Wanstead High Street welcomes cyclists

I recently put the boot into SUSTRANS for its fatuous and irrelevant and classically collaborationist involvement in a scheme to ‘encourage’ cyclists to shop on Wanstead High Street.

My critique lacked an illustration, so now here is one.

This is Wanstead High Street, where as you can see the street is far too narrow for a Dutch cycle path. So instead cyclists have to use the road. And for that little extra, there are some lovely NO CYCLING signs.

Cycling noise: four new examples

Let me offer up a category: cycling noise.

Cycling noise is an initiative or campaign which purports to ‘encourage cycling’ or make it safer but which doesn’t reduce the presence of motor vehicles on the street, in terms of volume. The existing volume of motor traffic may be restrained or modified in superficial ways – by traffic calming, say, or a lower speed limit – but the volume and presence of the existing motor vehicles are not reduced, either in terms of traffic flow or parking. In other words, cycling noise initiatives are inherently rooted in vehicular cycling and as such ignore the core issue of subjective safety (on which topic there are interesting insights here). Or to put it another way, cycling noise campaigns never challenge the car-centric status quo.

1. Labour Party cycling noise 

This week Shadow transport minister Maria Eagle made a speech to the Labour party conference:

I congratulate The Times on their Cities Fit for Cyclists campaign. The Government should implement the campaign’s manifesto for change. In full. 

Ms. Eagle singled out

Separated cycle-ways. Redesigned junctions. Advance green lights for cyclists 

Whoever wrote Ms. Eagle’s speech for her plainly hasn’t read The Times Manifesto very carefully, since it nowhere mentions “separated cycle-ways”. If the Labour Party plans to make a manifesto commitment to the reallocation of road space on main roads through urban centres from drivers to cyclists through the medium of physically segregated cycle tracks, then that is very good news indeed. However, uplifting speeches made to enthusiastic party loyalists need to be treated with caution, or better still, extreme scepticism. I suspect it is nothing more than rhetoric.

If you have the stomach to read the complete speech you’ll see that Ms. Eagle also positions herself as the friend of the hard-pressed driver and wants cheaper motoring. Leaving aside the deficiencies of the Times Manifesto – you can find point-by-point critical analysis here, I felt that The Cycling Lawyer hit the nail on the head when he remarked a few months ago:

The trouble is that 'The Times' is not calling for infrastructure changes that may adversely impact motorists. 

In other words, the Times Manifesto is itself nothing more than cycling noise because it doesn’t engage with the basic reason why most people won’t cycle and it doesn’t campaign for the kind of cycling infrastructure that would. Instead it merely ameliorates some aspects of vehicular cycling.

And that brings us back to the core wisdom of Dave Horton:

We’ve got a cycling promotion industry in the UK which refuses to contemplate the act of deterring driving. It’s always promoting cycling around the edges, not seeking to dismantle the central system of mobility in the UK, which is the car. 

It’s also worth remembering the very long history of politicians pledging their support for cycling and promising to encourage it:

since Lynda Chalker’s encouragement of cycling in 1985 until 2010, [there has been] an increase in car, van and taxi vehicle passenger distance travelled of some 48%. All motor vehicle mileage (e.g. including lorries) has gone up by 57%. Cycling distance travelled nationally decreased by about 17%. 

Not very effective on the encouragement front. 


2. SUSTRANS cycling noise 

Among those overjoyed by Ms. Eagle’s slithery speech was this person:

Sustrans' policy adviser Joe Williams welcomed the commitment: "Slower speeds on our streets will make the biggest difference to getting more of us out walking and cycling. 

No they won’t.

As far as cycling is concerned the biggest difference can be made only through the principle of separation of cyclists from motor vehicles, particularly by creating bike grids in urban centres. That’s how the Dutch cycling revolution began. It did not begin with sticking up speed limit signs.

Everybody from car-centric politicians to the vehicular cycling campaign establishment loves ‘Twenty's Plenty’ because 20 mph zones in no way threaten to curb the presence or volume of motor vehicles on British streets. Obviously 20 mph zones are a Good Thing in so far as they reduce the seriousness of the consequences of collisions but they do not in themselves civilise streets. If you want to get more people walking and cycling you achieve it by creating a safe, pleasant walking and cycling environment. That’s what will make the biggest difference, not sticking up 20 mph signs in car-sodden streets. For both travel modes that means separation from motor vehicles, whether through pedestrianisation or segregated cycle paths. It requires a reduction in the presence of vehicles on our car-sick streets and pavements.

SUSTRANS more and more resembles an organisation which has completely lost the plot and exists only to perpetuate its own existence. It is quite literally a collaborationist organisation, which is happy to ally itself with a borough which is absolutely NOT a friend of either the cyclist or the pedestrian. Listen to this other fresh example of Sustrans cycling noise:

CYCLING shoppers who use their local high street will be rewarded in a new loyalty card scheme. Sustainble transport charity Sustrans has launched the scheme with Redbridge Council as part of the council's pledge to become a biking borough. 

More than a dozen shops in High Street, Wanstead have signed up to the scheme which rewards cyclists for shopping locally. 

Cycling promotion officer for Sustrans, Emilie Charlesworth, said: "Wanstead has got this local high street feel to it. Residents and shopkeepers want to preserve that feel. 

Redbridge Council is a viciously pro-car Conservative administration with an extreme reluctance to curb the use or parking of cars in the borough. It’s cycling modal share is risible. As for High Street, Wanstead. It’s about thirty feet wide and dotted with NO CYCLING signs. Redbridge Council could very easily create segregated cycle paths on the High Street, but as the council understands nothing whatever about cycling there’s little chance of this ever happening. This cosmetic scheme won’t get a single extra person cycling on the hellish roads which lead to Wanstead High Street, and for Sustrans to involve itself with this kind of fatuous and inane scheme shows that the organisation is not fit for purpose.

Footnote: Sustrans’s latest London Greenway is identified as being fundamentally misconceived.



3. Hampshire Constabulary and ‘road safety’ cycling noise 

In 2011, there was an eight per cent increase in cyclists as road casualties across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with 190 seriously injured and one cyclist killed. 

In 2012, there has been another death, and the levels of cyclists being injured or killed on the roads of the UK nationally are increasing. 

Since in the majority of collisions the motorist not the cyclist is at fault, will there be a crackdown on reckless driving? Er, no.

Officers from Hampshire Constabulary's Roads Policing Unit have created the Steer Clear campaign, which is being launched across the county on October 1. 

New signs will be appearing on the roads of Hampshire today (October 1) to raise public awareness of the dangers posed to cyclists. 

Throughout October, officers will be carrying out initiatives to raise cyclists awareness of safety on the roads including knowledge of the Highway Code, basic road safety, and traffic awareness. 

The police spokesman masterminding this cycling noise says:

Our message to cyclists is very simple; be safe and be seen. Our leaflet highlights key safety tips, and gives you some discount vouchers to help get yourself kitted out properly; think high visibility, check your lights, and remember the Highway Code, it is really important. Things like cycling recklessly on the pavement, having no lights on your bike, cycling and driving under the influence of drugs and drink, or more than one person riding on a solo bike. We will be focusing on encouraging all road users to grasp the concept of mutual respect. We want to foster a culture of mutual respect between all road users to create a safer environment on the roads. 

Apart from the conspicuity crap (all about cyclists doing their best to shine a bright yellow in the hope of being noticed by the texting driver), and apart from the reality that the thrust of this campaign is focused on cyclists not drivers, there is not a scrap of evidence that ‘ mutual respect’ campaigns or education have the slightest beneficial result. This is not evidence-based 'road safety'. Crap campaigns like this are a substitute for road traffic law enforcement in a vehicular cycling environment. If the police were at all interested in making the roads safer they could start taking driver crime seriously, since the latest figures show that:

47% of cars exceeded a 30mph speed limit in 2011, while 49% went faster than 70mph on a motorway. The proportions of motorcyclists breaking the same speed limits were similar, at 50% and 49% respectively. 

The figures for articulated heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) were considerable higher, with 71% exceeding the single carriageway 40mph limit and more than four in five breaking the 50mph limit on dual carriageways. 

The road haulage industry is out of control, yet there is no shortage of cycle campaigning which hopes to make lorry drivers nice people who remember to watch out for cyclists at junctions.


4. PACTS cycling noise 

It is reported that

Annual road casualty statistics showed that overall cyclist casualties reported to the police rose by 12 per cent between 2010 and 2011. While the number of fatalities fell by 4 per cent to 104, the number of cyclists who were seriously injured rose by 16 per cent to 3,085 last year. 

The number of serious injuries has increased every year since 2004. 

Commenting on this Times story

Robert Gifford, Executive Director of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, said: “Both central and local government need to do far more to make our infrastructure more suited to cycling with dedicated cycle lanes where appropriate, better signed advance stop lines and campaigns aimed at getting car drivers to look out for cyclists.” 

Nothing but the same old crap. Leaving aside the fact that cycle lanes alongside or amidst motor vehicles have demonstrably failed to bring about mass cycling in Britain, that weasel phrase ‘where appropriate’ is a giveaway. Cycle lanes very often fizzle out just before road junctions, so they won’t get in the way of ‘stacking’ motor vehicles in two or three lanes (in central London sometimes even more) to ‘smooth traffic flow’. To allow a British transport planner to determine what is ‘appropriate’ for cycling is to surrender before the battle has even begun.

As for ‘better signed advance [sic] stop lines’. Yes, perhaps we could make them even more conspicuous.

Here is a helpful design showing a traditional cycle lane leading to an ASL. It also happens to exactly match this lorry driver’s rather substantial ‘blind spot’.

How not to design a junction to benefit cyclists

There was recently thrilling news from Ipswich with the revelation that

£22 Million transport package for Ipswich gets go-ahead 

Norman Baker said: “This innovative scheme will make a huge difference to the way people travel around Ipswich and will be a real boon to the local economy by making new business and housing sites more accessible by public transport. Strong transport infrastructure which helps to tackle congestion and reduce carbon will help the city achieve sustainable economic growth.” 

No it won’t. This new scheme will NOT make “a huge difference to the way people travel around Ipswich” because Ipswich is as car-centric as anywhere else and it’s a contradiction in terms to “tackle congestion” while purporting to discourage car dependency. In particular this scheme will not get anyone out of their car and on to a bicycle because it does nothing to make Ipswich into a town where cyclists are offered safe, direct routes without conflict with motor vehicles.

Back in 1995 cycling modal share in Ipswich was identified as being 6-7 per cent, with a potential for 30 per cent modal share if Dutch design was emulated.

By 2010 modal share had dropped to 4 per cent (“relatively high for the UK” enthused Sustrans, applying the traditional amnesia found in all branches of UK cycle promotion).

And if you want to know why Sustrans joins the long list of UK cycling promotion organisations which are not enablers of mass cycling but massive obstacles to it, look no further than this report, which asserts that “A wide range of practical interventions have been proven to increase cycling levels, and there is a growing body of evidence on the most effective approaches” – which turn out not to be Dutch practice and infrastructure but “notably from the Sustainable Travel Towns (STT) and Cycling Demonstration Towns (CDT) programmes” – where you encounter the usual percentage froth and spin which UK cycle campaigning adores.

Thrill to cycle-speak: “City-wide measures to increase cycling, such as those implemented in the CDTs, deliver substantially positive BCRs” – although sadly, as is acknowledged later on, “Despite the success of targeted interventions, the PTEs have seen limited impact on the overall mode share of cycling.” 

And there’s the rub. UK cycle promotion is always celebrating 40 per cent (or whatever) increases in cycling while in some mysterious alchemical way modal share remains stuck at what it always was, or even declines. This is not surprising when outfits like Sustrans get involved in promoting parochial vehicular cycling solutions with decades of proven failure behind them.

To put it another way Ipswich lost around 35 per cent of its cyclists in the period 1995-2010. This is consistent with the contraction in cycling elsewhere in British towns and cities.

This new £22 million package will do nothing whatever to shift modal share in Ipswich, because Ipswich remains a fundamentally car-centric town with nothing on offer for cyclists but vehicular cycling.

Look carefully at the detail of this new scheme and you will see that it involves the flavour of the month among transport planners, namely widening footways to push cyclists closer to overtaking vehicles and then using the widened footways for parking bays, to add a little extra twist of ‘dooring’ to the cycling experience - as shown here

In time-honoured fashion the local cycling group puts a lot of time and effort into attempting to ameliorate these vehicular cycling solutions and the usual suspects cheer with wild enthusiasm.

And now let’s look at the jewel in the crown of this new scheme, namely the treatment of what is currently a hellish roundabout where the A1022 (Civic Drive and Franciscan Way) meets the B1075 and Princes Street.

The new scheme removes the roundabout and replaces it with a signalled junction, as shown in the projection below (from the perspective of where Princes Street westbound meets the junction with the A1022).

This is not how you design infrastructure for cyclists if you are serious about making cycling a mass means of transport. 

In the first place there is nothing intrinsically wrong with roundabouts and the Dutch know how to design them to benefit cyclists.

And if you have to have a signalled junction you should be designing it like the Dutch do, so that Paths taken by cyclists and drivers do not cross. There is no conflict here at all, and that's why it's safe. 

This Ipswich “improvement” is no improvement at all for cyclists. Advanced Stop Lines and on-road cycle lanes alongside huge volumes of motor vehicles including lorries and buses are ineffective, subjectively and objectively dangerous, fail to prioritise cyclists and often slow them down, and do absolutely nothing to get non-cyclists cycling. It's predictable that when this scheme is built cyclists will be hopping on to the wide paved areas to take short cuts in order to avoid being delayed at the lights (which are there to manage vehicle flow, not assist cyclists) and because it may well be safer to do this than turn at the junction alongside large or carelessly or aggressively driven vehicles.

At a professional level transport planning for cycling in the UK remains suffused with an ignorant parochialism which is not remotely interested in outcomes, aided and abetted by a cycle promotion culture which is collaborationist to its core and which stubbornly refuses to learn from its own long history of failure.

Footnote - news just in

IPSWICH Hospital is to slash the price it charges patients to park their cars. 

Bosses at the Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust revealed yesterday that along with introducing lower charges for longer stays, patients will also be able to park free for 30 minutes in drop off areas. Some ticket prices will be reduced by as much as £1.40. 

Jeff Calver, Associate Director of Estate, said the new tariffs were introduced to reflect what patients and visitors have told the hospital in feedback. 

He added: “We’ve listened to what our patients, visitors and staff say about car-parking and hope these new changes will greatly improve people’s experience of using the hospital car-parks.

TfL, London Streets and ‘competing demands for road space’

Transport for London (TfL) has a subsection called London Streets, with a mission statement that reads as follows:

Our job is to make the safest and most appropriate use of London's busiest roads.

There are often competing demands for road space, which include:

• People who want to drive, walk, cycle or use public transport
• Freight and essential service traffic
• Places for Londoners to live, work, shop and sustain local communities

Our role is to carefully balance those competing demands to provide a well-designed, sustainable and accessible road network, sympathetic with the particular characteristics of each street.

And haven’t they done well on High Road Leytonstone? Here you can find British cycle lane design at its finest as well as a sympathetic balance between pedestrians, drivers who want to park on the footway, and people travelling very short distances by car to their local shops.

Yes, High Road Leytonstone is so good it has even had a thumbs-up from SUSTRANS, which described this street as ‘cycling and walking friendly’ in its original ‘Olympic Greenways’ document.

It’s so good, in fact, that it forms part of the London Cycle Network and there are lots of lovely little blue signs attached to lampposts to remind any cyclists who might have foolishly not realised they are enjoying iconic cycling infrastructure at its very best.






































And look who is in the traffic jam on High Road Leytonstone! (Well you really can’t expect anyone from TfL to go around on bicycles, can you?)

TfL’s ‘Network Assurance’: a massive obstacle to cycling and walking in London

Smooth traffic flow. High Road Leytonstone (‘Cycling-friendly’ – SUSTRANS), yesterday. All the vehicles in this photograph are legally parked. No cyclists were available for this photograph.

London Travel Watch recently pointed out a fundamental contradiction between its own aspirations for better streets for pedestrians and Transport for London’s number one transport priority.

TfL’s network assurance regime often works against Better Streets initiatives. We would welcome a review of that regime to allow more walk friendly initiatives to be implemented or at least the network assurance regime should be more transparent.

‘Network assurance’ is less than transparent (it would be interesting to know what proportion of London’s transport campaigners have ever heard of it) and it seems not to have been subjected to any kind of radical critique by campaign organisations

As London Travel Watch point out

The emphasis on keeping traffic moving as opposed to traffic reduction will limit the scope to rebalance the use of London’s streets in favour of the pedestrian.

Or for that matter cycling.

This is what ‘Network Assurance’ means: prioritising motor vehicle flow above all other considerations. Infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists is rejected out of hand if it seriously conflicts with that priority.

Network Assurance rules London:

I am writing to seek your approval to upgrade the junction of Notting Hill Gate and Linden Gardens to provide improved pedestrian facilities.
The scheme will then need TfL Network assurance approval before implementation to confirm that there is no adverse effect on traffic flow on Notting Hill Gate.

Traffic flow is the number one priority, irrespective of the constituents of that flow. Half of all car trips in Outer London are less than two miles in length. The situation is not so very different closer to the centre of the capital. Over 40% of people whose journeys finish in Lambeth are driving 2 miles or less.

TfL’s own transport modelling is responsible for this state of affairs, since its number one priority is not making those short car journeys more difficult but rather making them as easy and convenient as possible. The CTC’s Hierarchy of Provision states Consider first: traffic reduction yet TfL is institutionally committed to traffic accommodation, not traffic reduction.

‘Network Assurance’ traffic modelling is duplicated by all London councils, in the form of ‘smoothing traffic flow’ (a term you will probably encounter in every Local Implementation Plan in Greater London).

Smoothing traffic flow has other ramifications, because the basic planning model of accommodating and making life as easy as possible for those who choose to drive cars for short journeys is paralleled by the policy of accommodating all residents who choose to buy cars but have nowhere to park them but the street.

Historically, the massive growth in car ownership in London’s suburbs has been achieved by
(i) allowing more or less unlimited free parking on residential streets
(ii) where on-street car parking creates difficulties for other motor vehicle users, the footway is re-allocated from pedestrians for car parking
(iii) as residential streets reach saturation point they are converted to one-way, which in principle discriminates against any cyclists who live on those streets or who use them as cycling routes. The creation of additional one-way streets alongside others results in gyratory networks which obstruct direct cycling routes.
(iv) saturation parking results in the creation of Controlled Parking Zones, designed to exclude non-residential parking. However, in privileging residential parking no London council charges the true cost of parking a vehicle in the carriageway. In the London Borough of Waltham Forest the charge for unlimited parking of a car in a residential street is £30 a year, which represents a massive subsidy for what is effectively the rental of street space. There are no restraints on multiple vehicle ownership. As modern cars get bigger and as more people acquire 4X4s the pressure for street space grows, leading to the creation of even wider parking bays on footways, reducing the available space for pedestrians to as little as one metre, sometimes even less. This is well below all national guidelines for pedestrians, let alone pedestrians with a mobility handicap, but even the last refuge of the pedestrian – the footway – is reallocated for car ownership. This occurs even on streets where every household has off-road car parking; the acquisition of second, third or fourth vehicles is treated as a greater priority than the right of pedestrians to expect the footway as to be exclusively for walking.

So to recapitulate: transport modelling across London, by both Transport for London and London Councils, is designed to promote and prioritise both car ownership and car use.
 Now let’s apply those twin realities to a document like Delivering the benefits of cycling in Outer London, a collaborative document put out in the name of the London Cycling Campaign, Sustrans, the Mayor, Transport for London and London Councils.

It correctly identifies many of the barriers to cycling in suburban London, not least that at an individual level (i.e. fear of cycling in traffic). Cycling is being massively suppressed and one third of Outer London households do not own a car. It accurately notes that

the potential for a substantial increase in cycling in Outer London is huge.

The report then

proposes a range of practical solutions for boroughs to implement.

And that’s where the document falls apart. Its ‘practical solutions’ in no way address the Network Assurance/smoother traffic flow model, or the relentless on-street accommodation of increased vehicle ownership. All it has to offer is vehicular cycling solutions – a range of small initiatives which

build on the good work already being done by boroughs to promote cycling. These include cycle training, cycle parking, London Cycle Network Plus (LCN+), Greenways, school and workplace travel planning, and initiatives aimed at improving cycle safety and reducing cycle theft.

There is no hard evidence that projects like these, individually or collectively, will result in a substantial increase in cycling. Nor could they when (i) most people don’t want to cycle in traffic (ii) TfL and London Councils model their transport planning on making car journeys as quick and convenient as possible, and re-allocate street space to accommodate households buying their first car or adding to the number of motor vehicles they already own.

These are perfectly worthy objectives in themselves but they amount to an incoherent campaign strategy which will lead nowhere other than to a continuing tiny modal share for cycling in London. Such objectives signally fail to address (i) the failure of past vehicular cycling strategies of this kind to shift modal share in London (ii) the massive obstacle to cycling represented by the whole issue of safety (iii) the massive obstacle to cycling represented by transport modelling based on prioritising and accommodating car ownership and car use.

Dave Horton takes us to the heart of the matter when he observes

The thing that stops people from cycling is that they don’t want to ride on busy roads, full of motorised traffic that is going too fast and thinks it’s got the right of way and squeezes them. That’s the reason people don’t cycle. To me, the solution is obvious then – get rid of the problem. If you’re in the Council chamber, people will start saying ‘on your bike’ and ‘get in the real world’, but then you say, well, go to Groningen, Ghent, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Munich – there are so many examples across the world of places which are now hollowing out their city centres, creating places for walking and cycling.
We’ve got a cycling promotion industry in the UK which refuses to contemplate the act of deterring driving. It’s always promoting cycling around the edges, not seeking to dismantle the central system of mobility in the UK, which is the car.

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is a very good place from which to perceive the failure of traditional cycle campaign objectives, because it already has the kind of vehicular cycling infrastructure which other campaigners still dream of: large neighbourhood 20 mph zones, extensive traffic calming, 40 miles of cycle lanes and quiet routes, Advanced Stop Lines at most signalled junctions, signed London Cycle Network routes, bike sheds at railway stations which are regarded as iconic by other campaign groups, road closures with cycle access.

What’s more the borough is astonishingly compact – think of it as roughly oblong-shaped, no wider than 3 miles from east to west, and about 6 miles from north to south.

Yet none of this has worked and cycling remains deeply unattractive to local residents, with a modal share of less than one per cent.

The reason for this is quite simply traffic. The borough is bursting at the seams with parked cars and people driving cars for ridiculously short journeys.

A tiny number of people are prepared to cycle among lorries, buses, vans and cars on car-choked streets but the overwhelming majority are not. Even if every single driver drove with consideration and treated cyclists with respect, Waltham Forest would still provide a discouraging environment for cyclists. This was my route in Leyton yesterday, for example. A cycle lane designated as part of the London Cycle Network. An action shot taken alongside moving traffic.


























London Travel Watch explicitly recognises the contradiction between Network Assurance and its own aspirations for a better environment for walking. However, there are no obvious signs that Sustrans or the London Cycling Campaign recognise the same glaring contradiction between Network Assurance and a better environment for cycling (even though there are plainly individual activists within the LCC who understand all too well its implications).

To put it another way: the route to mass cycling in London and elsewhere lies through the re-allocation of street space from the motor vehicle to the cyclist, and the separation of cyclists from motor vehicles.

It’s not as if we don’t now have a model of proven success, or numerous examples of infrastructure that really works.

The SUSTRANS ‘Tarkovsky trail’ for sci-fi cyclists & psychogeographers

Rejoice! For the London Borough of Waltham Forest Local Implementation Plan (or LIP) has at last crawled forth into daylight. As yet the council does not seem to have made it available online. But not to worry. You could always try one of the local libraries. Like this Walthamstow blogger:

I asked if I could see “the definitive map and statement for the boroughs public rights of way” (“please”). Both ‘points’ consulted the online oracle and were equally puzzled as to what and where this document is. The librarians suggested I come back and ask some other librarians.

Much more about the LIP shortly. Crack teams of experts here at the Krapp Institute are subjecting the LIP’s stated aim of ‘encouraging cycling’ to rigorous critical scrutiny, and our report will be out in a day or so. Before that we shall expose a Town Hall car dependency scandal. But for today, as a small musical prelude to a thunderous symphony, let us consider section 3.4.7, entitled ‘Greenways and new cycle schemes’.

Waltham Forest’s LIP was developed in consultation with, among other organisations, SUSTRANS. Basically, the Sustrans ‘Olympic Greenways’, which were quietly shelved a couple of years ago, have once again been brought out into daylight, dusted down and reinvented for the LIP.

LIP funding has been obtained for ‘High quality cycle networks’ including ‘Greenways’, offering ‘convenient, predictable and reliable access to local destinations’ (p. 57)

This blog post will deal with one such ‘Greenway’ identified in the LIP, which is to be ‘developed and upgraded’ and which will ‘expand and enhance cycle infrastructure’ in Waltham Forest. And this particular one leads to the Lea Valley, wherein is to be found that distant, legendary Shangri-La known as ‘the Upper Lea Valley Opportunity area’.

But enough talk. Let us begin our epic journey down this Greenway, which is marked on the map on page 58 of the LIP.

In the east, this LIP Greenway begins at the idyllic Crooked Billet underpass (where the North Circular Road meets the A112 and the B179). What local cyclists think of this much-celebrated facility is indicated by the annual cycle counts for the period 2006-2010, which, over the period 7 am-7 pm, on a July day, are 309, 324, 294, 223 and 228. This indicates a trend. Which is a shame as there is so much to see and enjoy at the Crooked Billet. Take this intriguing structure, for example (below). A solitary running shoe amid the detritus in the foreground hints at an untold story. And what lies inside the darkness of those slightly open doors? The entrance to the magical land of Narnia? Or simply a decomposing corpse?





























But now it’s time to set off down the Greenway. The first part of the Greenway runs south of Billet Road on a new cycle path which has previously been celebrated on this blog. (Since that post it's been slightly extended, by the ingenious device of painting a white line down the middle of the relatively narrow pavement.)

Follow it to the end, cross Billet Road – do remember your Green Cross Code as the drivers are going much faster than 30 mph! – and go to the end of the cul de sac to the right of the new Academy (i.e. what used to be known as The McEntee School). You will be greeted by that essential design feature of every exemplar SUSTRANS route – a barrier. But there's access in the mud at the side for cyclists, so not to worry.































Here the route really comes into its own. The suburbs fade and rural life takes over, rich with glimpses of overgrown, derelict buildings, strange motionless horses, and a supermarket cart mysteriously enclosed on all sides by metal fencing. This simply reinforces the general theory that

Tarkovsky’s Stalker seems to be a parable about the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It is set in a wilderness area full of decay, where the normal laws of physics no longer apply.


































At the end of the path you meet another one, entirely lacking in direction signs. But as local psychogeographer and artist Julian Beere observes, this is not all that unusual in the London Borough of Waltham Forest:

Some of the paths appear unsigned, nameless; nowhere between somewhere or other - liminal passages.

In fact you need to turn left here, if you are following the Greenway route, which runs behind the Academy playing fields. As you can see, the width of the path here makes it highly suitable for two-way family leisure cycling shared with dog walkers. Who can doubt that this will become a veritable 'Camel Trail' for North East London?



































Before long you will encounter the delightful entrance to another public footpath, this one leading off south back to Billet Road. Naturally it’s unsigned. If you plan on leaving the Greenway here please note that experience in wading through toilet seats is an advantage.






























And this (below) is where this Greenway route eventually terminates, where it meets the aptly named Folly Lane.

More flytipping (the CCTV stalk nearby has the camera missing) and the entrance is coated in hundreds of tiny pieces of broken glass. This route has been identified by a top man at the London Cycling Campaign as ‘a hidden treasure’, proving once again that the LCC has a shrewd understanding of how to get more people cycling.
































If you don’t fancy returning along the Greenway route there’s an alternative. Overgrown crumbling steps reminiscent of a lost Mayan temple lead mysteriously upward…






























You emerge on to a lush green plateau containing this enigmatic artefact (below). Is it an extra-terrestrial taking a nap or simply her space module?

All I know is that next moment there was a blinding flash and I woke up several hours later to find myself back at the Crooked Billet, with my bike computer mysteriously frozen at the time I left ‘the Tarkovsky trail’.

Hostile cycling streets & unofficial cyclecraft

This is Glenthorne Road E17, westbound. It’s a permeability route for cyclists heading out of central Walthamstow into the Lea Valley. Glenthorne Road is a de facto one-way street eastbound because it’s NO ENTRY for motor vehicles from Blackhorse Road (A1106). Cyclists have dedicated lights at the junction and cycle access into Glenthorne Road. However, they are cycling against motor vehicle flow on this road. Traffic flows are light as this is a residential area and Glenthorne Road is not a rat run.

However, it is not a particularly pleasant road to cycle down if you meet a motorist, because I have yet to meet one who stops. They simply drive at you head-on and expect you to move to one side, so that if there isn't a gap in the parking you are sandwiched between parked cars and their ton of metal. Speeds may be low – 10 or 15 mph – but it is still intimidating. I have often wondered if some drivers realise that cyclists are allowed to go the ‘wrong’ way, since there is no signing to advise drivers, let alone any that requires them to give way to oncoming cyclists.

Contrast Glenthorne Road with Rosebank Road E17 (below).




























My photo shows Rosebank Road E17 looking south. This is still erroneously marked as a two-way cycle route on the most recent published edition of the TfL Local Cycling Guide 4 (2010/2011). In fact some four years ago the London Borough of Waltham Forest decided to convert both Rosebank Road and Russell Road into one way streets. No consideration at all was given to the reality that these two streets form part of a marked cycle route connecting Walthamstow and Leyton.

Whereas cyclists were once able to cycle south along Rosebank Road and Russell Road, and then cross the A104 into Bickley Road E10, this option has vanished. An important link in the thread of a back street ‘quiet route’ has been removed, purely in order to accommodate smooth motor vehicle flow on streets which have now reached saturation point for free on-street car parking. Ironically Rosebank Road is if anything a little wider than Glenthorne Road.

Meanwhile the London Cycling Campaign and Sustrans cuddle up to Transport for London and collaborate on cycling documents which put forward the fantasy that cycling will grow in Outer London. The reality is that even at the rudimentary level of vehicular cycling things are getting a whole lot worse, and they are getting worse because both TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest share the same priority: putting motor vehicle flow and motor vehicle parking at the top of the hierarchy of provision.

And for those still prepared to cycle on these car-sodden streets, evolutionary strategies (i.e. subversive and unofficial cyclecraft) are required to compensate for car-centric transport planning. Like the cyclist below, who simply ignored the NO ENTRY sign and followed the route which cyclists were allowed to follow until it was stolen from them by Waltham Forest council.

It’s just another day…

An action shot from the front line of Outer London cycling. Yesterday. A bit blurry but I was shaking from the freezing temperature, laced with everyday anxiety at cycling among dense traffic on the A112 (High Road Leyton). The A112 is the major north-south route running through the heart of the borough, from Chingford, through Walthamstow, into Leyton, and then on into Stratford.

The cycle lane was blocked by vehicles and the traffic was backed up ahead for 200 metres or so. The kind of everyday conditions which will always discourage the majority of people from cycling. The only practical and lawful way round traffic jams like this is to get round to the white line in the middle of the carriageway and head towards oncoming traffic. There’s usually space to get past but it requires very strong nerves.

Less assertive cyclists take to the pavement to get round vehicles in the cycle lane. They do it, of course, because the main advantage of cycling in a dense urban environment is speed and convenience. You can travel short distances much faster than in a car. But when you treat the bicycle as a vehicle, and a vehicle which is moreover subordinate to more important vehicles with engines, then the bicycle vehicle simply gets stuck in the traffic jam along with the cars, buses and lorries. A cyclist also experiences the added bonus of inhaling the fumes spewing from the exhaust pipe of the vehicle in front.

Situate a scene like this in the context of a document published in February this year, Delivering the benefits of cycling in outer London:

Outer London boroughs have great potential for increasing levels of cycling says sustainable transport charity Sustrans - part of a partnership that has launched guidance this week on how to make it happen.

Currently, around half of all car journeys in the outer London boroughs are less than 2 miles, a distance that could easily be walked or cycled by most people.

'Delivering the benefits of cycling in outer London' published by Transport for London, Sustrans, London Councils and the London Cycling Campaign, will give local authorities in outer London advice on how to give people more choices about how they make those shorter journeys.

The report usefully diagnoses the car-sick condition of Outer London:

Half of all car trips in Outer London are less than two miles in length.

Most cycle trips in Outer London (70 per cent) are undertaken by young males under the age of 40

There is considerable potential for cycling in Outer London if the barriers can be overcome.

One in five people say they wish to cycle, but the choice is not open to them because of actual or perceived barriers

Around 32 per cent of households in Outer London are without a car.

And what measures did the authors of this report propose to turn round car dependency in Outer London? Firstly, ‘soft’ measures, such as

Cycle training

Travel awareness campaigns help to highlight cycling as an alternative to the car and provide information to people who want to cycle

Boroughs can tie in with TfL campaigns such as ‘Catch up with the bicycle’ and ‘You’re better off by bike’

There are also vague suggestions such as

Develop and promote quieter routes and off-road cycle lanes to less confident cyclists

‘Develop’ how precisely?

But wait! A success story!

It will take time to achieve a significant shift away from car use in Outer London, but progress can start towards this goal. Positive trends have already been seen in areas such as Sutton where the Smarter Travel Sutton programme has contributed to a 75 per cent rise in cycling in the three years of the programme; and at a time when cycling levels in Outer London overall remained virtually constant. These results have been achieved through a comprehensive package of measures including personalised travel planning, promotion and training programmes.

The fly in that ointment is the statistic. What exactly does ‘a 75 per cent rise in cycling’ mean? According to TfL, cycling’s modal share in Sutton (by residence) 2006/07 to 2008/09 average, Seven-day week, is one per cent.

Curiously, the Sutton Smarter Travel site also promotes car dependency.

When it comes to ‘hard’ engineering measures this is as good as Delivering the benefits of cycling in outer London gets:

Increasing permeability through infrastructure

• Three main ways to improve permeability, include:
- Returning gyratories to two-way operation
- Returning one-way streets to two-way operation or making one-way streets two way for cycling
- Improving cycle access, for example, by dropped kerbs or cycle gaps

It’s not enough. Neither the soft measures nor the hard measures will significantly alter cycling’s very low modal share in Outer London. Nothing is on offer except vehicular cycling on car-saturated streets.

To find out how you turn round car dependency and achieve a significant rise in cycling you have to refer to a document which is of absolutely no interest to Sustrans, the London Cycling Campaign, London Councils or Transport for London. By that I mean The Dutch Bicycle Master Plan.

But, hey! - let’s not be too negative. According to 'Delivering the benefits of cycling in outer London'

There were 2,178 visitors to Carshalton’s Give Your Car the Day Off event and 227 pledges made.

Hallelujah!

Cycle campaigning: down memory lane

The fruits of 30 years of campaigning: a cycle lane on the London Cycle Network. The northbound A112 in Chingford.

What some people said seven and a half years ago at Cycling: A Capital Solution - The spring conference of the Cycle Campaign Network, the Cyclists' Touring Club and the London Cycling Campaign - hosted by LCC and Transport for London (TfL). Saturday 10 May 2003.


Christian Woolmar, National Cycling Strategy Board

Many cyclists are wrong to argue for totally segregated facilities. They won’t happen


Crispin Truman, Chair of London Cycling Campaign

The LCC now has an effective 5 year strategy


Philip Darnton, Managing Director, Raleigh

At current rates it’ll take 43 years to reach current targets.


Roger Geffen, Campaign Manager, CTC
"Raising the profile of cycling: the challenge for cycling"

CTC is raising the game. Cycling nationally is still in decline. We missed doubling it by 2002. We need to see what people need and campaign and recruit. We need to get more people in. We need to clarify priorities and improve communications all round.


Ollie Hatch, National Cycling Strategy Board
"Lessons from the Continent"

It’s not all bad in London compared to over there…..

it’s a good time for cycling.

Many many UK towns are now planning for cycling for really the first time.


James Ryle, Sustrans
"Marketing Cycling to the individual - TravelSmart"

I’m going to talk about softer ways of increasing cycling.

TravelSmart is about phoning people in their homes about their transport use, and bikes in particular.

If people aren’t interested, we leave them. We can’t waste time arguing.

If they are interested, we motivate them through tailoring them individual travel plans.

If they are already regular cyclists, we reward them.

In Gloucester, TravelSmart reduced car trips by 9%, and produced a 100% increase in cycling. We saved 37 car trips per person year. 3/4s of those went to bike/walking. In Frome we reduced car trips by 6%.

We’ve learnt some lessons:

• don’t mention the bike until well into the interview

Read more here.

Can you spot the bicycle?

Maude Road E17, yesterday in the rain. It’s the awesome London Cycle Network again, with a bike logo painted on the road surface and a little blue sign saying it leads on to the even greater glory of the National Cycle Network (enjoy). This route has also in the past received an ecstatic thumbs-up from Sustrans.

Waltham Forest council fails to maintain its cycling infrastructure in all kinds of ways. The slippy, slimy leaves in November will in due course be replaced by snow and ice, and when it comes nothing will be done to clear the dedicated cycle crossing at the end of this road. That’s assuming it’s not already been rendered unusable by contractors!

Goodbye ‘Cycling England’ – and the CfIT

Ah, it seems like only yesterday that the London Cycling Campaign’s chief executive Koy Thomson was fizzing with enthusiasm at the prospect of Britain’s first ‘cycling prime minister’. But then Koy was always someone who believed that behind-the-scenes campaigning was what worked best – ‘making friends within the system’. And hasn't that strategy worked well, making London the paradise that it is for cyclists. And hasn't our cycling prime minister David Cameron also made a difference. Yes, he appointed a petrolhead buffoon as his Transport Minister, a man who when appointed breezily remarked:

“I've never actually cycled in London. I'd have to take a deep breath. I think you need to know what you are doing to cycle in London.”

Which is the view of most Londoners too – but then none of them is responsible for the nation’s policy on cycling.

Next, speed camera funding was axed, even though, as any Daily Mail reader kno, they generate lots of lovely dosh from those zillions of lawless drivers out there. A fiscal contradiction there, shurely… And now Cycling England has been axed.

Cycling England was created by the Department for Transport in 2005 to promote the growth of cycling. The body introduced the Bikeability programme, and the bike-friendly Cycling Town and Cycling City awards.

The board of Cycling England was made up of leading figures in the cycling industry and cycling campaign bodies, town planning, pubic health, environment and sustainable transport.

That was a central weakness of Cycling England. It represented the cycling establishment – an establishment which has been signally failing cycling for decades by promoting vehicular cycling instead of the ONLY strategy with a proven record of success – the Dutch and Danish models, involving safe, convenient, direct segregated cycling. Sadly, British campaign organisations are rarely short of excuses as to why the Dutch model would never work here.

In the absence of a coherent philosophy we get statements like this:

"Cycling England has been a crucial conduit for funding which has touched the lives of millions of people by making it possible for people to cycle for everyday journeys," stated Malcolm Shepherd, Sustrans chief executive. 


You’d never know from guff like this that cycling was nationally in decline, and has been for decades.

The body also provides a unified voice for cycling at national level, one that is now set to be silenced at a time when it is perhaps more needed than ever before to prevent the work taken to increase levels of cycling in England in recent years being undone.

But that ‘work taken to increase levels of cycling’ DIDN’T – unless, of course, you prefer to talk about percentages on cherry-picked commuter routes, rather than modal share.

Of course what is being substituted for Cycling England is even more ludicrous:

"We want to give more power and more flexibility to local authorities as we strongly believe that they know best what is right for their communities."

As one commenter points out:

Do they? Obviously Norman Baker MP has not been to Hereford on his bike where we are still waiting for a river crossing over the Wye which had lottery funding two years ago and has not yet got off the drawing board. Our local authority has been telling its council tax payers what they know is best for them for many years and what a popular bunch of councillors they are! A lot of money spent behind the scenes and nothing to show for it on the ground.

If you want to email your MP and complain, Tim Lennon has some suggestions.

What has attracted virtually no attention at all is the government’s abolition of the Commission for Integrated Transport. You can see why this body would annoy the car-centric Conservative Party.

The Commission suggests raising an extra £1.5bn a year from taxes in the form of higher fuel duty, air passenger duty and a system of charging for foreign lorries to use Britain’s roads. It justifies higher motoring taxes by asserting that the marginal cost of car use is “generally lower than the cost which that use imposes on society”.

That’s a perspective you’ll never get in Britain’s car-centric media.

Naturally the petrolhead community is jubilant.

It’s the anniversary of the National Cycle Network!

It’s the fifteenth anniversary of the National Cycle Network tomorrow – a network which is synonymous with the very best in British cycling infrastructure.

Yes, back in the glorious dawn of the great cycling revolution (the cycling revolution that fizzled out as cycling in Britain went precisely nowhere), Sustrans was the first charity to receive funding from the newly-created National Lottery.

Ah, yes. Sustrans.

But, hey, don’t listen to grouchy bloggers:

There are around 2,000 bridges, 10,000 seats and 50,000 signs on the Network.

Waltham Forest is blessed to be included in this frabjous network. Here are some pics. As you head north in the Lea Valley you come to one of the Network’s 2,000 bridges – this one bearing that ever popular sign CYCLISTS DISMOUNT.




























Continue on across the bridge heading north, and a couple of hundred metres further on you come to this. Just in case you mistakenly think you are entering a zone of post-industrial apocalyptic desolation populated by flesh-eating zombies, a small sign on a pole offers the reassurance that, yes, you are still on National Cycle Network One.






























Five lighting panels, none of them working.



























Special gates have been introduced to prevent access for cyclists who might pick up some funny ideas from abroad about recumbent bikes.














































Cyclists are notorious for ‘falling asleep at the handlebars’ so this succession of brick ‘wake up’ strips placed at two metre intervals supply a much-needed jolt to bicycles passing over them. Yes, the National Cycle Network thinks of everything, so unscrew the cap of that £2.99 bottle of Lidl wine and begin the celebrations.

‘Shared use’ for Waltham Forest cyclists

Cycling in Waltham Forest is all about sharing. The dedicated cycle path on Snaresbrook Road (a very British cycle path) is shared with pedestrians, who are obliged to step into it because their own reduced section of a footway which was once exclusively for them is currently blocked by this road contractor’s sign for motorists.

Cycle stands are shared with all manner of materiel, usually sacks of rubbish. But sometimes the tedium of daily obstruction is enlivened by a refreshing new variety, in this instance an Asda cart, far from home and ingeniously wedged between the two stands outside Sainsbury’s in Walthamstow High Street (below).


























If there was a prize for the sheer multiplicity and variety of ‘shared use’ condensed into a single location, it would surely have to be awarded to the off-road cycle route which links Walthamstow with South Woodford at the so-called ‘waterworks roundabout’ (where the A503, A104 and the A406 North Circular Road all meet). Here, a complex combination of subways and roadside cycle paths has been designed so that drivers do not have the distressing experience of having to wait at a red light in order to allow cyclists and pedestrians to cross.

This infrastructure, recommended by Sustrans as providing a magnificent ready-to-use section for an ‘Olympic Greenway’, allows users to share the experience of cycling with rats, litter thrown from vehicles, graffiti artists, the aftermath of an earthquake which has cracked open the earth’s crust all along the cycle path, all in a rich tropical habitat. This is just the kind of ‘quiet route’ which will ensure the success of the ‘cycling revolution’ in Outer London for those novices too timid to cycle on major roads.

Welcome to a cycle route that gets the thumbs-up from Sustrans.


























(Above) Abandon hope all ye who enter here. One of a number of subways in this vast and creepy complex.

(Below) Rubbish thrown from vehicles on the North Circular slip road provides a colourful display along the edge of the cycle path.












































(Below) The 'shared use' pathway for pedestrians and cyclists on the Woodford New Road section of this route. Notice the beautifully clear and well-maintained markings. The path extends to the fence which is buried away in the darkness of the overgrown vegetation. This is actually a scrap of Epping Forest and is under the control of the Corporation of London, which has no interest in maintaining its property when the only people affected are the cycling and walking peasants of East London. The London Borough of Waltham Forest has the power to force the Corporation of London to cut back this vegetation but is totally indifferent, and this obstruction happens every summer, year after year.










































A tip for anyone interested in seeing the local wildlife. This is the spot where you are most likely to encounter a rat. (Below) Enjoy.