Is It Time To Demand Segregation?
No, I’m not talking about the kind of segregation that creates second-class citizens , and makes people sit at the back of the bus - that’s not a Good Thing at all.
No, what I mean is having decent, direct routes for bikes that keep them out of the way of eejits people driving motorised vehicles. I grew up as a Vehicular Cyclist - I passed my Cycling Proficiency test at the age of nine or so, and from then on rode proudly on the road, asserting my rights to be there through riding responsibly.
I ride as if I have every right to be there, obey the law (stop at red, light up, etc), and in the case of a driver who’s in any doubt, I’ve had over 30 years developing that "don’t f**k with me" look - conveyed with manners and politeness, of course. Until just a few years ago, I kept well away from off-road cycle routes, because all the ones I tried were just so shockingly bad:
- A surface like a ploughed field
- Usually strewn with broken glass
- Often overgrown
- Would end for no good reason
- Would be intermittent to allow priority to road traffic on minor roads that they crossed
- Would usually join up two middle-of-no-where places
- Were generally poorly lit & a general scroat magnet
- etc.
But I have found that some of the routes near us aren’t too bad nowadays - Hadrian’s cycleway has some really good stretches (and sadly, some bad ones still), and National Cycle Network Route 1 is great heading out of Ashington. Though it’s a pity that it ends in a bramble hedge just a mile short of Blyth.
But these still aren’t nearly good enough.
What we want is something like those shown in this vid by David Hembrow, now living in The Netherlands:
You might think that the only reason all these people are cycling is because it’s filmed in Flat-as-a-Pancake-Holland. But that’s a small flat country next to the North Sea, and what that means is it’s WINDY (why do you think the Dutch have had wind power for so long?). Given a choice between riding up an alpine pass as part of my commute, or into a relentless headwind, I know which I’d choose.
The town’s bypass routes all through traffic around, and the through roads have become cycle routes. What that means is that the the routes are safe, more direct than driving, and pleasant to ride along as they’re traffic free.
I’m a member of the CTC. I’m not too sure about their official policy, but the tone tends to be in favour of vehicular cycling. When you see the state of the most of the offroad provision we have, it’s hard to fault this - we already have a very national cycle network that connects everywhere to everywhere else - the routes are called "roads".
But if we’re really to get people out of their cars, and off the bus, isn’t it time we started to copy what plainly works very well elsewhere?
Hmmmm…. contentious one. I absolutely agree that safety is the biggest barrier to anyone taking up cycling, and the only way to fix this is to build genuine segregated cycle paths - but that’s not too say we should then be forced to use only these paths and not be allowed on roads where it is more convenient - I want to have my cake and eat it too!
But where is the appetite to build this kind of path? Sustrans seems to be happy building lots of ‘recreational’ paths and the CTC / LCC just don’t have enough cash or oomph. The only way I can see this happening in the UK is if there is a change in planning law stating that all new roads / developments must include cycle infrastructure of a certain quality. *sigh* The people of Holland and Denmark were lucky not because they had existing cycling culture, or flat lands, but because their governments were proactive in encouraging cycling in a safe and useful way.
Qualified “yes” for me. Qualified, because we should only accept quality cycling facilities as per the Netherlands and Denmark. Those places are proof positive that we will only ever get a proper cycling culture if proper cycling facilities are created. Novice cyclists don’t buy “vehicular” cycling and never will. My instinct suggests that driving standards are continually falling and life on the road is getting more hazardous for everyone (including car drivers) because of the ever increasing aggression and unnecessary risk-taking by a large and increasing minority of drivers. Maybe I’m getting old and feeling more vulnerable but I foresee the time when my cycling days will come to an end (hopefully with me still alive) except for car-assisted trips to offroad routes.
I don’t see any real sign of the will to invest capital, both political and fiscal, to move to a Northern European style cycle culture in Britain. Those of us who love our cycling will soon have to decide to either call it day on the bike on the road or “do a Hembrow” and move away.
The video wasn’t actually “public” until a second ago, so your blog visitors won’t have seen it until now. It’s surely a different thing to what most people in English speaking countries think segregated cycle paths are.
As I had to make the video live for you, I’ve brought forward my own blog post including a picture of what this area used to look like.
Ooops! Sorry - didn’t realise that you’d sent me a link to the pre-release version!
MarkA: What may not seem obvious from a British point of view (it certainly wasn’t obvious to me until I started coming here regularly) is that the cycle paths here provide the most direct routes.
I recently blogged about how my commuting speed is now 40% greater on the cycle paths of the Netherlands than it was when I rode on roads in the UK.
WestfieldWanderer: I’d really like to see Britain finally wake up and make a proper start. I’ve been listening to excuses about it being “too late” for longer than it took the Dutch to produce wonderful infrastructure. Britain could do it. But first the country needs to make a proper start.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by KarlOnSea: New bicycle blog post: Is It Time To Demand Segregation?: http://sweat365.com/-y/-3j1...