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...

What is holding Cycling back?

Continuing the blog “The Marriage of Success to failure”.

The tale so far.  We have established that our celebrated Olympic and Tour de France champions have become the toast of Britain, while at the same time, next to nothing is done to improve the safety of ordinary cyclists using the roads.

Proof of this came recently, with that latest fuck up – par for the course - the government’s dismal level of funding for their own Cycling and Walking Strategy announced at the end of March.

To recap on last week’s news.

Here’s what the CTC’s  Policy Director Roger Geffen and British Cycling  Policy Advisor Chris Boardman said of this debacle.

Geffen “Despite its laudable aim to normalise cycling and walking by 2040, this strategy’s draft targets suggest that, outside London, English cycle use would eventually reach Dutch levels by the start of the 23rd century…”

Are they having a laugh? As Ricky Gervais would say!

That’s 200 years to reach today’s Dutch cycling levels – which are 27 per cent of all journeys made by bike -  compared to under two per cent in the UK.

At the government’s new rate, cycling levels would only reach 3.5 per cent by 2025!

The brilliant and much admired “Get Britain Cycling Report” called for cycling levels to increase to 10 per cent by 2025 and to 25 per cent by 2050.

Here’s what Boardman said: “The Department for Transport has done some good work on cycling and walking, including developing processes to make it easier for local authorities to create infrastructure plans and identifying funding pots that could be used. But these are just baby steps. Far more ambition is needed if we have any hope of creating a cycling and walking culture to rival countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, let alone the government’s own modest targets.

“The truth is that without sustained funding, this strategy won’t be worth the paper it’s written on. We know that when faced with other priorities like road maintenance, saving bus routes and new housing developments, cycling and walking will be put at the bottom of most councils’ to-do lists.”

So that’s where we are.  Nowhere. Again.

From  my many talks with Roger Geffen and his predecessors when I was in harness at Cycling Weekly, I understood that tireless campaigning had eventually succeeded in winning the minds of the government, if not entirely the minds of Local Authorities! 

One of the major turning points came when the CTC had the  Department for Transport hauled before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transport, oh it must be over two decades ago. The DfT were charged with doing nothing to improve cycling conditions, and they were mercilessly challenged by the committee about this.  As a result they were obliged to mend their ways, and they did mend their ways.

A DfT cycling team actually began working with the CTC, and some good work would emerge over the years, benchmark ideas. Of course, they never did get very far because they were never given adequate funding.

By far the greatest success of recent years was the Get Britain Cycling Report identifying precisely how to improve cycling conditions as part of an integrated transport system. The Report was debated by a decent sized House of Commons and applauded by all parties.

Even the Prime Minister gave his support, whispering sweet nothings. For he declined to give it Cabinet backing!  He - and the other puppets in his government – stick to the mantra “it is for the Local Authorities to implement the Get Britain Cycling Report”.

It isn’t, never has been, never will be. Because they have no money,  no political will, no special expertise at all.

So there we are, bang up todate, banging on the walls of the Cabinet Office and Treasury. Are these the last two walls to be scaled before finally, we do “Get Britain Cycling”?

We need to understand our past if we are to understand the present, if we are ever to have a future.

This is my take on the many false dawns these past 50 years, my take on all the political  shit that has held cycling back, half a century of political indifference to making the roads safe for cycling.

John Grimshaw, the cycling visionary who gave us hope

The car takeover crept up on us at snail’s pace from the 1960s onwards, and we failed to notice.  Over the years, we hardly noticed how children’s play grounds - the side roads serving housing estates- began filling  up, first by cars going up and down, then by parking on either side, or on the pavements. I used to play footie with my mates in front of our house.

Now, many vehicles have invaded the pavement for parking space, denying even this to the kids, making life difficult for those with prams. 

But there was one engineer who 50 years ago didn’t like what he saw happening. His name is John Grimshaw, who wanted to include cycling and pedestrian’s needs into road plans. But he might as well have tried swimming against the tide. Other planners didn’t understand! His experience led directly to the creation of Bristol based CycleBag in 1977, and they built the Bristol to Bath cycling and walking path, the first such path along a disused railway. CycleBag became the charity Sustrans (Sustainable Transport) with Grimshaw as CEO.

They began turning those disused rail routes across the country into linear and leafy traffic free paths for cyclists and walkers.

Some of them became incorporated into Grimshaw’s far grander development, unique in Britain, the remarkable National Cycling Network (NCN). This now covers 14,500 miles in the British Isles, a mixture of bridleways, canal and river tow paths, and quiet traffic-light lanes, linking villages, towns and cities.

An estimated 3.1 million people used the NCN in 2012.

This was a dream which became reality. And Grimshaw was made an MBE in recognition of his enterprise.

Sadly, he was in the hands of local authorities who have in some places been unable to avoid routing the NCN along main roads, mostly where it enters towns. But in the main, this is a cycle path safe from traffic.

He has a yet unfulfilled dream.  He’d hoped that the NCN would be a catalyst for the introduction of cycle networks in the towns it passed through.

Instead, Highways Agency planners,by their own admittance, have little knowledge of how to plan for cyclists. They work to make roads ever more efficient – for motor traffic.

They turned their attention to smoothing out corners, speeding up traffic accessing side roads, once considered peaceful havens where children would play.

Kerbs have been  shaved to allow traffic to enter them from the main road without losing much speed, so as not to hold up the bumper to bumper stream hard up their arse.

It’s a higher tempo here than in Sweden, that’s for sure. I recall how my Swedish nephew on a visit to the UK becoming quite alarmed at the speed of our taxi drive to Gatwick Airport.

Funny thing is, I thought our speed was acceptable! No speed limit was broken!

Which perhaps suggests that even the speed limits are set too high!

Anyhow, back to cycle networks. There is another big network of cycle routes of note, the National Byway, another charity.  This covers 3,300 miles around England, parts of Scotland and Wales.

It’s aim is to provide a scenic route along rural lanes linking villages and market towns, specifically keeping to roads with as little as 2 per cent of motor traffic.

The routes connect 1000 places of interest, including eight World Heritage sites.

And it was routed by Michael Breckon, a former racing cyclist, Canadian Olympic  cycling team manager in 1972, involved at the highest level of the sport all of his life and more recently devoted to creating quiet byway routes for cycle touring.

Not without having to overcome political indifference in some quarters, leading him to say to me once that in Britain there prevails a "can't do" mentality. 

However, much of the British main road system to the cyclist and walker can often appear to them as a vision of the corridors of Hell itself. Instead of fire there is the stench of pollution and the noise of engines, often nose to tail, all of a rush.

Cycling campaigners trying to bring some balance to this one-sided development, can be likened to missionaries working among the heathen.

The roads remain motor roads. A few of them in the cities, very few, have a cycle lane, marked with a white line and the symbol of bike stenciled on the surface, providing some breathing space for the bike to take its rightful place.

Now and again, newspaper headlines tell of a new cycle route connecting a school – a one-kilometre length of path!

In Hove, the authorities removed one cycle lane after complaints that motorists were being held up!

The battle has been long and hard and shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile across Europe good progress has been made these past 60 years, a balance struck to allow cycling to play its part as transport.  There is great understanding in many towns and cities, respect on all sides.

An A&E doctor in the Midlands, sickened at having to deal with the weekly carnage from motoring collisions, once called for cars to be made of plywood and for a six-inch steel tungsten spike to be mounted in the dashboard of each and every motor vehicle.

That would concentrate minds, he said. He was being sarcastic.

But the fact of the matter is, if traffic was to be slowed down, if steam was made to give way to sail so to speak, cyclists could share the roads without fear and there would be no need for special facilities anywhere but at big junctions.

So the push continues, for engineers to rip out the road network and to completely redesign it. It will cost £billions.

We need cycle lanes the equal of traffic lanes in size, along all major routes, or beside them.

All enquiries to Pipe Dreams Incorporated.

Next week: Exposing the lie of London's cycling "Superhighways"

THIS morning, the government is to pass a new law which will forbid cycling campaign groups from criticising their dismal funding record of cycling.

Members of campaign groups who break the law which will be effective from 11.59 today will face a custodial sentence and made to ride to their deaths on an indoor velodrome.

This follows the outcry which followed last week’s Treasury announcement of record low levels of investment in the government’s own Walking and Cycling Strategy.  The strategy called for

a minimum annual investment of £500m – or £10 per head of population (in England) outside of London.

Instead, the treasury shocked the cycling world when it announced £300m spread across four centuries which amounted to a reduction funding per head of population to less than 1 penny per head.

To counter this, the chancellor said he would make up the difference by bringing back the turnpike to English roads, whereby cyclists would be have to pay as they passed a toll gate.

The toll gates are to be installed every three miles on main roads, and on every road into and out of each town.

Bridleways will also see toll booths installed, just in case the mountain bikers thought they could get off scot free.  

STOP PRESS: George Osbourne will replace Chris Froome as leader of Sky in a bid to win this year’s Tour de France.

Cameron and Osborne need to be held to account

Prime Minister DAVID CAMERON and Chancellor GEORGE OSBORNE  should be forced to justify themselves before a Select Committee over the Treasury’s derisory funding for their cycling and walking strategy announced to cries of shame last week.

But that won’t happen. Meanwhile, the cycling and walking strategy is now open to consultation.

This offers campaigners a glimmer of hope that if enough of us respond to the consultation document and protest, so that they may revise the funding upwards from it's lowly £1.39 per had of population to £10 per head!

Cynics will not hold out much hope. The American journalist Ambrose Bierce in the 19^th century was famous for being the “most savage newspaper commentator on human affairs…” wrote the late Miles Kington in his a collection of Bierce’s famous expressions published in The Devils Dictionary.  In this fine book, Ambrose defined the word consult as meaning: “To seek another’s approval for a course already decided on.”

Government under funding of cycling has a long history. If the cycling movement is to change attitudes, they need first examine that history.

They will then understand that all the fine reports published these past decades in support of elevating cycling to the centre of an integrated cycling policy have not worked.

The campaigners must then decide to find out why.

Somehow they must tackle the institutionalized discrimination which goes back decades but which today, despite the millions of people of all backgrounds cycling, still holds sway in the corridors of power.

Is it because cycling cannot escape it’s working class image?. Cycles are toys discarded for cars as soon as possible.  This is a peculiar British thing.

A line in the introduction of the English version of a book entitled, the Dutch Bicycle Masterplan, given to me by a Dutch transport engineer at the 1993 Velo City Conference in Nottingham, says it all.

The book explains how the Dutch transport rationale came to recognise the need to limit car use by encouraging as many people as possible to use a bike for those short trips of eight kilometres and less, which make up, in Britain, as much as 70 per cent of personal journeys made.

In what I took to be a neat dig at British mentality, the writer said: “First of all let me say that in Holland we do not have a problem with the bicycle”!

To me, that was a lovely example of the dry Dutch humour I had come to love from my many encounters with the Dutch racing cyclists in Britain and abroad during my time as a reporter.

It was a clever way of saying they knew that Britain did  have a problem with cycling! Insofar as making provision for cycling on the roads. 

In Holland 28 per cent of all trips are made by cycle. In Britain it is 2 per cent.

Fast forward some 20 years to the May 8, 2014, issue of Cycling Weekly.  Here we find a question and answer interview with Louise Ellman MP, chair of the Commons Transport Select Committee, leading a committee enquiry into cycling safety.

She was asked how committed did she think “we as a nation are to developing cycle and pedestrian-friendly cities?

She replied: “I think, overall, we are still a long way from understanding that concept, even though individually there are some good examples.”

How about that? You see! We, “are a long way from understanding that”. We don’t get it.  

But why? Oh dear, don’t get me started.

Let’s stick to what we know about the current impasse.

We’ll begin with a few curious facts guaranteed to make you either  laugh or cry.  Go for the laughter, because while this curious state of affairs exists in government, very little will be done to make the roads safer for cycling.

Here we go, for starters.

FACT: The mechanics of government do not exist by which the Department for Transport might lawfully demand Local Authorities to follow national guidelines to make the roads safer for cycling.

The DfT can only advise and Local Authorities  who have the right to disregard the advice and do so regularly,  or they interpret the advice as they wish.  This has resulted in piecemeal sub-standard facilities across the nation.

Every MP, every local councillor knows this – or should.

In my view, this odd state of affairs remains the  greatest single obstacle to improving cyclists rights on the highway and why the UK remains decades behind other European countries in cycling provision on the road network.

The other thing we need to know is that DfT controls only the trunk road network of England, 4.300 miles in total. Their authority extends no further,  not to the near quarter million miles of local authority roads you and I are using.

So that means the DfT have control of about 2 per cent of the English network, which, I understand, carries one-third of England’s road vehicle mileage.

The point to make here is this, the Dft is not responsible for the remaining 98 per cent of English roads – which come under Local Authority control. – Nor is the DfT responsible for any roads in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

So although the DfT might be persuaded to make their 2 per cent safer for cyclists, the much larger problem still remains.  How to get the 160 or so English Local Authorities to co-ordinate in the design and build of the road system to accommodate cyclists.

Answer, it can’t be done under the present set up. Each thinks they know best.

So that’s where we are at present, in a nowhere land for cycling.

And yet, guess what?  There are in fact,  246,988 miles of cycle routes in the UK.  They’re called roads.  Snag is, they have been hijacked for the use of motoring.

Many of them have become fast  hostile thoroughfares, race tracks in all but name built exclusively to serve the 33 million licensed drivers in the UK, not to mention the many who are unlicensed. 

Many drivers are just following the guy in front, aware that if they don’t keep up they’ll get a toot from the one behind.

And then there is too much going on  out there for many drivers to take it all in through that windscreen,   especially at junctions with traffic flying in from several directions at  twice, even three times the speed of the cyclist.  It’s pleasing when a driver spots the cyclist, ease off, beckons him forward.

I always acknowledge that, as I do those drivers of vehicles ahead of me in slow moving traffic, who move over to make room for me riding carefully down the inside.

When the sum total of all this energy is on the move, becomes the stream of fast moving traffic, that is when the road becomes hostile!

On top of that there are many driver who just floor it when they can, drive hard when the road ahead is clear, passing cyclists far too close for comfort.

And in amongst all of this there are several  million cycle owners having a hard time of it. In fact, many don’t ride at all because they’re scared shitless out there.  Not that government, central or local, understand. Or if they do they don’t care enough to do anything really effective about it.

As it is many drivers consider the roads  to be motor roads.  They don’t really expect come across walkers, horse riders as well as cyclists, who have a legal right to use them safely. 

Planners and traffic engineers, swept up on the exciting tide of technological development since the Second World War, think only of motor traffic. As ever more efficient and faster vehicles are produced, so the roads are tailored to suit. Roundabouts, for example, are designed to speedily process traffic.

Unlike in Holland where, as I understood it in the 1990s, they first ask how the moped rider and cyclist would use a junction, and design accordingly.

Whatever thinking directs their design of roundabouts today, one thing is certain, cyclists’ needs are designed into the layout. Dutch roundabouts are much safer to use than roundabouts in Britain.

.

Traffic islands in the UK remain the most hazardous part of the road network for cyclists and, indeed, for drivers, too.

Bikes were designed out of roads long ago, as the petrol and diesel engine was crowned king. Cycling was over, the transport planners thought.

It was understandable in a way, considering the comforts and freedom motoring has bestowed on people, and the view, still held in some quarters, that you had a bike only until  you could afford a car.

Only now are planners being made to understand that many drivers, too, are also cyclists, and that perhaps a more balanced approach to road design is needed if we are accommodate those 20-million bicycle owners.

For despite poor road conditions, cycling is thriving.

Next...the great cycling revival

The marriage of success to failure

STOP PRESS: Since writing this  in 2008, when even the historic  success by British riders in the Beijing Olympics failed to  motivate the British government to improve road safety for cyclists, I occasionally have pause to ask, do I need to reappraise my brutal assessment of how British politics has wilfully failed cycling this past half-century. 

I did the same after the 2012  London Olympic Games, when British riders again scooped a multitude of medals.

During this time no government has ever considered  putting up the necessary funding to put cycling at the centre of the integrated transport system Britain lacks.

The answer is, no, I don’t need to change a thing. The government is still providing peanuts for cycling.

In the November  2015 issue of  Cycle, the magazine of the CTC national cyclists’ organisation, an article postulated that  unless the government can agree funding by April 2016, the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy  they signed up to, will not run.

The report forecast  that investment  in cycling will halve, from the current miserable and totally inadequate £2 per head of population  to £1 per head.  That is10 times less than the minimum funding needed (£500m per annum) to make cycling safer on the roads.

Come March 2016, one week before April kicked in, the government announced their funding.

They had been asked to provide £450m a year for England outside of London, which equates to £10 per head of population.  Instead, the government announced £300m across five years.

That equates to £1.39 per head of population.

So that means everything in this chapter stands.

In fact, funding is now lower than it has been for years.

Why is this?

It is because in the Book of Transport, the bible written by the powerful Motor Lobby, it is written, Thou shalt not fund cycling.

Our cyclists are celebrated multi Olympic and World champions. Two of them have won the Tour de France – Bradley Wiggins once and Chris Froome twice. Some riders have been Knighted or made Dames.

Yet despite this celebration of our elite riders, the prospect remains remote that the roads will ever be made safer for cyclists, be they sporting cyclists or the  tens of thousands of ordinary cyclists, too. They will  remain as dangerous to cyclists as ever.

It has been suggested that the Sir David Brailsford, the guru largely responsible for Britain’s international cycling successes and who in 2015 guided Chris Froome to his second Tour de France victory and Britain’s third following Bradley Wiggins historic first in 2012, should now  apply his logistical brilliance in the pursuit of excellence to the wider cycling cause.

Good idea.

Because the CTC, the national cyclists’ organisation and a bastion of cyclists’ rights for over 100 years, who tirelessly lobby Parliament to improve cyclists safety, are banging their clever heads against a brick wall, bless their saddle bags. They don’t appear to realise that their excellent campaigning is going nowhere.

I have watched them for 40 years and have come to the conclusion that like hamsters in a wheel, they are going round and round and round, in a race to nowhere.

Nothing will change until someone finds a radical new way of tackling the government’s unwillingness to put their money where the mouth is.

Could Sir Dave Brailsford for that man?

 I imagine that in order to provide a solution he would first need to understand the problems.

Look now further, Dave.  It’s all here.

How is it that parliament continues to fail cyclists, he will ask.

Why is it that Britain continues to lag decades behind

other European countries in improving cycling safety on the roads?

How can we move forward?

Well, Dave, here’s your starter, to get you going.

According to the chairman of the now disbanded Cycling England, – scrapped by the Tories – you will first have to address the  institutionalised discrimination against cyclists which exists among Local Authorities.

The same might also be said of central government  which over the course of several parliaments these past five decades that I have been on the case, have very conveniently passed the buck to Local Authorities to improve the road infrastructure for cyclists.  But never provided them with the necessary money – now put at £500m funding per annum - necessary for them to make a start.

London has made a start and and is held an as example for the rest of the country to follow,

But London’s cycling infrastructure is rubbish,

according to a Dutch blogger who rode around it on his bike with  his wife.

He describes the Capital’s cycle network as “abysmal”.

One commentator responding to this blog said London is about 100 years behind the Netherlands in cycling development! He said they could do much to copy the Dutch, but that means asking them how to do it. And they won’t do that.

Why won’t they do that?

I don’t know.

MPs do a good talk, but that’s about it.

Many of them are genuinely concerned and want to help. But they are stymied by …..I don’t know what. By indifference at Cabinet level, at Treasury level.

During my time reporting on the many cycling campaign initiatives I can recall enthusiastically running stories on the promises made by various prominent politicians who have supported the case for improving cycling safety on the roads.

Each time I was convinced change would come. But it  never has, in any meaningful way. There have only ever been small investments which make little or no difference.

I feel we have been conned. Nothing much has ever changed.

I recall the  Friends of the Earth’s “Reclaim the Roads”  campaign in the mid 1970s, and the presentation of a report on how to do this presented to 10 Downing Street.

I thought, that’s it. Things will get begin to improve.

There was the British Medical Association’s report calling for action to encourage cycling to improve the health of the nation. There have been countless number of excellent reports presented Government by the CTC, the national cycling organisation.

One of the most convincing was entitled “Costing the Benefits”,  presenting the the economic case for cycling.

There is a design guide on how to build cycling infrastructure into the road system, endorsed by the Government and sent to every Local Authority in the land.

There is the National Cycling Strategy launched in 1996 without any money.

And each and everyone of these reports is gathering dust on shelves.

Engineers, when they do put in cycling facilities, such as the shared use cycle lanes on pavements – the preferred option – will maybe look at the Design Guide to see what it recommends, then discard what it says and build what they see fit.

Which is generally unfit for use.

The Highways Agency admits its engineers and planners have little experience in planning and designing for cyclists.

The only man attempting to improve the roads for cycling has been Mayor of London Boris Johnson, but even here, the “safety” of his Cycling Superhighways was illusionary. As I write, work has begun with his Cross London cycle route.

Most of the other town centre stuff in Britain, with a few exceptions,  is crap. There is not one town or city with a half-decent cycle network. 

Why – with the all professional expertise, all the expert opinion – has nothing been done on the scale necessary? Even that most impressive campaign in The Times - Cities fit for Cycling, and the Get Britain Cycling Report it inspired promoted by cycling friendly Liberal Democrat Julian Huppert has failed to wrest decent money from the Treasury. Why is this? Any attempt to find an answer will be lengthy.

Where to start?

More next week.

Cameron jeopardises 'Get Britain Cycling' report by refusing to give it Cabinet backing

 ‘Get Britain Cycling’ jeopardised by Prime Minister David Cameron’s refusal to provide Cabinet backing

LEADING transport commentator Christian Wolmar says it will be an “utter cop-out” if Prime Minister David Cameron’s refusal to provide Cabinet backing for the report ‘Get Britain Cycling’ - when it was published in April – sees cycling development left to Local Authorities.

Now, less than a month to go before the e-petition to trigger a parliamentary debate – which is still short of the 100,000 signatures this requires – I asked Wolmar, CTC Ambassador and a candidate for Mayor of London, what this report needs.

 “It needs a lead from central government to take responsibility, to provide inspiration and initiative,” he replied.

 “We need a strong government impetus behind this. When Holland changed its policy and went over to encourage cycle use that was a national policy brought about by protests about death in the 1970s. (now 27 per cent of all journeys are by bike in Holland, compared to less than 2 per cent in Britain) 

“You really need a government to draw out strong guidelines for the LA’s to channel money in the right direction. A lot of these levers are in government hands.

“I think it is an utter cop out to leave to LA’s. The tone and rules are set by government.”

 However, CTC Campaigns Chief Roger Geffen says don’t give up on the ‘Get Britain Cycling report yet.

The CTC has had high-level talks with Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, building the economic case for substantial investment for cycling in George Osborne’s forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.

Geffen says, “The DfT’s cycling team are working on getting other government departments to line up behind it, and (hopefully) securing backing from No. 10.”

*The Get Britain Cycling Report wants roads made safe for cycling and calls for

spending to increase from the current £2 per head of population to £12.50 per person. The Dutch spend £24 per person per year.

To sign the petition, go online to: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49196