New Wandle Trail Barrier

The Wandle Trail is the best piece of cycling infrastructure in the Merton area. So you can rely on councils (Wandsworth I believe in this case) to spend money to make it that little bit worse. After all, we don't want to encourage cycling, do we?

On my ride home today I spotted this, at the Trewint Street end:

The wooden posts originally had steel scaffolding poles between them, forming a chicane which was fairly easy to negotiate. They've left the wooden posts in place and added two galvanized steel barriers, in keeping with the rural, countrified  feel of the area, which are quite difficult to get through on an unladen bike. If you have panniers, or a utility bike, or a tandem, or one of those attachments for towing a child's bike, well that's your look-out and it serves you right for not going by car like normal people.

Why have they made this "improvement"? I have no idea. I've seen pizza delivery mopeds taking a shortcut along this piece of trail, but it really isn't that big a problem for anyone. There was a period where you would occasionally see a burned-out scooter on the trail, but this barrier won't stop scooter theft and the trail is still freely accessible from the Plough Lane end.

It's irritating to note how the rare occurrence of a small motorcycle using a cycle path attracts the zealous attention of the councils, and the result is more and more barriers getting put up, and real inconvenience to innocent cyclists. Yet motoring offences that pose a far greater danger to life and limb are completely ignored. Report a problem with speeding or dangerous overtakes to your council and you'll be met with amused indifference. After all, what do you expect them to do? They can't be expected to jeapordize traffic flow - if a few children get run down, well that's just collateral damage.

Cycling to School in the Future?

According to a report from BUPA, future parents (that is, people aged 18-30 who are planning to have a family but haven't got around to it yet because they're up to their eyes in debt) are keen for their as-yet-unborn offspring to watch less telly and take more exercise than today's kids, and to walk or cycle to school.


It's a shame the study hasn't measured the aspirations of today's parents. I think most parents would like their kids to walk or cycle to school, but what with one thing and another it doesn't quite work out. Partly it's time pressures, but equally it's safety concerns.

Unless I miss my guess, when tomorrow's parents' children actually reach the age where they can cycle to school on their own, the UK's cycle infrastructure will be much as it is today. In other words, not safe enough to give most parents confidence that their progeny will arrive at the school rather than the hospital. And those parents will simply accept that the world is the way it is, it's simply not safe for children to cycle, and that's an end to it. We all like the idea of children cycling to school, up to the point where it's our children cycling on infrastructure that is some combination of intermittent, unsafe, badly designed or simply non-existent.
Let's think for a moment though about what else will have changed in fifteen or twenty years time, when the next generation of children are going through school. For one thing, the UK should have significantly reduced its carbon emissions, and oil may be significantly more expensive. Therefore it's not unreasonable to think that children won't be travelling to school in cars in the same numbers as they do today: they'll likely be using active modes of travel instead. And that would be a good thing: it would free up parents' time, reduce costs and make children fitter and healthier.


So it would seem that current and future parents aspire to have more kids cycling to school, and this would bring many benefits to the UK in terms of better public health, reduced carbon emissions, and so on. It would also appear, based on entirely mainstream projections, that children will need to cycle to school. Yet there's no plan to make it possible by building cycle infrastructure that parents will be happy with. Most cycle infrastructure projects are hamstrung by lack of money. For example, London's Biking Boroughs project is £4M, divided between 13 boroughs. There ares also no coherent national or even local plans for cycling. There's no national body in charge of cycling, and in London there is no capital-wide responsibility - TfL is in charge of the TfL road network, and individual boroughs oversee their own roads.  For infrastructure projects that get beyond the drawing board, there's a labyrinthine planning process to contend with , which allows public enquiries to be ordered in response to even a single objection to a proposed cycle path, and allows trivial parochial concerns such as convenient car parking to veto a proposal. Contrast this with the High Speed 2 development. Truly eye-watering sums of money (£17bn) are being invested, there's a (reasonably) grand vision to back it up, and objections are being ridiculed as 'nimbyism'.

Don't get me wrong. Rail does matter. But there are a lot more journeys to school each day than there will be journeys on HS2. Why is it that journeys to school don't matter?

Garden Waste

Merton has apparently abandoned its programme of collecting garden waste, as part of the general downsizing of services caused by the Coalition cuts. Let's see if we can figure what's happening to all that waste. Some of it will end up in somebody else's skip or flytipped in a park or back alley. Some of it will end up sneakily mixed in with the ordinary refuse. Most of it will be going into the back of often quite large cars, often in quite small quantities, and those quite large cars will be driven half way across the borough to the local dump (sorry, Reuse and Recycling Centre) and then back again. So that's going to cost residents both time and money, it'll lead to increased carbon emissions and more wear and tear on the roads.

Government Backs HGV Cyclist Safety Improvements

Wow. I wasn't expecting to write that headline. It seems Philip Hammond has given his support to the campaign to fit large vehicles with cameras and sensors to eliminate 'blind spots'. He also waxed lyrical about the Bikeability and Exchanging Places schemes.

It's worth noting, however, that the European Parliament “Written Declaration on heavy goods vehicle collisions” already has the support of 369 out of 732 MEPs, and actual amendments to legislation are down to the European Commission, so it's likely that British government support won't make much difference. It's also worth noting that Bikeability is one of the few programmes that benefit cycling that hasn't been cut. Hammond has done nothing at all of any substance to promote cycling, and plenty (cutting Cycling England, cuts to road safety budgets and speed cameras) that is deleterious. His words on this subject don't do much to alter that record.

Warwickshire is scaling back its speed camera programme - thanks to a £1.2M Coalition cut to the speed camera budget. The council appreciate the road safety benefits of the cameras, but at a time of austerity, they can't easily make up the funding shortfall from elsewhere. Philip Hammond and Mike Penning may protest that they're not forcing cuts to safety cameras, but in practice they're making life very difficult for councils that refuse to do so.

The council are going to make the best of a bad job by keeping all the existing cameras going at least some of the time, retaining at least some of the deterrent effect. Unlike Oxfordshire, which simply announced it was going to switch off all its cameras and watch people die.

The safety effect of the Warwickshire cameras will be diluted, because if people who speed past a camera don't receive a ticket, they're unlikely to change their behaviour. And people who would have received a driving ban due to serial reoffending will retain their licences - exactly the people you don't want on the road.

Richmond Park

A quick circuit of Richmond Park yesterday. Drivers very well-behaved; most cruising around the posted 20 MPH limit and just two cars went past me with well-judged, safe overtakes. In fact I think I overtook more cars than cars overtook me. One very 'hairy' near miss though: a cocker spaniel tore across my path missing my front tyre by inches. Owner nowhere to be seen. Time for one circuit was 21:12, not too bad for a windy day. I think I can probably get it below the 20-minute barrier on a still day if I take the 'guards off, get up early enough to miss the traffic (and the dogs) and give it some more gas down the hills.

Crap Driving

A bad day on the roads yesterday. Morning run in through the back-end of Colliers Wood, an idiot-in-a-hurry overtook me on Eastbourne Road. This road is far to narrow for a safe overtake but it wasn't going to stop him. He started by revving impatiently, then edging closer, then finally forcing his way past by intimidating me out of his way. Too late to gain any advantage though, I caught him back up at the T-junction and got a good look at him. He looked like an angry Eric Clapton, but without Clapton's financial resources - his clapped-out old Peugeot didn't sound like it would be intimidating people for too much longer. Sadly I'd not got the video camera on. About a 5 on the Barber scale of close shaves: "distinctly disconcerting".

Next, in Battersea, a minicab driver forced his way past. Just as I was about to avoid a speed cushion, at a tad over 20MPH (it's downhill you see) I heard a honk behind me and the approaching minicab was on a collision course, so I swerved sharply to the left to avoid a coming-together. I had the video camera on this time. Looking at the vid again, it was a dog's breakfast of an overtake. The H-C advises against any overtakes where there's traffic calming. There was a blind junction on the right, and no reason to think an emerging vehicle would look left for an overtaking car. On top of all that, it big letters on both lanes, was the word 'S L O W'. A good 7 on the Barber scale: "downright dangerous".

Lunchtime, I figured I'd go to the police station and report the latter incident. Not with any great hope, but perhaps faced with video evidence the driver might 'fess up' without the need for a court appearance. I waited in line for 15 minutes. The young man in front of me was chavved up with the kind of labelled attire that the designers (Louis Vuitton, Henri Lloyd) wish people like him wouldn't wear as it devalues their brand. However, I thought, put that prejudice aside, he's probably just another victim. The first thing the desk seargeant said to him was: "So when were you arrested?" Oh well, Liberals 0, Stereotypes 1. Me next. "You'll need a form". 19 pages, but it looks like I'll only have to fill in one section. "What do I do with the video?" "They'll be in contact."

We'll see.