blog spot april 10

London’s false dawn – the Cycling ‘Superhighways’

Continuing the story of the UK’s failure to invest in safer roads for cycling.

London was considered to have set the benchmark by which other UK cities are judged for encouraging cycling when, in 2008, they introduced “Cycling Superhighways”!

Super? Latin for ‘over’, ‘above’, ‘beyond’, says my 1935 edition of the Daily Herald New Illustrated Dictionary, a marvellous tome.

“Super is often prefixed to nouns to indicate excess, as in superior distinction….”  So the definition goes.  

In fact, it was a lie. A great lie and we were almost taken in. The Superhighways were nothing more than ribbons of blue paint, subtly conveying a false sense of security.

And now, in 2016,  London is putting down segregated cross city cycling routes.

Sounds good. But our experience of the so-called Superhighways means we are right to be skeptical.  It remains to be seen if the segregated routes will be any better than the so called “Superhighway” ,  a  fancy name for bog-standard cycle lane painted a vivid blue. Safer?

Cyclists have been killed on them!

They were – remain – a fantasy.

They were the idea of Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. He had been under pressure from the tireless London Cycling Campaign to improve road conditions for cyclists. And Livingstone came up with the vision of “Cycling Superhighways”. But he was not to remain in office long enough to fulfill his dream.

But his successor,  Boris Johnson did it for him.

Johnson  had street cred as a cyclist. He rides to appointments across London, and we had hopes cycling conditions would improve under his rule.

Boris set about turning Livingstone’s dream into reality, going over the top, in true Boris fashion laying it on thick by vowing to turn London into a cycling city the rival of Copenhagen.

However, he did launch the Barclay’s Bike Hire scheme – now Santander -  which has proved a huge success.

We all thought cycling conditions were improving at last, although we remained  curious and not a little suspicious about what a Cycling Superhighway would be like. Talk is one thing, doing quite another.

What exactly is a Cycling Superhighway.

It was all a bit vague.

The first one cost some £10million – a  blue superhighway from Merton into the City.    It will go down in history as probably one of the most expensive cycling safety confidence trick ever perpetuated. 

And yet, perhaps these “tricksters” actually thought they were doing the right thing. Think about the number of man hours involved in painting miles and miles of highway, of making the stencils to imprint the image of bikes and Superhighway  motifs on the roads.

The various heads of departments responsible spoke with conviction about their creation. I am left with the impression that they believed. And that is telling. For it tells us that they really didn’t have a clue!

My first sight of a Cycling Superhighway

In my mind’s eye I  imagined  the Superhighway was so named because cars would be banned from using streets given over solely to cyclists. Clearly that couldn’t happen. But the tag “Superhighway” must mean something special, or so I thought.

Something different from the bog-standard gutter-hugging narrow cycle lane which has a habit of disappearing under parking bays, and often just ends with a sign ordering “Cyclists’ Dismount”.

So being “Super” must mean they will be wider, and perhaps segregated at busy junctions.

Of course, there would also be traffic lights with  a cycling phase, to get riders across ahead of other traffic.

Actually, NOT!

All of this was pure fantasy. Cycling Superhighway turned out to be nothing more than a bog standard cycle lane, just a little bit wider than the norm, but given a lick of bright blue paint.

And there were no cycling traffic lights. And vehicles could  drive into them and park on them!

The funny thing is, that blue paint did something to our mental processes. It did  look super in a way, special, even.  I recall my first ride down the first Superhighway to be opened. I joined it at 7am at Merton, and rode it the seven or so miles to Clapham Common, to the official opening launch by Mayor Boris, who, good on him, had ridden in down the Superhighway from the city.

The Superhighway stood out. They might not really be that super, but drivers noticed this electric flash of blue, like a magic carpet,  striding down the dark grey tarmac.

Snag was, still is,  TFL traffic engineers seemed to believe that this blue lane would have the same magic effect on drivers as the Zebra Crossings. They hoped that drivers would give way to cyclists riding in the blue lane across junctions, just as they give way to pedestrians on the black and white strip of a Zebra crossing.

Fanciful!

And yet when the first Superhighway from Merton to Bank came into use, declared open by Boris in that marquee at Clapham Common that sunny morning – with all the flair of a stand-up comic – it was hailed as major breakthrough in cycling provision in Britain.

Well, it was certainly a good deal for blue paint manufacturers.

But we soon cottoned on to the simple fact that this blue line offered cyclists a false sense of security, especially at major junctions were cyclists remained as vulnerable as before in the starting grid alongside motors.

And so it proved, for cyclists were killed on the Superhighway at the unprotected crossing of the Bow junction.

The not so cycling superhighways had been created to cater for the sudden rise in pedal power in the capital. Which Transport for London wanted everyone think was down to them when in fact it had more to do with the indefatigable London Cycling Campaign (London CC).

When the controversial Congestion Charge was introduced to London in 2003 in a bid to dissuade people from making unnecessary driving trips in the central area,  it was the LCC who took the initiative and mounted a campaign which persuaded huge numbers of people to cycle into London instead of driving.

After the London bomb attacks on public transport in 2005 many more people  switched to using bikes!

This is what kick-started the huge rise in numbers of cyclists on the capital’s hostile roads, that and the high cost of public transport.  Mayor of London Ken Livingstone cottoned on.  Soon Transport for London, to their credit, adopted cycling as a viable transport mode to be promoted as a way of easing pressure on the crowded  buses, tubes and trains. And they produced stylish ads giving the impression that cycling was lovely on London’s roads.

LCC thought, OK, you bastards, if that’s the way you want to play with PR, how about doing something really worthwhile. And they wasted no time in increasing the pressure on TfL about the need to calm the traffic, to lay down cycle lanes. 

Do something about the lamentable lack of cycling provision on the main arteries. Improve the crossing places for both cyclists and pedestrians, the latter corralled on pavement and refuge, waiting for the green man to show for those few seconds they are allowed to hurry across. 

The back-street London Cycle Network,  a work in progress for decades aiming to top 900 kilometres – and incidentally the only city wide network in the UK  -was an ambitious  concept involving 33 London boroughs.

Decades after it was begun it remained incomplete, severed by major roads across which no secure path has yet been provided. Major roads remain a physical barrier usually heralded by the ubiquitous “Cyclists Dismount” signs. 

And it takes  time to learn the network which although well signposted, ducks and dives around the back streets. The good maps produced by TfL are a must. Even so it may not be taking you where you want to go. It has always needed a big brother running down all the main roads.

Cue the introduction of the not so super cycling highways back in 2008.

Now, eight years on, we have the latest incarnation, the segregated cross London cycle route. What will we make of them?

To be continued...