BREXIT or Bike-it? asks Cycling UK

With the general election next week, Cycling UK are calling on cyclists to ask their local MP to press Government for the £billions needed to fund active travel to help stave off climate change and pollution.

They know full well that we are all consumed by a terrible angst with the long running Brexit farce with no end.

But taking the long view,  whatever becomes of Brexit, the government must still be persuaded to address climate change and pollution before the Thames floods  Parliament and one way of doing so is by  pumping £billions into making the roads safer for cycling. 

I'll believe it when I see it, says Bingers

Well, I think we know the present government’s response to that one! Nevertheless, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

In fact Labour’s election manifesto promises massive investment, the Liberals offer is pretty good while the Conservative’s budget for cycling remains typically poor.

The indefatigable Paul Tuohy, Chief Executive of Cycling UK, says whatever your position on Brexit, lobby your MP to press for the sustained government investment needed.

There was nothing in the last Budget for this.

Currently, about 2 per cent of the transport budget goes to cycling. It needs to be at least 5 per cent.

So, do as Paul asks, write to your MP about this. (Or email if you  no longer possess pen and paper)

You never know, one day the government may fulfil their own modest target to double cycle use which at present ain’t going to happen because their own active travel policy is all but inactive.

What the three main political parties promise to spend on cycling in their election manifesto 

The Guardian Bike Blog has it all in greater detail. You can read an edited version here

courtesy of The Guardian News and Media.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2019/dec/01/which-partys-general-election-pledges-are-best-for-cyclists

From the Guardian Bike Blog…

The Walking and Cycling Alliance wants £17 per person per year to be spent on active travel, rising to £34 per person by 2025. Spending is currently £7 per person annually.

Conservative

Main pledges: A £350m cycling infrastructure fund over five years (£70m a year), and “tough new design standards, which must be followed to receive any money”; a £2bn pothole fund; Bikeability training for every child; pilots of low-traffic “healthy neighbourhoods” to reduce rat running on residential streets, with increased provision “for separated bike lanes on main roads”; trials incentivising GPs to prescribe bicycles or bicycle hire to patients. There is mention of a “long-term cycling programme and budget like the roads programme and budget, though of course smaller”, though it is unclear if that refers to the £350m or something longer-term.

Funding pledge on cycling: £70m per year, each year of the new parliament; total £350m.

Per head per year: £1.18 – so less than the current spend.

However, £350m over five years is tiny in transport terms and pales in comparison to what other parties are offering. Manchester alone needs £1.4bn for its city-wide cycling and walking programme.



Labour

Main pledges: £50 per head per year on cycling by the end of the term, amounting to £7.2bn a year. Deliver 5,000km (3,100 miles) of cycleways within the first term; provide safe cycling and walking routes to 10,000 primary schools; £200 grants for e-bike purchase and support for an “e-bike valley” industrial cluster. Bring back Cycling (and now also Walking) England, axed in the bonfire of the quangos, to deliver councils’ plans. Doubling of Bikeability funding to cover all primary school children, plus secondary school children, and adults. Fully fund the Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy which sets targets to double cycling by adults and children by 2025. Cycling and bicycles on prescription; a “cycling and walking social investment fund” to support active travel in “left-behind areas”.

Summary: £8.2bn a year is a huge amount of money for cycling. This programme, if successfully implemented, would be transformative – opening up cycling as a genuine transport option up and down the country. Funds would come from vehicle excise duty, says Labour – i.e. the polluter pays. The goal of the plans is to cut congestion and air pollution, which is responsible for at least 40,000 deaths a year, boost health and improve towns and cities.

Liberal Democrat

Main pledges: Spending 10% of the transport budget on cycling by the end of a five-year parliament. More devolution and power to councils to make decisions; using the planning process to reduce car dependency in new developments. “A national strategy to promote cycling and walking, including the creation of dedicated safe cycling lanes”; placing a far higher priority on encouraging walking and cycling; reducing car use; integration of rail, bus and cycle routes.

Funding pledge on cycling: 10% of the transport budget by the end of a five-year parliament.

Summary: Light on detail, though a commitment of 10% of the transport budget is an ambitious target.

Council surrender and Velolife lives again

So it came to pass that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead finally gave up their vindictive two-year campaign and last week withdrew their application for an injunction - and with it the threat of a jail sentence - against the owner of Velolife cycling café.

But it took the sustained joint effort of Britain’s two biggest cycling bodies, 
Cycling UK and British Cycling - who wheeled into action lawyers Leigh Day - before the council surrendered.

Here’s how Cycling UK summarised the case made against Velolife.

Lee Goodwin’s café and workshop in Warren Row, Berkshire, was made the subject of an Enforcement Notice by the council in October 2017, following a complaint from a neighbour. In July this year the Council applied for an injunction against Mr Goodwin alleging breaches of the Enforcement Notice, which could have resulted in imprisonment for him if cyclists met at his premises.
Perhaps we’ll never know what exactly occurred that finally persuaded the council to back down, but clearly Leigh Day played a major part in preventing the case reaching court.

This was a “victory for common sense” said Cycling UK.

The lone resident’s complaint was that his or her right of access to his or her house was blocked by cyclists outside the café. That’s a fair enough complaint to be followed up.

And it was, by the looks of it, for a sign was posted outside the café requesting no one gather there.

But the whole thing started to go mad when the council claimed that Velolife would be in breach of the planning application if organised meetings or rides began or ended there.  And yet they were unable to explain what exactly constituted a meeting or an organised ride!

And then the story descended into farce as they sent in inspectors to check on cyclists arriving and departing!

What was it that had so spooked the council?
Was this a grudge thing? A council bigwig’s brush with a badly behaved person or persons on bikes?
Taking it out on the whole wider cycling community?

Was this the fear of the unknown? Of  something different in their backyard?  
This strange tribe gathering in their big shiny helmets and tights and colourful jerseys and jackets and sparkling machines, walking awkwardly in their cleated shoes. 

And worst thing of all, smiling and laughing, joking, voices raised in greeting, perhaps drowning out the comforting throbbing noise of traffic.

Perhaps the resident and the council saw those big helmets and shiny skinny clothing and thought, Christ, the aliens are back.

For there are some who would have us believe we were visited by others from some far off place in Biblical times, teaching our forefathers  engineering, astronomy, maths and probably Bingo and Morris Dancing as well. For there is no doubt these activities are the product of a much higher intelligence. 
As a former club hill-climb champion I can only appreciate and envy them their anti-gravity propulsion drives.

Whatever, it is certainly true that people are often spooked by change. Take the story a few years ago of the fear generated among residents who began to shake with rage at the proposal to run heavy freight trains along the hitherto barely used railway line at the bottom of their gardens of their big 
houses.

The fact that the railway had been there 100 years before houses were built alongside it seemed to have escaped them. Bit like moving to live on a main road and then complaining about the traffic noise.

Or people who move into a flat opposite a pub and get a cob on when the place erupts with loud rock music on two evenings a week.

Or this one. City people moving to live in the countryside and then moaning about farm smells; moles digging up manicured lawns; deer trampling flower beds.

The railway was there first, so was the pub, so was the farm and so were the animals. Get used to it.

Back in the 19^th century cycles made transport history by becoming the first mechanically propelled machines on the roads, providing individuals – for the first time ever - with the means to travel far and wide. Including to Windsor and Maidenhead, where they might like to find refreshment and horror of horrors, meet with other cyclists!  Get used to it.
The new Millennium has seen a cycling Renaissance. Velolife is a celebration of that.

Bristol 15th best cycling city in global survey

BRISTOL confirmed its claim to be Britain’s most popular city for cyclists when placing 15^th worldwide in a 90-city Global Bicycles Cities Index - carried out by German insurance company Coya -  reports Cycling UK.


Edinburgh was rated next best British city, placed 54^th worldwide, while London was rated third best in the UK,  62^nd overall. Dublin in Ireland was placed 60^th in the overall table.


No prizes for guessing which city topped the survey,

Yes, Utrecht in Holland, that Utopian cycling city to many eyes here in the UK.

Next best was Munster in Germany, 2^nd.  Antwerp, Belgium, placed 3rd, Copenhagen, Denmark was ranked 4^th, Amsterdam in Holland 5^rd and Malmo, Sweden, 6^th.
(photo by Elina Sazonova)

According to Coya, Utrecht comes out top for several reasons. For a start, over half of the city’s residents regularly use a cycle. There are low accident rates and few bike thefts.

The authorities created a bike-friendly city with a network of covered and open air cycle paths linking many areas, with purpose built bridges, subways and roundabouts designed for cyclists.

Utrecht also boasts the world’s largest cycle park which by next year will be extended to include 33,000 bike parking spaces.

Utrecht, to many of us in Britain, represents cycling Utopia.

What’s Bristol got going for it?

Well, in 2008, Bristol was named Britain’s first Cycling City stealing the thunder from Cambridge, Edinburgh and London who all like to think they are top dogs for cyclists in the UK, where investment in cycling nationally remains piss poor.

Currently the government claims to be spending £7 per head of population (England) which is quite a jump from what it was a few years ago when it was about £2 per head and falling. Even so it remains far below what the Dutch invest in cycling which is now £25 per head.
As I recall it, funding would have to be at least £10 per head in the UK before we would see an  appreciable increase in the number cycling utility trips made. It's not just about building cycle lanes, it's about making roads and specifically junctions  everywhere safer to use.

In the absence of  any decent government funding to make the roads safer for cycling - estimated to run to £billions but still mere peanuts in annual transport budget – it is left to those cities with the political gumption to do what they can with moderate sums offered by the government.

In this way Bristol received £19m a few years ago and £7 million more recently, enabling them to put down cycle lanes on many streets, including Dutch-style segregated lanes.

It is most appropriate Bristol should be leading the way. It is thanks to the former local pressure group Cyclebag that the 12-mile Bristol to Bath  cycling  and walking route along a disused railway was built in the 1970s. 
This led to the creation of Sustrans 
(the Sustainable Transport charity based in Bristol) famous for creating the 16,000 mile national cycling and walking route.

ONE OF THE MISSING MILLIONS

I never tire of the dramatic vistas which open up when I am cycling in the hills around the small Surrey market town where we live. I enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face, the fresh air, the satisfaction of powering along under my own steam. I can take descents Vincenzo Nibali style  - I like to think - carving a perfect arc through the hairpins. When I can see that the road is clear!

I just wish my daughter could enjoy the countryside as I do.


But she is housebound, isolated by a terrible genetic medical condition which baffles doctors and scientists alike.  She has Ehlers Danlos syndrome (EDS) and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia (PoTs); she is grounded, physically and mentally.


The government is being petitioned to increase the research into EDS.

Here is the link: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/275249

Why the zebra?

*There is a saying “When you hear hoof-beats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra.” 

This is because they are taught to look for the more common diagnosis, not the unexpected. 

EDS is rare, so the medical profession does not look for it, especially in young people. 

That’s why it is usually under diagnosed or misdiagnosed.

The condition presents hypermobility - bendy limbs.

Bendy limbs are a symptom of weak connective tissue – the stuff which connects bone, muscle and organs, body and mind together.

Many people have bendy limbs with no serious ill effects. But for a lot of people, it can be very painful and even lead to serious dislocations.


Here’s an analogy the better to understand this.  Think of the human body as a chassis, such as that of a motor vehicle, that rigid framework upon which is set not just the body, but also the engine and all working parts.

Imagine the chassis is made of rubber, bends this way and that. So the driveshaft moves out of line, the engine stalls, fuel flow is unreliable.

You would change the vehicle. You cannot change the human vehicle. 


She has orthostatic intolerance meaning the slightest movement can push heart rate sky high and blood pressure very low, resulting in giddiness, feinting in some cases. When this occurs there is a need to sit down immediately, and wait for it to pass.

She has sensory overload – the slightest sound is a thunder clap; bright colours dazzle and shimmer; move too quickly, dizziness.

There is chronic fatigue, which is a common factor also with sufferers of ME.  

There is crushing anxiety – up to seven times greater than normal - triggered by an overreaction by the brain to what otherwise would be considered normal day to day stress.


 I am free.

She is a prisoner. 

Not permitted a smile of pleasure at the beauty of the Weald, as I am. Or to play football for a local team, as she once did when a schoolgirl - although she was so often exhausted afterwards. And so hungry we needed to quickly find a café on the way home. Years later and after endless appointments, she was diagnosed hyperglycaemic.


Well, that was a relief to know at last the reason for the angry, traumatic and embarrassing outbursts at the school gate all those years before.  

No warning.  Sudden and dramatic ravenous bouts of hunger, plummeting blood sugar levels, a craving to eat.  Her mum would take a sandwich along to quell the hunger and anger.  

She was a young adult when the PoTs kicked in. Although she didn’t know it was PoTs at that time.

One day, returning home across town the world started to spin.

Thank you, cardiac specialist Dr Nick Gall, of King’s College Hospital in London who considered her case merited further investigation. After a private hour-long consultation he determined to do for her what no other doctor had considered doing these past 20 years, strive to identify wider health issues through a variety of specialists.


Some 30 exhaustive tests later, over a 12-month period - thankfully arranged on the NHS - she was found to have PoTs (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia) and EDS – which was diagnosed by the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore. For years she was considered to be suffering from ME, which presents similar symptoms to PoTs.


Her honours degree in broadcast production is the one shining positive in her life thus far, which came after a four year respite from illness over 10 years ago and which had taken her out of secondary education in her first term.  She had recovered sufficiently to return to education in fits and starts, but needed to take care and to rest often.


That achievement stands as a marker to opportunities lost and although she began to relapse during her final term, she completed her studies.  But the cruel effects of EDS means her future is now on hold.


For she is one of the “Missing Millions”, mostly they are young people and all with the same or related conditions. No longer seen outside their front door. In the absence of any understanding of this condition in the wider NHS, sufferers are left alone, cared for by parents who themselves can become severely stressed with worry and little respite.  She discovered who her real friends were. They stayed in touch, bless them. Others drifted away. The isolation is awful.


Dr Jessica Eccles, NIHR Clinical Lecturer, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, offers hope for EDS sufferers. She is currently exploring how hypermobility causes such a range of disabling conditions.

She and her team have designed and are to test a new non-drug treatment for managing anxiety in those suffering with hypermobility and autism.  There is evidence that people with this condition are wired differently, she says. But exactly how she doesn’t know. I insert a “yet” in there because I try to remain positive.


My mind is full of this as I ride, which necessity means cannot be for long, for my wife and I share caring duties for our daughter hour by hour. So I am able to get out for an hour and a half or so, usually first thing in the morning before the house is up, or sometimes it will be after lunch,  on one or two days a week.


I’m lucky in that I am retired and so I can do this. Unlike my wife who works from home and so has very few breaks.  Juggling home life with work deadlines is added stress.

Up and along and down the North Downs I will go, or perhaps on the mtb to Deer Leap Woods, there to glory in the  tantalising view back down the valley to the town sitting in the curve of the hills, and the church spire reaching for the sky.


We all went down that route years ago, when Jenny  was a child, on the Isla trailer bike hooked up behind me, with mum on a Raleigh Pioneer hybrid.

If she was well, Jenny would probably prefer to go film conferences – which she used to do with friends.  That was years ago, when her condition allowed windows of opportunity to engage with the world – but carefully. Because there would be consequences – several days of aching limbs, brain fog, muscle pain.


Serenity, that was the sci-fi film she took me to see.

When neighbours were away, Jenny would look after their cats.  She might also do a morning stint helping out in local charity shops.

But now the condition has closed even those few loopholes, those rewarding escapes which allowed her to dream, to plan her life. She had wanted to work in LA.


She was industrious, a natural leader, and CNN took quite a shine to her when she worked at their London news studio during the summer break in her degree course.

Now movement is too painful. It would take her 20 minutes to manage the stairs.  So  she has confined herself to her room. She has not left this room for over six months now. She becomes very depressed, fearful, and the obsessive compulsion evident as a child has grown worse. There are huge meltdowns.


So her room offers a peaceful haven away from the clatter of dishes in the kitchen, away from voices which no matter how low can still be too loud. But her best friend’s bark – Toby, our Dachshund (right)  – is no longer heard. For this sparky character, our friend, passed away in his 14th year, at the end of June and is greatly missed.


She would sometimes ask for Toby to be brought up to her for cuddles. Sometimes we’d see him at the foot of the stairs, peering upwards, wanting to visit, when we would take him up.

There are many constraints. There can be no longer be any     visitors to our small cottage - sound carries.  One carer must be here at all times, 24/7. The daily routine remains the same.  Christmas, Easter – barely observed, they have become merely dates on the calendar.


There is a care management protocol to follow.

There is a need for several small portions of fresh food through the day – she has a slow digestive tract.

Sinus pain requires ice packs. Back and neck pain heat wraps, sometimes late into the night.  We maintain a supply of fresh water. She was required to consume between three and four litres per day but this is now reduced.

There will be lemon drinks, mint tea, ordinary tea, Complan, Ready Brek.  For lunch, nearly always a small portion of chicken, rice or potato and vegetables, after which she will take a glass of freshly made carrot juice with ginger.


The evening meal of homemade vegetable soup is followed by a small glass of broccoli and cucumber juice also with ginger. Ugh! There will be snacks provided overnight in case of need – dry Rivita crackers, a banana.  A flask of hot water.

She manages herself a strict medicinal routine,  rigidly follows her nutritionists guidelines – shades of her former well-organised self.


How different life can be. It is not really a life. That said, the condition is not life-threatening in itself.  But the lack of movement, the loss of condition, physical and mental, poses future serious health risks.

The local GPs know all the details of her plight, courtesy of Dr Gall.   


Yet over the years even though they have invited us to discuss with them any problems, they have never offered a routine health check, except when prompted.  

Our doctor, a kindly man, admits to knowing next to nothing about the condition and yet he disputed her level of anxiety.  She had dosed up with painkillers for his visit!

He was called out because of her repeated high temperature readings. He had never encountered this before and didn’t know what might be done to alleviate it.

Notwithstanding many others who have far more serious and often life-threatening conditions, this invisible and horrible illness puts sufferers through one of the stages of Hell.  


She no longer reads books.  Doesn’t read newspapers, or watch Television, nor go online.  Has no idea what’s going on in the world. Doesn’t want to know.

The sensory issues have forced her to withdraw.

There is the occasional smile, when the pain eases.  She will do her daily stretching routine, a very light workout in accordance with advice.

Otherwise she stares at the walls, at the sky through the window, lost in her own thoughts, whatever they may be.  For there is no conversation as such.  A sentence or two when she needs a hug or simply silent company.


There is a cycle shop up on the hill, a hill that be seen from her window if she cared to look.

This shop is aptly named Destination Bike and more often than not that will be my destination occasionally.  I can be there in 30 minutes. A 10-minute stop. My escape.

Excellent coffee and cake in there – and it goes without saying, excellent bikes and kit. The owner must be very fit.  He and a dozen of his friends rode the Tour de France route in June.  As you do!


The 1972 route, that is.  They chose ‘72 because it had fewer transfers between stages than more recent editions of the biggest bike race in the world. This made it more manageable to organise, starting from the same town the Tour arrived in the day before.

The ’72 Tour was won by the greatest of them all, Eddy Merckx. It was his fourth victory of five in Le Tour.

That edition covered just over 3,800 kilometres in all, taking in the big mountains - the Pyrenees, Mont Ventoux in Provence and the Alps.

Lots of ups and downs. Just like life.

I recall Jenny taking part in a tour of sorts, a one lap children’s cycle race on her Raleigh mtb, on the Crystal Palace circuit in South London.   

I can still see her big grin as she pedalled furiously into view down the finishing straight.  She was aged about nine. That was over 20 years ago.

www.ehlers-danlos.org

www.facebook.com/Ehlers DanlosUK

ALICE IN WONDERLAND LEARNS THE BITTER TRUTH

 

A year or two ago this blog commented on the hitherto unknown and scandalous story which explained why no half-decent funding has ever been provided to improve cycling road safety or, for that matter,   any transport policy worthy of the name.

This was revealed when I reviewed Christian Wolmar’s revolutionary book, “Are Trams Socialist – why Britain has no Transport Policy”.


I am persuaded to run these facts by you again…like one of those oft repeated Second World War movies they keep showing.

Because last week Cycling UK (formerly the Cyclists’ Touring Club) complained once again that the government is still refusing to part with the money to make the roads safer for cycling.

It’s as if they didn’t know why!


Surely Cycling UK knows the history?   But they’ve never seen fit to tell the cycling world how cycling was simply  never considered in the huge expansion in road building over 60 years ago. Other than to blame the motoring lobby.


It’s about time Cycling UK told the whole story to their members. Come on, I’ve been a member for over 25 years. Do it for me!

Write the story revealing all the ugly details of how cycling was engineered out of the equation all those years ago and has never been allowed back in.  Or is Cycling UK scared of frightening away new cyclists by admitting the roads are hostile places to be? It’s a problem for them, I appreciate that.


But in coming clean, at least everyone will then know why this is such a Titanic struggle to get funding to enable Britain to even get close to replicating a cycling policy similar to that of Holland and other countries.

For this is a fascinating tale of bloody single-minded opportunism by those with vested interests in road transport back in the 1960s.  


The very same qualities, it might be said, employed today by that bunch of comedians in the Cabinet conjuring up Brexshit Hell.

Notwithstanding that most of us are going mental after three years of this Brexshit nonsense since that ill-fated referendum, Cycling UK remain clear headed in their continuing work to protect cyclists’ rights. For there are many areas in which they successful. But not in the big one.


In the latest issue of Cycling UK’s magazine, Duncan Dollimore is lamenting the continued lack of finance for cycling in the government’s spending plans. Clearly, it’s beginning to get to him, for he reveals a healthy dose of scepticism in quoting the White Queen telling Alice in Wonderland: “the rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”

That sums up Her Majesty’s Government perfectly.


Dollimore says he is still waiting “for any MP, minister or civil servant to explain why investing more in active travel doesn’t make economic sense and isn’t needed to help tackle our inactivity-related public health, air pollution, congestion and climate crises.”

As if this logic will surely make sense to them.  

Well, first off, the older MPs  aren’t that bothered by climate change because most of them will be extinct well in advance of the chaos science is predicting for the human race.  

As for the younger ones, with few exceptions they may not see cycling as a major career move because they suffer from Big Projectitus and  want to only to be involved in mighty schemes,  like HS2.


Besides, the ruinous transport decisions set in stone half a century ago dare not be challenged for fear of losing motor voters.  

It’s worth remembering what happened to John Prescott who, as deputy PM to Tony Blair in the 1990s, received a slap on the wrist when he dared to suggest cars should be used less often. And his transport brief calling for an integrated transport system was taken away from him and his suggestions binned.

As for today’s government,  funding for cycling is the furthest thing from their minds, hunkered down as they are with Brexshit and dancing to the mystic notes of the pied piper of Downing Street, one Dominic Cummings, nightmare advisor to the shameless Prime Minister Boris Johnson.




As Mayor of London back 2008 Johnson was cycling’s friend, remember?

Then he honed his skills as an illusionist and conman by giving us cycling “Superhighways”, those blue painted cycle lanes offering a false sense of security which evaporated at major junctions, and contributed to the deaths of cyclists there.

So no point in running this story past Bojo’s cabinet.  They are engrossed in fulfilling the Brexshit dream of misguided Leavers who blame the EU for the ills of our own government’s making!


So as we career out of control towards leaving the EU, with no firm idea of how trade and the supplies food and medicine is to continue, let us examine another previous government fuck mess which, although small by comparison with the current shit show,  put cycling on the back burner for ever.

Hats off to cycling

We go back to the 1960s, to another bunch of self-serving MPs headed by the then  minister for transport, road builder Earnest Marples, who eventually did a runner to France, thence  to Monaco, wanted for fraud – leaving home in a rush, drawers left open, clothes strewn about -   to avoid arrest for tax avoidance.


Back then the government, noting the growth in car use in the early 60s, determined that this was to be encouraged.  There was no thought to strike a balance by providing for each mode – rail, buses, cycling, and pedestrians.

They considered people only cycled until they could buy a car.

They put into peoples’ minds that driving was the only way.

It was a vote winner, after all. So it was decreed that people should be able to drive where and when they wanted to.

And so drivers came to believe this was their right and that bikes and buses were in the way.


This policy, says a well-known transport expert today, was “pursued with a fervour bordering on fundamental fanaticism which to this day dare not be challenged.” 

They came up with a transport policy – but only for cars.


In fact the rail network was at the same time conveniently savaged in the infamous Dr Beeching cuts which took an axe to 5000 miles of the network in the guise of making the rail network more efficient.

The network certainly needed pruning, but this went too far and many local communities lost their vital rail links.  Is it a coincidence, I read this week, that many of those communities whose rail links to the big towns and therefore employment opportunities were severed  voted Leave?


The plan was that everything must be done to facilitate and encourage car use, never mind those who didn’t own or even desire one.

So Marples presided over the Buchanan report which recommended – wait for it - that the motorway network be extended into the heart of every city and town in England.

Plans were drawn up! But then, horror of horrors, it was realised this would mean the wholesale destruction of town centres and tens of thousands of homes, a sure vote loser, that one!

So the scheme was quietly dropped. But not before a start had been made in various cities and towns, including the Hammersmith Flyover built by Marples Ridgeway and a chunk of Hyde Park destroyed to widen Park Lane! 

The inner-city motorway plan was quietly shelved.


To this day nothing else has ever been proposed that might address our inefficient transport system and cycling has been the biggest loser.

But the drive everywhere dream has persisted and nothing must be allowed to disturb it simply because there is big money in motor transport.

This is why the M25 has more junctions than originally planned for – to allow business development along the link roads accessible only by motor transport.

Society became wedded to this dream.

So promoting cycling on the scale envisaged by campaigners remains a vote loser in the minds of government for fear of a backlash from the motoring lobby who see this as a threat.

Even when it can be argued that the growth in leisure and cycling sport makes it a vote winner!

“You need to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan.

Government make a nonsense of their cycling safety review

This is the bizarre story of how two years ago the government, which continues to invest next to nothing in cycling safety, managed to contrive to make cycling less safe.

They did so by a rule change to allow parking on some cycle lanes without first consulting with and then not telling  any local authority nor Cycling UK about it.
(The photo shows a car preparing to turn left by straddling the solid white line of a cycle way).

This act of vandalism came to light following the Department for Transport’s (DfT) 2018 review of cycling safety when eagle-eyed Roger Geffen, Cycling UK Policy Director, discovered to his alarm a secret rule change at odds with the Highway Code.

He now fears it could become incorporated into the next edition of the road user’s bible and that will certainly undermine cycling safety on cycle lanes.

I will attempt to explain in a nutshell what I have gleaned from the detailed explanation of the complex legislation surrounding this matter, published on the excellent Cycling UK website.

You know those solid white lines on cycle lanes which we all love because vehicles are not allowed to park on them? | Well, vehicles are allowed to park on them now.

Well, not all cycle lanes with solid whites! 

The DfT decided that solid white lines put down before the rule change in 2016 will remain sacrosanct - it remains an offence to park a vehicle in them.

It is the cycle lanes marked with solid white lines put down after the 2016 rule change where a driver is now permitted to park his or her hazard. 

But how to tell the post 2016 lanes from earlier models?

Will anyone know?  Are records kept of when the white lining was put down!  Are they date stamped?

Geffen warns that this is a situation which could become really messy and he is striving to get the DfT to drop their new ruling.

He told Cycling UK magazine:  “We now have a situation where the Highway Code is out of step with the law. So, unless the Government reverses the 2016 rule change, they will soon need to make a change to the Highway Code which will worsen cycle safety, as part of a review that is supposed to improve cycle safety.”

STOP PRESS.

No money for cycling in the government’s recent Budget.

No change there, then – not even small change!

So much for Extinction Rebellion’s urgent call to reduce carbon emissions (rapidly rising, according to the latest news) which could be achieved by promoting cycling as an alternative to always using the car.

Instead, they now permit motors to go where no motors were allowed to go before, into protected cycle lanes.

*I no longer doubt the intelligence of  computers after the spell check

on this piece recommended changing the abbreviation DfT to Daft!

Council inspectors to monitor Velolife cafe!

I learn in Cycling Weekly this week that the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead are to post council inspectors to monitor cycling behaviour at Velolife Café, in their ongoing and absurd bid to stop “cyclist meets” there – whatever constitutes such a meet; the council cannot explain this even to themselves and say they don't want to stop cyclists going there!
But if riders should do whatever it is the council say they shouldn't be doing - appear to be meeting -  the café will be in breach of planning rules and the owner could face legal action.

The real reason for the council’s shit behaviour of course is to pacify nearby residents who have apparently complained cyclists are a nuisance. One complaint was that they have impeded a local resident's access to reach his home via a driveway customers  cross to reach the café.   You would think that could be cleared up by advising customers  to keep the drive clear.

But when a council inspector denied that cyclists were a “visual disturbance” and lowered the tone of the area it would seem there is more to this than story than meets the eye and we can only presume that someone had said that they were.

It was encouraging that the council quashed that viewpoint but confusing they have persisted in their harassment of the café owner and cycling clubs over a condition in the planning rules they cannot explain adequately, making matters worse by the threat of legal action against the café owner.


Thanks to crowdfunding, Velolife Café has received over £18,000 in donations to help pay for their defence, if this goes to court.

In the meantime, the inspectors are moving in for teas and a slice. And to spy on the pedalling customers.

Where will it all end?

Could we see a park and ride scheme being set up down the road in either direction of the café - near Reading - to spare the residents the nuisance of witnessing the arrival of cyclists on bikes.

Cyclists would be required to leave their bikes in the park and ride area and board closed prison vans loaned from a security company, one rider per cell. I don’t know how many each van will take, eight riders, maybe?
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Parked ready to ride
 Anyway, in this way they could arrive at the café unseen, exit the vans and

go directly into a covered walkway, like those connecting aircraft to terminal buildings.

These arrangements will, at a stroke, spare the residents from a “visual disturbance” of seeing riders in funny, gaily coloured cycling garb. And spare them the racket of all those freewheels, not to mention the horror of overhearing laughter and merry chat.

Once inside the café, inspectors, wearing jack boots and black shirts bearing some sort of insignia will be tasked to determine whether the cyclists are in a “meeting”.

Two cyclists together OK. Three or more…that could constitute a planned meeting! Break it up.

But how to prevent this in the first place? 

Easy.

First of all, cyclists shoud only be allowed at the counter one or two at a time.

They must sit only in pairs at tables shielded on both sides by high-sided screens so they cannot see adjacent tables. In the style of voting booths.

An inspector will monitor each pair to see they do not exchange result sheets or race programmes - which may be interpreted as a meeting of some sort -  and that they only speak in whispers.

Hopefully, this will all be sorted before October 31 when, in the event of a No Deal Brexit things might take a sinister turn.

According to the latest Private Eye, the army are set to take over running local council services because local civil servants will be pressed into service by Whitehall to help deal with the chaos and disruption expected as we leave the EU.

Best to see Royal Borough’s operation as a dry run in public control if Nigel Farage’s Brexshit Party win the general election and impose martial law.

Tea and a slice, please. No sugar.

Council still at war with Velolife

Ryka's Cafe at the foot of Box Hill in Surrey, famous as a magnet for 100s of bikers, cyclists, and walkers either solo or meeting in organised groups...no bother!

Council digs itself deeper into a hole over legal threat to Velolife Café

Last Friday, Velolife café owner Lee Goodwin was still facing the threat of legal action if cyclists meet in organised rides in breach of planning rules; say the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council.

A week after this absurd story first broke attempts by both Cycling UK and British Cycling to persuade the council to soften its aggressive approach have only

resulted in the council digging themselves deeper into a hole.

This dispute kicked off when the council received a complaint that cyclists at the café were considered a nuisance by local residents.

Just how they were a nuisance wasn’t explained.

We have since learned two things. It seems likely that the sight of cyclists upset someone or some persons. Lowered the tone of the neighbourhood!

I venture to suggest this after reading a comment from council inspector who denied that the “visual effects” of cyclists congregating at the site was “harmful to the character and appearance” of the area. 

Which suggests to me that some discriminating nasty had said they were?

But the real reason for the upset appears to be access.

We now learn that next door to Velolife is a small cottage. There is a drive way to the cottage and this passes the side door to the café.  The driveway separates the café from the café car park and bike sheds.

It means that people who have parked cars or bikes there then walk across the driveway to reach the café.

The complaint is that, on occasion, the owners of the cottage, who have right of access over the drive, have at times not been able to access their property.

It must be added that the Velolife business does not own the drive. The drive is the property of the freeholder of that land.



Now, if a resident complains that access to their home is being impeded, the council should look into this and act to determine the weight of the claim.


Instead, it seems the council have gone to war by trying to put off cyclists going to the café in the first place!

They had first targeted cycling clubs by threatening them with legal action if they organised rides to and from the café and then rescinded that

by saying cyclists are welcome to use the facilities “but must not arrange organised meets that start, end or stop at the café.”

If they do so Velolife café could face legal action.

When pressed by Cycling UK to define exactly what constitutes  an organised ride or meet, the council declined to explain. Probably because they don’t know.

This is the sort of satire we enjoyed from Monty Python, and which had us in stitches. The five minute argument comes to mind. The Ministry of Silly Walks.

Except this is real for the owner of the café, a nightmare. 

The Royal Borough has demonstrated they do not know the first rule of holes. Which is, when in one, stop digging.