Cyclecraft is "destroying" UK cycling

[MrHappyCyclist]

I think an important point that is being missed here is that, far from being put off by "Cyclecraft", most people have never heard of it.

The first time I came across it was last autumn after I'd already been cycling to work for a while, having been an occasional, casual cyclist for over 20 years, when I decided to learn a bit more. Most regular cyclists I know have never heard of it apart from my mentioning it, all the casual cyclists I know have never heard of it, and non-cyclists aren't interested to hear of it.

We live in a tiny corner of the country that is regular cyclists, and a tiny corner of that tiny corner, which is people who have heard of the term "primary position".

How can people be put off by something they have never heard of?

 

[henshaw11]

Doesn't appear that anyone's spotted this yet :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/03/britons-unmoved-cycling-campaigns

 

[StuartG]

.... this very freedom means that many cyclists are untrained and have no idea how to keep themselves safe, nor how they should interact with other road users ...

My National Proficiency Test consisted of cycling around some obstacles (these were pre-cone days) and hand signals. Nothing about handling traffic. And we had been cycling to/from school for many years beforehand. Did we really need training or was just getting on and going the accepted way? Of course that was a time of mass cycling and in my town outnumbered cars. It was their problem of keeping out of our way.

So that's the problem - Cyclecraft is for the few dispossessed (of roadspace) cyclists of today. I use it a lot. But teaching it is teaching fear, making riding confrontational and hence distasteful to the non-cyclists. They have, of course, not read it but they see the roadcraft needed everytime they see an assertive cyclist. And they don't want to be that cyclist.

However, show them pictures of Copenhagen and many agree it is heaven. Interestingly my experience of Copenhagen is that my roadbike style of riding is as alien and unattractive to them as it is to our motorists.

Cyclecraft is not the cause of anything (save a survival manual for us) - it is a symptom of transport system that has one problem - cars. Cycling is irrelevant unless we as a society decide to tackle the paradox of the freedom to drive. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[OldGreyBeard]

More importantly they don't spend all their time presenting it as an extreme sport requiring special protective equipment (hi-viz, helmets) and being isolated from "dangerous" traffic. Copenhagenize reported that Denmark saw the first ever fall in cycling in decades when helmets started to be promoted for safety a couple of years back. If you continually hark on about the dangers (which are in reality miniscule) its hardly surprising that people decline to participate.



If nothing else, Cyclecraft is helping ensure motorists are at least aware of cyclists on the road and learn to deal with them which would not happen if we all cowered in the gutter or hid away on segregated cycle lanes.



You have a better way to cycle on our roads? I mean our roads as they are rather than as you would like them to be in some future. Perhaps you should write a book about it to remove the Franklin monopoly.



Those cycling levels existed in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany before they built their segregated cycle paths and did not increase after they were built - they were high already. So what makes you think, even if we could build them here, that the effect would be to raise cycling levels when it hasn't elsewhere. The DublinBikes scheme has done much much more to increase cycling in Dublin than their building a 200 mile Strategic Cycle Network across the city that resulted in a 15% drop in commuter cycling and a 40% fall in student cycling. Its because the DublinBikes, like the Boris Bikes, make people realise that cycling is possible by ordinary people just like them and not just an armoured elite of extreme danger junkies.

Whilst you can reasonably argue that cycling in the Netherlands and Denamrk etc had declined as it did in the the UK up to the 1970's it hadn't declined as far and there is plenty of evidence that cycling has increased since then.

The UK has pretty much always persued an integrationist approach with the results we see.

My main problem with Cyclecraft is that it presents its approach as the only one and Mr Franklin actively speaks against segregation, no doubt because he has convinced himself it is dangerous. Why doesn't he try and persuade the Dutch?

I don't have a better way to cycle on our roads but I do have a better way to cycle which would suit more people and that is Dutch standard cycleways.

It isn't impossible to build such a network. Afterall the position of cycling here in the 1970's was absolutely dire compared to what it is today for which Sustrans must be awarded quite a lot of the credit for building routes people will use.

 

[OldGreyBeard]

I think an important point that is being missed here is that, far from being put off by "Cyclecraft", most people have never heard of it.

The first time I came across it was last autumn after I'd already been cycling to work for a while, having been an occasional, casual cyclist for over 20 years, when I decided to learn a bit more. Most regular cyclists I know have never heard of it apart from my mentioning it, all the casual cyclists I know have never heard of it, and non-cyclists aren't interested to hear of it.

We live in a tiny corner of the country that is regular cyclists, and a tiny corner of that tiny corner, which is people who have heard of the term "primary position".

How can people be put off by something they have never heard of?

It's the influence it has when arguing for segregated cycleways that people will actually use that is the problem.

 

[OldGreyBeard]

My National Proficiency Test consisted of cycling around some obstacles (these were pre-cone days) and hand signals. Nothing about handling traffic. And we had been cycling to/from school for many years beforehand. Did we really need training or was just getting on and going the accepted way? Of course that was a time of mass cycling and in my town outnumbered cars. It was their problem of keeping out of our way.

So that's the problem - Cyclecraft is for the few dispossessed (of roadspace) cyclists of today. I use it a lot. But teaching it is teaching fear, making riding confrontational and hence distasteful to the non-cyclists. They have, of course, not read it but they see the roadcraft needed everytime they see an assertive cyclist. And they don't want to be that cyclist.

However, show them pictures of Copenhagen and many agree it is heaven. Interestingly my experience of Copenhagen is that my roadbike style of riding is as alien and unattractive to them as it is to our motorists.

Cyclecraft is not the cause of anything (save a survival manual for us) - it is a symptom of transport system that has one problem - cars. Cycling is irrelevant unless we as a society decide to tackle the paradox of the freedom to drive. I'm not holding my breath.

Well said!

 

[OldGreyBeard]

Doesn't appear that anyone's spotted this yet :

http://www.guardian....cling-campaigns

I think this is the study that was reported in the last issue of the CTC's Cycle magazine.

As I said elsewhere cycling has to escape from the ghetto it has been placed/put itself/found itself in and to do that it has to listen to what the people who want to cycle but don't say as to why they don't cycle. The top reason is always safety aka fear.

Make cycling a viable choice and just see what happens!

 

[dellzeqq]

1. show us the drawing
2. give us a price
3. tell us how you're going to convince people that segregation is a good idea, and worth paying for

 

[OldGreyBeard]

1. show us the drawing
2. give us a price
3. tell us how you're going to convince people that segregation is a good idea, and worth paying for

As I said before I doubt very much if even the top cycleway designers from the Netherlands could convince you so I doubt that I would be able to.

There are plenty of implemented designs in the Netherlands to choose from and cycleways are a good deal cheaper than building a road system capable of dealing with projected traffic growth.

People don't need convicing that segregation is a good idea, they say it in every survey of potential cyclists and nearly everyone I talk to at campaign events says that would cycle if there were more cyclepaths and no thankyou they are not interested in being trained to cycle on the roads.

If you're happy to cycle on the roads as they are, just continue, but you do need to recognise that the vast majority of people are not happy to cycle on those roads.

 

[dellzeqq]

1. you simply have no idea, and no intention of demonstrating that segregation can be applied to a city street grid in London.
2. you have no idea of the cost, and no interest in the cost
3. you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of persuading sufficient people that it's a good idea to make it happen.

the words 'doomed', 'to' and 'failure' spring to mind

this is a strictly pipedream only exercise, divorced from practical and political reality

 

[OldGreyBeard]

1. you simply have no idea, and no intention of demonstrating that segregation can be applied to a city street grid in London.
2. you have no idea of the cost, and no interest in the cost
3. you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of persuading sufficient people that it's a good idea to make it happen.

the words 'doomed', 'to' and 'failure' spring to mind

this is a strictly pipedream only exercise, divorced from practical and political reality

1. Not everyone lives in London or indeed in a city. Besides which the Dutch have done it in their cities so it is clearly possible
2. The Guardian article quoted £800,00 per km which has to be an average as where I live the costs would be much less.
3. I'm not that pessimistic

I don't agree that it is divorced from practical and political reality. What would Sustrans have achieved if John Grimshaw had had that attitude?

 

[dellzeqq]

1. Not everyone lives in London or indeed in a city. Besides which the Dutch have done it in their cities so it is clearly possible
2. The Guardian article quoted £800,00 per km which has to be an average as where I live the costs would be much less.
3. I'm not that pessimistic

I don't agree that it is divorced from practical and political reality. What would Sustrans have achieved if John Grimshaw had had that attitude?

what has Sustrans achieved?

if you are talking about interurban roads, say so - but the straightforward fact of the matter is that cycling is inevitably going to be skewed toward cities, because the distances are smaller, competing modes of transport slower and critical mass is easier to achieve.

Now, your first point is plain, straightforward wrong, but you don't have to take my word for it. Get an ordnance survey 1:1250 map and a scale rule, draw a length of segregated cycle path and post it up here.

As for the second - probably an underestimate for the centre of town, which is where the greatest political opportunity will lie. Note that Cycling Superhighways are substantially cheaper (and more successful, and with a greater capacity, but there you go....)

And as for the third - I'm completely optimistic. Cycling in my part of the world is on the up. The segregation thing has been parked.

Finally - if you had the patience to read the thread you'd see that all kinds of work can be done to make streets more civilised, and that those of us unconvinced by segregation are making the case for that work; your allegation that people are content with the status quo is both ignorant and insulting.

 

[OldGreyBeard]

what has Sustrans achieved?

if you are talking about interurban roads, say so - but the straightforward fact of the matter is that cycling is inevitably going to be skewed toward cities, because the distances are smaller, competing modes of transport slower and critical mass is easier to achieve.

Now, your first point is plain, straightforward wrong, but you don't have to take my word for it. Get an ordnance survey 1:1250 map and a scale rule, draw a length of segregated cycle path and post it up here.

As for the second - probably an underestimate for the centre of town, which is where the greatest political opportunity will lie. Note that Cycling Superhighways are substantially cheaper (and more successful, and with a greater capacity, but there you go....)

And as for the third - I'm completely optimistic. Cycling in my part of the world is on the up. The segregation thing has been parked.

Finally - if you had the patience to read the thread you'd see that all kinds of work can be done to make streets more civilised, and that those of us unconvinced by segregation are making the case for that work; your allegation that people are content with the status quo is both ignorant and insulting.

We are never going to agree so lets stop trying to convince each other!

I'm preparing for our campaign market stall tomorrow when I fully expect to hear that people would cycle more if we had more cycle paths, I'll suggest training, maps etc and they'll say no thankyou.

Without segregation I fully expect cycling levels to remain in the doldrums and cycling to remain a niche activity. You clearly feel differently.

The proof of the pudding will be the state of cycling in five & ten years time. Perhaps you will be proved right, perhaps not. I suspect it will be the latter. If cycling is booming with double digit modal share I'll be more than happy.

 

[StuartG]

I think I disagree with Dell on segregation per se. But what I do agree with him is there is currently no way of getting from where we are now to a Dutch/Danish model. It isn't even cost or size of streets. Its political will. And if you haven't noticed - there isn't any to do anything serious - and if there was we have no idea how to engineer such a culture change.

So talking roadschemes CycleCraft or CycleLanes is just tinkering with the present. Any change in the future isn't going to come from CTC/LCC/Sustrans/CEGB et al. Its going to come when the RAC/AA & Daily Mail start campaigning for car control.

When the oil runs out and London finally gridlocks that's a possibility. Problem is all this TfL traffic smoothing stuff is working quite well at keeping the old structure running, and it may run a good number of years yet. Probably my lifetime.

I'm just going to enjoy my cycling and not worry to much about what I can't control or change. Life is too short.

 

[jonesy]

...

The UK has pretty much always persued an integrationist approach with the results we see.

...

Results like these for example...?
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pete.meg/wcc/facility-of-the-month/index.htm

Do you really think this sort of thing is designed by people who advocate vehicular cycling?

I don't have a better way to cycle on our roads but I do have a better way to cycle which would suit more people and that is Dutch standard cycleways.

It isn't impossible to build such a network. Afterall the position of cycling here in the 1970's was absolutely dire compared to what it is today for which Sustrans must be awarded quite a lot of the credit for building routes people will use.

Well sadly rather a lot of the farcilities featured in the website linked to above are part of the National Cycle Network... and that is what happens when people insist segregation is the only true way, but can't answer dellzeqq's "show us the drawing" challenge, so they end up demanding what isn't practicable or affordable, so they end up accepting comprises on the "anything is better than nothing" assumption, which all too often leads to something we'd be better off without.

I don't deny that the NCN has led to development of some very attractive, well used, traffic-free trails, some of which are useful for everyday utility cycling as well as for leisure. Indeed, I've even helped fundraise and maintain some of those routes. But you can't build leafy railway paths everywhere people want to cycle, so sooner or later you have to deal with how people are going to cycle along the road corridors. So while there are some nice routes away from the road, I'm afraid I can't think of a single example on the NCN in my part of the world where it has provided an intervention along a road corridor that offers any significant benefit over what was there previously.

Meanwhile, in Oxford and Cambridge, there are large numbers of people cycling for everyday journeys in their normal clothing, just as they do in Copenhagen, but without a huge network of segregated paths that we couldn't afford to build even if someone could provide a workable drawing. So why not look at what works best in those places and how it might be most cost-effectively applied elsewhere?