Cycle Infrastructure - Set Menu, or À La Carte?
David Hembrow’s recent comments have got me thinking. What’s the secret to getting more poeple on their bikes? Things that can and are being done to varying degrees include (in no particular order):
- Cycle lanes. Actually cycle lanes that mean something, rather than just being tokenistic jestures, that vanish at the first sign of difficulty in their implementation.
- Segregated cycle routes
- Cycle routes that join up the places people would otherwise drive between
- Decent signposting and maps
- [Free] cyclist training
- Bike to work cash incentives - either paid as your ride, or to finance the up-front price of your ride.
- Provision of secure bike parking - at work, in town, at home, wherever.
- Role models in public life (Mayor of London, Borris: Love him or hate him, you can’t deny that he’s noticeable!)
- Everyday role models. Like the stuff you see on Copenhagenize, Copenhagen Cycle Chic or Amsterdamize.
- But they’re in glamourous, far-away locations (unless you live in Amsterdam or Copenhagen). So what about YOU (and me) acting as role models? Rolling past the queues of traffic (stopping at the red light, of course), with a smile on your face says an awful lot about how much fun it is to ride. Seeing someone do this is what got me back on my bike.
- Getting controversial . . . cutting cars out of certain parts of town to make them bicycle friendly
- Public promotion of cycling. Given how much local councils spend on advertising how brilliant they are, would it hurt to divert some of that cash to cycling campaigns?
- Joined up infrastructure. It used to be easy-peasy to take your bike on a train - just turn up & sling it in the guard’s car. Not any more - you need to book in advance, space is limited, etc. Bah! And you’re not even allowed to take your bike on the Tyne & Wear Metro at all. Double-Bah!
- Minimum specifications for bike locks.
- Campaigns in schools to get kids cycling to school & building a habit.
- Enforce ‘residents only’ parking within 400yds of schools so as to really discourage school-run cars.
- Planning / building regulations to stipulate provision for bicycle parking in new developments.
- Have UK councils set ambitious targets for cycling instead of ones that are so un-stretching that it would be harder to miss than to achieve them.
- A return to decent fuel prices. Something around £2 per litre as a starting point.
- Technological solutions - bikes that can take a week’s shopping (uh, dude - the Danes and the Dutch already do them), bikes with RFIDs fitted so they’re easy to identify when stolen, bikes with roll-flat tyres that don’t deflat when you get a puncture, bikes with lights built-in (uh, dude - they already do them too)
- Bikes built for comfort rather than speed
- Bike shops marketing transport rather than recreation
- Shower facilities. Though you don’t really need ‘em.
- Low cost / free mass bike hire schemes. Like that ever-so chic Vélib’ scheme in Paris.
- Looking after bike lanes - that means daily snow clearance if you live in that sort of climate, but also ensuring that their surfaces are smooth and free of potholes.
- Ensuring that bikes have priority at junctions.
- Where segregated cycle lanes cross roads, give the bikes priority. There’s nothing more likely to keep me cycling on the road rather than the dedicated lane than if I have to stop for every junction I pass.
- Putting cycling into mainstream media. The Sunday Times ‘Backpeddler’ column is an example of this.
- etc. I’m sure there are more!
My question is . . . what are the things that should be done? It is a case of there being one cornerstone that if only we could put in place, cycling would really take off, creating the demand for all the rest? Or are there a few vital ingredients that you could pick and choose from (depending on location, budget constraints, etc) to get the same results? Or is it that this isn’t an à la carte menu, and to get any kind of real uptake in cycling, you’ve gotta bite the bullet and do ‘em all?
What do you think?
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 10/16/2008
- Total Time: 1:09:00.00
- Distance: 17 miles
- Average Speed: 14.78 mph
Great list, Karl.
Residents only parking 400yrds from school? Do you want to be lynched? It is every parent’s right to park right outside the school gates.
I ranted about this on NewcastleCentric: http://newcastlecentric.com/news/watch-out-theres-a-gateshead-traffic-warden-about#comments
Somewhat late to the party here - but I think this is a very good question. The dutch and the danish basically encouraged cycling by doing _everything_: high petrol prices, excellent bike lanes, separated lanes, laws that put the onus on drivers, not cyclists, to be safe, closing roads … so we don’t really know which of those factors are necessary to promote cycling (if not all of them) - and then once cyclists had hit a critical mass, a virtuous cycle kicked in as well to reinforce the trend. I started out in the anti-cycle lane, take the road, active safety school of cycling, but I think that was a reaction to all the crap dangerous cycle lanes there are in the UK. Now I’ve acknowledged I’m a coward, I can see how a bit more infrastructure would help
My suggestions would be (in order of priority):
Increasingly limited parking spaces
High and rising petrol prices
Really good, well thought out, joined up cycle routes that go to shops, schools and railway stations - and yes, bring back guards vans
Bike parking in places where there are eyes on the street (cafes, smoking areas, news vendors) rather than one not-very-convincing CCTV camera and a bunch of dead bikes
Lots and lots of ‘car free days’ and events like London freewheel to get people dusting down their bikes and having fun on them
The UK towed south until it has a climate like Southern California (because, face facts, that’s as likely to happen here as any of the other suggestions listed above…)
Some excellent points here - thanks for the contribution. I’d add to your comments:-
1. Petrol prices. Thank you OPEC!
2. Cycle routes that go places. We have them - they’re called “roads”
3. Bike parking in sensible, visible places. Oh, yes please. Either that, or get Boris’ version of Sharia Law enacted for bike thieves.
4. Southern California climate. Unless the world as a whole wakes up to the need for Contract & Converge, with a 90% reduction in greenhouse gasses by 2020*, you may get your wish. Or more rain. And large scale crop failure.
Sorry - that’s two smilies in a rather short reply. More on this sort of thing (the getting people riding, not the smilies) later. I attended a conference this week on “Cycling & The Sustainable Door To Door Journey”, and have LOTS to write up about it.
*n.b. the British government’s commitment to 80% by 2050 isn’t enough, but it is a step in the right direction. However, we need to get shipping and aviation included. Lobby your MP TODAY on this issue - there’s a big enough rebellion on the back benches to build on and get this onto the bill. Phone / email / visit your MP’s weekend surgery to emphasise how important this issue is to you, the voter.
Agree on the roads = cycle routes up to a point. Yes up here where I’m living in a nice quiet rural area. But there were definitely journeys in London that I just didn’t want to do on my bike because they were too scary - and I’m not that easily scared. Big multilane roundabouts, being chanelled onto fast roads, complex junctions where you’ve got to get into a lane against buses and lorries - all of them are just too difficult for all but the most confident cyclist. And if I, who cycle every day, was frightened, how does it look from the point of view of someone thinking about getting back on their bike for the first time?
Agree on the urgency though…
Of course, having said all that, I was just checking out the copenhagen guys’ post on Paris & the effect of Velib (here if you haven’t seen it) and - contrary to what I would have expected - just the Velib programme seems to have been enough to trigger a huge change, with cyclists happy to use bikes even in the madness of Paris, using bus lanes without much in the way of separated provision. So maybe there’s hope yet…
I’ll stop hijacking this thread now