Would You Vote For This?
By and large, cycle infrastructure in the UK is a mess.
It’s not joined-up, doesn’t go where you need to get to, and always, always seems to play second fiddle to roads for motor vehicles or footpaths for pedestrians. Many local authorities do things that could only charitably be seen as making any effort, yet which in reality put cyclists and motor vehicles in conflict, or provide an excuse for the worst sort of “Outa my way, you non-road tax paying, two-wheeled scum” behaviour from the neanderthal element.
The budgets allocated are often so small as to be insulting, and the results they generate are nothing short of a disgrace. It’s little wonder that so few people bike to work in this country, that Cycling is a capital-letter hobby for Lycra-clad enthusiasts, and why the nation’s waistline is expanding at such a shocking rate.
It’s one possible reason for the UK having a growing problem in childhood obesity.
But it doesn’t have to be like this. We could build the kind of infrastructure that would make cycling a pleasure - even for trips to work or school. But to do that, we need to put in place the political will and leadership to take decisions along the way that will upset the vested interests who do very well out of the status quo. We need a vision, or a goal that can be easily expressed. One that everyone can understand, and that pretty much everyone would sign up to.
Something like JFK’s “Send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade” (I’m paraphrasing, if you’re looking up the speech).
And reading Velorution’s blog a few days ago, I think I’ve found the words:
[By 1st January 2030], Make any three kilometre cycling journey in the city safe for a nine year old to ride by him/herself.
I added in the deadline, because without one, these things become a “when we get around to it” project. 2030 is also a long way off - I’ll be touching 60, and Daughter might even be of an age where I’ll think about her having a boyfriend. But a twenty year timescale is important, as it reflects the shear scale of the change and effort that’s needed - unless we were to throw a budget like the Apollo Project’s at this problem too.
What sort of area would this change cover?
Let’s look at North Tyneside, which is where I live. No, I’m not picking on North Tyneside Council, whose cycling people do a great deal with little money, and for whom I have almost nothing but praise - it’s just an example map:
We have two different school systems in operation - a two tier system (primary and high schools) and a three tier one (first, middle, and high schools). If we were to say that all high schools (11-18 year-old pupils) must comply 100% with the 3km vision . . .
. . . but allowed middle schools (9-13 years) to have just 2km provision . . .
. . . and first schools (5-9 years) to have just 1km provision . . .
. . . we’d still have almost universal coverage (these distances are roughly in line with the school tier’s catchment area policies):
Why hasn’t this already been done? I don’t honestly know - decades of the rise of the car seen as representing “progress” may in part be to blame, as is the rise of out-of-town (and hence car-fuelled) shopping that’s gradually sucked the life from our town centres. When policies that might make it harder to drive are suggested, the few remaining town-centre traders can only see the downside, and get very vocal - especially around election times. So councils can tend to follow the easy path, and just go with the flow.
But with a compelling vision in place of what they’re trying to achieve, along with the toughness of the challenge spelt out at the beginning, they may well find that the electorate is a whole lot more willing to accept leadership than they’d have thought.
[By 1st January 2030], Make any three kilometre cycling journey in the city safe for a nine year old to ride by him/herself.
As an ‘end’, would this justify the ‘means’? And would it get your vote? More importantly, would it get the vote of your non-cycling friends?
I think this is precisely the kind of thing that might get people’s votes. I’d vote for it (if I hadn’t already voted with my feet…)
Would get my vote.
I only fell in love with cycling when I moved to The Netherlands and one big reason why I would hate to move back to the UK is because I couldn’t cycle everywhere like I can here.
I would vote for this, yep. The school run is what seems to cause most of the congestion in Bath (it eases during the holidays).
There’s been talk of US-style yellow school buses (and, to be fair, several of Bath’s schools are on top of hills) but buses won’t help with childhood obesity levels.
[...] 27.2.9 - In this post, Karl applies the goal to Newcastle and equates it to a Kennedyan challenge. If we were able to put [...]
I think you might butt up against the problem that we’ve reached a point in this country where we won’t let a nine-year-old do anything by him-or-herself. Fear of strangers as much as fear of cars has done this. Of course, if the accompanying change included people taking responsibility for other people’s kids, and children having more independence, then yes, wow, what an improvement. But that, frankly, would be even harder than getting UK councils to build decent cycle routes…
Eleven might be a better goal. Just so you don’t run into the whole stranger danger debate.
@town_mouse: Sadly, I think that even if the age of eleven were to be the goal we would find that ’stranger danger’ remained as an excuse.
As a school teacher in a secondary school I am constantly astonished by the activities that pleasant, apparently well-balanced teenagers are not allowed to do. This, of course, may be why increasing numbers of adults think that all teenagers are evil: so many of the pleasant teenagers aren’t allowed by their parents even to get the bus into town.
I think this is a fine goal and it’s certainly something that I would vote for and try to take up in my own town.
As for my friends. Experience tells me that people will support something as long as it doesn’t interfere with them.
As an example, I used to live just off the Uxbridge Road in London. The road connects Shepherd’s Bush, and the many public transport options there, to the outlying districts like Acton, Ealing, Southall and so on, right out to Uxbridge.
There’s a plan for a tram. It would be:
- clean
- frequent
- cheap
- comfortable
- fast
Who WOULDN’T vote for this?
Until you find out that it means getting in the way of people’s cars, diverting traffic for a time while it’s built, possibly bulldozing some shops and houses.
At which point people get really quite upset.
So, while I think lots of people would vote for your principle. But what would it take to implement it and would people object to the disruption caused?
Actually, does anyone have any idea what it WOULD take to implement something like this?
I drew a similar picture for Darlington a couple of years ago.
There was a news story about a Durham school who had put signs up a 5-minute walk (I think) distance from the school saying it was a car-free zone. (I think the idea was that it was a voluntary thing, for parents of kids in the school, with the idea being that even kids who were driven to school would get dropped a five minute walk from school.)
So, I picked a fairly slow walking speed and used that to come up with a distance (I think it was 500) and drew circles round every school in the town, which we suggested should be made into 20 limits. It turns out, almost everywhere in Darlington is within 500m of a school!
[...] so say we’d set out to make it safe for every child of nine years and older to cycle to school unaccompanied. What sort of measures could we put in place to ensure that the public money spent on this project [...]