Regression To The Mean
You can call it social pressure, or the pressure of reality trying to break in, or whatever. But when I first saw this Streetfilms video on EcoVelo, my first thought was,
Oh, lovely. But it’ll never work here, because our streets are too narrow.
Like Alison Dines, leader of Islongton’s Cyclist Action Group, I’m probably thinking,
“People who don’t cycle say they would like to see segregated bike lanes like they do in some European cities. Unfortunately, it is never going to happen in London [Whitley Bay / Newcastle / Wherever] because we don’t have the space.”
But this is just a symptom of the power of the UK’s dominant, car-centred culture. The messages we receive all day, every day insist that streets have cars on them, and that this is the only way to go. Cars. Car parking. Taxi ranks. Anything that gets in the way of these is plainly unrealistic.
This is a Bad Thing, and something we should all strive to resist. Down that road lies accepting of the status quo, and thinking that Business As Usual wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Streets in Britain are not and never have been “too narrow“.
There are any number of examples of streets the same width in the Netherlands which magically have enough space to make cyclists’ lives easier.
Yeah!Let’s campaign for fairer road space! Road space re-orientation. We are not going to be popular (as usual), but - so what - we are strong!
Our urban centres gotta be our starting point.
This reminds me of how much of an expensive joke the Stupidhighways are turning out to be. If those lanes were in London they would have bus stops and parking bays on top of them, and yet the Americans of all people are starting to do things right.
Quite right, christhebull.
I notice very young children using those separate lanes in NYC.
I wonder if anyone has seen children of that age using the Superficial Cycleways in London?
[...] Posted on March 12, 2011 by stabiliser My attention has been drawn, via Crap Waltham Forest and Karl McCracken, to the recent comments of Alison Dines, the leader of Islington Cyclists’ Action Group, [...]
Don’t get too excited about New York. It’s a nice video, and they’re big on words, but the cycling rate there remains quite incredibly low.
The last real figure I saw quoted was that 0.6% of commutes in the city were by bike - and commuters (by definition working age adults) are rather less affected by issues of subjective safety than are other demographics. London already has a significantly higher cycling rate than New York. When there isn’t a special event on, how many small children do you really see ? I suspect not many at all.
Also, note that they rather gloss over what happens at intersections. If you take a look at design guides from America you see some pretty horrific things being held up as best practice. This is not the place to look for inspiration. You need to look for better examples to copy than somewhere which is actually doing less well than Britain is. The obvious place to look is, of course, the Netherlands as this is where you find the highest standards applied to design, and the time-tested infrastructure which is the most successful in the world.
Here you really do see small children, the old and disabled people riding bikes in the city centre, and everywhere else, every day.
“This is not the place to look for inspiration. You need to look for better examples to copy than somewhere which is actually doing less well than Britain is. The obvious place to look is, of course, the Netherlands”
David, I certainly wasn’t suggesting that we should look to New York instead of the Netherlands for inspiration!
My point was that at least New York *seems* to be making cyclists feel more subjectively safe with their layout of cycle lanes, compared to what we have in London. Separating cycleways from the flow of traffic with a parking bay is certainly an improvement on the general layout of lanes in London, where there is little, if any separation, anywhere.
Oh, indeed. They’re trying. That’s to be applauded. However, the standards to which they work are quite poor. Little attention at junctions, for instance, and not really a comprehensive grid as has been shown to be required for these things to have an effect.
It is possible to make nice looking films and photos anywhere, including in Britain. Americans look to the UK just as much as British people look to the US ! However in both cases it would make sense to divert attention elsewhere…
There are good (and potentially misleading) examples in the UK too. For instance, this cycle path which actually has pedestrians and cyclists segregated and is built to a reasonable standard. Lots of students go along here, so use plenty of different camera angles, feature the young and attractive cyclists who use it and you’d be able to make a lovely “cycle chic” type video with excellent cycle infrastructure and high usage in the UK.
It’s great that this is a good stretch, but that it doesn’t really link up with much is actually the issue.
BTW, if you look at 48 seconds into the streetfilms video, how often do cyclists have to stop and give way ? And have you all noticed yet that whenever cycling Copenhagen is shown, wherever it is shown, including in this video, you nearly always see the same street ? It’s another example of cherry picking best examples of local infrastructure and not worrying too much about how widespread it is or what the bigger picture is.
Actually we’ve used photos from New York in our presentations to local traders - as well as a whole lot of others from the Netherlands of course.
The important thing with the NYC images is the pure shock value, as most people’s perception of New York is that it’s a completely car dominated city. That may or may not still be the reality, but when people here see photos of Times Square before and after its pedestrianisation, they really sit up and take notice - if we can make it there, we can make it anywhere!
More to the point, it gets past the prejudices against the Dutch that we have here - “They’ve always cycled”, and “It’s flat” being the two main ones. We know that the former is only partly true (their decline was only a decade behind ours, but was arrested in the mid 70s), while the latter has a big down side to it - the damned wind! Oh, and not all of the Netherlands is flat either. We could try re-educating our audience about these facts, but in so doing, we’d end up making it a debate about something that’s largely a diversion. Sometimes it’s more important to be a bit right and win the day, than completely right and lose the audience completely!
So don’t get too hung up on the degree of manipulation that these not-as-good-at-it-as-the-Dutch cities are doing of their public images. It’s all useful stuff for us who’re still battling against the UK’s pervading 1960’s school of urban planning.
Karl: What you say is all well and good, but there is still a problem here. As with all policy decisions (crime, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, obesity etc. as well as cycling), the UK looks far too often across the Atlantic and far too infrequently across the North Sea.
The Netherlands is ludicrously under-emphasized in the perception of cyclists and transport campaigners in the UK, and also in the perception of the media.
This is illustrated well by looking at what an average example of the British media says about cycling. If you search The Guardian, for instance, you find no fewer than 12000 hits about cycling in New York, vs. 3000 about Copenhagen and 2600 about “holland” (the best of three different words I tried), 600 about Amsterdam and just 35 for Groningen !
Most of the Dutch references are actually about preparing for a London to Amsterdam charity ride. Many of the others are hits on comments which people have made under articles, and not in the articles themselves.
Given the lack of actual cycling which goes on there, New York is not exactly under-represented in these numbers. Nor, indeed, is it under-represented in blogs about cycling.
Indeed, the same search on your own blog gives 2500 hits about Copenhagen vs. 4 about Groningen, 46 about Amsterdam (at least one actually about “New Amsterdam”) and in this case 38 about New York.
The focus of the cycle campaigning world in English speaking countries really is not on the Netherlands. You don’t need to do anything at all to stop yourselves talking about the Dutch success in cycling too much - that’s already well in hand !
Point taken - I must try harder!
A trip to the Netherlands is now officially on the agenda to rectify this.