Without growth, fewer and fewer people, particularly of the younger generation, will be able to afford to run cars. If we do 'green' the economy, a switch from private motor transport has to be a part of that process. So either way, cycling being the cheapest and greenest form of transport, has to figure pretty large.

On the face of it, we don't need to invest a penny in cycling. That's the marvellous thing about it - cycling can take place on existing infrastructure that was designed for motor vehicles. However, the danger is that while the current barriers to cycling exist - mainly fear of traffic - people will have to get pretty desperate before they try it. And while people stay in their cars, we'll be stuck with an economy that will function a little worse every year as an escalating oil price eats into disposable incomes, business margins and competetiveness.

That's not to say that cycling is going to save the economy. It's only a small part of a massive program that has to involve energy efficiency, renewable energy, electric vehicles, public transport, a switch from air travel to surface transport, and lots of other shifts. But I suspect that the day the Government finally acknowleges cycling as a transport mode will be the day it finally accepts there's a new economic paradigm and lets go of the idea that we can simply carry on as we did before.

Blackfriars Flashride

2011-07-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

Another one of these LCC-organized flashrides, to let 'em know we've not forgotten about Blackfriars Bridge. See LCC's site for details: 6pm outside Doggetts pub, south end of Blackfriars Bridge.

I can't help thinking a bit more notice would help attendance, and 6PM seems a bit early...I'll see if I can get some of my chums along.

Olympic Bike Race Test Event

2011-07-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

A year till the London Olympics, and you'll have the opportunity to watch the London – Surrey Cycle Classic which will follow the same route as the Olympic road race, and will feature road cycling's 'heads of state'. This is a closed-roads event, which isn't something that you get very often in the UK and certainly not in London. The route will go through Richmond Park.

“We are concerned about how the crowds are going to be handled, and how they’re going to make sure they don’t impact on the wildlife and environment of the park,” said Ron Crompton, chairman of Friends of Richmond Park.

It's a shame Ron isn't more concerned about the impact on the wildlife and environment of the park that is caused by motor traffic, which is allowed through 7 days a week from dawn to dusk throughout the year. Motor traffic damages the park's ecology in lots of obvious, and not-so-obvious ways: this was highlighted in a report by Dame Jennifer Jenkins in the 1990s, which said
"this stretch of countryside, itself quite extraordinary in a world city, is undermined by noise, pollution, congestion and danger from cars, all aspects of the surrounding great city which most Park visitors have come to escape”.

But of course, the Friends of Richmond Park includes a substantial number of people who are effectively Enemies of Richmond Park, because they are quite happy to drive their own vehicles to the Park and to support the right of others to drive in the Park.

CSH 8 Superhighway - lessons learned?

2011-07-26T01:37:00.000-07:00

The latest Cycle Superhighway, number 8, will take you from Wandsworth to Millbank, and officially opened on July 19th. At the same time as the lauch of this latest Superhighway, TfL have released a review of the first two Cycle Superhighways, which you can read here. You really don't need to waste your time reading the whole thing; you just need to read "Chapter 6: What will be done differently for future Barclays Cycle Superhighways". In fact, you don't need to read it. TfL didn't need to write it. Everything that is wrong with CSH #7 was immediately obvious from Day 1. In fact, it was obvious well before that point. Cyclists prefer it if they have their own lanes, they prefer it if those lanes are a decent width, and the prefer it if cars, whether parked or moving, stay out of those lanes. It really is that simple. Anyway, the key" lessons learned" paragraphs are:

"The implementation of mandatory cycle lanes is planned for future Barclays Cycle Superhighways where capacity and capability allows. Over the long term mandatory lanes will continue to ensure the benefits of cycle lanes on busy carriageways are realised, subject to their enforcement."

"TfL will aim to implement changes to the operation of parking bays along the Barclays Cycle Superhighways where practicable, to provide consistency along a route e.g. peak, off-peak, tidal. Wherever possible, potential parking issues will be designed out of future routes to avoid car parking on the Barclays Cycle Superhighways, and will be enforced where appropriate. Consultation with residents and businesses will take place where this is planned."

Note the weasel words: "where capacity and capability allows...where practicable...wherever possible". The important thing is that TfL, with the help of research from its Department of the Bleeding Obvious, now concedes that allowing parking and driving in cycle lanes is not such a terribly good idea.

Let's see if CSH #8 has been "done differently".

First, the good news. North of the river, along Grosvenor Road and Millbank, the lanes are mostly continuous, mandatory and fairly wide, except at a couple of junctions.

The bad news starts on Battersea Park Road:

Above: Not too bad to start with. There are parking bays, but the lane goes round them with a reasonable 'door zone' allowed.

Above: Oh dear. The cycle lane is now too close to the last car (which is parked within the marked bay), and the lane ends abruptly.

Above: It gets worse. The lane is in the gutter, but it's interspersed with parking bays. Here, there's a central reservation meaning that overtaking cars can't give you a wide berth if you keep those parked cars at a safe distance. There's no traffic calming or even a 20MPH limit here either.

Above: More of the same, this time just after a pedestrian crossing, so cars will be accelerating past just as you get to the parked cars.

Above: The road narrows as you pass the Latchmere Road junction, so you have to make do with a 'ghost lane'. The car above is taking a perfectly reasonable line and not breaking any laws, even though it's in the cycle lane.

Above: Again, this is just after a junction, so you have to pull out of the blue lane just when cars have got up speed and are about to overtake you.

In summary, CSH # 8 south of the river is actually worse than CSH #7 on both key issues of parking and mandatory cycle lanes. There's more parking in the cycle lanes at peak times before 7PM which is when all the above pictures were taken. The lane is not mandatory and/or is too narrow for considerable stretches. It's perhaps not surprising that I didn't see a huge number of cyclists on this route.

I am sure TfL will protest that it "wasn't practicable" or "wasn't possible" to do anything about the problems you see in the pictures above. This simply isn't true. If you look at the parking bays, many of them could easily have been relocated into the side roads which are literally metres away, or simply removed altogether. With the stretch between Latchmere Road and Falcon Road, the reason the westbound lane is so narrow is there are two eastbound general traffic lanes. If the CSH attracts cyclists as intended, one of those lanes won't be used as it will be full of cyclists. That being the case, the left-hand eastbound general traffic lane could be narrowed to allocate more space to the westbound lane. (Interestingly, one eastbound lane has been blocked for some time by building work. It's amazing how whole lanes can be taken out for months or even years at a time for construction projects, but for cycling the excuse is always "wasn't possible").
The idea of reconfiguring the road to remove a traffic lane won't have occurred to TfL, because they are concerned with theoretical capacity and flow issues that take place on computers that don't have cycling programmed into the model.

More Media Speed Camera Nonsense

2011-07-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I commented on a report that the BBC had been criticised for giving climate sceptics too much airtime. In the firing line for sloppy journalism today, it's the Lancashire Evening Post, whose journalists have a weak grasp of science and no idea of balance.

"Cash-grabbing speed cams will be reviewed"

is the headline, although the article comments

"one of them, in Eastway, close to Glencourse Drive, Fulwood, caught just nine people speeding"

Not much cash grabbed there, then.

The article quotes chapter and verse from the Association of British Drivers (ABD), which is an unrepresentative group of petrolheads with a very small membership, dedicated to seeing the back of speed cameras, speed limits and anything else that slows them down. Balancing opinion from a Road Safety Partnership, a road safety charity like Brake, or indeed anyone who knows the first thing about road danger? No thanks- don't want to spoil a good story.

What's most irritating is the total ignorance of statistical methods. If you take any group of camera sites, there'll be a spread of collision rates. Some will have more collisions and some will have less. Over time there will be variation. At some, the collision rates will go up in real terms or in relation to the average trend, and at others, collision rates will go down. The journalist writes:

The Evening Post has found three speed cameras in Preston alone where the number of accidents and casualties has increased since the cameras were installed.

Nothing remarkable in that. But the Post jumps to the conclusion that because collisions have gone up, the cameras "don't work". This is completely unscientific. Normal statistical variation could explain the anomaly, but there could be other factors. If conditions at a particular camera site have changed, this could lead to more collisions. For example:

nearby roadworks causing rat-running and changed traffic patterns;
changes to linked roads which increase traffic through certain junctions;
road markings such as white lines becoming unclear through wear and tear.

The increase in collisions may have been much higher but for the presence of a speed camera. Just because collisions go up does not mean it's the camera's fault. To make an assertion like that, you need either a solid statistical evidence base, or a causal link, neither of which they have. In fact, quite the opposite: there is plenty of evidence that speed cameras do reduce collisions, and no real evidence that they cause them, despite the ABD's efforts to suggest that they distract drivers or make them concentrate on their speedometers to the exclusion of all else.

The ABD spokesman offered their usual assertion that with collisions falling nationally "it's impossible” to separate the effect speed cameras have had from other factors. In fact it is possible to separate the speed camera effect by turning the cameras off and seeing what happens. This is exactly what they did in Oxfordshire. Result: a 50% increase in fatalities and a 10% increase in serious injuries. The ABD can't blame that on speed cameras.

Climate Sceptics given Too Much BBC Airtime

2011-07-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

An inquiry has found that in the quest to be impartial, the BBC has given too much weight to climate sceptics.

It seems perfectly reasonable to allow a cross-section of views to be represented on a topic, after all, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But people are not entitled to their own facts. And climate science, like all science, is a matter of fact. It is right to allow science to be questioned on the basis of research and evidence - indeed this is what science does - but not on the basis of rhetoric, fiction and misrepresentation, which is the tactic employed by the deniers.

Perhaps part of the problem is the BBC doesn't have enough people who understand science, and too many fat cats who are afraid that climate science isn't compatible with their first-class, limousine-based, taxpayer funded lifestyles.

Electric Car Q2 Sales

2011-07-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

So far, the electric car grant that is supposed to transform road transport in the UK has been, to put it politely, a partial success. It enticed a further 215 applicants over the last three months, to bring the total to an unimpressive 680. Of those 215, 75% were bought by companies meaning that only 50 private motorists bought one. 49 of them didn't want an electric car but the salesman was such a very nice young man. I wonder where Philip Hammond is hiding? Yes, that's right, the same Philip Hammond who said:

"Government action to support affordable vehicles and more local charging points means we are on the threshold of an exciting green revolution - 2011 could be remembered as the year the electric car took off."

A DfT spokesman trying to keep a straight face said:

“We are committed to supporting the early market for low emission vehicles in the UK – they are essential in making reductions in CO2 emissions from road transport. We can’t turn our back on the automotive sector that adds around £11 billion a year to the UK economy.”

Now, you could pick holes in every phrase in that paragraph, but the one fundamental truth is that by any measure the DfT has failed to "support the early market for low emission vehicles", and so far 2011 doesn't look like it will be "the year the electric car took off" given that sales are on a downward trajectory. It won't have helped that Boris Johnson has made all new VED Band A cars exempt from the congestion charge, which removes the incentive to buy an electric car to avoid that expense. Hammond seems to have no realistic plan to get people to buy electric cars. Unless he offers bigger incentives that make electric cars an economic proposition, or makes fossil-fuelled cars relatively more expensive (which is what the congestion charge did in London until Boris changed the rules), why would anyone bother? Hammond cannot do either of those things, because there's not enough money for bigger incentives, and more tax on fossil-fuelled cars would be seized upon by the media and perhaps the opposition as 'war on the motorist'. Which means Hammond is left without a strategy to de-carbonize the UK's road transport.

Oil prices may come to the rescue in a few years time, but by then it will be too late. The need is to reduce our oil-dependency so that the economy is less exposed to an oil price shock. Waiting for the oil price to rise before we do anything about our oil-addiction is a bit like waiting to have a heart attack before we stop sitting on the couch eating junk food (which strangely enough is another of the Coalition's policies).

Ironically enough, the Government's do-nothing policy could actually be the best one for cycling. A sudden increase in oil prices could force a lot of people off the roads. Over the last year many people have reduced their car mileage in response to relatively mild increases in the cost of motoring. People might just discover at the back of their garage a two-wheeled device that enables them to travel for free, and their need to get around could just be stronger than their fears and prejudices about cycling.

How to Buy Cycling Shoes

2011-07-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

There are three basic methods of buying cycling shoes.

Method A:

Check your shoe size.
Bin your old shoes.
Visit your favourite retail cycling website, and pick a shoe. Don't just pick one at random; you need a shoe with lots of features, such as a carbon sole and a wierd ratchetty thing to do it up. And of course it has to be on special offer.
A few days later and the shoes will arrive. They will look nothing like the picture and won't fit, because they're Italian.
Fish your old cycling shoes out of the bin and ride round to the post office to return the new shoes to the retailer. You can't order the same shoe in the next size because that won't be in stock.
Return to Step 1 and repeat.

Method B:

Check your shoe size.
Visit your favourite retail cycling website, and do a bit of research to get an idea of what shoes you like the look of. Don't just pick one at random; you need a shoe with lots of features, such as a carbon sole and a wierd ratchetty thing to do it up.
Go to your LBS. Most of the shoes you researched won't be in stock and the others will be priced over your budget, except the ones they don't have in your size.
Return home exasperated.
Return to Step 1 and repeat

Method C:

Check your shoe size.
Go to your LBS.
Find a shoe you like and try it on. You now know it fits, but it will be priced over your budget. Give the guy some old pony about "thinking about it and coming back later".
Go home and visit your favourite retail cycling website. Find the shoe you liked. That won't be in stock in your size, so order something similar but cheaper.
Bin your old shoes.
A few days later and the shoes will arrive. They will look nothing like the picture and won't fit, because they're Italian.
Fish your old cycling shoes out of the bin and ride round to the post office to return the new shoes to the retailer.
Decide to cut your losses and buy the shoes you liked at your LBS after all.
Ride round to your LBS. Your LBS is closed - it's gone bust because of people like you wasting their time and then ordering stuff off the Interweb.
Find another LBS, return to Step 1 and repeat.

Electric Car Update

2011-07-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

I hate to say "I told you so".

Sales of electric cars have been flatter than a worn-out battery: only 534 people took up the opportunity to buy a Government-subsidized electric vehicle (EV). That could be something to do with the fact that even with the rebate, it's still cheaper to buy a Ford Focus and 10 years' worth of diesel, and with the Focus you don't have range anxiety or resale values to worry about.

Bear in mind these 534 sales have been achieved with considerable publicity: last week's Saturday paper had a couple of prominent ads attempting to spark public demand for the various electric vehicles. I've yet to actually see one of the new generation of EVs on the street except for a couple of Smart EVs that were clearly being test-driven.

The manufacturers are, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, now assuming that many EVs will be second cars. Think about what that means. A 2-car family is a deeply car-dependent family. They're replacing one car with an EV, likely the smaller, more economical car used only for shorter journeys - dropping the kids off at prep school, trips to Waitrose or the acupuncturist or the hairdresser's, that kind of thing. The other car is likely to be a larger luxury model suitable for making longer journeys in comfort, and that continues to be a fossil-fuelled car. No doubt our middle-class couple will feel very smug about all they are doing for the environment, as they drive round to recycle their Telegraphs and Balsamic vinegar bottles, but remember that while we still mainly have fossil-fuelled grid electricity, an EV isn't that much greener than a small diesel car. So our 2-car household has made a few local journeys a little less polluting. It would've been much more effective to buy a bike, but of course our family probably already owns a few, which they will continue to load onto a bike rack on their SUV and drive out into the country where it's safe to ride them.

So, if the average EV buyer is a typical 2-car household, the good old taxpayer giving massive subsidies to help some of the wealthiest, most car-dependent and most polluting households continue pretty much as they are but feel less guilty about it. Is this really the Government's idea of progress in reducing our national carbon footprint? Oh - and I nearly forgot - an EV is just as bad for congestion as a fossil-fuelled car.

If, instead of spending £5000 a pop on putting in on-street charging points and subsidizing EVs for the wealthy, we invested the money in decent cycling infrastructure we'd save more carbon, reduce congestion and be less flabby into the bargain. And as other countries already know, cycling projects pay back the investment in economic benefits many times over.

School Safety Zones

2011-07-20T04:07:00.000-07:00

One thing that even most hardened petrolheads won't speak against is the idea that you should drive slowly and carefully past schools.

Unfortunately, children have a habit of popping up in all sorts of unexpected places at unexpected times. So the idea that 20MPH in the immediate vicinity of a school is sufficient and motorists can revert to their usual speedy inattentive ways when they are more than a hundred yards away from a school gate is flawed. As 20sPlenty point out:

"...why are we so pre-occupied with school safety zones if children are most likely to be casualties on the rest of the road network where there are higher speed limits, and when they are not on the way to or from school?"

Tragedies like this one are a reminder that children are more vulnerable to cars when they are not at school. The 14-year-old victim was hit outside a leisure park on the busy, 4-lane dual carriageway with a 40 MPH limit. The driver has been charged with causing death by careless driving.

When you drive, you need to be constantly alert and mindful of the fact that you need to be driving in a way that enables you to avoid collisions, rather than just not be the direct cause of one. But the law makes no such assumption. With 'Road Safety', we're taught from an early age that it is the child's responsibility to avoid being hit by a car. That's why it's such a relief to grow up, get a license, get behind the wheel and relax in the knowledge that collisions are now somebody else's fault for getting in you way.

Morden Road Crash (yet another one)

2011-07-20T03:19:00.000-07:00

Looking back over my previous posts there seems to be a pattern emerging: the words "Morden Road Crash" seem to occur rather frequently. So why change a winning formula?

Here’s a picture of evidence of the latest one, taken yesterday (19th July 2011):

This is exactly the point (to within a couple of feet) where I previously witnessed a crash. The road is configured with two southbound lanes at this point, so cars can jostle for position. Undertaking at speed is common. No wonder this is one of Merton’s most dangerous road. Even more alarmingly, you can’t escape the danger on foot. The footway is very narrow at this point and children walk to school in both directions along it. There are no proper crossings for about a mile. It’s quite common to see people cycling on the footway, which is quite understandable as the road conditions for cyclists are not for the faint-of-heart. More here.

Cycle Superhighway 7

2011-07-18T02:17:00.000-07:00

Some observations a year or so on from the opening of CSH #7.

Above is the scene heading south-west from Stockwell around 6PM on a weekday in early July 2011. I joined the CSH at the Stockwell Gyratory, and the cyclists were at least two abreast as far as the eye could see. You can see them spilling out of the blue lane into the bus lane, and it was like this pretty much continuously right up to Clapham Common. The cycle traffic was so dense that motors had difficulty making left turns. The cyclists had definitely thinned out considerably by the time I got to Balham however, and the number making the full-length journey to Colliers Wood was fairly low.

Above is the scene at Clapham North on the same day.

The cycle traffic seems to have very well-defined peaks. I cycled the same route the next day but about half an hour later, and there were far fewer cyclists. Being among this many 'peak hour' cyclists does give you a sense of 'safety in numbers', but for me the feeling of security is more to do with having a lot of potential witnesses around should a collision occur than with objective safety. There are plenty of hazards: the junction treatments are rudimentary (with the odd exception) and there are lots of side-roads with motors turning across the blue lane both left and right. Additionally having this many cyclists has its dangers: I've seen cyclists close-passing left and right at speed, and I saw one riding with elbows on the grips and hands in the middle of the bars so he couldn't reach the brakes. He actually clipped another rider's wheel, which fortunately didn't result in an 'off'. I think the reason there aren't more incidents is that when you ride regularly you develop a kind of 'hyper-awareness' of what's going on around you.

Whatever the reality of cycling trends in London - and I don't have a lot of faith in statistics in this area - anyone seeing this scene will get the impression that there are a lot of people cycling, and may even be tempted to join them.

Violent Assault on Cyclist

2011-07-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

Today a senior Met policeman told Parliament that they were too busy with counter-terrorism to investigate phone hacking. It seems they are not too busy to ticket cyclists on Chelsea Bridge, as we've featured on the blog previously. Let's see what their priority is this week. This assault, where a cyclist is punched to the ground by the driver of a silver car, was handily captured on video by a fellow rider. The footage has yielded very good images of the road-raging ruffian in question (who, I am reliably informed, punches like a girl) and the assault itself.

The registered keeper allegedly told police that his motor had been taken without his consent by persons unknown, and then returned without a scratch, before you could say "perverting the course of justice" (and probably with a thank-you note and a full tank of fuel). The police seemingly have accepted this story at face value even though it's about as likely as a Greek bond getting paid back. Where's Gene Hunt when you need him?

However, the story was featured on BBC London News this evening, and in the Standard so it seems pretty unlikely that the Peugeot-driving pugilist can remain anonymous for long.

Just goes to show it's not just in the Tour de France where you have to watch out for stupid drivers.

Hacked Off

2011-07-07T02:06:00.000-07:00

It seems advertisers in the News of the Screws aren't best pleased with the mushrooming of the phone hacking allegations to include not just 'fair game' celebs and politicians, but people who anyone with any conscience would leave alone, such as 7/7 boming victims.

Car giant Ford are one company keen not to have their image tarnished by association.

But are Ford that squeaky clean? Remember, contemptible as the NoW's alleged actions are, nobody died. By contrast, Ford, along with the rest of the motor industry, have opposed emissions legislation, succeeded in getting voluntary agreements watered down and then failed to meet even those targets. This has helped take the globe to the brink of runaway climate change. They've also benefitted from papers like the NoW publishing distortions about climate change science. More accurate coverage of the issue might stop the public buying their products. People will die because of climate change. Maybe it's the NoW that should be refusing their advertising rather than the other way round.

Ford might argue they've done nothing illegal. All they've done is sell people products they wanted to buy. Which of course is exactly what the NoW did, although (allegedly) a couple of laws got broken along the way.

Ford, VW and other motor manufacturers have a choice of what products to make and how to market them. They don't need to price their 'eco' models at a premium. They don't need to cancel out engine efficiency improvements with bigger, heavier, less aerodynamic vehicles. They don't need to lobby against emissions legislation. The fact that laws don't cover much of this does not absolve the companies of their responsibility to humanity and to future generations, and the consequences of the actions of the motor manufacturers, in the form of climate change, will persist long after phone hacking is a forgotten piece of history.

Wimbledon Parkside - Princes Way Junction

2011-07-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

Wandsworth Council have spent a bit of time and money improving the junction between Wimbledon Parkside and Princes Way. First, a bit of background. This junction is just before the massive Tibbetts Corner roundabout which forms the junction of the A3 and Putney Hill. Motorists blast round it at high speed, making it very hostile indeed for cyclists. Fortunately, there's an off-road alternative under the roundabout, but to get there you need to come off Parkside and make a right-turn into Princes Way. Currently that right-turn is banned so that motors don't try to rat-run into Wandsworth avoiding the West Hill queues.

Above, looking north up Parkside just before Tibbetts Corner, at the Princes Way junction. The logical, but illegal maneouvre is to make the right turn between the bollards on the left of the picture.

Above you see the new right-turn facility for cyclists. You wait in the reservoir in the central reservation, then make the right turn onto the on-pavement lane. Trouble is, you're now on the wrong side of Princes Way.

You now have to cross Princes Way to get to the correct side. For motorists coming down Princes Way, there's nothing to warn of a cycle crossing at this point.

Above: A closer look at that cycle reservoir in the first picture. To get to it, you have to get into the right-hand lane, and as a consequence you'll be going pretty fast as you approach the reservoir. The last thing motorists behind you will be expecting you to do is brake, but that's exactly what you'll have to do to make the turn into the cycle reservoir. And motorists won't be slowing down just yet for the roundabout. So the safest thing is likely to leave your braking till the last possible moment to minimise the possibility of getting rear-ended. What they should have done is get rid of the island on the left of the picture to give a proper approach lane. Now imagine it's a dark rainy night. Braking hard and swerving on wet road is not generally a good idea, but it's potentially a choice between that and the rear hit I was talking about. Overcook your braking and you could be going home in an ambulance.

Now let's look at how the new junction layout works going in the other direction.

Above: Rather than emerge from Princes Way you're expected to leave the carriageway on this path.

Above: You can either turn right into the cycle reservoir mentioned previously, which will take you to the roundabout. That's unlikely though, as if you're brave enough to take on the roundabout you'll turn right at the end of Princes Way with the motor traffic; you won't go out of your way to take this path. On the other hand, if you elect that discretion is the better part of valour, you'll be using the off road alternative to the roundabout so you won't be coming this way in the first place.
Alternatively, and more likely, you'll be going towards Wimbledon, so following the path on the left of the picture. However, the layout is pretty poor. Motorists don't expect traffic to emerge from the tiny side road where the path stops. The path is pretty much parallel to Parkside, so you'll have to do a careful rear observation to check what's coming at you from the roundabout at precisely the time you should be accelerating to merge with the traffic. To make matters worse, there's a pedestrian refuge acting as a pinch point just beyond the junction. I think it's probably better to make the left turn at the Princes Way junction instead. You'll likely get a better chance to accelerate into the traffic, the sightlines are better and motorists will be expecting emerging traffic.

I promise you I get no pleasure from carping about cycling facilities. It could be this one is better than it appears, but it does seem to have been designed by someone who doesn't cycle and has no understanding of the problems of this junction for cyclists. A significant amount of money has been spent on a scheme that really doesn't solve the problem. True, it's now possible to make a legal right turn from Parkside, but you could get the same effect at much less cost by taking a nibble out of the island in the first picture above.

There's one last elephant in the room that Wandsworth have ignored: the hostile nature of Parkside itself. Every hundred metres there's a pinch-point from a pedestrian refuge, so it's necessary constantly to adjust your road position to deter dangerous overtakes whilst trying not to obstruct traffic unnecessarily. The width of the pedestrian refuges could be used to construct a cycle path on the north side of Parkside. As it is, very, very few cyclists will use the new junction because so many avoid Parkside like the plague.

This kind of scheme is pretty typical of why cycling in outer London is in the doldrums. It's an expensive spot improvement that doesn't do much to improve conditions, and it connects roads that are at least as hostile as the junction itself. It might make journeys marginally safer for existing cyclists, but it won't attract a single extra cyclist or even cycle journey.

**UPDATE**
I rode through this junction from the Wimbledon side on Sunday. My analysis above was correct: the approach to the cycle reservoir is not adequate. What I didn't spot however is that because the cycle reservoir is the 'wrong' side of the Princes Way junction, you are in conflict with vehicles emerging from Princes Way as well as traffic already on Parkside coming from the roundabout.
Also, once you've crossed Parkside and you're on the east side of Princes Way, rather than cross Princes Way at the junction it's better to follow the eastbound cycle path in the 5th photo above in the wrong direction and then cross Princes Way, because you avoid any queueing traffic.

Victim's Rights

2011-07-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

The recent Milly Dowler case, and the ordeal the bereaved family were put through, has resulted in a call from the Government's 'Victims Czar', Louse Casey, to change the way the justice system operates to give rights to the bereaved.

What has this got to do with cycling, you may wonder. It's this:

Casey said:

the law in England and Wales must recognise the situation that families found themselves in when a loved one had been the victim of murder, manslaughter or a road death caused by criminal behaviour ...a "victim's law" could ensure that the criminal justice system protected the interests of families, such as through guaranteed meetings with prosecutors at critical stages of the legal process.
(my emphasis)

While the bereaved families of road death victims are seldom under suspicion, they share with families like the Dowlers a deep dissatisfaction with the way the justice system operates. Inappropriate charges, lenient sentencing, sloppy police work and a general tendency to treat road deaths as collateral damage are sadly typical of the victim's experience. It's worth noting that road deaths outnumber murders by 4 to 1. Theresa May must not be allowed to wriggle out of her responsibility to all victims, because there are the dark forces of the roads lobby for whom the current system works very well. It suits motor manufacturers, oil companies and others for road deaths to continue to be treated as much as possible as tragic accidents rather than criminal acts.

Two-way working on St James and Pall Mall

2011-07-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

One-way systems are one of the biggest problems for cyclists in London. They turn roads into fast, multi-lane affairs that are dangerous and unpleasant and extend your journey unnecessarily. The streets of the whole of Westminster, virtually without exception, are laid out with motor traffic the absolute and sole priority. The one-way streets have no cycle contraflows, and any spare width is given over to car parking, cab ranks, exta lanes, junction fan-outs, in fact anything that will get the motorist to the next bottleneck a little bit faster.

It's ironic that a lot of the Westminster one-way systems were created to deal with traffic problems. It didn't work. So there's now a £14M project to return Pall Mall, Lower Regent Street, St James and Piccadilly Circus to two-way working.

"The council believes turning the roads into two-way streets will tackle the increase in vehicles which causes congestion and creates rat runs through narrow roads nearby."

An ignorant cynic might suggest that relieving congestion by putting the streets back to how they were before they were reconfigured to relieve congestion...might not actually relieve congestion. That cynic might further suggest that £14M would build a lot of cycle paths, which might encourage a few people to cycle rather than take a car or a taxi, and thus relieve congestion rather more effectively. But such people are not traffic engineers: they have no training in the mystical, arcane arts that ensure London's traffic flows effortlessly. They're just whingers, like Steve McNamara, spokesman for the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, who said: "We are sceptical because every scheme that's been brought in to central London in the last 10 years has been detrimental to traffic flow." I ask you. What do taxi drivers know about London traffic?

I'll be monitoring the area in the coming weeks to witness how miraculous the transformation is...

**Update***
Initial impressions are not good...one road user fumed, "utter chaos, and getting worse".

Royal Parks Cycling

2011-07-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

Boris Johnson has backed opening up the Royal Parks to more cycling. Caroline Pidgeon (Lib Dem) of the London Assembly Transport Committee has also supported the move.

Cycling is a leisure activity. Exactly the kind of thing parks are there for. However, the Royal Parks Agency, rather than taking a sensible view of cycling, seem determined to treat it like the British establishment used to treat homosexuality. They know it exists, they know that banning it is unrealistic, some of them even indulge in it themselves, but they think legitimizing it would get some people very upset. So they talk about it in hushed tones:

"A shared-use pedestrian and cycle route trial on Studio Walk is currently being carried out from 2 August 2010 to 31 January 2012, in order to test its suitability as a permanent shared-use route."

Oh, for goodness sake. Cycle routes through parks exist up and down the country. There's nothing unique about Kensington Gardens. What are they going to learn from a trial that lasts a year and a half? Yet every new cycle facility in every park seems to require years of planning, consultation and trials. (Mind you, to be fair, the Royal Parks Agency look progressive compared to some UK organizations like the Wimbledon Common Conservators.)

Where the Royal Parks Agency really falls down is by failing to question the hegemony of motorised transport in and around the Parks. Why is it that to feel safe from traffic, cyclists have to go through a park? London doesn't have enough green space. That fact is self-evident if you go to St James's Park on any sunny day; it's absolutely solid with people. Yet there's a motorway (The Mall) going through the middle of it. To the south of the Park, Birdcage Walk is a highway with two lanes separated by a wide central reservation. Why can't the space be reconfigured to include a segregated cycle path? To the east of St James's Park, Horse Guards Road is massively wide: plenty of space for a segregated path there. To the north, The Mall is 6 lanes wide in places - surely space for a cycle path there? In fact there is one on the north side, but it's well hidden, weaves in and out of car parks and ends before Admiralty Arch, forcing all cyclists onto the road. The fact is there is plenty of unused roadspace on the periphery of St James's Park that could be converted into decent segregated cycle paths.

Then there's Green Park. A reaonable segregated path goes alongside Constitution Hill, but that's the only cycle route that Green Park and St James Park boast between them. You have to ride very carefully along it as tourists tend to stray into it. There's no path parallel to Piccadilly, which has a central reservation that is coincidentally the width of a decent cycle path. The central reservation is punctuated by the sheep-pen crossings that pedestrians hate. I suspect there are quite a few cyclists whose desire line lies along Piccadilly, but don't fancy taking on a multi-lane dual carriageway whose designers had no thought for non-motorised road users.

The effect of all this is that the Royal Parks, hemmed in as they are by streets that are absolutely hostile to anyone outside of a motor vehicle, are the only refuge from the danger, noise and pollution. If I were in charge of the Royal Parks, I'd be making the point that the Parks don't exist in isolation from the surrounding environment: the Parks should not be the only decent cycle routes in London, they should be part of a network. That way, cyclists wouldn't have to divert from their desire lines to get away from the traffic danger, and this would relieve pressure on the Parks.

Of course, considerate cycling should be allowed in all parks. But as well as that, Boris Johnson should be telling his Tory friends in Westminster to make it possible for people to cycle with confidence on the roads.

Technology and Traffic Congestion

2011-07-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

Transport for London can only see one thing in their crystal ball: traffic, and more of it. In their car-centric world view, the only way of getting something done is to get in a motor vehicle. The predicted growth of London population will inevitably mean more traffic, the alternative being economic stagnation and ruin. Right?

Predicting the future is very difficult to do, and no-one really wants to try because they look ridiculous if they get it wrong. However, if we're going to plan for the future then we have to try to predict it. The intelligent thing to do is to look at the various factors that will interact, and come up with some likely-looking scenarios. The problem with this is it can turn up some surprising, and frightening predictions. Like climate change for instance. No politician, or transport engineer, wants to be delivering a message people don't want to hear. So the lazy, cowardly way to predict the future is to forecast that it will be exactly like the past, only more so, in a nice, gentle, linear-progression kind of way. People can relate to that; they can understand it and it doesn't frighten or threaten them. Even if it's unlikely to be true. That's why we get TfL predicting more traffic, even though climate change, increasing oil prices and squeezed incomes all point in the other direction. There's also another factor that may driver traffic and indeed travel in general down: technology.

Communications technologies mean we can keep in touch, work and shop remotely. That's one reason why high street shops are closing. These days, you could live a fairly rich life without ever setting foot outside your house. Technology, used correctly, can enable fewer motor journeys to be made.

The building blocks of technology that allows you to hail cabs electronically has been around for a while - smartphones with geo-location - and now we're starting to see apps that make the concept a reality. Basically, you signal your position and intended journey to a 'market', and a nearby cab driver can accept your fare, drive to your location and pick you up. In the long term this should mean less downtime for cab drivers, as there will be fewer cabs driving around empty looking for a fare and hence less congestion. It also means that if there are no cabs nearby available to take your fare, you could take the bus or tube instead of standing by a kerb waving haplessly at a succession of occupied black cabs. (However it's not all great news for black cab drivers because there is no reason why minicabs cannot apply for hire electronically, removing the one key advantage the black cabs have over their private-hire rivals.)

Technology will in time make it easier for people to take public transport or walk. Smartphones will become ubiquitous very soon indeed - even my wife has a smart-ish phone, and she's usually the last person in the country to embrace new technology - and all-you-can eat tariffs mean users don't have to worry about using apps such as Google Maps to find their way around. There will also be apps that know your current location and help you choose the fastest, or easiest, or cheapest way from A to B, and tell you when the next bus or train is due. So this should help reduce the number of people who only take a cab because they don't have the information to choose another mode. Technology may also help people avoid travel, by finding restaurants or entertainment close by.

Logistics is another area in which technology can reduce journeys. Currently, there are a lot of half-empty vans being driven around London. With real-time location information and the ability to match a load and its destination to a nearby vehicle, it becomes possible to deliver goods in a short timescale in a cheap and efficient way, with far fewer vehicles on aggregate than we currently have.

Above are just a few concepts that can be implemented with currently-available technology. You won't see much discussion in TfL documents about how these easily-foreseeable developments will affect traffic levels, yet they are trying to predict traffic 20 years into the future. 20 years ago, the internet didn't exist for practical purposes. TfL are not so much looking at the world through a car windscreen as through the rear-view mirror.

That's that over with then...

2011-07-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Now for some proper sport - where men push themselves to the absolute limits of physical endurance for five hours- without stopping every couple of minutes for a drink, or new balls, or to wipe themselves with a towel - and then they get up the next day and do it all over again. For three weeks. Go Cav!!!

Road Deaths at Record Low

2011-06-30T13:44:00.000-07:00

The number of people killed annually on the roads in the UK has fallen for the seventh consecutive year. 2010 saw 1,857 deaths, 16% lower than the 2,222 in 2009.

It's not such a rosy picture if you're a cyclist though - the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year by 7%, to 111 up from 104 in 2009. The number of cyclists rose by just 0.5%, which means cycling is getting significantly more dangerous. Mike Penning, Road Safety Minister, commented that the Government is "looking at how we can improve cycle safety." Oh yeah? Let me take you to Blackfriars Bridge, Mike, and I'll give you a few ideas. You might want to stop taking down speed cameras as well.

Roger Geffen's take on it reflected the CTC's vehicular outlook. "We still have only a tiny fraction of our residential streets covered by 20mph while hostile roads, bad driving, and weak law enforcement remain serious barriers to getting more people cycling."
The trouble is, it's unclear how the CTC think we can create a Britain in which more people cycle. They seem to reject the experience of countries that do have high levels of cycling, which is that segregation from traffic is necessary to give your average person confidence to cycle. Without segregation, you have a problem. It only takes one or two inconsiderate or inattentive drivers to turn a cycle ride into a unpleasant experience; unpleasant enough that a new cyclist will quickly turn into an ex-cyclist with a story they'll tell to anyone who's thinking of taking up cycling. It only takes one or two inconsiderate or inattentive drivers out of the hundreds of drivers you're likely to interact with on even a relatively short journey. Today, the majority of drivers admit to breaking speed limits, and 27% of drivers admit to using a handheld mobile whilst driving. With that real-world starting point, how do the CTC propose we can create a world where all drivers are skillful, alert and attentive, they know, understand and respect the law, no-one is in a hurry, everyone is nice and considerate, says please and thank-you, and goes to church on a Sunday (though they have no sins to confess)? The fact is, people are not perfect. In or out of a car, from time to time they do stupid things; they lack skill and judgement; they get angry; they bend the rules for selfish gain. More law enforcement won't change that, neither will 20MPH limits. The point is vulnerable road users need to feel protected from inattentive, inconsiderate and otherwise delinquent motorized road users. That's why we have pavements. Cyclists feel just as vulnerable as pedestrians, so it follows they need a safe space that's guaranteed to be free from motor vehicles.

The other disturbing aspect of the 2010 road casualty figures is that the effect of the Coalition's road safety cuts and 'War on the Motorist' agenda won't yet have kicked in. So, as the RAC Foundation's Stephen Glaister put it, "there is a danger these figures could mark the bottom of the casualty curve."

Wimbledon Tennis - No Room for Cyclists

2011-06-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

Above you can see Woodhayes Road SW19, which runs towards Wimbledon Common. Normally it's parked up on both sides, and hence just a little too narrow for two motor vehicles to pass. For the tennis, temporary parking restrictions are in place. I wonder where all the parked cars have gone? Given the Wimbledon Championships last 2 weeks, it's safe to say that it is possible for the car owners to make alternative arrangements, which rather suggests that the world wouldn't end if the parking restrictions were made permanent, at least on one side of the road. Then you'd have enough space for a segregated cycle lane. But as we all know, there's not enough room for such things in the UK.

Wimbledon Tennis Traffic

2011-06-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd go out for a little ride, bust a few red lights and scare some pedestrians, like we cyclists do. My circuit today took me past the All-England Club. For 50 weeks of the year, it's quieter than a graveyard at night, but right at the moment it's a magnet for tennis fans the world over.

Above you see Church Road at the junction with Victoria Drive. In the middle of the day, this is normally very quiet. The police are directing traffic to give some order to the chaos, and doing a reasonable job, but it's not stopping a considerable tailback along Church Road towards Southfields. The people on the two buses in this picture have to wait in the queue with the cars.

Now imagine this scene repeated at various venues all over London, only on a considerably larger scale. Imagine further that one lane on key routes is exclusively reserved for the limousines of the sponsors and other big cheeses, further adding to the chaos.

Around the All-England Club, various people have set up their front gardens as parking lots, and charging twenty quid a pop - a nice little earner. Luckily, Wimbledon Tennis is an established yearly event and almost all the fans arrive by public transport. But you can't stop some people from driving. At the Olympics, with the prospect of sweaty, packed-out tube trains and buses stuck in traffic jams, some people will try to drive and you can't blame them. I'm sure there'll be plenty of impromptu parking lots set up by enterprising east-enders to cater for them, even if they can't park at the venues. And it won't take many extra car drivers to turn normally-congested roads into total gridlock.

8 months for a Hit-and-Run

2011-06-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Beach-MacGeagh, 20, was knocked down as she crossed a street in Barnet by a BMW doing 45mph in a 30mph zone. The driver, Aryeris Angelis, sped off without stopping.

Tellingly, almost without exception the comments on this Standard article are incredulous about the light sentence.

The simple fact is that at 45MPH you may not even see someone step into the road before you hit them. At 30MPH you'll see them and have time to brake. 15MPH is the difference between a near miss and a fatal collision. Yet speeding is treated almost as a human right by the Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, who thinks speed cameras are part of a War on the Motorist. Now it could be argued that fixed speed cameras are not the best way of enforcing speed limits. But if you take that view, you have to come up with a better way, and you have to give a clear message that speed kills and speeding is not tolerated. Hammond has failed to do either of those things, and the result is that more motorists think it's OK to speed because the Government doesn't take it seriously.

Insurance Scams?

2011-06-28T06:37:00.000-07:00

Jack straw is on the warpath, after no-win no-fee ambulance chasing lawyers, who are apparently buying lists of collision victims from insure, recovery firms and even the police.

There are two aspects to this. If the victims are being encouraged to exaggerate their claims or claim for injuries that don't exist, that's fraud. If there's commissions being paid, it needs to be transparent.

However, the motoring lobby have for years managed to externalise the true cost of road collisions. So it's long overdue that victims are increasingly getting realistic compensation for their physical and injuries, mental anguish, time and ongoing losses.

Many people get knocked off their bikes, and that's enough to put them off cycling for good. If you're the victim of such a collision, the fact that you can no longer cycle will mean you'll be paying tube and bus fares for the rest of your life, and maybe paying gym membership to replace the free exercise you were getting. If you sustain serious injuries, your ability to do your job, or any job, may be lost. Yet in the UK we have no strict liability law. That means that in the absence of witnesses it's very difficult to prove you didn't swerve into the path of a car, or jump a red light, and without such evidence making a claim may be impossible. The result is that you and the good old taxpayer end up footing the bill for someone else's bad driving. And even if you do have a claim, it's still the taxpayer, rather than the errant driver, who pays for any NHS hospital treatment. It is wrong that the law assumes that all road users are equally liable, even though some bring far greater danger to the roads than others, and those same road users are far better protected from the risks that they create.

Then there are the societal costs. Road danger takes away the freedom of choice from people who'd rather not use their cars all the time. Adults are afraid to cycle. Kids aren't trusted to walk or cycle on their own, and are ferried around in cotton-wool lined SUVs. The resulting sedentary national lifestyle has an increased incidence of a wide range of associated diseases, from obesity and arthritis through to diabetes and cancer, keeping the NHS busy, and it's all paid for by - guess who - the good old hardworking taxpayer.

The fact is, if car insurance premiums actually paid for all the consequences of the harm that road collisions cause, both at an individual and a societal level, they'd be a lot higher than they are. If the over-marketing of junk food at kids was treated with the same zeal as the over-marketing of personal injury services to adults, we might be paying less tax to fund the NHS.