more scenes from the Hierarchy of Provision

Both the CTC and the now defunct Cycling England (which lives on digitally) praise York as a city which puts pedestrians and cyclists ahead of motorists. Naturally York council is delighted by such praise and there is much mutual back-scratching.

Let me focus today on pedestrians in York, who are failed in this city at every level – including those of enforcement and infrastructure. You’d never know it from Cycling England, which illustrates this document with this:

And now a scene from Goodramgate on a weekday. There are scenes like this all over York. Neither York’s car-centric police force, nor York’s car-centric council carries out enforcement against this kind of parking.

The vehicle shown above seems to be associated with a local business. It was still parked in the same position (but joined by a second unlawfully parked vehicle) when I passed by three and a half hours later and took these photos of a woman with a baby in a pram, who were forced out into the road in order to get past.

My next photographs show the crossing point between Lendal and Museum Gardens. Every day thousands of tourists on foot pour down Lendal and then have to find a way across vehicle-choked Museum Street to reach a large park beside the River Ouse which contains The ten-acre botanical Museum Gardens, a ruined abbey, and the Yorkshire Museum. And they get no help at all in crossing the road. Neither a zebra crossing nor a signalled crossing. York Council leaves them to get across a traffic-choked highway as best they can. In a city where pedestrians vastly outnumber drivers, and where cycling is stagnating, York Council puts motorists first and is every bit as committed to 'network assurance' (smooth traffic flow) as Transport for London.

Gilbert Road Revisited

My recent post on the CTC and Gilbert Road has provoked an interesting response from a local Cambridge cyclist.

In its wider ramifications it strikes a chord, because it gets to the heart of where UK cycle campaigning currently is. Do you settle for minor improvements for existing vehicular cyclists (which is pretty much the history of UK cycle campaigning) or do you dig your heels in and demand the kind of Dutch infrastructure that really will bring about a massive rise in cycling’s modal share? (Of course a swathe of UK cycling opinion doesn’t accept that equation, which is itself another difficulty.)

This issue is pertinent to York, where cycling is stagnating, and to Bristol, and to Brent, and to Waltham Forest, and to everywhere else in the UK.

If radical change ever comes it may well come first in London but even though the ‘Go Dutch’ agenda commands wide support it appears that Transport for London has no serious intention of embracing it, as the examples of Blackfriars Bridge, the Bow roundabout, the Lambeth Bridge roundabout, Kings Cross, and now the Imax roundabout by Waterloo Station all demonstrate. It is too early to judge where the LCC’s ‘Go Dutch’ campaign is going but to my mind the signs don’t look good. And let’s also not forget the Vauxhall gyratory

Back to Gilbert Road and the Cambridge cycling blogger:

Lets put this into context. We're not a minority. Half of the populace ride a bike regularly, we account for upwards of a fifth of all journeys. We're mainstream. But we're also flatlining - stats for cycling in Cambridge have been similar since at least the '90s. So despite Gilbert Road cycle lanes, extended bike parks underneath City Centre car parks and cycle lanes on many roads, we're going nowhere. It is demonstrably true that cycling is making no advances in Cambridge, no matter how often Cambridge Cycling Campaign and the County Council smugly pat each other on the back because 22% or so of journeys are made by bike. Success such as would be measured by increasing share has not happened.

So I think we should ask a very obvious question. Who is the investment in cycling infrastructure for, and why do we make that investment? Is it for those who are already cycling, or is it for those who are not?

Self-harming commuters

It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, but every day London’s train stations are packed with people going to work. Other commuters use buses. Some walk. And what these fools don’t realise is that they are self-harming. Yes, these complete idiots are staring death in the face.

Because the fact is that those who do NOT cycle to work have a 39% higher mortality rate than those who do. 

Or to put it another way

It is dangerous NOT to cycle!

This is why we must get more people cycling by telling them they are self-harming idiots. Once they have come to their senses by appreciating the statistics they will be in a position to enjoy the benefits of their new healthy, life-enhancing lifestyle.

Yes, whether it’s on Ruckholt Road, Leyton, or Charing Cross Road in central London, there is nothing quite like cycling to increase your longevity prospects and make your journey to work safer and healthier.

The context and implications of a photograph

The CTC’s recent statement of support for quality segregation was, oddly, illustrated by a negative – the kind of crap off-road cycle path we all hate - but not a positive.

If you wanted to find out about the kind of infrastructure that sets the CTC juices flowing you had to follow the link to its Cycle-friendly design page, which uses this photograph as a sample of best practice.

My own response to this Damascene conversion was to criticise this supposed best practice, while noting

Annoyingly there is no hint of its location, so it’s difficult to scrutinise the wider context. 

But then we’ve been here before. The CTC’s Hierarchy of Provision page is illustrated with a photograph the location of which is not identified.

I stared at it for many months before I suddenly recognised it, probably because my perspective on York has never previously been from the top deck of a Sainsbury’s multi-storey car park. Once I understood the site I was able to establish the context, which as far as I’m concerned is deeply hostile to cycling and shows that the CTC continues to lose the plot. Since the CTC remains unrepentant about its use of this photograph or about its infatuation with the ludicrous and failed Hierarchy of Provision approach to cycling, then I’m afraid some of us will continue to see the CTC as an obstacle and not as an enabler of mass cycling in the UK.

Chris Juden asserts that CTC has never aimed low. If anyone is to blame for crap farcilities it's the diverse local cycle campaigns that sprang up in the 1970s and 80s. These groups initially measured their success in miles of facility, never mind how crap it was. 

Personally I think that in idolising York and its crap cycle lanes the CTC is aiming very low indeed. The CTC’s vehicular cycling heart remains deeply wedded to crap cycle lanes, and the crap cycle lanes it promotes as best practice are just as much farcilities as the notorious joke off-road cycle paths which are dotted with street furniture and end with railings.

 Likewise, the assertion that

painting white lines on the pavement requires little money and even less political will, it is generally worse than useless, and CTC will therefore continue to oppose it. Our position is pretty simple really. 

invites some tweaking. How about this?

painting white lines on the carriageway requires little money and even less political will, it is generally worse than useless, and CTC will therefore continue to present it as desirable and as best practice and the best we can hope for in the circumstances.

The CTC’s bashfulness about every supplying a context for its best practice photographs was spotted recently by the Alternative Department for Transport in a blistering attack on the CTC’s ‘Right to Ride to School’ page:

The CTC thinks that the reason 99% of children in the UK don’t cycle to school is because… 
• they don’t know how 
• their parents would rather drive them 
• they don’t have anywhere to keep their bike 
• their school actively discourages this mode of transport 

and asks if this is not

a perfect example of cycle campaigners ignoring the elephant in the room? Why isn’t “because it looks and feels dangerous” on that list? How about “it’s insane to expect small children to cycle around cars and vans”? Even the photo they have used looks suspicious – why can’t we see where these children are riding their bikes? 

I don’t think anyone from the CTC ever did reveal the location of their heavily cropped photo.

Which brings me back to the CTC’s latest ‘best practice’ pic. The enigmatic location can now be identified. And the first thing to say is that the choice of city is revealing. Just as the Hierarchy of Provision shows a street scene from York, this new one portrays a street in Cambridge. No coincidence. These are cities where cycling’s modal share is higher than normal for the UK, and the reason why the CTC is so keen on these cities is that they can be used to claim that a high modal share is possible with nothing more on offer than vehicular cycling.

The choice of location in fact takes us into the depths of the abyss which continues to exist within the world of UK cycle campaigning. It also raises key questions of vision and strategy. Because this crap cycle lane, dear reader, happens to be located on Gilbert Road in Cambridge. The local cycling group spent years campaigning for this infrastructure. It basically involved widening an existing cycle lane from 1.5 metres to 1.7 metres, colouring it red, and banning on-street car parking by putting down double-yellow lines. This provided a marginal improvement for existing cyclists but, arguably, is not nearly enough to draw in those who find cycling unsafe.

The alternative perspective is put by an unconvinced local blogger:

well done Cambridge Cycling Campaign. Really. You have achieved your goal. I just don’t think it’s the right goal. This is yet another marginal improvement for cyclists; yes, its wider, but it isn’t wide enough. Yes, you’ve got rid of parking there in theory, but you’ve left us with an advisory lane that is free for motorists to enter in to and to be a nuisance in. You’ve given us something that’s a bit better than we had, but which isn’t good enough. 

This is the most cycled city in the UK, yet even on a busy road that serves multiple schools as well as being a major route for cycling in to the city, that has ample space for a fully segregated wide cycle lane without depriving motorists of a single lane, a route that would really encourage people to feel safe, that could demonstrate that cyclists aren’t just welcomed but really valued, even here what we’ve got is a cycle lane that barely does better than the naffest ones specified by the Department of Transport. Is that it? Is that all we get? All that campaigning from organised teams of motivated and determined cyclists? All that time and effort, and we get to this? 

The problem really is very simple. The minimum standard we should require for cycle infrastructure is higher than is obtainable in the best cycling cities in the UK. What we want as a starting point is better than the most useful we can get from local authorities. This IS a victory, but not a tactical one. This sets a standard for the best new facilities we can expect to get into and out of the Cambridge, and while its better than we’ve had, its not good enough. Its not nearly good enough. 

When cooperative campaigning fails, whats left? If we’ve got cycling campaign groups who view this kind of thing as a success, if they’re looking at what can be achieved without upsetting people too much, if they’re always willing to accept such compromises, perhaps we need to consider NOT being cooperative. Maybe we need to consider NOT avoiding upsetting people. Perhaps we need to make a nuisance of ourselves. When the best on offer isn’t up to the minimal standards we should accept, what purpose is compromise? After all these years of such campaigning we now have to accept the simple premis; conventional cycle campaigning bodies have failed. Well done Cambridge Cycling Campaign, I wish you all the best in your future endeavours. I just don’t get why you think you’re really getting somewhere.


Two things have happened since this modification of the old cycle lane. Firstly, cars continue both to be parked and driven in the cycle lane on an intermittent basis.

Photo credits here and Keep Pushing Those Pedals





Secondly, some cyclists continue to cycle on the pavement on Gilbert Road rather than use the cycle lane, resulting in protests from local residents and demands for punishment.

The fact that people still choose to ride on the pavements there (and on the more frightening Arbury Road) is a damning statement about the failure of you, our County Councillors, to get cycle provision right. There is a real, huge demand for top quality cyclist provision across Cambridge 


Cyclists’ did not get what they wanted. They got what Cambridge Cycling Campaign were willing to settle for because they saw such a situation as a pragmatic compromise. Thats right, they compromised on cyclist safety rather than show willing to change the politics of the situation by withdrawing support and opposing this and all such inadequate facilities. The evidence that it is not good enough? simply that many cyclists still choose to use the (bumpy, uneven, cramped) pavement. 

This is an argument about both vision and strategy, because the Cambridge Cycling Campaign never asked for segregation, even though a segregated cycle track is both plainly possible and the only infrastructure that is adequate for a street like this. And this kind of thing is happening all over Britain. The ‘improvements’ to Gilbert Road are really no improvements at all, and for the CTC to present this cycle lane as best practice shows how flimsy its purported commitment to segregation really is, and how what our leading cycle campaign organisations regard as best practice is all too often a farcility which cannot be recognised as such because of vehicular cycling tunnel vision.

Worryingly, the London Cycling Campaign seems just as willing to go down the road of surrender prior to battle, judging by this astonishing statement in connection with the Lambeth Bridge roundabout:

A compromise solution would be to put in place a more simple continental-style roundabout, with narrow lanes and sharper corners to control speed, but without the segregated track. This could be done easily within UK guidelines and rules, and a continental roundabout would cost about the same as the current proposal. 

By ‘a continental roundabout’ the LCC means the kind of useless crap farcility which you can see in York in the form of the so-called ‘magic roundabout’. In this instance the LCC’s commitment to segregation rings as hollow as the CTC’s.

Finally, the name Gilbert Road should ring a bell because David Hembrow was once involved in cycle campaigning on this street, and he has written at length about vision, strategy and practice in relation to this street:

The problem with this scheme is its lack of ambition. The campaign asked for little more than was built. No-one really ever asked for a "more imaginative solution" as discussed 11 years earlier. 

What has been achieved in Gilbert Road is an incremental improvement, but not nearly the best possible outcome. If progress is to be made in cycling then campaigners need to start asking for the best, not watering down their proposals before even approaching the council.

Some versions of cycle campaign history

Apparently the reason why cycle campaigning has never achieved much in Britain is because in the middle years of the final decade of the last century some intransigent campaigners insisted that segregation was the way forward:

At the very moment when we needed to focus on securing funding for the NCS [National Cycling Strategy], and integrating it into a wider policy framework which supported cycling, the cycling lobby instead broke into a big argument about segregation. This merely provided Whitehall with a perfect excuse to allocate no funding to cycling – “if cyclists can’t agree what they want, what’s the point of funding it?” In other words, we allowed ourselves to be divided and ruled. Hence the NCS never got anywhere near achieving its targets (which were then abandoned c8 years later), and we’ve been living with the consequences ever since. 

This is a version of cycle campaign history which often pops up in comments boxes to dampen down criticism of the UK cycle campaign establishment. I’ve never been able to find any on-line evidence that there was a big, mainstream debate about segregation in cycle campaign circles at a national level in the mid-1990s, nor is it clear to me how such a debate can have been formally expressed in such a way that Government funding was promptly terminated to ‘cycling’ (this term also lacks clarity).

On the contrary, my impression is that the Big Three (i.e. the CTC, the London Cycling Campaign, and Cyclenation) have historically shown no interest in segregation at all, that national cycle campaign conferences have traditionally focused on asserting that cycling is healthy, that it is statistically safe, that the place for cyclists is on the road, that traditional vehicular cycle campaigning is getting results and that cycling is perpetually on the brink of finally expanding in a significant way. In this scenario John Franklin has always been a revered figure, whose authority on cycling infrastructure and cycling best practice have been widely and respectfully cited. But maybe I’ve missed something.

Unfortunately I have been unable to locate any on-line national cycle campaign archives dating back to the pre-digital 1990s. What is easily available are the Cyclenation conference archives which, though patchy, provide an illuminating insight into the priorities of UK cycle campaigning in the first decade of this century – priorities which I would define as vehicular cycling campaign business as usual.

I am unable to make Roger Geffen’s version of campaign history gell with that of David Arditti’s fascinating history of the Camden cycle tracks, in which, at the end of the last century, a solitary campaigner, Paul Gannon, galvanized an LCC branch with his knowledge of Dutch cycling infrastructure. Under his tutelage this branch then achieved practical success at a local level in creating safe segregated cycle tracks in central London. This project, however, was never completed and it encountered many obstacles.

David Arditti argues that the crucial factor which blocked the creation of a network of cycle tracks in central London was the hostility of the vehicular cycling campaign establishment – that same establishment which turned a blind eye to the Dutch template for decades.

Roger Geffen’s argument that dissent within the campaign community centered around segregation was instrumental in the collapse of the National Cycling Strategy also does not gell with this alternative account:

When we look back even further, to the mid-1990s, we recall how the CTC declared the battle for minds won. 

The government at last agreed to take account of cyclists' needs, to encourage people to take up cycling, to save the nation's health, to cut congestion and therefore pollution. Campaigners thought that at last, cycling was to have its day.

But no. It never happened, not even when the National Cycling Strategy was created under the Conservatives in 1996, and launched with a huge press conference in London.

This was the first ever transport strategy, a historic moment. A breakthrough, at last. But there was a catch. There was no money for it! I recall transport journalist Christian Wolmar demanding Sir George Young, the secretary of state for transport, to tell us where the money was. "Well, where is it?" said Wolmar. "Where's what?" replied Sir George, a lifelong cyclist, by the way. "The money, there's no money," countered Wolmar.

Sir George told us it didn't need any money as such, because transport planners would be required to include cycling within the budget already provided for general transport development. It never happened, not on a realistic scale. In fact, when, to induce local authorities to apply for grants to build ‘integrated' transport facilities, such as for cycling, many of the local authorities siphoned the money off into ordinary road building schemes.

The government raised hopes yet again by endorsing a brilliant design guide, setting out how to build a cycling infrastructure into the road system. Turns out this is as close as it would get to emulating the best of what we see abroad. So what happened next? Nothing. Local transport engineers took no notice of the guidelines.
 
If this account is to be believed, the parable of the intransigent and quarrelsome segregationists has no basis in fact. Quite what Roger Geffen is alluding to is highly obscure but whatever its substance he basically cites it to dampen down continuing criticism of the CTC:

Will we now learn from history, and work together to mobilise the political support we need for cycling to flourish – or are we condemned to repeat it? Blogs like IBikeLondon and Cyclists in the City have been doing a great job of working with LCC to get cyclists out on the streets in support of LCC’s Go Dutch campaign for more and safer cycling. That is surely more useful than arguing amongst ourselves over whose fault it is that cycling in the UK is still in such a parlous state! 

But the parlous state of current British cycling cannot be detached from the history of British cycle campaigning, its vision, and its strategies. Unity is a wonderful thing, but to be unified there has to be an agreed way forward. I am far from persuaded that UK cycle campaigning has yet reached that condition, and in its absence dissent is to be expected.

For example, Roger Geffen asserts:

The real debate we need to have is how to galvanise the political will to reduce traffic volumes and speeds, so as to create space for quality cycle provision, whether segregated or otherwise. That political support is what is so seriously lacking in the UK. 

This attracted a critique from As Easy as Riding a Bike:


This is a new one to me. Why do traffic volumes and speeds need to be reduced, before we can consider putting in infrastructure? Can the two not go hand in hand? Geffen makes the argument again, in a later statement - 

There’s a genuinely interesting debate to be had about segregation. Moreover, it’s not about the wonderfulness of Dutch and Danish cycle facilities – that bit is mostly pretty obvious. The real question is, what does it take to ensure that segregation is done really well in the UK context, where our traffic laws and driver behaviour are very different, and where our streets that are far more traffic-dominated than Holland and Denmark were back in the 1970s. In that respect, the recent experiences of New York and Seville are much more interesting. It seems that, for segregation to work well, there has to be a really strong political commitment to create space for quality cycling provision, by reducing traffic volumes and speeds, and reallocating roadspace and junction capacity. Otherwise, any attempt to introduce segregation will merely end up marginalising cyclists. 

As Easy as Riding a Bike further comments


I think Roger Geffen is blurring together two entirely separate recommendations of the report. The ‘traffic volume’ and ‘speed reduction’ suggestions apply, quite specifically, to non-arterial roads, while the suggestion for separated paths and tracks is along those arterial routes. 

It is not at all clear to me why a policy that aims to construct those paths along our arterial networks should have to wait for, in Geffen’s words, ‘space to be created’ by lowering traffic speeds and volumes. You simply take that space away by building the paths in the first place. I’m not saying this is easy to implement politically, but it is surely no easier to ‘reduce traffic volume.’ Indeed, without the construction of the paths, it is equally unclear to me how you reduce traffic volume on arterial roads – this is something that exponents of this ‘strategy’ simply talk about, and then wish away, in much the same way that traffic volume is ‘disappeared’ when it comes to discussions of motor traffic volume in ‘shared spaces‘. 

(I find it rather amusing, in fact, that proponents of the construction of cycle tracks on arterial roads are often labelled as unrealistic dreamers by the very same people who think the best way forward is to simply get rid of traffic on urban arterial roads. If we are whistling in the wind, then they must be whispering into a hurricane). 

This is unfair. Browsing through the Cyclenation archives I came across this inspiring presentation at a national cycling conference from someone representing progressive cycling-friendly Surrey.

I feel sure this campaign made an absolutely massive contribution to reducing traffic volumes in Surrey (a county where everybody I know there owns at least three cars).

Yes, asking motorists to consider their conscience and think about our smiley planet is a surefire route to traffic reduction innit.

‘Dedicated clear space for cyclists’

In its haste to surrender the segregation option the CTC envisages a situation in which a local authority claims it doesn’t have the money to provide cycle paths (even though finance is never the reason; the problems are political, not economic or technical). Therefore,

if its budget only extends to painting some white lines, CTC believes these would be better placed on the road. 

I am reminded of the way in which the LCC’s ‘Go Dutch’ policy has often been compressed into a single, slippery phrase ‘dedicated clear space for cyclists’. By a marvellous sleight-of-hand the Dutch option can thus be cleverly transformed into… vehicular cycling!

The very finest white lining, of course, is the unbroken white line alongside an on-road cycle lane. Backed up by a double-yellow line ‘no waiting at any time’ restriction this makes it unlawful for any driver either to drive into the cycle lane, or to park there. It's unambiguously dedicated clear space for cyclists.

And if the cycle lane is placed towards the centre of a wider carriageway, continuous and unbroken white lines ensure that no vehicle intrude there.

Where better to look for the success of such inspiring infrastructure than such progressive cycling authorities as Waltham Forest and York?

Here’s the policy in action on two primary routes.

(Above) The southbound A112 in Waltham Forest.

(Below) Bootham Bar, York.

The tight bend means that bus drivers can’t avoid entering the cycle lane. But that’s the Hierarchy of Provision for you…

The CTC embraces segregation (sort of, in a way, sometimes, but not always)

Spot the cyclist, or: A suitable case for treatment. First photo: Where the eastbound Victoria Embankment (A3211) enters the underpass leading to Upper Thames Street. Second photo: Bootham, a primary route into central York.




Hallelujah! Well done!

CTC declares support for quality segregation while still opposing “farcilities”

No, I take that back. The CTC’s newfound enthusiasm for segregation carries all the conviction of a brothel-keeper proclaiming a sudden commitment to the virtues of chastity.

CTC supports high quality facilities - not fiddly pavement conversions. 

Oh really? Number six in the CTC’s beloved Hierarchy of Provision is Conversion of footways/footpaths to shared use cycle tracks for pedestrians and cyclists.

I don't understand why any smart cycle campaign organisation ever signed up to something like that, which transport planners use to stop cyclists inconveniencing motorists and which almost always ends up with “fiddly pavement conversions” which benefit no one. But then the CTC has been dogmatically resisting full-blooded segregation since 1934. The CTC has long been the road lobby's greatest asset as far as cycling is concerned, as have the rest of the vehicular cycling campaign community.

You might think a statement of support for segregation would be accompanied by an iconic example of segregated cycling infrastructure. If the folk from the CTC can’t quite bring themselves to use a Dutch example (the CTC likes Dutch cycling the way vampires like crucifixes) this needn’t be a problem. Examples from British practice might be a bit thin on the ground but there are existing templates which serve to show future possible directions and which, though far from perfect, are far superior to traditional British “farcilities”. I am thinking of Camden and Old Shoreham Road.

Instead, the CTC’s notion of cycle-friendly design is perversely accompanied by a photograph not of a safe, segregated cycle path but an on-road cycle lane.

Best practice? Annoyingly there is no hint of its location, so it’s difficult to scrutinise the wider context. The clues that the photo contains are not encouraging. What looks like a single-decker bus is vanishing into the distance. This raises questions of what kind of route this is and who this street serves. I suspect that wherever it is, it’s a through route. Whatever the speed limit is on this street – I would guess 30 mph – are drivers keeping to it on a long straight stretch like this? Almost certainly some will not be. If this was NOT a through route then of course there would be no need to have cycle lanes at all; strategic road closures or circuitous one-way systems which only serve residential housing are sufficient to prevent short-cuts and rat-running and bring about traffic reduction.

The CTC’s photograph strikes me as very unsatisfactory in two ways. Firstly, conditions for cycling in that cycle lane are subjectively and, arguably, objectively very unsafe. The lay-out of the cycle lane may appear exemplary but note those dashed white lines. This is a cycle lane which drivers can enter quite lawfully. And see the way the blond-haired male is cycling on the very edge of the cycle lane. What happens when a motorist approaching from the rear meets oncoming vehicles? Some drivers may hang back but there are plenty who won’t, and that cyclist will find himself experiencing a large metal object passing at speed, very close. In short, the kind of thing that deters lots of people from taking up cycling, or which makes them decide to give up as it feels too dangerous. (For a recent example of a cyclist giving up in terror read this)

Secondly, it seems strange to have this photo illustrating a statement about good practice in a link from a statement in support of segregation, since it is a classic example of how NOT to create good, desirable cycling infrastructure. There is plainly space to convert that cycle lane into a proper segregated cycle path, simply by reconfiguring the street. The trees should be cut down and the cycle lane relocated to where the grass verge is currently situated, to create a cycle path which is physically separate from both the carriageway and the footway. That done, plant some new trees to reinforce the separation. Easy-peasy.

The CTC claims that its new policy calls for neighbourhoods, town centres and road networks to be “fundamentally redesigned to be ‘people-friendly’ but the photo it uses simply indicates a feeble adaptation of an existing motorised hegemony, and is the exact reverse of a fundamental redesign. It's collaborationist, not innovative. It serves the interests of the road lobby. It does nothing for cyclists at all. It's subjectively and objectively dangerous, it does nothing to persuade non-cyclists to take up cycling, yet the CTC can't see it.

The CTC inventory of wonders seems to me lamentably unfocused and it includes stuff like ‘early advance’ cyclists’ traffic lights. I assume this means providing an ASL and lights which give cyclists a three-second head start over motor vehicles at junctions. If so, this, I’m afraid, is unlikely to get the masses cycling. It's the kind of crap that TfL have come up with at the Bow roundabout, and it does nothing whatever for safe cycling.

The CTC states that its new policy is based upon a review of the relevant research evidence. Oh really? The Dutch template is sadly lacking. Instead we are invited to bow down before two very questionable studies:

In support of these principles, CTC points to evidence from a study by University College London, commissioned by the Department for Transport, which found that traffic reduction is the most important factor for boosting active travel, while a TRL report found that that speed reduction is the most important infrastructure measure for improving cyclists’ safety. 

The UCL study depends heavily on research from the USA, Canada and Australia – countries which have absolutely nothing to tell Britain about cycling. The TRL report likewise arrives at its parochial conclusions by studying English language material based largely on vehicular cycling cultures. It’s utterly absurd to base a policy on material like this. Apart from shunning the example of the most successful cycling nation in both Europe and the world, the CTC chooses to avert its gaze from a wealth of native research material which consistently and repeatedly indicates why the majority of the British population prefers not to cycle.

If you have the stomach for it, the UCL study is worth reading – it contains some interesting statistics – but it purveys the kind of banal claptrap that academics love in their bubble world of research publications:

if there are no destinations within a walkable distance people will be extremely unlikely to walk 

Gosh, that had never occurred to me.

car ownership did not appear to improve systolic blood pressure or waist hip ratio 

That’s a surprise innit.

Because walking and cycling contribute to physical activity, more time spent on either will help to improve health. This means that a longer trip is better than a shorter trip. 

Sheer genius. Obviously you need a PhD to arrive at insights like this.

However, I must admit even my narrowed, scowling eyes lit up joyously at the revelation that in some quarters there is

Concern about the methodology used in evaluating the Cycling Demonstration Towns 

(Yes, never put the monitoring of cycling targets in the control of those supposed to be increasing them - because the bastards will pull every trick in the book to make it seem that cycling is booming when, er, it isn’t.)

I find it hilariously ironic that the CTC is proudly citing a report which calls for

wider pavements (7.1)

a solution which the authors of this UCL report assert is

straightforward 

No it isn’t. It is very far from straightforward. Because the current transport planners fashion for widening pavements has enormous implications for vehicular cycling. Presumably the report's authors haven't spent any time lately cycling in London.

My depressed and battered heart slumps and flattens even further when I read that

Measures which make cycling more attractive include improving and building cycle lanes as well as wider, clearly marked colour-co-ordinated cycling lanes 

 Oh, please…

Moreover it is asserted that:

The bicycle hire scheme in London is generally seen as a success… so similar schemes could be set up in other cities. 

Well, that's a matter of opinion. The problem is not shortage of bikes.

I’m also amazed to see the CTC citing a report which comes out with assumptions like this:

there were many car journeys which could not have easily been done with another form of transport either because it was dark, there was poor weather or there were people or goods that needed to be transported as well. 

You can’t ride a bike in the dark or when it’s raining? Jeez…

I am not persuaded that the authors of the UCL report know anything at all about cycling or have a clue how to bring about a mass cycling culture. The report is full of woolly sociological and psychological material and ends up asserting that

Behaviour change is required to encourage a shift from the car to walking and cycling (p. 102)

No it isn’t. Infrastructure change is.

As for that other study cited by the CTC:

a TRL report found that that speed reduction is the most important infrastructure measure for improving cyclists’ safety. 

Well, speed reduction may well objectively reduce danger to cyclists in terms of death or injury but in itself it isn’t enough to make cycling subjectively safe, let alone convenient and attractive.

The most important infrastructure measure for improving cyclists' safety is SEPARATION FROM MOTOR VEHICLES. It also happens to be the kind of thing that persuades people to cycle. But if you are going to base your research on British examples of off-road cycling infrastructure then obviously you won't ever understand this because British segregation is traditionally a dismal joke and a monstrous travesty of what is possible. And using Stevenage and Milton Keynes as examples is pitiful. But then the vehicular campaign establishment has never been interested in real evidence-based policy. The CTC is actually looking for research which reinforces its vehicular cycling prejudices.

CTC therefore urges that segregated facilities should normally be created from existing road-space rather than pavement space. They should avoid creating conflict, either with pedestrians, or with motor vehicles at junctions – given that 75% of cyclists’ collisions occur at or near junctions – ensuring that cyclists have at least as much priority at junctions as they would if using the road. Conversely, if the authority does not have the will to meet these standards and its budget only extends to painting some white lines, CTC believes these would be better placed on the road.

It’s a rather weird approach to cycle campaigning, to include unconditional surrender among your core principles. But then it’s no coincidence that the CTC’s commitment to segregation simultaneously expresses its, er, commitment to ‘on-road facilities’, even highlighted in a framed box.

The notion that by boosting cyclist numbers you then enlarge the strength of ‘the cyclists’ vote’ locally strikes me as questionable. Is there such a thing as a cycling vote? Plainly Boris Johnson believes there might be, which is why he announced a last minute conversion to ‘Go Dutch’. But I’m not really convinced. You might be able to get more people cycling but that doesn’t mean they have the slightest interest in transport policy. Even campaign groups like the CTC and the LCC struggle to engage the bulk of their membership, even at the level of bothering to cast a vote.

The CTC’s reluctance to let go of vehicular cycling shines through statements like this:

London has seen substantial growth in cycle use since 2000, achieved primarily through measures other than segregation, but in the process has generated the political momentum needed if campaigns for high quality segregation are to succeed. 

Leaving aside TfL’s own research which asserts that claims of a massive growth in London cycling are somewhat exaggerated, modal share remains risible, precisely because ‘measures other than segregation’ are suppressing cycling, not enabling it.

In any case, how powerful is that political momentum? So far, Boris Johnson and TfL have delivered nothing. The design of the Lambeth Bridge roundabout is nothing but the same old crap.

To a large extent the CTC is doing nothing but restating ancient principles. Traffic reduction was always number one on the Hierarchy of Provision, with speed reduction at number two. The CTC still promotes the Hierarchy as a sacred text, even though it shuns all mention of segregation. There is also the enduring problem of praxis. The CTC has been demanding traffic reduction for donkey’s years, with a total lack of success. The recession has had a greater impact on traffic levels than decades of campaigning by the CTC.

The only practical aspect that the CTC concerns itself with is funding. It comes up with an idiosyncratic solution, citing the example of New York. This is weird. New York is not the answer. It’s as if the CTC remains as phobic as ever about using the word ‘Netherlands’:

Road maintenance budgets - which amount to billions of pounds each year - could be a key source of the funding needed to transform our towns, neighbourhoods and road networks to be cycle-friendly and people friendly – as could the planning system. CTC points to the example of New York which delivered significant cycling improvements by this means in recent years, and is now urging councils in Britain to adopt a similar approach. 

The trouble is, the more that councils are urged, the more they encourage cycling.

And now I feel it’s time for a song.

20 mph zones do not increase the number of cyclists

(Above) Cycling friendly? Streets in 20 mph zones in the London Borough of Waltham Forest and Norwich.

A recurring characteristic of vehicular cycle campaigning is to cherry-pick an aspect of Dutch cycling success and then misapply it to British roads in the form of a syllogism. For example: There are many Dutch cyclists and Dutch cyclists are very safe therefore if we can just get many people cycling in Britain then cycling will be very safe here too. This, of course, is the ‘safety in numbers’ thesis, which remains at the heart of the CTC’s campaigning and which has been repeatedly debunked by As Easy As Riding a Bike, most recently here and here.

But a close second is the thesis that speed reduction is the golden key which will unlock all that suppressed cycling out there. At its most emphatic it is asserted that speed reduction, and that alone, is the ONLY thing that will redress the balance and give people confidence to cycle on the roads. 

The CTC argues that Lower speed limits are also linked with increased cycling and walking. In the Netherlands 30kmh (18.5mph) covers 75% of the residential street network and is deemed a safe speed for cyclists, pedestrians and light vehicles to mix. The objection to that analysis is that in the Netherlands cyclists do not mix with ‘light vehicles’ under the same conditions as British cyclists. Traffic volume is only a fraction of what a cyclist can expect to encounter on a British street and the lay-out of the street is very different, with rat-running prevented and a range of measures giving cyclists clear priority.

The danger of cherry-picking the Netherlands commitment to low speeds in residential areas, noting the high rate of cycling, and then applying it to Britain is shown by this recent example:

‘Cycletopia’ - an imaginary town depicting 15 real life examples of promoting, protecting and inspiring cycling in the UK - has been created by cycling charity, CTC, and one of the key parts of Cycletopia is the 20mph zone, inspired by Lancashire County Council’s 20 mph limits. 

CTC Cycling Development Officer in Lancaster Damian Bonsall said: “Lancashire is powering ahead with introducing a speed limit of 20 mph to residential areas over the whole county. This is a fantastic example of a council spearheading change on our roads and it is a speed at which most people feel safe to mix with motor traffic when cycling. 

In Britain? Oh really? Where is the hard evidence for that? None is cited and as far as I am aware there is none, and the CTC has never supplied any. This involves either the misapplication of the Dutch example to the utterly different conditions to be found on car-sodden British urban streets or it is wishful thinking masquerading as fact - something the UK cycle campaign industry is very good at.

It’s important to make that distinction between the fact that in KSI terms 20 mph zones are objectively safer for cyclists and the reality that KSI statistics [i.e. annual figures for those killed and seriously injured in road crashes] are not in themselves a good index of actual danger. In any case, the crucial issue is not statistics relating to deaths and injuries but whether or not cyclists feel subjectively safe in a 20 mph zone, and whether or not those zones provide cyclists with convenient, direct routes which are not subordinated to the convenience and greater priority of motor vehicles. As a resident of the London Borough of Waltham Forest I have good reason to be sceptical of such claims. I certainly don’t feel safe or relaxed cycling in local 20 mph zones, because I have to share them with psychopathic rat-runners in white vans and minicabs – drivers who cannot bear to be behind a cyclist even for five seconds, and who aggressively seek to overtake in highly unsuitable circumstances. Indeed, most of my worst experiences locally have been on so-called ‘quiet routes’.

Waltham Forest has plenty of 20 mph zones across large networks of residential streets. It also has a cycling modal share of less than one per cent. If it was really true that 20 mph zones unlocked cycling’s potential then one would expect a significantly higher modal share and a clear trend of increased cycling, year after year. No such trend has ever been identified by the council’s cycling counts, which indicate at best stagnation and at worst shrinkage. I have argued all this before, at some length.

Unfortunately the false claims for a connection between 20 mph zones and increased cycling has now become accepted wisdom, so much so that it is even embedded in transport planning. The Northampton Town Transport Strategy states Inside the inner ring road many [cycling] routes cross the town centre, which is a safe cycling environment as it has a 20 mph limit. In one sense this is specious reasoning (a cyclist travelling at 20 mph who is hit by a car coming the other way at 20 mph will be suffering the force of a 40 mph impact, unlike a pedestrian). I once came across the aftermath of a spectacular crash in a local 20 mph zone. In the past year another driver ‘lost control’ at almost the same location, crashing into the house on the corner of Grove Road and Eden Road E17, causing major structural damage. And once you start looking, there’s no shortage of evidence of crashes in 20 mph zones which, if they involve no injury, will never be officially recorded as a “road accident”.

But even if it was true that a 20 mph limit guaranteed a safe cycling environment it doesn’t automatically make cycling attractive. Even though central Northampton offers cyclists a reduced chance of death and serious injury, the town’s low modal share for cycling indicates that this is not enough to produce a surge in cycling. Nor is it likely to when around £150 million is about to be spent making travel by car in and around Northampton more attractive, with increased car parking space in the city centre (see previous post, below).

But there is one city which is currently being trumpeted as the great cycling success story, where 20 mph zones are concerned:

Slowing speed limits from 30 mph to 20 mph contributes to increasing cycling and walking by up to 12%.  

Bristol City Council report that walking and cycling increased by up to 12%. 

I never trust statistics of this sort, which lump cycling and walking together. Modal share for walking anywhere tends to be quite robust and subject to little change. People will walk because they have to or because it is more attractive to walk than to use another mode, and nothing that local authorities can do will stop them. Thousands – probably tens of thousands - of car owners walk every day to Leytonstone, Leyton, Walthamstow and Blackhorse Road tube stations, because parking is not available there or because it is but would add significantly to the cost of commuting into central London. Cycling is an altogether more fragile mode, probably because it is a far more frightening and dangerous mode, even though I know a certain sort of cycle campaigner is fond of proving the opposite with statistics. The fact is walking never feels as dangerous as cycling. That’s because as a pedestrian you are segregated from motorists. The experience of cycling in Britain is, I would argue, far more stressful, inconvenient and unattractive than other transport modes, which is why of all them it has probably the highest rate of ‘churn’.

The fragility of cycling, even in a country which is the second most successful cycling state in Europe, is underlined by a little-noticed update to one of David Hembrow’s Copenhagen posts, where he notes

A 15% decline over two years in the busiest street in the city

part of a wider, long-term trend in which

cycling dropped from between 18 and 19% to 16% of journeys within Denmark. 

The reason for this decline seems fairly obvious. Danish cycling infrastructure is inferior to Dutch cycling infrastructure because it fails to prioritise cyclists in the same way and because it involves far more subjectively unsafe vehicular cycling.

In the case of Bristol, the Twenty’s Plenty website is plainly misrepresenting the results of the Bristol study. If you bother to look at the fine detail of the Bristol analysis you will find this:

Overall, the number of people that said they never cycle has remained constant at around 66% (inner south area) and 60% (inner east area). [Section 8.13]

So, if the questionnaires are to be believed, being included in a neighbourhood-wide 20 mph zone has not made a blind bit of difference to the residents of these two areas, as far as encouraging them to take up cycling is concerned.

It appears that designating neighbourhoods as 20 mph zones did not reduce local residents’ feelings of threatening behaviour by drivers. Among the “direct communications” [from residents] received during the pilot one of the four most common themes was

Request for more enforcement especially where drivers were acting dangerously. 

The Bristol analysis also includes this cogent and very important qualification:

Casualty and traffic monitoring data is unpredictable over short periods. The numbers are very small and the study period very short, so it is not yet possible to properly assess the impact. 

Got that? In reality the methodological flaws in the Bristol analysis are quite blatant. All we get is percentages, never the numerical data that those percentages refer to. It is also quite clear that the sampling was far too small to carry any weight or significance. The analysis involved cycling and walking counts, but Bristol Council is reluctant to release the figures which might allow anyone to make sense of them. I’m reminded of a London borough which experienced

a 30 per cent increase in cycle trips between 1996 and 2002 and an 83 per cent increase in cycling in the eight year period 1998-2006, showing a success rate even better than Mayor Livingstone’s target of an 80 per cent increase in cycling in the period 2001-2010. 

By 2005 this borough had achieved a modal share of around 2 per cent on most roads and was aiming for 4 per cent modal share for trips within the borough. This borough has won no less than four awards from the London Cycling Campaign, as well as a Bike to School award and a London Transport award. This borough is rightly proud that ‘the number of cyclists is increasing as the new facilities are being introduced’ and is not ashamed to assert the exciting possibility that in this cycling wonderland, cycling might even become as popular as in Holland. Yes, this is irrefutably one of the leading local authorities in London 

Yes, in the London Borough of Waltham Forest numerous 20 mph zones and a fabulous commitment to the London Cycle Network have delivered a modal share of, er, just point eight of one per cent. Cycling has declined or at best stagnated; it has not grown, despite all the promotional froth.

In Bristol, the counts – whatever they are - indicate that

an increase in cycling and walking has taken place however this might indicate that this increase has come from non-residents, or from people who already cycle increasing their number of trips.

Well it might do. After all, Transport for London once quietly conceded that Evidence suggests that the growth in cycle travel between 2001 and 2008 was largely caused by cyclists increasing their cycle trip-making. There is no evidence of a net increase in the number of cyclists overall 

Or, alternatively, it might indicate that the serious methodological flaws of the survey indicate nothing more than statistical noise, from which anyone can extract any of the contradictory results they want to to prove their chosen case. For example, I don’t find this result remotely plausible:

In the inner south walking levels for those walk “most days” actually FELL by 12 % but there was an 8% increase in residents who said they walked “every week” (8.14)

I’m sure these wildly fluctuating percentage figures are worthless and distorted by tiny, unrepresentative sampling, but I can’t prove it because Bristol isn’t releasing the data that would allow an informed and critical analysis.

We do however learn that the sampling was inadequate in terms of its timing, since it relies on nothing more substantial than

manual counts conducted in August 2009 prior to implementation, and in August 2010 for the inner south area (after 2 months of operation) and in August 2011 for the inner east area (after 10 months of operation). Counts were taken on both a weekday and a weekend. 

Even this is lamentably vague in its detail (how many counts? where? for what hours?).

In direct contradiction to everything the Twenty’s Plenty website claims, Bristol concedes that

Early indications are that overall levels of walking and cycling activity across the pilot areas have increased both at weekends and on weekdays. However, it is not possible to confidently state that these changes were due solely to the introduction of the new speed limit. 

None of this should be a surprise.

As Joe Dunckley has observed

Bristol’s authorities can not claim to be administering a cycling city 

adding

the highways department are as obsessed as any other with traffic flow and junction capacity; transport officers are just as obsessed with buses; parking enforcement just as powerless to keep cycle lanes clear; police just as indifferent to dangerous driving. It’s not a cycling city, it’s a city with a cycling department. 

You can read the fine detail of the Bristol report here

20 mph zones involve residential areas, not major though routes. The reason why vehicular cycling campaigners are so desperate to believe in 20 mph zones is because they still cling to the delusion that vehicular cycling can deliver mass cycling. They will happily prioritise anything except segregation. But as As Easy as Riding a Bike pointed out some time ago

This is the kind of thing the Dutch and Danes did at first. They put in the really useful cycle facilities in the places people really needed them on the main roads. They established the primary cycling network. That is the thing that really gets cycling up at first, and establishes in people’s minds the viability of the cycling option, with quality, high-profile provision. 

adding

Routes through ‘back streets’ are rarely faster (and indeed, often just as unpleasant, in that you will often encounter belligerent drivers on streets narrowed by parked cars). and he derides the idea that we should instead go for the ‘low-hanging fruit’ like lower speed limits, stricter enforcement of road traffic laws, and so on – the kind of ‘Dutch’ solutions that Wright wants LCC to campaign on, apparently because we’re just never going to get proper Dutch-style cycle paths on our main roads. 

Exactly. The British cycling campaign establishment still clings to the notion that lots of little disconnected initatives will somehow get enough new cyclists to create a 'tipping point', after which only then can much better infrastructure be asked for, with public opinion strongly behind it. There are all kinds of problems with that scenario and specifically there is no reason whatever to believe that 20 mph zones in isolation will bring about any increase in the numbers of people cycling. For this reason, although Twenty's Plenty is obviously worth supporting as a casualty- and danger-reduction measure, it should not form the foundation of any plan which aims to increase cycling numbers.

The Dutch example indicates that to significantly increase modal share you first of all need to create a bike grid in urban centres, i.e. segregated cycle tracks on primary routes into town and city centres. That should be every cycle campaigner’s number one campaign objective. Everything else is secondary and amounts to nothing more than ‘pepper potting’ – at best localised improvements which fail to deliver meaningful cycling networks. Having established in a very visible way the primacy and attractiveness of cycling – build it and they will come – you then reinforce this cycling success with infrastructure which prevents rat-running through residential areas (which might involve road closures, or complicated and circuitous one-way systems), backed up by speed restrictions, contraflow lanes, traffic calming, and other strategies.

Simply cherry-picking one of these subsidiary strategies and trying to apply it to Britain’s car-sodden streets while hoping for success on the Dutch model is a futile undertaking. In so far as it makes exaggerated claims for encouraging new cyclists, the Twenty’s Plenty campaign is one such exercise in futility, and its popularity plainly rests on a twin appeal. For vehicular cyclists it offers another campaigning method that remains in the ghetto of ‘sharing the road’, while for local authorities it allows them to posture as friends of the cyclist and the pedestrian while doing absolutely nothing to curb the volume, presence or parking of motor vehicles. Because at the end of the day, 20 mph zones on the British model do not deliver safe, convenient, attractive cycling.

a field guide to British cycling activists

(1) CTC 

The CTC activist is easily recognised by his tense expression and powerful stare.

Fond of dropped handlebars and brightly coloured jerseys, the CTC activist is very, very particular about how handlebar tape should best be applied.

The CTC activist favours tight clothing which displays his scrotum to best advantage. Sometimes he exhibits a fondness for leather straps.

He never eats Dutch cheese, on the grounds that if he does so he might then be banned from eating Cheddar.

The CTC activist feels strongly that cyclists belong on the road. He is sometimes woken in the night by nightmares of being prevented from cycling down his local High Street by armed Dutch police.

The CTC activist is a strong believer in ‘safety in numbers’ because if more people can be persuaded to cycle, he might then get to meet just one other cyclist on the A3 between Guildford and Portsmouth.

Here we see the CTC’s leading activists once again struggling to persuade indifferent non-cyclists that there is “safety in numbers”.

(2) London Cycling Campaign

The London Cycling Campaign activist respects red lights and believes in dressing up in suitable gear for the daily commute.

Appearing conspicuous and making eye contact with drivers is essential for surviving daily cycling in London. The LCC activist is a cheery optimist, although the cycling philosophy will depend on which branch the activist belongs to.

The LCC activist enjoys making sandwiches and feels very strongly that handing out cycle maps and organising bike rides form an important part of creating a better world.

Highlights of the cycling year include Bike Week and No Car Day.

The highlight of LCC activism is a slow bicycle ride with police protection. This will not achieve anything but is great fun.

The LCC activist would like to ‘Go Dutch’, but only very moderately, and often with strong reservations, and sometimes not at all, especially if in the Hackney branch.








(3) Cycling Embassy of Great Britain 

Handsome, fit, bronzed and sensibly dressed in clothes which are chic yet casual, and possessed both of a shrewd critical intelligence and a great sense of humour (they need it) the CEoGB supporter is the envy of all other cycling activists, who sadly tend to have a waxy pallor and to be what psychiatric social workers know as “on the spectrum”.

CEoGB activists know how to live life to the full. They ride cumbersome utility bikes and believe that cycling should be safe, convenient and relaxing, i.e. they are killjoys who want to spoil all the fun of an adrenalin-charged ride round the Elephant and Castle or Hyde Park Corner.

CEoGB activists are notable for emitting a series of uncontrollable groans and sighs throughout the day as they encounter for the thousandth time the argument that streets in British towns and cities are just “too narrow” for Dutch-style cycling infrastructure, which it is unrealistic to ask for because it will never happen, at least not until we get more people cycling, which we can do by explaining how cycling is safe, and also by persuading drivers to behave nicely.

The front gardens of CEoGB activists often contain tulips and model windmills.

What is York’s cycling modal share?

(Above) How York council promotes cycling 

(Below) Actual conditions for cycling in York. A cyclist stuck amidst stationary vehicles on Lendal Bridge. 

The quick answer to the question "What is York’s cycling modal share?" is: no one knows.

York Council relies on the ten year national census for its assessment of commuter cycling modal share. It makes no attempt to discover what the true modal share figure is for cycling in York overall. You would never know this from the history of British cycling promotion, however. In 2008 the London Cycling Campaign asserted that modal share for York was 19%. According to the CTC between 1991/1993 and 1995/1998 modal share rose from 15 per cent to 18 per cent. These last figures can only refer to general modal share (since the general share is always less than the commuter share, and the commuter share in the 1991 census was 18 per cent). However the picture given of cycling becoming more popular in York in the 1990s was dealt a blow by the results of the 2001 census, which indicated a commuter modal share of 13 per cent.

If York lost over a quarter of its commuter cyclists between 1991 and 2001 it is not remotely credible that utility cycling boomed over the same period. There is always quite a gap between commuter cycling share and utility cycling share, so if York’s rate for commuting was 13 per cent than it seems highly unlikely that overall modal share was higher than ten per cent.

Let’s go back down memory lane to 2005:

[Richard Lewis] spoke of a planning and design hierarchy of road user groups with the needs of pedestrians, and cyclists considered first, and private motor cars last. He told us that the city of York had made many improvements on the basis of this hierarchy and as a result the number of collisions has reduced by a third, and cycling and walking have both increased. Cycling in York now accounts for 20 per cent of journeys compared with just two per cent in London. 

I find this statistic baffling and I can find nothing to support it. It would indicate a continuous rise in cycling in York, something not borne out by other data. Nick Cavill and Dr Adrian Davis on behalf of Cycling England celebrated York not as an example of increased cycling but for its glorious and uplifting stagnation:

The 1991 census reported that cycling and walking made up 30 per cent of all journeys to work in York and they still comprised 29 per cent in the 2001 Census. 

That’s a misleading presentation however, since a rise in walking’s modal share conceals a dramatic decline in cycling (down from 18 per cent to 13 per cent).

The theory that York’s general modal share in reality probably doesn't exceed 10 per cent at most is reinforced by The Cycling City and Towns Programme Overview (May 2009), which sets out some figures (page 6). Here, for York, the “approximate mode share for cycling (as quoted in towns/cities workplans)” is identified as 10 per cent.

However, commuter cycling may well have slumped since the 13 per cent modal share identified in the 2001 national census. An obscure report which refers to 2007-2008 includes these very interesting figures: (section 6.7, page 16)

York Northwest Revised AM Peak Modal Share Outputs 

Peak modal share for cyclists in York Central was 12 per cent 

For York City it was 8 per cent 

Bear in mind that these are the very highest figures available for commuter cycling at its most popular time of day. The figures for utility cycling would be somewhat lower. The available figures appear to indicate that at best, cycling is stagnating in York; at worst it is declining. Either way, it is a failed city for cycling, which, for such a compact city, ought to have an absolutely massive modal share for cycling.

There are other little indicators of the failure of cycling to grow in York. A “Personalised travel planning” pilot scheme tried out in York in 2005 found that 20 per cent of all trips moved from car to other forms of transport. There was no increase in modal share for bikes (the explanation offered was that commuter cycling was at saturation levels, which is somewhat ironic in the light of the figures).

York is a city where over a quarter of primary school children would like to cycle to school when only five percent are currently doing so.

For those attending the football ground relocated to the Community Stadium, travelling by bicycle is projected at just 2 per cent.

The instability and wide variation in modal share figures traditionally given for York raises questions of methodology. The census is not a particularly satisfactory tool for determining modal share, as it relies on a single question about mode of travel to work. It assumes that the person filling in the form is accurate and that the census genuinely records all residents, and it also only measures commuter cycling. (The national census is also culturally determined in the data it seeks. It asks questions about motor vehicle ownership but excludes figures for cycle ownership per household.)

A much more satisfactory methodology is the cycle count, but the value of any results is shaped by the location of the count, the number of sites used for counts, the frequency of the counts, and the time of day and month of the year. A wide network of full-time automated counts is arguably the best methodology. Questionnaires also supply useful back-up information about individual travel choices, provided that they are very detailed (as TfL’s are) and provided that the samples are representative of the population (which they may not be).

Modal share is the key statistic in determining how successful a town or city is at creating a cycling-friendly landscape, and it is significant that York Council is not really interested in finding out what its modal share is. The true figure might well be shocking and would give the lie to the widespread promotion of York as a successful and cycling-friendly city.

It is not a coincidence that the usual suspects have always been keen to praise York as a cycling city. The reason, I think is very simple. York supposedly demonstrates how vehicular cycling really can work and be as good as any continental model. York also claims to embody the principles outlined in the CTC’s beloved Hierarchy of Provision (the CTC’s page shows a location in York which supposedly embodied best practice).

Cycling England cheered on (see p. 36 here) York City Council’s Transport Priorities:

1. Pedestrians
2. People with disabilities
3. Cyclists

categories which are way ahead of

6. Car-borne shoppers

and

8. Car-borne long stay commuters and visitors.

Anyone who believes that York’s transport planning puts pedestrians and cyclists ahead of car drivers belongs either in a lunatic asylum or in the offices of the CTC. Amusingly, the CTC’s new infantile fantasy is obviously a projection of York (it is geographically accurate, with the railway station, the Minster, the river Ouse, and the bridges all where they should be, albeit slightly distorted by hallucinatory drugs) and with exquisite timing York Council has come up with its own infantile transport campaign.

For York ever to achieve the levels of cycling which would be found in a Dutch city of similar size the shallow gimmicks and all the ‘encouraging cycling’ initiatives would have to be ditched and serious cycling infrastructure introduced. That would mean segregated cycle tracks on all the major routes into the city centre (one such route is the site of the most recent and troublingly ambiguous serious collision involving a cyclist). It would also mean closing two bridges to motor traffic, and emptying the car-sodden joke pedestrian zone of its cars and providing through routes for cyclists. Travelling by car around central York would need to be made inconvenient and subordinated to cycling and walking flow. Of course before all this happened it would be necessary to understand what is presently wrong with cycling in York and then to ask for the Dutch-style solutions which would release suppressed demand.

Meanwhile it transpires that in York

Certain parts of the city centre and Fishergate are in breach of European air quality limits designed to protect us from the effects of long-term airborne pollution, for example by nitrogen dioxide. 

The Rougier Street/ George Hudson Street area is even worse. Nitrogen dioxide levels are so high here that, for those with conditions such as asthma, there is an immediate risk of health problems. 

In a sign of where York’s true transport priorities lie it is reported that

TRANSPORT bosses in York have not given up on the hope of one day dualling at least part of the city’s northern ring road – even though it could cost up to £150 million. 

And for a classic example of the toxic and self-defeating contradiction which lies at the heart of transport planning in York and everywhere else in the UK, there is the aspiration to

 • Reduce congestion, so cutting travel times and making York a more pleasant place to live and work 
 • Encourage more people to cycle and walk by reducing the dominance of the car – thus improving health. 




(Below) How cyclists create their own permeability in a car-centric cycling-hostile urban environment such as York.

A cyclist travelling south gets into the fast lane on Piccadilly at the junction with Tower Street. What’s he up to? This is a left-turn only junction, where Piccadilly meets the hellish inner ring road.

All becomes clear. He wants to turn right. And because the road network is designed to manage traffic flow not help cyclists, he avoids getting locked into a diversion around a gyratory by simply executing a sharp right turn through the gap in the central reservation supplied by an unsignalled and unmarked pedestrian crossing point.

Having made it to the far side he is able to cycle west on the dual carriageway. A solitary cyclist alone in a sea of cars, coaches and lorries. And if a driver should happen to "clip" the cyclist, the railings ensure he'll bounce back into the carrriageway.