For those of you who like statistics, Transport for London has done some research into London cyclists and red light jumping. Among the wealth of research findings, these are the ones that stand out:
‘84 per cent obey’
‘16 per cent disobey’
‘men are more likely to ride through red lights than women to some extent'
The research is flawed by two omissions. Firstly, it fails to study red light jumping in relation to the existence or not of green phases for pedestrians. Jumping the lights at red is more inviting if motor traffic is stationary, held at a red phase, and it then becomes safe for a cyclist to cross. This may of course impact on pedestrians to their detriment; however, if no pedestrians are crossing, there is no logical reason why a cyclist should not cross at red. In this regard cyclists are no different to pedestrians: they cross roads at red when hanging around waiting seems entirely pointless. For a cyclist red-light jumping may also be safer in relation to road layout ahead, especially if you need to get into the middle of the road to turn right from a two-lane-same-direction carriageway.
Secondly, it fails to relate red light jumping to whether or not there is an Advanced Stop Line which is occupied by a motor vehicle or vehicles, in which case red light jumping may be a survival strategy on the part of the cyclist. I am certainly not going to remain in an ASL at red if a motor vehicle pulls in alongside me. The Metropolitan Police has a policy of not enforcing ASLs and it is therefore blatantly discriminatory of them to enforce road traffic law selectively. No cyclist should be prosecuted either for going beyond the final white line or for jumping a red light when vehicles have entered the ASL at red.
These omissions rather undermine the report’s introduction of ethics into the analysis:
the 16 per cent that do must be discouraged from ignoring traffic signals
Enforcement of Advanced Stop Lines might well discourage some red light jumping by cyclists. But Transport for London is a car supremacist organisation, so this consideration is naturally excluded from the analysis. The ASL legislation is itself blatantly rigged in favour of poor driving, because it permits drivers to halt there unless the box is empty when the light is at red. But no cautious, careful driver should ever find themselves in an ASL when the lights change. The orange phase is intended to signal to drivers to slow down, when in reality most accelerate.
The TfL study also excludes from analysis the reality that red lights are there to manage motor traffic, not cyclists. On the one hand cyclists are expected to obey car laws; on the other hand they are expected to tolerate and not respond to massive abuse of Advanced Stop Lines by drivers.
And now the Met is cracking down:
PC Nigel Lewis read out the results of the morning's work. "10 people were stopped and spoken to about contravening the red light and three people were given a fixed penalty."
Just like that criminal cyclist in the photo above. She should be in the Advanced Stop Line, along with the taxi and the car!
Meanwhile Westminster councillor Angela Harvey, who wants council staff to have the power to fine cyclists, says “I’m a cyclist” but, curiously, refers to a naughty cyclist “who then drives off into the distance”. A Freudian slip by someone who is really more of a motorist than a cyclist, Angela? See the BBC TV interview, which contains the bizarre claim that ‘if a car jumps a red light they get done for it’, here.
How comforting to know that the London Cycling Campaign is backing the crackdown:
Leaving aside the very debatable question of guilt and responsibility regarding cycling fatalities, and the reality that red light jumping, pavement cycling and one-way street 'wrong way' cycling are all a response to a transport infrastructure that is car-centric, hazardous and inconvenient for cycling, I would have thought pragmatically that if Westminster Council really does get the power to issue naughty cyclists with £100 fines (more than the fine for steering a ton of metal while chatting on a mobile phone), all that will happen is that some of those fined cyclists will stop cycling. I find it odd that the LCC is giving its support to a measure which is being put forward by a local authority which is notoriously anti-cycling and anti-walking, which is just another symptom of the cyclophobia being stoked by some sections of the mass media, and which will surely only have the effect of suppressing cycling.
Advice which tens of thousands of London cyclists ignore every day. And note that slippery expression ‘pedestrian-only pavements’ – local authorities are as keen to put cyclists on the pavement through ‘shared use’ as they are to accommodate and promote car ownership by creating parking bays on the pavement.
No one has rendered the old saying pavements are for pedestrians more empty than local authorities, not least a council like Waltham Forest, which regards pavements as good places to put cars, cyclists and revenue-generating advertising panels. And when councils put cyclists on pavements they do so to benefit motorists, not cyclists.
In other words, Britain's two main cycling organisations collude with the car supremacist transport status quo by demanding that cyclists conform to it. They not only do not represent that large number of cyclists who routinely ignore their pious advice, but they position themselves firmly on the side of a transport culture designed to manage drivers, not cyclists or pedestrians.
The conformist arguments of the LCC and the CTC cut little ice with a cycling radical like Josh Hart:
I run red lights all the time, routinely, and I’m not ashamed of it and I won’t apologize for it.
I find Josh Hart's cycling advocacy more impressive than Debra Rolfe's. For her to demand that people like Josh (or all those other bloggers who make it plain that they cycle through red lights, including Chris Hutt) undergo “cycle training” is crackers.
Josh Hart’s post provoked a lot of comments. Here are the ones which make most sense to me:
Chris Hutt:
I don’t see the point of waiting at a red light when there are no conflicting pedestrian or vehicle movements.
The traffic control system on UK roads has evolved over the last 50 years or more with little if any regard for the particular needs of cyclists. It is therefore entirely logical and fitting that cyclists should treat this system with the same contempt as the designers of the system showed towards cyclists. Besides which the proliferation of traffic lights in more recent decades has occurred principally to accommodate an unsustainable and obscene increase in motor traffic in our cities. In many cases Zebra crossings that gave by default priority to pedestrians have been converted to Pelican crossings that give by default priority to road traffic, so making walking even less attractive and encouraging car use.
I would go so far as to say that it is the duty of every genuine environmentalist to do everything they can to undermine this iniquitous system, including of course jumping (as we say in the UK) red lights whenever it is safe and convenient to do so.
‘Dave M’:
‘Stop at Red’ completely misunderstands the problem – rather than campaigning for road laws which accommodate cyclists, they are campaigning to force cyclists to conform to the current laws – which are designed for cars.
Many (although not all) riders who jump lights have simply seen the truth of this, and choose to take responsibility for progressing when it is safe, just as pedestrians do.The elephant in the room is that bikes are *not* cars.
The fact that the law largely requires cyclists to obey “car laws” is a problem which should be addressed by new laws. Pedestrians already treat the ‘red man’ as a ‘give way’ sign, and there is no reason why cyclists should be persecuted for the equivalent. If cyclists are cutting up pedestrians on crossings they should be hit with fixed penalties – but not for jumping lights when there are no pedestrians.
Exactly.
The majority of cyclists are not members of a cycling organisation, don’t read blogs, and don’t bother with the kind of feverish arguments which this topic engenders among cycling activists and bloggers. They simply adapt their behaviour to the existing road network, in a classically Darwinian manner. This is partly about survival and partly about convenience. As long as Britain lacks a safe and convenient cycling infrastructure, cyclists are going to ride on pavements, go through red lights and go down one-way streets the ‘wrong’ way. If you punish cyclists who do this when there are no victims (i.e. when there is no conflict with other road users, especially pedestrians), all you’ll do is stop people cycling.
Of course, some cyclists simply dump their problems on pedestrians, and no one should be surprised if pedestrians think cyclists are a bigger threat than motorists. Quoting statistics at them isn't going to change views founded in experience, any more than quoting statistics at people is going to persuade them to take up cycling.
One major attraction of cycling in London is that it offers a quick, convenient way of getting around a dense, often non-linear urban road network. But both cyclists and pedestrians are expected to wait at red lights for long periods of time, simply to accommodate the smooth passage of motor traffic, which remains the number one priority of transport planning in Britain, both at a national and local level. No cyclist or pedestrian wants to wait 2-3 minutes, simply to cross a road, and that is why when the opportunity arises to do so, cyclists and pedestrians both cross at red.
Similarly if you convert roads to one-way in order to smooth the passage of drivers on streets choked with parked cars, then cyclists are either going to cycle down the road the ‘wrong’ way, or cycle on the pavement. Every year in the London Borough of Waltham Forest another half-dozen streets are converted to one way, without any consideration of cycling flow or convenience. With brazen impudence the Council has even done this on recommended cycle routes. I can’t say I’m aware of even a squeak of protest from the London Cycling Campaign, at either a central or local level.
Instead of seeking to punish or re-educate cyclists, supply them with a safe, convenient infrastructure on the Copenhagen/Dutch model and watch the bad behaviour vanish. If you are not prepared to do that – and it seems plain that British transport planning remains doggedly in love with motor vehicle supremacy and fundamentally hostile to cycling and walking – then the ‘bad behaviour’ will continue as cyclists adapt their cycling to dangerous, inconvenient roads which pamper bad, lazy, lawless, reckless drivers. Whether or not you agree with my arguments, this I believe is the future. In the absence of an infrastructure, cyclists will continue to engage in perceived 'bad behaviour'. However, I think there is a big difference between inconsiderate cycling and safe, considerate but unlawful cycling.
Let me add something about this sequence of events. When I had got past the van illegally blocking the cycle lane, and the Council van illegally in the Advanced Stop Line, I moved forward to find a twenty-something female cyclist waiting beyond the ASL. When the lights went to red for the traffic on Forest Road, an all-green phase kicked in for pedestrians at the junction. There were no pedestrians crossing at any of the four crossings. The woman cyclist sailed across at red and went off down Fulbourne Road. A thirty-something male cyclist who’d been waiting ahead of the vehicle-occupied ASL on Forest Road went through the lights at red and turned right into Wood Street. And I cycled across at red and turned right on to Forest Road.
The three of us were not inconveniencing pedestrians because there weren’t any, nor were we putting ourselves in danger, because the motor vehicles were all held at red and there were no emergency vehicles howling towards us. Our behaviour was motivated by the knowledge that it was safe, convenient cycling and considerably safer than waiting for the lights to turn green, when the possibility of conflict and danger arose from those vehicles lurching forwards out of the ASL. Proof, if you like, that cyclists who break the law by jumping red lights may be safer, especially when you consider that
That’s a very different situation to this. Drivers jumping the red light at one of the busiest pedestrian crossing points in the borough (Willow Walk E17 at the junction with High Street).
(Above) This driver hit me. No, not road rage. His car hit my bicycle. It was the lowest of low speed collisions but if left me shocked and angry. I was sufficiently angry to take photographs of the driver and car, which I don't normally do. If the pics on this blog normally have an unpeopled atmosphere it's because I usually wait to let pedestrians pass before I take photographs, and I avoid taking pics of lawless drivers because I prefer to avoid abusive or violent confrontation.
It happened last Saturday at about 1 p.m. I thought I'd wait a bit before I blogged about it. To give me time to reflect on the circumstances and return to the location to look at it more closely.
I'd been in Tottenham and I was returning to Walthamstow. I cycled across the Lea Valley, up Coppermill Lane, along St James's Street, and up Courtenay Mews and Cranbrook Mews (part of the London Cycle Network). It was a Saturday and there was heavy congestion everywhere. When I reached the junction with Willow Walk I encountered the traffic backed up along South Grove. No problem for a cyclist, as there is a cycle lane at this junction, which feeds an ASL at the Willow Walk/Selborne Road/South Grove junction. Except that on this occasion there was a car and also a motorcyclist in the ASL.
The car was not signalling left. Nor was it turning left. But as I entered the ASL the lights changed. As my momentum took me past the car, the driver moved forwards and he hit me. There was a loud crunch as the car hit my bike. The driver braked and I braked. Shocked, I pointed at the ASL and screamed at the driver "YOU SHOULD NOT BE THERE!"
The driver raised his arm in apology. He knew perfectly well he should not have been in the ASL and that he was at fault. He did not get out of the car. He was plainly embarrassed.
By this time the lights had changed to red again. I dragged my bike to the side of the road to see if it was damaged. As far as I could tell it wasn't. The car had hit the rear frame at low speed. It hadn't touched my leg and it hadn't knocked me off my bike. Maybe the crunching sound was the car panel caving in. Looking at the pics I can see a black smear on the car which I think was the point of impact. I can't tell if the car is dented or if it's just reflections.
I was in a state of mild shock. In the past I've twice clipped the wing mirrors of slow-moving cars which lurched unexpectedly into the cycle lane while I was undertaking them, but apart from those inconsequential events I have never been in a traffic collision before. I was sufficiently angry to take photographs of the driver and his car. The driver was embarrassed and looked away - he had two young teenage girls in the back, who seemed quite startled by the turn of events - while the gormless lawbreaking motorcyclist stared at me.
(Below) The aftermath of the collision, with the lights at red again. And make a note of that white van on the extreme right of the photo. It will be putting in another appearance later in this post.
(Below) The scene of the crime. An ASL with a feeder lane. I'm starting to see why some cycling campaigners refer to these so-called cycling facilities as "sucker-traps". As you might expect from the crap London Borough of Waltham Forest the ASL markings are seriously faded. Even so, there's no real question that this box is for cyclists. And I think the design is deadly, since a cyclist heading straight on up Selborne Road has to swing out right to do so, which means instant conflict with a vehicle in the ASL, even if that vehicle is also going straight on. What caught me out was that the lights changed at precisely the wrong moment.
I thought I'd return to Cranbrook Mews and re-examine the circumstances of my little collision. It was an illuminating experience. In the time I surveyed the ASL, non-compliance by ALL drivers was one-hundred per cent.
I'd just arrived yesterday (at noon) when a cyclist and a car approached the ASL together, at a red light. I managed to take a quick snap (below) before I switched to zoom. The car drove into the ASL, so the cyclist compensated by going beyond the lights and waiting there, a perfectly sensible reaction but one which is technically illegal and can lead to police harassment.
(Below) This more or less duplicates the circumstances of my collision. Except that I was probably about a metre nearer to the car in the ASL. The cyclist swings in front of the car to to go up Selborne Road. Here, the driver who was unlawfully in the ASL can see the cyclist and waits. Whereas the driver who hit me wasn't expecting me to appear on his left.
(Below) The next red phase, the next offender...
Note the angle at which the offending car is positioned. This ASL design is deadly for cyclists who are going straight on.
(Below) The next red phase, the next offender...
I went closer to take more pics, and a bus driver came along at the next red phase and drove into the ASL (below).
I see that Westminster Cycling Campaign took up the issue of bus drivers who abuse ASLs with Ken Livingstone:
To which my response is: ha bloody ha. Bus drivers generally in Waltham Forest are a lawless, dangerous risk-taking menace (I realise there are exceptions to every generalisation). They jump red lights on a staggering scale, they repeatedly cut me up on my bike, they deliberately and wilfully obstruct ASLs.
Remember that white van on Cranbrook Mews, I mentioned earlier? After I'd cycled on after my little collision, it overtook me on Selborne Road. The driver had witnessed the collision between the driver in the ASL and me. So what did white van man do when he reached the next ASL, just before the bus station. That's right: he drove right into it. (Below)
On another day recently I cycled towards a red light at The Bell corner. I cycled into the ASL. I had it all to myself. But then after about fifteen seconds I had company. (Below) You can see see why increasing numbers of cycling campaigners refer to cycling facilities as cycling "farcilities". You can also see why so many cyclists either position themselves beyond the final white line, or simply cycle across at red.
I would never undertake a heavy goods vehicle or a bus in an ASL. But usually it's safe to do so when it's only a car. On this occasion I failed to take into account the fact that this ASL is situated on a bend. I was lucky: the car which hit me was a tiny, tiny one, the speeds were slow, and the driver braked. It could have been much worse than it was.
The lessons I draw from this are various.
(1) In future I shall never enter an ASL which has vehicles in it.
(2) The Metropolitan Police is institutionally car-supremacist, colludes with lawless drivers and promotes cycling deaths and injuries by refusing to enforce ASLs:
In other words, maintaining motor vehicle traffic flow is more important than the safety of cyclists. Which explains why the Met has such an animus towards Critical Mass.
(3) The sooner enforcement of ASLs is transferred to local authorites the better. If Gordon Brown was seriously concerned about public safety he would rush through legislation at once. I feel far more threatened by London drivers than I do by terrorists.
(4) Many so-called cycling facilities are indeed sucker-traps, which promote the potential injury or even death of cyclists. Undertaking can be potentially lethal, yet the so-called London Cycle Network encourages it across the capital.
(5) As there was no physical injury and no obvious damage to property my collision does not count as a road traffic "accident". I've seen some cycling activists argue that since road casualty figures are going down and the number of cyclists on London's roads is increasing, London's roads are getting safer. This is false logic. To get a true picture of how dangerous the roads are you need to count in figures for non-injury crashes recorded by insurance companies. The number of drivers who crash their cars, or who are crashed into, without any injury, and who claim on their insurance, is vastly greater than the number of drivers involved in recorded road traffic "accidents". You also need to factor in events like the one I've just described, which will never be recorded as a statistic, and will allow someone to claim that this junction is very safe.
Everyone who wrote to the AA about this pic got back the same standard reply:
Some signal-controlled junctions have advanced stop lines to allow cycles to be positioned ahead of other traffic. Motorists, including motorcyclists, MUST stop at the first white line reached if the lights are amber or red and should avoid blocking the way or encroaching on the marked area at other times, e.g. if the junction ahead is blocked. If your vehicle has proceeded over the first white line at the time that the signal goes red, you MUST stop at the second white line, even if your vehicle is in the marked area. Allow cyclists time and space to move off when the green signal shows.
The A.A. is clutching at straws, as I saw their employee drive into the box when the lights were already at red. So it was indeed an unlawful piece of driving. Not that the A.A. man or any other lawless driver needs to worry. You can stare at this particular ASL all day long and you’d see thousands of drivers abuse it, just as every other ASL in Greater London is treated with contempt, because the law is not enforced, and apparently this is Metropolitan Police policy.
The A.A. response underlines how the law always has little loopholes to benefit reckless drivers. Because no careful driver would ever get themselves in the position of being caught in an ASL. The only sort of driver who gets caught in an ASL between amber and red is someone driving too fast and hoping to jump the lights, or an impatient driver in a traffic jam who follows the car in front an inch behind, and is indifferent about being in an ASL.
As it happens, at Christmas Santa Claus brought me the first series of the legendary TV programme ‘Twin Peaks’. I enjoyed the moment when the slightly eccentric FBI agent divides America up between good and bad towns, defined as being places where, approaching traffic lights, drivers slow down at amber or those towns where all drivers accelerate.
London has for a very long time been a city where drivers who see the lights turn to amber put their foot down. And just about every red light has one to three drivers who race through.
If you want to understand all that’s rotten in the state of establishment British cycle campaigning, look no further then this document.
It acknowledges the fundamental reason why most of the population has no interest in cycling:
Fear of traffic and feelings of vulnerability
And then it offers solutions, of which the primary one is
Targeted cyclist training
In other words, its solution to people’s reluctance to cycle among motor vehicles is to treat this as a personal behavioural problem, not as one of infrastructure or the street environment or a mass motorized transport culture.
If you are afraid of cycling amid high volumes of motor traffic or if you feel vulnerable in an environment filled with people operating dangerous machinery in a criminally negligent way, then it’s YOU who is the problem. Your fears must be addressed in two ways.
Firstly, you must be persuaded that your perceptions are false and that cycling in what you regard as a hostile and dangerous environment is actually perfectly safe.
Secondly, you must be taught how, as a cyclist, to adapt your behaviour to this environment. You must be trained.
'Cyclists fare best when they are recognised to be and act as the operators of vehicles' is a universal maxim, perhaps best expressed in the Stationary Office cycling manual 'Cyclecraft' written by John Franklin. Central to the 'vehicular cycling' approach are the principles of assertive and defensive cycling.
I find the concept of ‘defensive cycling’ quite an interesting one, because it tacitly accepts that there is an offensive going on. And cycle training is basically all about accommodating yourself to the mass-motorized battlefield.
In itself ‘Cyclecraft’ makes sense for hardcore vehicular cyclists. It’s all about minimising risk to yourself by making your presence very visible to motorists, by occupying the centre of the carriageway when appropriate (for example, when approaching a pinchpoint), and by being assertive, confident and giving clear hand signals. ‘Cyclecraft’ advice includes stuff like this:
Multi-lane manoeuvres (such as to turn right off a dual carriageway) are generally regarded as some of the more difficult ones for a cyclist to make. In fact, cyclists can make such manoeuvres without great difficulty, but to do so requires knowledge of the appropriate vehicular cycling technique.
It doesn’t just require cycling technique, however. It also requires nerves of steel. It also doesn’t work if the volume of traffic is high and vehicles are bunched close together and travelling that much faster than you are – a not uncommon phenomenon on ‘A’ roads. And these days you will see very, very few cyclists on British dual carriageways or out-of-town ‘A’ roads, for the very good reason that they are terrifying and very unpleasant places to cycle. The same applies to rural roads. And assertive cycling quite often leads to the blowing of a car horn or the screaming of obscenities by motorized terrorists who resent being held up even for a few seconds by a cyclist or a group of cyclists.
Almost all cycling bloggers report unhappy interactions with motorists. Cycling bloggers as diverse as Rob Ainsley and Martin Porter scrupulously obey the rules, but still report having very bad experiences. Fairly regularly. And the more you cycle, the more you are exposed to risk, and the more likely you are to have these unpleasant experiences. YouTube is crammed with videos like this one:
Once you start insisting on cyclists wearing ‘visible clothing’ (sic) your argument then starts to blur with the bogus, blood-drenched ideology of ‘road safety’, which puts all the emphasis on the victim and diverts attention from the source of the danger. And in a sense ‘Cyclecraft’ and ‘road safety’ have a lot in common in so far as they accept the transport status quo and demand that cyclists adjust to it. And of course when the roads are full of drivers who are using mobile phones, or glancing at paperwork, or are otherwise distracted, it makes sense to wear reflective yellow or a brightly coloured cycle helmet. And once you start NOT conforming to car-centric values and rules, then you, the cyclist, become the problem.
Cyclists who jump red lights annoy drivers and give us all a bad name. Obey traffic signals, they’re the law and you’re subject to the law.
But of course red light jumping is simply the expression of what might be called a massive culture of unofficial cyclecraft, which includes things like cycling on the footway or riding up one-way streets the ‘wrong’ way. The vast majority of cyclists are not members of cycling organisations and almost certainly have little interest in, or knowledge of, the politics of cycling or the debates which rage on blogs or cycling threads. Ordinary cyclists just get on with it, in their own way. They have no mission, other than their own safety and convenience, which they work out on their own terms. The reality might be deplorable but I would argue that this is a response to a vehicular cycling infrastructure which they perceive as slowing them down or as dangerous.
The transport status quo is all about accommodating, managing and prioritizing motor vehicle flow. Establishment British cycle campaigning is basically about seeking to ameliorate conditions for vehicular cyclists within this framework. But many cyclists disobey this status quo for two reasons. The first one is safety. Some cyclists perceive themselves to be safer riding along the footway. It may also be safer to jump a red light, no matter how much this scandalizes cycling campaigners. The second one is convenience. The transport status quo is indifferent to the convenience of cyclists, so cyclists adapt accordingly, finding their own unofficial desire lines.
John Franklin doesn’t see it like that. Instead he argues that
In recent years, the deliberate disobeying of red lights and other controls has much increased – all practices that are consistent with the changing perception of cycling to a non-vehicular activity.
Similarly, he thinks people cycle on pavements because they have been corrupted by ‘shared use’ off-road cycling infrastructure. Franklin argues:
Most of the pavement cycling I see is alongside roads with sufficiently little traffic to pose no realistic difficulty to anyone.
The problem with that kind of attitude is that John Franklin’s 'realism' is not shared by other people. And in fact a road used by few drivers can be far more frightening and dangerous than one which is full of motor vehicles. Where there are few other drivers and the road is empty, there’s much more of a temptation to speed. Traffic congestion and crawling motor vehicles make for safer cycling – but not necessarily enjoyable cycling.
The reality, I suggest, is quite the opposite of Franklin’s interpretation. The rise in the kind of rule-breaking cycling behaviour described is consistent with a huge rise in vehicle ownership and use. Franklin is keen to blame the temptations of off-road infrastructure for this bad behaviour, but this is simply him imposing his prejudice against segregated cycling onto reality. He’s seeing things through the wrong end of the telescope. The behaviour he deplores is precisely a response to the atrocious conditions which the ‘vehicular cycling’ ideology has bequeathed cyclists in what is now one of the most backward and stagnant cycling nations in Europe.
Cyclists respond through their behaviour to the inconvenience and danger inherent in a car-centric and heavily motorized road network. If you expect people to cycle but don’t provide them with a safe or convenient infrastructure they will adapt their behaviour accordingly.
Trying to sell cycling as an attractive travel mode is negated both by the personal experience of non-cyclists – they can see at a glance that the roads are filled both with big intimidating vehicles like lorries and with drivers behaving recklessly – and by perceptions of cyclists as people who need to dress up in safety gear and wear a safety helmet.
It is all very well talking about a ‘culture of fear’ but many cyclists are afraid and I think they are right to be. No matter how logical the arguments against cycle helmets may seem to a cycling campaigner, huge numbers of riders still prefer to use them. It is perfectly true that cycle helmet campaigns possess an evangelical incoherence but so does ‘road safety’ and ‘vehicular cycling’. Insisting that cycling is not dangerous is not fundamentally different to insisting that a cycle helmet will protect you from the consequences of a traffic collision. If it isn’t dangerous then why is ‘defensive cycling’ at the heart of vehicular cycling campaigning? Here in London any person in their right minds would perceive Vauxhall gyratory as dangerous for cyclists. Or the Tottenham Hale gyratory. Or the Aldwych gyratory. Or Marble Arch. And all the cycle training in the world isn’t going to get the masses using them. Nor is advice like If it’s rush hour and it’s a major roundabout just get off your bike and walk across it. That negates the whole point of urban cycling – maneuverability and speed.
Trying to sell cycling as something which can be rendered agreeable by battlefield training and a uniform seems to me a non-starter. But the problem isn’t one of marketing, it’s one of product. You can devote huge sums to advertising a product, and you may get lots of people to try it once, but if the product is crap – or at least if it is perceived as dangerous or inconvenient and unenjoyable - they won’t buy it again. The recent DfT report revealing that two out of three drivers who gave up the car for cycling subsequently reverted to their cars was very revealing. Other local studies from around Britain indicate that when you can effect a small modal shift away from the car, drivers switch to public transport, not cycling.
Cycle training is important to British cycle campaigning because it is a vehicular cycling strategy. If you don’t agree with segregation, then this is what you are left with – adapting cycling behaviour to the status quo. And as a campaign strategy it has blatantly and dismally failed. Over the past decade the ambitious targets for modal share which were established at the start of the century in towns and cities across Britain (“Go for growth!”) have crumbled to dust. The response of the cycle campaign establishment is, as always, one of complete amnesia, icy silence and… fabulous, exciting and yet more utterly unrealistic new targets for 2020 or 2025. For establishment cycle campaigners, Britain is forever on the edge of a cycling renaissance. No one is more in denial than a conventional cycling campaigner.
*
The centrality of ‘cycle training’ as the panacea for non-cyclist’s fears is rooted in the prevailing ideology of British cycle campaigners. But the dark side of cycle training is that it has become a substitute for safe, convenient, segregated cycling infrastructure on the Dutch model – the one cycling strategy with a proven record of spectacular success.
It’s no coincidence that two of the leading opponents of segregated cycling infrastructure are also the authors of the two leading books on how to cope in modern urban traffic, i.e. John Forester in the USA (whose book Effective Cycling was first published in 1984) and John Franklin in the UK (whose book Cyclecraft first appeared in 1988).
Franklin’s hostility to off-road infrastructure is rooted in the notion that it’s dangerous and has a high casualty rate which often goes unrecorded. He also argues that such infrastructure slows cyclists down:
Efficient and speedy cycling is important if cycling is to compete as a mode of transport with the car. Road-side paths of almost any kind prevent this and make cycling slow and dangerous.
That’s certainly true of most British cycle paths. It’s utterly untrue of cycle paths in the Netherlands, however, which are not slow.
Safety problems of two-way cycle tracks at junctions almost insuperable
This turns out to be a claim made at a Dutch transport conference 34 years ago, at a time when the Netherlands was just about to start reversing its car dependency. And yet people still triumphantly quote Franklin’s collection of yellowing, out-of-date material on cycling threads and in comments boxes.
In reality nowadays
Dutch cyclists are not only the safest in the world, but also the Dutch cycle more than people of any other nation. Almost the whole population (93%) rides a bike at least once a week. Every type of person cycles. The infrastructure is the reason why.
Got that? The Netherlands offers an experience which is more or less impossible in any British town and city, like, say, an unbroken 10 minutes of cycling.
To any Dutch person it would seem a very quaint idea that you needed to read a book about ‘cyclecraft’ and be trained in ‘defensive cycling’ before you could ride a bike. But then Dutch cyclists are visibly relaxed, don’t feel the need to wear special equipment, and do things which would be regarded as seriously anti-social in Britain. They ride two-to-a-bike. They ride side by side. (I was once cycling alongside a friend in Hackney when a police car cut us up, braked, and a furious police officer sprang out and screamed that we were slowing down the traffic and that I would be arrested if I didn’t cycle in single file.)
You only have to look at the faces of cyclists in London to see that a lot of the time it’s not fun but stressful. You can’t relax, ever. You have to be permanently on your guard. You have to watch out for drivers. It’s true: you have to cycle defensively.
I think he’s wrong. I think cyclists in Denmark and the Netherlands find it enjoyable. And if cycling isn’t enjoyable you aren’t ever going to get a mass cycling culture.
Which is why the reallocation of road space away from cars is at the heart of humanizing our towns and cities, and making them more attractive for walking, cycling and living. And historically the Dutch started out on that path by firstly creating segregated bike grids on major routes in towns and cities. They made cycling attractive, convenient, safe and enjoyable. That was how the Dutch cycling revolution started and how car dependency began to be reversed.
John Franklin has always been a major obstacle to such a reallocation of street space by virtue of his fervent promotion of vehicular cycling and antipathy to off-road cycling. Back in 1998 he wrote a shit-stirring open letter to John Grimshaw of Sustrans, objecting to that organisation’s commitment to off-road cycling infrastructure:
I have noticed a considerable maturing of the views of cycle campaigners in recent years based, no doubt, on experience in the real world. With this has come increased recognition of the limitations of cycle facilities and of the need to integrate rather than segregate cyclists in traffic. I was delighted only a few weeks ago to learn that one CCN group, whom I had given up as a lost cause in terms of cycling policy, has by its own admission made a U-turn away from segregation and in favour of a minimum facilities approach. I sense that Sustrans is becoming more and more isolated in the direction it is taking, and that this will lead to increased friction at both national and local levels. There is already a feeling in many places that Sustrans too often runs rough-shod over the views of local cyclists. Is it really in the best interests of any of us for this to continue? I am copying this letter to the CTC, and I will circulate it within CCN and to other parties, as I feel it important for these matters to be considered as widely as possible.
Sustrans was not accountable to Franklin and his associates or to British cycling organisations and therefore survived his discontent, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a supposedly professional organisation with Franklin at its heart should still be issuing the cycling world's tepid equivalent of a fatwa. That the guardians of vehicular cycle campaigning feel rattled by a pro-Dutch blog like this one is curiously revelatory. (And just for the record this blog had never had a word to say about the policies of Cyclenation prior to its bizarre and inaccurate – and since modified and toned-down - ‘national statement’. I didn't even know that Cyclenation had a cycling policy, since I understood it to be a company that facilitated cycling conferences. Which as far as I can tell is basically what it is. But the heartwarming upside of being denounced by Cyclenation is a surge in this blog's readership and an increase in its listed Followers.)
Franklin seems on the face of it to have won. Thereafter Paul Gannon appears to vanish from the world of cycle campaigning. Today the Camden group unequivocally states We are involved in campaigns for better on-road cycle routes. (How successful this has been remains problematic.) Until very recently segregation seemed to vanish from overt debate within the world of cycle campaigning. The last reference I can find to it online is back in 2003 when Christian Woolmar (another major player in the world of cycle campaigning) informed delegates at a conference:
Franklin, in the interim, went from strength to strength. If you look at Cyclenation conference presentations dating back to 2001 you’ll see that John Franklin pops up five times, in 2009 (twice), 2007, 2004 and 2001, more than any other listed speaker. (Naturally there is not a single speaker listed during the first decade of the twenty-first century talking about cycling in Denmark or the Netherlands; the British cycle campaign establishment remains fundamentally parochial.) Today John Franklin is a revered figure, although to me he’s probably the individual who, across the broad field of cycle campaigning, has personally done the most to damage the cause of mass cycling in Britain. And today (to revert to where this post first started) even Sustrans now lends its name to on-road cycle campaigning. Franklin's rout of the opposition is nothing if not impressive.
But leaving aside the demonstrable failure of the vehicular cycling strategies which have been at the heart of cycle campaigning in Britain over the past decades, there is one final irony. The proponents of cycle training patronisingly tell non-cyclists to overcome their fears and get some cycle training, but they are personally unwilling to come to terms with their own basic anxiety. This was articulated as long ago as 1937 by the CTC:
A great deal of the cycle-path propaganda is based on a desire to remove cyclists from the roads. That is why the request for cycle paths is so often accompanied by a suggestion that their use should be enforced by law. Therein lies a serious threat to cycling.
The problem is that by shunning Dutch-style cycle paths and dogmatically defending the right to ride on 'A' roads, establishment cycle campaigning has left us with the worst of both worlds. Cycling has massively contracted and only the most diehard rider wants to cycle on roads like the A1 or the A3 or the A11 or the A12. Meanwhile where segregated infrastructure does exist in the UK it is notoriously mediocre and bears no resemblance to Dutch infrastructure at all. The CTC opposed segregated cycle paths but it passionately embraced motorways. That would get drivers off main roads and leave them clear for cyclists. And didn’t that idea work out well…
As far as the Netherlands are concerned, here are some examples of cyclepaths alongside roads where you're not allowed to cycle: first example; second example; third example. But who would want to cycle on roads like those when you have a safe, good quality cycle path?
As for Britain. Cycle training first started in 1947. Around the time that cycling in Britain peaked and then began its historic decline. So if anything, cycle training is historically associated with contraction and decline, not growth.
(Below) Defective cyclecraft on the Aldwych gyratory. Clear hand signals and they’ve ‘taken the road’. But foolishly they’ve forgotten their 'visible clothing'.
Yet another fatality at The Bell corner, where Forest Road (A503) meets the A112. Details are sketchy but it appears to have been a single vehicle only crash, evidently the result of the driver 'losing control' of a high-powered BMW while exceeding the speed limit. This death occurs just yards from where a young man died in the wreckage of his car after 'losing control' at high speed and crashing into the traffic lights at The Bell, and just yards from where a child crossing Forest Road was run down and killed by a hit and run driver, as well as a short distance from where a young mother was killed crossing Forest Road, and from the site of the hit and run killing of a cyclist two years ago.
The Bell corner is a site where drivers jump the lights all day long, abuse the Advanced Stop Line for cyclists, and cut across the pedestrian lights when they are at green. It needs a thorough redesign with speed cameras and cameras to catch red light jumpers, but local residents have been saying this for years and still nothing is done.
To be fair to the Council, their powers over this site are limited, as it's Transport for London (TfL) who control A roads like Forest Road. TfL's priority is to maintain traffic flow, which is why no right-turn phase has ever been supplied for traffic wanting to turn right off Hoe Street on to Forest Road (in the Town Hall direction). The result is that drivers are held up by red-light jumpers and by the time they are free to move off the lights have turned to green for pedestrians. For cyclists, the Advanced Stop Lines are usually filled with vehicles and the KEEP CLEAR area at the junction with Howard Road is often blocked. This junction is a shambles for every sort of road user. However, these design failings are unlikely to have had anything to do with this particular crash, which was evidently the result of the driver exceeding the speed limit and 'losing control'.
By 10.20 am things were already looking ugly, with these sites flagged as ‘red light’ collisions involving road closures or major delays
A102 Blackwall Tunnel Greenwich » Severe delays and queueing traffic due to earlier accident, two lorries involved
A302 Victoria Street Victoria » Queueing traffic and partially blocked due to accident
A213 Penge Road South Norwood » Road closed due to accident
And so on, throughout the day. To the complete indifference of national news organisations. But then even BBC London News has always been indifferent to the regular killing of cyclists by lorry drivers. BBC London News never bothered to report the killing of Catriona Patel, it never bothered to report the trial, and it never bothered to report the verdict or the sentence. BBC London News is a petrolhead outfit run by journalists who obviously never cycle anywhere and who presumably have clocked up numerous parking tickets and speeding convictions, since they repeatedly give publicity to the most trivial stories involving ‘unfair’ parking tickets or ‘unfair’ speed cameras.
Chief Inspector Jane Connors said kettling had been put in place "as a last resort". She told the news agency:
we want to make sure that Londoners can go about their business
Which is a surreal remark in a city where yesterday, as on every other day, hundreds of thousands of drivers took to the streets to speed, jump red lights, talk on mobile phones and drive into Advanced Stop Lines. The rights of pedestrians and cyclists to go about their business peacefully, unobstructed and free from threats of violence has never been of much interest to the Metropolitan Police, which has a long tradition of colluding with the most violent and lawless section of London society, i.e. motorists.
The driver of the Toyota shown above, reg. J80 SLY, cruised past me as I approached the empty ASL at red and went straight into it, even though the ASL is very clearly marked and has a giant logo of a bicycle in the box. The junction of the A503 and the A104. But the driver, a middle aged white male, knows perfectly well that road traffic law is rarely enforced in London. If they wanted to, the Met could catch thousands of drivers every day breaking the law by driving into ASLs at major junctions in Waltham Forest. But they don’t enforce the law. They are institutionally anti-cyclist.
Not long afterwards I saw the driver of a massive HGV. He was driving with a large road map or something similar spread out across his steering wheel. He was belting along staring down at the map, not looking ahead. By the time it was safe for me to stop I had missed the chance of getting his number. Just another highly dangerous lorry driver working for a road haulage industry which is totally out of control.
Not that it’s different in other cities.
Manchester:
The police then blocked off the road near Rusholme, charged the protesters and threatened to arrest anyone who went on the roads.
“Manchester police said criminal or anti-social behaviour would not be tolerated.”
Except, of course, when the culprit is a motorist, in which case the cops couldn’t give a toss. No surprise really, in view of Manchester’s policing tradition.
This is the junction in Hackney where last Wednesday an elderly woman pedestrian, who was apparently using a walking stick, was crushed to death by a massive 22-wheel lorry. The driver was arrested.
The lorry driver was evidently turning right out of the A107 on to Urswick Road (A102). My impression is that the pedestrian was probably hit on the crossing and then dragged under the lorry, although this is purely speculative. As we know, there’s a blind spot under the windscreen of some lorries, so that drivers don’t see even quite large objects.
The signalled crossing here is one that requires pedestrians to cross in two stages, to the middle where they wait in a cattle pen. It’s an atrocious junction. There are no ASLs for cyclists, some of whom jump the lights. Impatient drivers also flagrantly jump the lights, after the amber light has turned to red. Some pedestrians ignore the cattle pen or run across at red to get to the other side before the green light goes out.
It’s a spacious junction which prioritises motor vehicles. There would be the space to separate cyclists from motor vehicles here, and also reduce the length of carriageway which pedestrians have to cross to get to the other side, allowing them to cross in one go. However, that would impinge on ‘smooth vehicle flow’ and would be anathema to TfL.
An interesting new piece of research Deaths of cyclists in London: trends from 1992 to 2006 blows away some of the cherished superstitions of the vehicular cycling fundamentalists. For example, there’s no 'safety in numbers' :
We did not replicate, however, the findings of previous studies which have suggested that increased levels of cycling lead to decreased fatality rates
The CTC’s pseudo-scientific notion of ‘safety’ based on comparing that nebulous entity ‘cycling in London’ with KSI road casualty statistics falls apart with the reality that
the data in STATS19 appears to underestimate the severity of injury, such that only about two thirds of serious injuries were classified as such.
Other cherished illusions also disintegrate. The cyclists who die under the wheels of lorries are not ‘novices’ and the drivers who kill them are not inexperienced lorry drivers:
“lack of experience of drivers or riders does not appear to be a problem.”
The authors conclude:
The problem of [left] turning goods vehicles has been analysed in depth in another paper, which highlights that the principal contributory factor is the limited field of vision from the driver’s cab of nearby road objects. This is because freight vehicles are not designed for urban environments such as London, instead being intended for transporting goods on large, suburban roads and motorways with freeflowing traffic and few vulnerable road users.
To prevent cyclists being killed by HGVs, large freight vehicles (>3.5 tonnes maximum laden weight) should be removed from urban roads and more appropriate means of delivery of essential goods found. The problem that large freight vehicles cause was highlighted for me on Saturday, when I caught up with this juggernaut (below) which was trying to turn left out of Hatherley Road E17 into Erskine Road. The Council’s policy of allowing as much on-street car parking as possible made it impossible for the driver to turn left, and so instead in the end he gave up and turned right. He was only able to do this by driving over the footway. Because this lorry had a left-hand drive (the registration plate is Romanian) the driver had very restricted visibility and seemed oblivious to the presence of pedestrians on the footway which he was driving across. In order to get past a car driver came on to the footway where I was standing and drove past.
And what was this massive vehicle doing in a residential area? Apparently carrying donated second-hand clothes for the European rag market, though the company seems to be based in, er, Hackney.
Not exactly what you'd call a wholehearted apology, eh? For ripping off one of this blog’s pics and then taking it out of context to slag off the Liberal Democrats for a street scene which has nothing to do with them.
Leaving aside the cynical misuse of my photo in Labour Party propaganda, what is just as objectionable is the Labour Party trying to position itself as the car-friendliest local party. So much for its Green credentials.
But what is also striking is that this car supremacist electioneering is taking place in a ward where the council’s own website states that49% of households have no car or van. This is much higher than the Borough average of 39%.The clueless local Labour Party doesn’t even understand the nature of the ward in which it is canvassing. It has nothing at all to say about walking and cycling, underlining the Labour Party’s total indifference to those two ways of getting around the borough.
The statistics show that most people in Hoe Street ward go to work on the tube, i.e. they have to negotiate the abominable Hoe Street/Selborne Road junction beside Walthamstow Central, where both pedestrians and cyclists are treated as subservient to drivers. A significant portion of the hordes of people who come down St Mary Road in the morning prefer to sprint across to the traffic islands rather than wait ages to cross one half of Hoe Street to a cattle pen, then the other half, then wait at more lights to cross Selborne Road. For those who play by the rules, when the green light comes on they have to scamper across before it swiftly goes back to red. The phasing is rigged to prioritise drivers, not pedestrians.
Other residents may cross lower down by the bus station, where some drivers jump the lights and go through when the light is green for pedestrians. Many impatient bus drivers also jump the red lights when they emerge from the bus station.
As for cyclists, the dedicated cycling lights have now been out for EIGHT MONTHS (see above). And cycle stand provision at Walthamstow Central station is grossly inadequate. On such transport matters the local Labour Party is silent.
Incidentally, although supposedly passionate about supporting local business, the Labour Party’s Hoe Street ward campaign leaflet states in miniature print that it was ‘Printed by Karian and Box Ltd, 8 The Broadway, London W6 7AL.’ Not a local firm, then.
