How successful are the Six Cycle Demonstration Towns?

Results from an evaluation of the original six Cycle Demonstration Towns (Aylesbury, Brighton & Hove, Darlington, Derby, Exeter and Lancaster) show that they are working. The survey found a 27 per cent increase in the number of cycle trips as well as strong evidence of new cyclists taking to the road and demonstrable health benefits.

Phillip Darnton, Chairman of Cycling England, added: “This is fantastic news for our demonstration programme. Cycling England and the Department for Transport set out in 2005 with six cycling towns to show that investing in cycling can deliver real impact – in tackling congestion and pollution, and improving health.

“The results from the original six towns, and the promise shown by the new wave of 11 additional cycling towns and one cycling city alongside other cycling demonstration projects such as the Peak District National Park, give us great confidence we can make a real difference to the travel culture of the UK.”

Analysis and synthesis of evidence on the effects of investment in six Cycling Demonstration Towns is an interesting report. Strip away the spin and the most interesting sentence, I think, is this one, which accepts the possibility that

growth in cycling in the towns may have been ‘patchy’, with quite rapid growth on some routes, and little or no growth on others.

Room for more research. The report does not describe new infrastructure or what exactly it is that is encouraging or suppressing cycling. In fact the 27 per cent figure only applies to cycle counts

sited in traffic-free locations.

Cycling on segregated facilities free of traffic appears to be significantly more popular than cycling on roads shared with motor traffic.

What’s more

Three towns showed an increase in cycling levels as measured by manual counts (between +6% and +13% per year); while one town showed a mixed picture (Lancaster with Morecambe, with +3% per year in Lancaster and -5% per year in Morecambe); and two towns showed a decline in cycle activity (between -2% and -5% per year)

Not entirely a stunning success, then.

As with London, most of the attention is focused on cycle counts, not on modal share. I don’t know the Cycle Demonstration Towns, so I can’t comment on local conditions there. I do know the London Borough of Waltham Forest, which boasts that

These most recent cycle counts from 1998 – 2006 show an 83% increase over the 8 year period.

Let me take one example of this success cited by the Council:

Hale End Road E17

(This is a strategic cycle route, linking Highams Park and Walthamstow.)

7am - 7pm counts

1998 64

2002 82

2006 101

It’s not clear to me if these figures measure cycling in just one direction or both ways (because if two-way you obviously risk counting the same cyclist twice, particularly in the case of commuters). But irrespective of that, these are scarcely very impressive figures. How many cars were driven along Hale End Road during the course of those 12 hours? We don’t know because no one bothers to measure motor traffic with cycle traffic, with a view to comparing them. Yet motor traffic has undoubtedly increased along Hale End Road over those years.

If you look at the material put out by the London Borough of Waltham Forest, you would think that cycling was a rip-roaring success in this borough, with a very rosy future. But you can only allow yourself to be fooled by this if you ignore modal share, which is risible and likely to remain so.

My own feelings at present are pretty much summed up by Westfield Wanderer, who writes:

My instinct suggests that driving standards are continually falling and life on the road is getting more hazardous for everyone (including car drivers) because of the ever increasing aggression and unnecessary risk-taking by a large and increasing minority of drivers. Maybe I’m getting old and feeling more vulnerable but I foresee the time when my cycling days will come to an end (hopefully with me still alive) except for car-assisted trips to offroad routes.

I don’t see any real sign of the will to invest capital, both political and fiscal, to move to a Northern European style cycle culture in Britain. Those of us who love our cycling will soon have to decide to either call it day on the bike on the road or “do a Hembrow” and move away.

Martin Esom’s Environmental Service

(above) a cycle stand on Wood Street E17. Last Friday.

Because of his marvellous efficiency as a senior council officer devoted to transforming the streets of the London Borough of Waltham Forest into the condition celebrated every day on this blog, Martin Esom, who attracted the attention of the Taxpayers Alliance when his annual salary rocketed from £115,134 to £130,964 (13.7%), has now been promoted to become the borough’s Deputy Chief Executive with Executive Director responsibility for Environment and Regeneration. Presumably his salary has experienced another quantum leap and he’s now earning as much as the Prime Minister.

(Below) Esom’s empire: a car sick borough, full of squalor, with a pathetically inadequate cycle lane (at best one metre wide, possibly a bit less than that), in a poor condition. The A 112 in Chingford, yesterday.


































(below) When temperatures plummet below zero this is going to be fun, isn't it?

Why I didn’t shop at Chingford Sainsbury’s

Cycling back to Walthamstow on Sunday morning I thought I'd call in at Chingford Sainsbury's. You simply can't get Horse and Hound in Walthamstow, Leyton or Leytonstone, but you can at Chingford Sainsbury's.

Among other things I'm on a desperate hunt for celery soup, which is an increasingly rare commodity in this part of East London. But all the lovely lolly I might have spent there I didn't (you'd be surprised how much alcohol I can pack on my bike - it's one reason I keep having to have my spokes replaced).

The reason? All the cycle stands had been blocked off. There's some sort of construction work going on along the edge of the car park. It was perfectly obvious that there was no need to block off the cycle stands, as that area was just being used for storage of building materials. But it was obviously done without a moment's thought on the part of either Sainsbury's management or the contractors working at the site. Because everybody knows that cycling and cyclists aren't important. Get a life - get a car.

So I took my money elsewhere.

The Ed Miliband collection just keeps growing!

Exciting news. Yesterday I spotted three more lamp-posts burning brightly in the middle of the day, which can be added to the list. Making a grand total of twelve this month. So remember folks, save the planet and don't waste electricity - unless of course you are a Green council, in which case you can charge it to the council tax!

(above) Beresford Road E17.

(below) The lamp-post at the foot of the steps on the east side of the Wadham Road footbridge, Highams Park

























(below) the lamp-post at the foot of the ramp on the west side of the Wadham Road footbridge

speed cameras: more media misrepresentation

Speed camera that rakes in £500,000-a-year blamed for doubling of motorway casualties

howls the Mail on Sunday, with a story full of blatant untruths. But this preposterous headline will now become enshrined as scientific fact and be cited as such for years by the kind of people who fill up Comments boxes with anti-speed-camera wailings.

A motorway speed camera responsible for earning the Government £500,000-a-year in fines has been blamed for increasing accidents since it was installed.

Blamed by who precisely? Paul Pearson, a solitary anti-speed-camera nutter. Like the crackpot one-person ‘Safe Speed’ these individuals are given great attention by the media, because their views come in useful in promoting the vested interests of an industry which depends heavily on advertising revenue from motor firms, or has corporate interests which include motoring magazines. Their uninformed opinions also chime nicely with those of that minority of journalists in the national media who earn large salaries, drive fast cars, and themselves have motoring convictions.

The camera, which monitors a busy stretch of the M11 in Essex, results in 9,000 tickets a year, but figures released by police show crashes have risen by a quarter at the site.

That’s a very slippery formulation because it evades defining what ‘the site’ is. In reality the speed camera only covers about 20 metres of motorway. You have to read to the very end of the article to get at the truth:

The Highways Agency said that the accident data for the spot, between junctions four and five on the southbound carriageway, did not show a pattern of accidents which would be consistent with the camera itself being a factor.

Anyone who drives south down the M11 knows that, farcically, this is the only speed camera along the entire length of the motorway, and along its entire length the M11 is crammed with drivers screaming down the fast lane at 90 mph or more. (The middle lane, obviously, is for 80 mph drivers.)

The Mail’s account of the road lay-out at this site is wildly misleading, as no one is more pampered with road signs than the modern motorist. There are a series of warnings of the speed camera, and it is painted bright yellow and very visible ahead on a long straight stretch of road. The fact that so many drivers are still caught by it is simply a symptom of the atrociously bad standards of driving to be found on this motorway (as on all motorways), with drivers travelling at lunatic speeds while not paying attention to the road ahead of them.

It’s funny that people like Paul Pearson never seem to notice realities like that. And such realities are not ones which the car supremacist national media has any interest in acknowledging either.

One less car

The owner of the most expensive car in the world has been forced to write off his $1m Bugatti Veyron after crashing into a lagoon.

He told police he had dropped his mobile phone as he sped alongside the lagoon while taking his newly delivered car out for a test drive.

When he looked up from picking up the phone he was startled by a low flying pelican which caused him to swerve off the road.

Friday The Thirteenth

Another day, another collection of glass from a broken green bottle strewn across the cycle lane. The drainage is impressive, too.

Without moving from my saddle, let's swing the camera round 45 degrees to see what's on the other side of the road. Yes, it's the Town Hall! Two days ago.