Crap Cycling & Walking in Waltham Forest

An anniversary

2011-08-08T20:59:00.004+01:00

This blog is four years old today.

A big, big thankyou to our sponsor, Waltham Forest Council. This blog would not have been possible without its dedicated commitment to crap cycle lanes, inadequate cycle parking provision, feeble or non-existent maintenance of cycling infrastructure and public footpaths and rights of way, not to mention its ongoing partnership with Transport for London, its traffic section’s commitment to ‘smoother traffic flow’ and car-centricity, as well as its installation of pinch points, one-way streets, useless and dangerous traffic calming, and parking bays alongside cycle lanes.

And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains…

A cycling success story

2011-08-08T20:31:00.003+01:00

Let’s be upbeat and celebrate success, because let’s face it there’s a feeling we’re entering, or perhaps even in, a golden age of riding.

The statistics prove what golden times we live in.

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

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

And in the last golden age of London cycling (circa the year 2000) there was this good news on modal share:

The aim of Waltham Forest Council policy is to meet the LAPC target of increasing the number of cycle trips from 2% to 10% by 2012.

So all in all it’s a bit of a mystery why the borough’s 2011 Local Implementation Plan revealed that after year upon year of these brilliant successes and massive percentage increases in cycling trips, cycling’s overall modal share was 0.8 per cent, one of the worst in London.

This is disappointing when so much effort has been put into encouraging cycling.

Car Free Day in Walthamstow in 2002 and Leytonstone in 2003/4/5 included a demonstration of unusual recumbent bikes and a cycle obstacle course attracting over 100 participants. These events gained good publicity in the local press.

For those who like good infrastructure, there are lots of vehicular cycling solutions here (yes, come to Waltham Forest and try out conditions on those ‘green tick’ infrastructure pages).

Of course we all know that the borough has a sarcastic, negative cycling blogger (who need not be mentioned!) but luckily the LCC’s Cycling Development Officer is prepared to step forward and set the record straight. And who can deny that the Coppermill Lane ‘cycle superhighway’ route is indeed a rip-roaring success? The council’s monitoring figures speak for themselves. In 2002 there were only 181 cycle trips on this route over a 12 hour period on an October weekday. In 2006 the council decided to switch the monitoring month to July and the results were much, much better. There was a more than 100% increase on this route! Let’s look at the figures. 431 in 2006, 444 in 2007, 465 in 2008, 422 in 2009 and 415 in 2010. So this ‘cycle superhighway’ has achieved a net loss of six cycle trips over a five year period. Truly super. It would have been interesting to know what the numbers were for 2011 but sadly the council has stopped counting.

(Below) Conditions on the Coppermill Lane ‘cycle superhighway’ – a road which is lined on both sides with parked cars, which has rubber speed cushions which both fail to deter speeding drivers and encourage drivers to steer round them, which has pinch points with free parking bays but no separate cycle access, and where all oncoming drivers are on the cyclist’s side of the road but who invariably fail to slow down or give way.

Elsewhere in the borough there are more success stories. For example, in response to those suggestions for segregated cycle tracks put forward by that Lancaster sociologist, the CTC’s Campaigns & Policy Director was quick to point out that this would be expensive, and anyway now is not the time to ask for it, and
Actually, on most urban streets, the solutions don't require a great deal of funding – we just need to introduce 20mph speed limits. Even in the most cycle-friendly countries such as the Netherlands, most urban streets simply have a 30kmh limit, perhaps with some nicely-designed traffic calming, and no cycle-specific provision whatsoever.

And here, too, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is at the cutting edge of this new thinking. Here is a street in a local area-wide 20 mph zone with extensive traffic calming, on a marked London Cycle Network route, which exactly matches the CTC’s winning formula for encouraging cycling, and I think you’ll agree the resemblance to any street in the Netherlands is remarkable:

The great thing about Waltham Forest is that it manages to find a balance between different road user groups. The council is keen to encourage cycling, but it also recognises the need to encourage motoring. Local shops depend on people driving short distances to them, and shopkeepers have always been keen to call for more parking bays and more free parking.

Happily, the council has found a perfect balance between free car parking bays in shopping centres and high quality cycle lanes.

When the M11 Link Road was built through the heart of Leytonstone and Leyton, local residents were promised a traffic-free High Road Leytonstone. Over the years successive administrations realised what a pie-in-the-sky idea that was, and the council’s latest ‘£2.8 million project to transform Leytonstone High Road’ will continue a great tradition. Pedestrians, too, can benefit from the judicious balancing of environmental improvements, as shown here on this fabulous urban gateway to the Olympic Village.

Another success story is Ruckholt Road. Back in 2002 this major commuter route registered only 284 cycle trips over a 12 hour period on an October weekday. By switching to July there was soon proof of an increase of nearly 300%. Yes, by July 2006 the figure had risen to a stunning 764, with 837 trips recorded the following year. Sadly there has been a bit of slippage since those glory days and the figure for 2010 was 708.

For some context bear in mind both motor vehicle flow and cycling infrastructure. As far as motor vehicles are concerned

The 2005 count for Ruckholt Road is 31,516. This is an increase of over 13,000 vehicles per day in only 4 years.

And this is the cycling-friendly cycle lane (another section of the fabulous London Cycle Network) on Ruckholt Road.

And now enjoy the video. Cycling in Waltham Forest.

Walthamstow today

2011-08-08T13:54:00.001+01:00

Broken glass is nothing new to Waltham Forest cyclists. It’s just that it's normally in the cycle lane…

Crap cycling & walking in York

2011-08-07T21:55:00.001+01:00

(Above) Cycling in car-sick York

York is a very compact city:

With less than three miles - or around 18 minutes by bike - between the outer ring road and the city centre, getting around York by bike is fast and easy.

However, modal share figures for the period 2007-2009 indicate a growing rise in the number of York children who travel to school in a car. A report entitled A Sustainable Travel to Schools Strategy for York commented:

Detailed research is required to ascertain why children and young people do not walk or cycle in York.

Successful promotion of sustainable modes of travel to schools will contribute towards reducing traffic

Detailed research is not necessary. York is a car-centric city with a grossly inflated reputation as a cycling- and walking-friendly city. In fact its transport planning is little different to that of Transport for London or that found elsewhere in the UK. York’s transport planners prioritise ‘smooth traffic flow’. If you want to reduce motor traffic you have to inconvenience motor traffic and make it less convenient and attractive than walking, cycling and public transport. But York is like everywhere else, a grossly hypocritical highways authority which prioritises the private car while simultaneously ‘encouraging’ walking and cycling with empty words and smiley-smiley slogans.

Infrastructure for walking and cycling in York is subordinated to the convenience of drivers and motor vehicles. On busy streets pedestrians get sheep-pen crossings, which require two separate green phases just to cross the road. Cyclists get crap cycle lanes. Where infrastructure does exist that benefits pedestrians and cyclists, it is widely flouted. Drivers enter Advanced Stop Lines at red. They park across cycle lanes. They drive over crossings when the lights are green for pedestrians. They rat run through the pedestrian zone, unhindered by any enforcement. York’s crap council doesn’t even have dropped kerbs as a basic universal feature of the walking environment. Everywhere you go in York you encounter unlawful pavement parking and hundreds of shattered flagstones. York’s car-centric police are not interested in enforcing basic road traffic laws and neither is the council; York council could obtain the power to enforce footway parking but hasn’t done so.

There is no mystery why most people don’t cycle in York. It’s the infrastructure, stupid. If you make driving convenient and smooth, with lots of handy car parking, many people will choose to drive into and around city centres. If you make cycling subjectively unsafe, don’t enforce even minimal traffic restrictions and don’t supply enough parking, or supply parking with a high rate of theft, most people won’t cycle.

In the last ten years of the twentieth century York lost one third of its cyclists. No one who writes about York and cycling ever seems to mention that fact, but then most writing about cycling is at the default buoyant optimism setting. In place of a demand for infrastructure that works are substituted appeals for more promotion and marketing and cycle training and trying to make drivers behave responsibly. If you market a product that is crap people might be persuaded to buy it once, but after that they won’t.

York City Council has still not restored the level of cycling that existed in 1990, nor is it likely to as things stand. People cycle in York despite the infrastructure, not because of it. York ought to have an absolutely massive modal share for cycling, bearing in mind that it is a very compact city and also has a large student population. In reality York has dismally failed to build on its traditionally high modal share. Incredibly, the council (rather like TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest) is pursuing even more car-friendly policies. The pedestrian zone is being nibbled away at the edges for more car access. Here’s a traffic order I spotted on a lamp post last year:

York’s much-promoted pedestrian zone is a car-sick joke. This (below) is the heart of the pedestrian zone. Drivers rat-run through it all day along, undisturbed by York’s indifferent police and indifferent council. Blue badge owners are legally permitted to enter the zone and park there. Cyclists are banned. York’s pedestrian zone is a total farce. Only a nation with an utterly impoverished vision of civilised urban centres would regard York’s joke pedestrian zone as iconic.

And now let’s revisit York’s famous ‘magic roundabout’. Would you want to send your child to school on cycling infrastructure like this? The three photographs below show the A1036 leading north-east out of York towards the roundabout. Cyclists who want to go straight ahead at the roundabout (up Stockton Lane) or right (along Heworth Road) have to get into the cycle lane between two lanes of motor vehicles, as shown in the third photo. Remember that this is nominally a 30 mph road, though many drivers are plainly exceeding the limit.

(Below) The 'magic roundabout', heading south back into York. Note the closeness of the car to the narrow cycle lane. Then look at the wider context in the next photograph.

The design of the so-called 'magic roundabout' is astonishingly mediocre and comprehensively car-centric. The potential for complete separation of cyclists and motor vehicles on approach roads to the roundabout and on the roundabout itself is glaringly obvious. Get rid of that parking for two side-by-side cars and put in a segregated cycle track. That's the solution to York's cycling stagnation, here and elsewhere in the city.

(Below) Continuing south from the roundabout we come to this. Who would want their child to cycle to school on a cycle lane like this? York, like the London Borough of Waltham Forest, thinks putting a narrow cycle lane alongside parking bays is a brilliant idea.

(Below) The cycle lane stops before a junction. And a cyclist is overtaken by a driver signalling a left-turn.

(Below) Beyond the junction the cycle lane begins again, then soon comes to a sudden halt. Parking bays take priority. Yet York Council has the gargantuan nerve and hypocrisy to claim that private car users are at the bottom of its road hierarchy, with cyclists taking precedence.

If you keep going you soon come to Foss Bank and more iconic cycling infrastructure.

For more about York’s magic roundabout see this 2003 CTC article here (pages 6 and 7), which I wasn’t aware of when I wrote my original critique. Also check out As Easy As Riding a Bike’s very interesting follow-up piece.

Cyclist killed today on Holloway Road

2011-08-06T15:39:00.001+01:00

A cyclist has been killed in a collision with a bus in north London.

Police were called at about 13:10 BST to reports of a bus having collided with a cyclist on Holloway Road, near the junction with Jackson Road, in Islington.

Update

A new report implies this might be a case of ‘dooring’:

The 25 year-old died at the scene.

Investigators said initial reports suggested the cyclist had collided with an open car door prior to hitting a single decker bus. The driver of that car, an Audi, was arrested and is in police custody tonight.

Olaf Storbeck takes a special interest in London cycling fatalities and his blog will no doubt supply much more information in due course.

Driver who killed cycling RAF Commander is charged

2011-08-06T15:37:00.003+01:00

A MAN has been charged with causing death by careless driving after a cyclist from Beaconsfield died in a road accident.

Group Captain Tom Barrett, 44, died in a collision on the A40 in Ruislip on March 10.

The dad-of-two, who lived on Amersham Road, was the station commander at RAF Northolt.

Cycling casualties still rising

2011-08-06T15:35:00.000+01:00

The latest road casualty figures are more bad news.

The new figures underline what is starting to look like a trend. The one road user group where casualty figures are rising – and rising in all categories (light injuries, serious injuries and fatalities) is that of cyclists. Pedestrian casualty figures (which are often worse than for cycling) continue to fall.

What is striking about the latest set of figures is that they occur both in the winter months, when there are fewer cyclists around, and against a background of falling car use. Recessions are usually good for road casualty figures, because people drive less. But cycling is dangerous.

Bus driver news

2011-08-06T15:33:00.001+01:00

Bus drivers in the news: here, here and here.

The photo above shows Selborne Road, Walthamstow. Apparently a bus driver knocked someone down. The police didn't put up this sign until three weeks after it happened and details of what exactly happened remain sketchy.

A Stella career

2011-08-06T15:33:00.000+01:00

The latest issue of Private Eye has a disgracefully cynical critique of Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow. I must urge you all not to rush out and buy this scurrilous rag. There is enough sarcasm and negativity in the world already. Please, I beg you, just ignore this issue, the one with Piers Morgan and Rebekah Brooks on the cover, which is available from all newsagents, and even Sainsbury’s!

Plastered

2011-08-06T15:31:00.000+01:00

On November 23 I photographed this fly-tipped heap of plaster, presumably dumped by a white van man builder. It’s just off Walthamstow High Street, on Buxton Road.

Nine months later it’s maturing nicely.

Waltham Forest Council abandons ALL cycle monitoring

2011-08-05T12:06:00.002+01:00

Until 2005, Waltham Forest Council carried out annual screenline cycle counts on twelve major routes in the borough.

The raw data for these routes is available in section 3.6 of the Waltham Forest Cycle Action Plan (2005, with subsequent updates).

The council then reduced its counts to ten routes, dropping monitoring on Grove Green Road in Leyton and Hoe Street in Walthamstow.

These counts were very valuable, and I was looking forward to seeing the July 2011 figures. I duly sent off a Freedom of Information request and with commendable speed and efficiency the council has responded. I am informed that the Transport Planning Team has been subject to severe budget reductions during 2011, as a consequence of which no cycle counts have been taken this year.

I confirm therefore that there is no cycle monitoring information for 2011.

I’d be interested to know if other London boroughs have also abandoned their cycle counts. If you live in one, do ask.

How to tell if a cyclist is going too fast

2011-08-05T08:37:00.000+01:00

A 24-YEAR-OLD driver who knocked down a cyclist has appeared in court and claimed the man on the bike was travelling too fast.

Matthew Gosling, of Royal Sussex Crescent, appeared before the town’s magistrates on Friday morning (July 29) and admitted driving without due care and attention on April 16. The court heard Gosling was turning right into Moatcroft Road from The Goffs, Old Town, when he hit the cyclist causing him to be thrown in to the air.

When interviewed about the incident, Gosling said he felt it was the cyclist’s fault. He told the officers he had not seen the cyclist and suggested he may have been on the pavement and then switched to cycling on the road shortly before the accident.

However, another motorist at the scene said the cyclist was clearly on the road and she was waiting for the bike to pass before she made her manoeuvre.

In court, Gosling represented himself and told the magistrates he felt the cyclist was travelling too fast because there was considerable damage to his car following the impact. He also said the sun was in his eyes at the time.

A tale of three cyclists

2011-08-04T14:49:00.017+01:00

Russell Square. Obviously there wouldn’t be room on a narrow footway like this for a separate cycle track…

I must admit when I took a look recently at the ‘improvements’ to the south side of Russell Square I was very surprised. The old right-turn lanes into the Square have been blocked off and transformed into footway. You can see the line of the old kerb in the photograph above. This is very good news for pedestrians. It is bad news for cyclists, however, because now you have to wait a little further down the road, and make a sharp right turn.

What is absurd about the new design is that it could so easily have accommodated a cycle track. To be viable, however, it would also require lights with a dedicated ‘cyclists only’ green phase. As things stand, Russell Square remains a fundamentally car-centric location, and the so-called ‘improvements’ have actually made cycling worse – less safe, less convenient, more off-putting to all but hardcore cyclists. It didn’t have to be like this. And apart from the grotesque absence of cycling infrastructure on the Dutch model, the Square should have been humanised by blocking it off to through traffic. It would be perfectly easy to close the Square to through traffic by strategically-placed road closures which still permit access to essential traffic while deterring rat-running.

(Below) Let’s swing the camera round and look at the south side of Russell Square, facing west. The so-called ‘improvements’ involve a major narrowing of the carriageway, with parking bays for buses and coaches on one side and parking bays for cars and other vehicles on the other. Cyclists are squashed closer to motor vehicles. This is a truly incredible scene when the possibility of a wide, safe, segregated cycle track is blatantly obvious. It’s another testimony both to the lack of vision of London transport planning and its parochial ignorance of cycling infrastructure on the Dutch model which supplies a proven model of spectacular success.

(Below) Look carefully and you will see two cyclists in these photographs. Both want to turn right into Russell Square (south side). One is an elderly male cyclist, who obeys the rules. The other is a much younger helmet-clad male. The younger cyclist swings out into the fast lane of north-bound traffic coming from Southampton Row, which is empty of traffic because it is held at a red light on the other side of the junction. He jumps the light and cruises into Russell Square. He is not at risk from drivers, because all lanes are held at red. However, this involves passing over the pedestrian crossing at green. In this instance there is no conflict since the cyclist passes behind the one pedestrian who is crossing.

(Below) The elderly cyclist, now stationary, positions himself correctly to turn right. He gets some protection from having a right-turning motorcyclist behind him, otherwise he would be even more isolated and vulnerable, trapped between two lanes of large vehicles. The driver of the massive oncoming Dutch articulated lorry has to move over to his left to avoid the rear end of the lorry hitting the cyclist, then straightens up. The Dutch lorry is a left-hand drive vehicle, which means the driver is on the other side to the cyclist.

(Below) With a gap in the traffic, the elderly cyclist is at last able to turn into Russell Square. Take a look at what is happening in the background: a blue car and a cyclist travelling north on Southampton Row, towards the camera, both approach the junction.

(Below) Note that in the background the blue car is now travelling parallel with the cyclist, both moving at the same speed.

(Below) A near miss. The driver of the car turns left into the path of the cyclist who is going straight ahead. My photo catches the moment the cyclist swerves away and glances in surprise at the driver, who brakes.

Left-turning drivers at this location (above) may be misled into thinking that a cyclist is also turning left because the road lay out here involves the road widening by the Square, with the north lane turning into two lanes. Cyclists move slightly to the left to go into the slow lane.

(Below) The cyclist (doubtless a little shaken by the experience) continues on his way, while the car turns into Russell Square.

The moral of this sequence of events? For a cyclist, jumping a red light can sometimes be a lot safer (and quicker and more convenient). And it is pointless condemning such behaviour when the road network is built for the convenience of drivers, without safe and convenient infrastructure for cycling, and where rules designed to protect cyclists are not enforced. Darwin would have understood contemporary cycling behaviour in Greater London.

The death of a cyclist: some anomalies and ambiguities

2011-08-04T14:43:00.000+01:00

A “NATURAL roamer” who travelled the country on his bicycle was hit by a car and killed on the A34.

Motorists were shocked to see Alistair Bettis pedalling along the southbound carriageway near Pear Tree in the dark, an inquest heard yesterday.

Witnesses said they struggled to make out the 59-year-old as he cycled on the edge of the slow lane in the dark, although one driver said he may have been carrying a red LED bike light.

This is the first ambiguity. Either the cyclist was displaying a light at the rear or he was not. A competent police investigation of the crash scene should have arrived at a conclusion on that point.

Nicola Gibson, who was travelling south on the dual carriageway having left work in Summertown, told Oxfordshire Coroner Nicholas Gardiner she had no time to react after the cyclist veered into the inside lane.

This is the second ambiguity, since the deceased appears to have been in the slow lane all the time. The killer driver’s assertion that the cyclist ‘veered’ is contradicted by her next assertion that she didn’t see the cyclist until ‘a second before the impact’:

The motorist, who was travelling well below the speed limit, struck Mr Bettis as he was 1.7 metres inside the carriageway, crash investigator Andrew Evans said.

Ms Gibson, who was exonerated by Mr Gardiner, said: “About a second before the impact I could see him. (It was) not until my dipped headlights saw the back of his tyre, and I just put the emergency brakes on.
“He seemed like he was right in front of the passenger side.”

The incident took place at about 7.15pm on November 30.

But ‘in front of the passenger side’ is exactly where a cyclist should be riding. And what does ‘travelling well below the speed limit’ actually mean? It could mean 60 mph, if the limit was 70 mph. But speed limits are often a red herring, since the duty of a driver is to drive in a manner appropriate to the road conditions. You can be below the maximum speed limit for the road you are on and still be driving in a reckless and dangerous manner.

Unfortunately bald newspaper reports like these raise far more questions than they answer.

In the comments ‘Quentin Walker, Oxford’ writes

I'm surprised not more cyclists are killed on our roads. Many of them do not have the self-preservation instinct and ride in dark clothing, which can be difficult to see even in daylight.

It is time it became mandatory for all cyclists to wear hi-viz clothing

Such comments are symptomatic of a society in which driving without due care and attention is institutionalised at all levels, to the detriment of pedestrians and cyclists.

a death site revisited: Vernon Place

2011-08-03T15:35:00.007+01:00

Vernon Place, eastbound. Three lanes wide at the junction with Southampton Row. Absurdly, the third ‘fast lane’ can legitimately be used for drivers going straight ahead as well as making a right turn. This generates conflict with right-turning cyclists, especially those unable to get into the fast lane because of speeding traffic or obstruction of the Advanced Stop Line (ASL).

Spot the cyclist in the second photo. You can’t, though there is one present here in this three-lane-wide wedge of packed motor vehicles

Vernon Place (London WC1) is a junction where two women cyclists have been killed in recent years, one in 2008 by a left-turning lorry, another in 2009 by a right-turning bus. I blogged about the last fatality here and there was more commentary by Olaf Storbeck here.

More recently I blogged about conditions for cyclists as you approach the junction

(Below) I photographed the ASL after the lights had gone to red and waited to see if any drivers would flout it.

(Below) By a strange quirk of fate the first vehicle which came along was a number 98 bus – the same service which killed Dorothy Elder. The light had been red for some time before this bus arrived, and the driver had no excuse at all for doing what he did, which was to wilfully and deliberately drive into the ASL reservoir for cyclists.

(Below) While he was waiting at the lights the driver of this bus switched his attention from driving to reading some papers in his cab. My photo captures the moment that the lights change, with the driver still staring down at whatever he was reading, oblivious to what was going on around him. He didn’t even notice me taking photographs of him. In other words, Metroline drivers of number 98 buses are still driving in a criminal and reckless way at a site where one of this company’s drivers killed a cyclist.

Olaf Storbeck also wrote about the death of cyclist Jayne Helliwell, killed nearby by a bus driver on Oxford Street remarking I urge Metroline and TfL to take responsibility for Jayne’s death. Fat chance, I’m afraid.

Ironically, the next sight I observed was a number 8 bus in the fast lane coming into conflict with a right-turning cyclist (below). The number 8 bus was going straight ahead. The right-turning cyclist had evidently not had the confidence to get over to the right when approaching the junction. This was potentially another fatal collision scenario. However, it happened in broad daylight (whereas the two fatalities occurred here during the hours of darkness) and the bus driver was attentive to the cyclist’s manoeuvre, and braked to allow the cyclist to pass in front. This episode simply underlines what a catastrophically dangerous junction this is for cyclists. The only safe solution here is to separate cyclists from motor vehicles on all four arms of the junction – segregation is perfectly viable in terms of available road space – and to give cyclists a dedicated all green phase. Needless to say TfL isn’t thinking in such terms; sadly, neither are many cycling campaigners, who prefer to focus on confidence building and cycle training, conspicuity, and changing driver behaviour through education, enforcement or new legislation.

The curious case of the Olympic PR picture

2011-08-03T15:25:00.001+01:00

This is the latest PR pic of ye bucolic ‘Olympic Village’, released to the press by the authority’s Mad Men (I’ve borrowed it from today’s Evening Standard).

I’ve noticed that all these pretty pics always avoid giving you the full picture. The north-west corner of the Olympic site is always either missing because the picture has been cropped, or, in its earlier incarnations, vanishes into a strange green mist. (In the projection above the north-west corner is at the bottom right - or would be if it wasn't missing.)

What is curiously missing or obscured is (i) the massive multi-storey car park which occupies the north-west sector of the site (ii) the roads inside the perimeter of the site (iii) the A12 running alongside the site.

Why, it’s almost as if the organisers wanted to play down the massive role that cars will play in the Olympics!

As for us lucky local cyclists, here’s an exciting update.

The Marsh Lane/ Lea Bridge Road option brings you out by the Olympic car park. As far as I can tell the Greenway will involve crossing a Zill lane, which suggests to me that the Olympic Greenway will be closed by the A12 and cyclists will be told to divert to the towpath. Hilarious, if this is the case. Woops! - just remembered. The Met is is hinting strongly that the towpath may need to be closed for 'security reasons'. So your best option is to get a job with BMW, BP or Coca-Cola and go there by limo.

Crime and punishment – update

2011-08-03T15:19:00.000+01:00

The protester who threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch has been jailed for six weeks.

Meanwhile

A van driver risked his life and that of train passengers after making a split-second decision to ignore red lights at a level crossing and accelerate under the protective barriers.

Alan Dodd, 55, was ordered to pay a £400 fine, £45 costs and given three points on his license at Cambridge Magistrates' Court.

The judge who banged up the shaving foam comedian is the same one who cleared Metropolitan police sergeant Delroy Smellie of assaulting protestor Nicola Fisher.

District judge Daphne Wickham ruled he acted lawfully, despite video evidence posted on the internet showing Smellie hitting a woman half his size with the back of his hand and a retractable metal baton.

the latest road rage helmet cam film

2011-08-03T10:09:00.000+01:00

A VIOLENT thug threatens to floor a cyclist in a terrifying road rage attack captured by his helmet camera.

The footage shows the fuming yob grab the cyclist around the neck before threatening to punch him.

a new Olympic cycle track: this is as good as it gets

2011-08-02T16:57:00.002+01:00

This is the brand new Olympic cycle track (or Greenway) which runs along the north side of Whipps Cross Road (A114), all the way from the Green Man Interchange to the roundabout at Whipps Cross.

What not to like?

Plenty. It’s not quite finished yet and not officially open but its design deficiencies are glaringly obvious. This, for example. (Below) A sensitively located sign for motorists.

As far as I can tell it’s intended to be a two-way cycle track. Its core failing is that it is shared use. So it's not really a cycle track at all. Even though there was plenty of space to put in a separate physically segregated footway running parallel to the cycle track this has not been done. Along its entire length, two-way cyclists will be sharing with two-way pedestrians.

(Below) Conflict with pedestrians. A bus shelter, a bus stop and a distant zebra crossing - nicely spaced to give those lazy bus-users plenty of exercise.

(Below) More conflict, with both pedestrians and drivers. People queue on the path for service at this wooden hut (which is very popular and sells refreshments 24 hours a day), just beyond which is the entrance to a car park, where cyclists and pedestrians are naturally expected to give way to vehicles. A properly designed cycle track would have required a complete re-design which involved moving the car park and the hut further back. And there is nothing at all to stop drivers parking on the Olympic Greenway. (To be fair to the council, they did want a better design than this by the hut but they experienced systematic opposition from the anti-cycling City of London, which owns the land.)

(Below) There’s a second car park, where cyclists and pedestrians are again naturally expected to defer to drivers. Cyclists will again be slowed down by the presence of pedestrians across the path. And even before the path is officially open a trader has placed advertising on it. Waltham Forest council has a long history of ignoring unlawful obstruction of the footway by traders.

It would be interesting to know what design model was adopted for this infrastructure, which has failure built into it. I don’t remember this scheme ever being put up for consultation by the council, and I don’t know if the local branch of the LCC was ever consulted, and if it was what comments or criticisms were made.

One day this scheme will have to be re-done but obviously that will only happen when Waltham Forest Council addresses the reasons for the failure of mass cycling in the borough and begins seriously to engage with car dependency and car prioritisation. The current leader of the council, Cllr Chris Robbins, is obsessed with encouraging car use and car parking, so the prospects for mass cycling in Waltham Forest remain at present very, very bleak.

However, the main reason why this new Olympic ‘Greenway’ will fail to result in masses of people cycling to and from the Olympic site lies outside the basic design flaws of this unsatisfactory cycling infrastructure. It’s that to access the cycle route you first have to cycle in conditions like this (below). If you leave the Greenway at Whipps Cross roundabout, using the zebra crossing by the hospital entrance to get across the A114, this is what you have to cycle in if you are heading west down Lea Bridge Road or north along Wood Street. Two to three lanes of motor vehicles jostling for position, with vehicles sometimes travelling at high speed.

Transport network in chaos (tell me what’s new)

2011-08-02T16:49:00.000+01:00

Obviously this kind of thing couldn’t possibly happen next year during the Olympics:

It was like the whole of south-east England's network just collapsed.

This chaos was brought to you by the purveyors of Australian ice.

A motoring marvel

2011-08-02T16:48:00.000+01:00

100-year-old motorist Peggy Hovell shows no signs of slowing down.

The centenarian is still driving and has clocked up an impressive 85 years behind the wheel - despite never having taken a driving test.

And Jesus said: Thou shall worship thy fossil-fuel addiction

2011-08-02T16:47:00.000+01:00

There are 47 churches in Westminster and its Churches Together campaign is calling on parishioners to stand in the 2014 local elections in protest over the parking charges.

Michael Beckett, church warden of St George's Hanover Square, said: "The churches feel Westminster isn't listening to local people and no one is in favour of these charges."

Small shops and chain stores have also joined forces to fight the scrapping of nearly all free parking in the West End.

Harry Potter and the TfL cycling commercial

2011-08-01T10:37:00.004+01:00

Recently I went from Walthamstow to Woodford (which is in the adjacent London Borough of Redbridge) two days running. The first time I went on my own, by bike. The next day I drove there, this time with someone else, to see the new Harry Potter movie.

My destinations were almost identical both days running. In each case it took the same time to get there – fifteen minutes. Cycling offered a more direct route, but that direct route could have been much quicker if the right infrastructure was there. What infrastructure there was for cyclists was subjectively dangerous, objectively dangerous, and substandard. An example.

This is Woodford New Road (A104) at Waterworks Corner (named after an underground reservoir). Here the carriageway is five lanes wide. The cycling route to Woodford is on the other side of the road.

There is no crossing for cyclists and pedestrians here, other than through circuitous underpasses. Drivers get fast, smooth, direct routes but cyclists and pedestrians are marginalised. You have to go via that area of greenery in the distance.

The distance from here to Grove Hill E18, a cul de sac which offers cyclists a direct route into the shopping centre, is, as the crow flies, about 100 metres. But cyclists and pedestrians are diverted under the roundabout. You have to go through a minimum of two underpasses, no matter what your destination. The signing is poor. This is what it’s like to cycle from the west side of Woodford New Road through the Waterworks roundabout underpass to Grove Hill. It takes two minutes – a long time to travel a distance of about 100 metres. Bear in mind that this is a ‘shared use’ route for two-way cycling and walking. Not surprisingly, no other cyclists or pedestrians are encountered on this lonely, out-of-the-way route. The subways are covered in graffiti, not all the lighting panels are working, the lighting column on the route is burning brightly in the daytime (which probably means the timer is wrong and it will be out during the hours of darkness). Because this is not a high definition film you can’t really appreciate the cracked surfaces or the litter or the slimy mud in the second subway.

Cycling infrastructure like this is always very poorly maintained. Indeed, just before entering the labyrinth inside the roundabout, the ‘shared use’ footway on Woodford New Road has this dangerous surface – a drain covering which has been shattered, probably by a lorry driving over the footway. Broken infrastructure like this often remains in this condition for months.

Which brings me to Harry Potter and TfL. The movie was preceded by half an hour of commercials and trailers. One of the first commercials was from TfL. It showed a variety of smiley-smiley cyclists radiantly happy as they pedalled through the cycling-friendly streets of London.

But as we know from Rob Ainsley (who took the pic above), the police close streets to motor vehicles to allow TfL to make their cycling commercials. These kind of adverts cost around a quarter of a million pounds and involve paying minor celebrities like Edith Bowman (no, me neither) five grand for a day posing on a bike. The message being: hey, it’s cool to ride a bike!

No it isn’t. It’s often stressful, inconvenient and dangerous riding a bicycle in London. It depends on your journey, of course - but a lot of the time it makes much more sense driving a car. Driving to Woodford was fast, convenient, safe and stress-free. Because I know the area very well I was able to find free parking close to the cinema. The only minor annoyance was encountering temporary traffic lights on Woodford High Road because of roadworks. No problem – on the way back I simply rat-runned through the residential streets, avoiding the lights. Everything in London is geared to making short-cuts by car as easy as possible, and it’s just the same everywhere else.

By the way, the TfL cycling commercial was only in two dimensions. The best ads were in 3-D. They included a cool Audi commercial (Audis are FAST and VERY SAFE was the message), a boy’s racing car game, and a trailer for CARS 2. By which time everyone in the audience had, I’m sure, forgotten all about that cycling-is-fun stuff.

One driver in seven speeding is OK with the cops – that’s normal

2011-08-01T10:29:00.000+01:00

People living on Hillside Avenue, in Woodford Green, slammed a recent police evening operation which found only 14 per cent of drivers were speeding along the street.

Six officers checked the speed of 253 vehicles on the road on Friday, July 22, between 5pm and 7pm, but concluded that “Whilst speeding was detected it was not found to be prevalent, was below expectations, and equivalent to problems on similar suburban routes.”

But residents raised several complaints with the operation itself. They told the police they were stationed in the wrong parts of the road, wore high visibility jackets which alerted speeding drivers to their presence, and should have done the speed checks at night on the weekend.

But police said safety reasons stopped them from performing these operations at night and doing it on the weekend would have damaged other priorities.

There are no safety measures to control speed on the busy road.

Crap statistic #473

2011-08-01T10:25:00.003+01:00

Canada Safety Council recommends for all cyclists to wear an approved helmet. Bicycle helmets can prevent up to 88 per cent of brain injuries when used properly.

THE FACTS

There has been a 130% increase in cycling statistics over the past four years.

92% of cycling statistics in newspapers can seriously damage your grasp on reality.

A bullet-proof vest can improve your chances of survival when cooking spaghetti by up to 63%.

Experts believe that up to 107% of statistics relating to speed camera stories in the Daily Mail are false.

(Oh yeah, and if you are a helmet zealot you should read this…)

It would be a BMW

2011-08-01T10:24:00.000+01:00

A car overturned and hit two pedestrians after careering out of control in central London last night.

Three people were injured in the incident involving a powerful BMW car, in Brompton Road, Kensington.

According to the BBC it happened in Old Brompton Road.

A cyclist and his ‘improvement works’

2011-07-31T10:01:00.003+01:00

Photo: Martin Dalton

Surfing the interweb I came across this delightful photograph of Councillor Clyde Loakes, the local 'environment' supremo and the man who more than anyone is responsible for inspiring this blog. It’s the only photograph of Clyde on a bike I’ve ever come across. To be honest it looks a bit small for Clyde and suspiciously like one of those made-in-China bikes you can pick up in Halfords for £90. But a mountain bike is a sensible choice for the terrain of Waltham Forest, and those chunky tyres are just the thing for the local glass-strewn cycle lanes.

Many of the improvement works mentioned in this article have already been covered by this blog. Clyde’s idea of improving things for cycling is putting in parking bays alongside cycle lanes and moving the lane closer to overtaking motor vehicles. The Forest Road ‘improvements’ included putting in a pinch point while simultaneously raising the speed limit to 40 mph. But then that was a collaboration with TfL, which explains it.

I recognise the location of the photo. It’s close to Leytonstone tube. Well done Clyde for being able to pose in the cycle lane, as normally it’s blocked by a line of minicabs!

In the background can be seen that marvellous farcility known as Leytonstone bike shed.

Ironically, the spot where Clyde is posing is now also due for Olympic refurbishment. The road closure with cycle access is going to be opened up to motor traffic and the area outside the tube station is going to become ‘shared space’. The local minicab drivers will undoubtedly assist in making this a great success!.

Stella Creasy update

2011-07-31T09:57:00.000+01:00

There was a controversial march from Leyton to Walthamstow yesterday. This was preceded by a spot of flyposting asserting that Waltham Forest is ‘a Shariah Controlled Zone’. Apparently there’s a name change in the offing. No longer will this slice of north-east London be known as the London Borough of Waltham Forest: The radical - an electrician called Trevor Brooks before converting to Islam - said last night: "It would be changed to the Islamic Emirate of Waltham Forest.

The Shariah poster strikes me as car-centric. There is nothing about misuse of blue badges in Waltham Forest, which is currently at epidemic proportions thanks to the total indifference of the crap police and the crap council. This is where Shariah law could prove very useful. Anyone found mis-using a blue badge would be sentenced to having their arm chopped off. This, I believe, would end such mis-use at a stroke (literally!).

What has this got to do with Walthamstow’s MP Stella Creasy, you ask. Well, while the march was going on this blog went instead to the Saturday afternoon craft fair at the social club on Orford Road. And who should be there, shopping, but Dr Creasy. This was a bit of a surprise, since you’d think an anti-fascist campaigner would be down there in the town centre rallying people against the EDL’s counter-demo.

This blog was able to witness this episode.

Dr Creasy approaches a stall selling cushions.

Woman behind stall: ‘Are you Stella?’

Dr Creasy. ‘Yes! Yes, I am!’

Woman behind stall: ‘You don’t look like you do on your website.’

Very droll.

Personally I’ve always thought Stella looks exactly like her photographs.

I am pleased to report that Stella ordered a cushion (she wanted a grey one and that colour wasn’t available on the stall. As I am not a psychologist I am not going to speculate what a liking for the colour grey signifies.) It’s good to see an MP ploughing money back into the local economy.

I have one other piece of news about Stella. I am sorry to say that she now totally denies this scandalous episode. It never happened, she insists. Don’t trust bloggers.

It’s enough to make me want to buy a helmet cam!

It now occurs to me that the woman I saw at the craft fair cannot possibly have been Dr Creasy. My sincerest apologies. Don’t whatever you do trust a blogger. We are mad and we fib.

Blackfriars Bridge protest

2011-07-31T09:49:00.000+01:00

Spot the speeding driver caught on camera before the protest started.

A full report on the demo from Road cc here and I Bike London here. More footage here:

Blackfriars Bridge: the battle against TfL's anti-cycling, anti-walking agenda commences

2011-07-28T16:57:00.001+01:00

It's been rumbling on for months... letters have been written, petitions signed, rallies held and motions tabled. Despite all our protestations and the unanimous backing by all the parties at the London Assembly of a motion calling for an urgent review of the plans for Blackfriars, Transport for London intend to go ahead with their treacherous and terrifying junction plans anyway this Friday night.

Transport for London - the undemocratic, unelected, unaccountable kings of spin and of moving the goal posts - are going ahead with their plans all the same. The speed limit will be increased from 20mph to 30mph, cycle lanes will be squeezed and shoved to one side, carriageways for cars will increase from two lanes to three. In all effect, they are hell-bent on creating a 1960s-style urban motorway, completely to the detriment of all other road users.

The first of many protests begins tomorrow. Remember that even TfL’s car-centric rationale is risibly threadbare. If you feel like attaching a slogan to your bike how about TfL will kill again. There’s more from Cyclists in the City here and some important reflections on protest from The Bike Show.

Blackfriars Bridge, incidentally, is named after the adjacent site of the old Dominican priory:

The name Blackfriars was first used in 1317 (as Black Freres from the French 'frère' meaning 'brother') and derives from the black cappa worn by the Dominican Friars who moved their priory from Holborn to the area between the River Thames and Ludgate Hill in 1276. Edward I gave permission to rebuild London's city wall, which lay between the river and Ludgate Hill, around their area. The site was used for great occasions of state, including meetings of Parliament and the Privy Council, as well as the location for a divorce hearing in 1529 of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII.

But a once all-powerful institution did not survive the tide of history. Today, all that’s left of Blackfriars Priory is this solitary, insignificant scrap of stonework. Perhaps there’s a lesson here for Transport for London…

it’s the new Olympic cycling signs!

2011-07-27T14:31:00.008+01:00

I pedalled off to the Olympic site on Sunday to see how the Olympic Greenway from Waltham Forest was getting along. Among many impressive developments were these new signs. One year to go!

Yes, the wraps will soon be coming off this sign (above) on the main ‘Olympic Greenway’ which runs past the stadium and Boris Johnson’s Olympian erection. If you are not sure what the sign says, I’ll give you a clue.

British Cycling has said the true measure of success of the London 2012 Olympic Games will be in inspiring people to ditch the sofa in favour of saddling up.

Partnering with Sky, British Cycling has pledged to get one million people cycling regularly by 2013. The organisation said excellent progress has already been made

Let me assure you, dear reader, that no one in their right mind will be taking up cycling in the Olympic borough of Newham, with its terrifying motorway-style gyratory, its virtual absence of cycling infrastructure, and its traffic-choked streets crammed with drivers who overtake you with inches to spare. Yes, Newham is so incredibly unpleasant for cycling in that I always sob with gratitude when I cross the border back into crap Waltham Forest.

Meanwhile back at the Olympic site and the Lea Valley, the new cycling signs complement the more traditional ‘cycling heritage’ signing which has always existed on this popular off-road route:

(Below) Sadly, not all cyclists are getting into the Olympic spirit. They persist in cycling even when the Olympic authorities tell them not to. Where's the respect?

TfL’s Leon Daniels is indignant about delays to motor vehicles

2011-07-27T14:27:00.001+01:00

TfL said closure of two lanes in Marylebone Road this weekend had led to "long queues" and was "unacceptable".

Thames Water said the work to identify the cause of seepage at Baker Street station was brought forward by two weeks at the request of TfL. Pin-pointing an underground leak was "easier said than done", it added.

Leon Daniels, TfL's managing director for Surface Transport, said: "We have had another busy summer Sunday with long delays whilst the problem with the leaking water main remains unsolved. "I contacted Thames Water on Sunday to draw their attention to this unacceptable failure and to demand an explanation.

Sounds like Mr Daniels got stuck in the jam himself, he sounds so peeved…

When ‘traffic’ is ‘flowing smoothly’ along Marylebone Road it is one of the most polluted locations in London. Cyclists are advised to minimise the risk from to their health from air pollution in this way:

"The best way to protect yourself against pollution is to avoid hotspots such as Marylebone Road, Euston Road and Upper Thames Street rather than adopt a sticking plaster solution like masks."

Leon Daniels, like TfL as an institution, is obsessed with motor vehicle flow, irrespective of its consequences for health, cycling or walking. TfL is a cancer at the heart of London, relentlessly pushing for faster, easier driving.

Congestion for cyclists and pedestrians troubles Mr Daniels not one jot. In fact he is one of the people who is making it worse.

At his Street Talk in June Andy Cameron from WSP argued for an additional green man phase at Oxford Circus, on the basis that it’s used by 40,000 pedestrians an hour and only 2,000 vehicles an hour at peak times.

An additional green person phase? We don’t need that. We need Oxford Street and Regent Street closed to ALL motor vehicles during the day and access strictly restricted to service vehicles at night.

mad cycle lanes of Birmingham

2011-07-27T14:25:00.000+01:00

'I don't see the point of these cycle lanes, it's like a Tour de France for leprechauns

‘Shared space’ in Covent Garden

2011-07-26T13:52:00.002+01:00

Long Acre at the junction with James Street, looking east, on a weekday last week, early afternoon. This is just across the road from Covent Garden tube station.

This is ‘naked street/shared space’ in action, i.e. a condition in which a tiny number of motor vehicles (most of them black cabs) dominate an urban space where supposedly all users are equal. In reality at this location pedestrians vastly outnumber drivers but remain subordinate to vehicle flow which takes precedence by virtue of brute force and laws designed to protect pedestrians which are not even minimally enforced.

This is the sickness which car-supremacist Transport for London and London’s car-centric councils have bequeathed the capital city. (The air pollution at this site, needless to say, is invisible.)

The car shown above is moving. This is not the case with those vehicles shown in the photographs below, which are all stationary on the zebra crossing. The law states that no vehicle should stop on a zebra crossing, an offence which can result in a fine up to £1,000, 3 penalty points and discretionary disqualification from driving. Needless to say, London’s under-performing and car supremacist police force has absolutely no interest in enforcing this legislation. But then the Metropolitan Police is run by a clique of middle-aged men who, as Commanders, enjoy the perk of a chauffeur-driven car.

There is nothing to add about the inherent design failure of ‘shared space’ which I haven’t already broached here and which has been much more substantially critiqued here and here.

Not mentioned on BBC news

2011-07-26T13:43:00.002+01:00

The former chairman of the BBC Trust ran up expenses totalling more than £11,500 in six months, according to figures released today.

Sir Michael Lyons, who left the job on April 30 when he was replaced by former cabinet minister Lord Patten, spent £1,335.04 on cars despite having part-time access to a driver and car when working in London on BBC business.

Court decides driving is a basic human necessity

2011-07-26T13:42:00.000+01:00

An unlicensed driver who was jailed for nearly two years for hitting and killing a cyclist on Yorke Peninsula has had his sentence reduced by the South Australian Supreme Court.

The court found the ban was too long, given the limited public transport options where Bennett lives on the Yorke Peninsula.

Well we wouldn’t want killer drivers having to endure all the inconvenience of travelling by bus, would we?

And obviously cycling is totally out of the question.

Cycling on the pavement in Chingford

2011-07-25T14:06:00.003+01:00

The A112 is the central north-south transport spine for motor vehicles in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It runs from Chingford Green in the north through Walthamstow and Leyton all the way to the northern perimeter of the Olympic site and Stratford.

This road is deeply hostile to cycling, in a variety of ways at a variety of locations. The deterrents to cycling include proximity of overtaking motor vehicles, sub-standard poorly-maintained cycle lanes, speeding drivers, pinch points, a mini-gyratory, cycle lanes placed immediately adjacent to parking bays, motor vehicle congestion which also delays cyclists, obstruction of cycle lanes, both permissive and transgressive, and issues of personal security at the Crooked Billet underpass.

On the border between Chingford and Walthamstow cyclists using the A112 are diverted through the Crooked Billet underpass system, where the cycle monitoring figures tell their own story: for the successive years 2006-2010 the counts over a twelve hour period in July were 309, 324, 294, 223, 228. Back in 1998, when the counts were taken in October, the figure was 335.

The council used to record counts for the A112 but stopped doing so several years ago (the 2005 LIP promised extra cycle counts at new locations; with characteristic cynicism the council then subsequently reduced the small number of monitored routes by two).

No one involved in ‘encouraging cycling’ in the London Borough of Waltham Forest seems at all interested in even acknowledging the spectacular failure of cycling in the borough (where the modal share is less than one per cent), let alone addressing it, diagnosing it, and seeking a solution.

This is a preamble to a sight I saw recently on the A112 in Chingford. A woman cycling on the pavement:

Why was she cycling on the footway? Probably because it felt safer. If that was her motive, it was not unreasonable. The A112 is nominally a 30 mph road but there are no restraints on speeding other than traffic congestion and signalled junctions. Lawless speeding is a particular problem on this section of the A112

Another reason why some cyclists might feel safer cycling on the footway rather than the road is the existence of pinch points. The London Borough of Waltham Forest specialises in putting in murderous pinch points on roads across the borough, including those which are laughably identified as cycling routes. This is what I’d stopped to photograph when I saw her ride past.

A pinch point like this simply engineers conflict with cyclists. There isn’t space for a driver to safely overtake a cyclist, but if you take the primary position you may experience someone blowing their horn and screaming abuse. Note the way drivers veer over towards the kerb when they pass the pinch point (below).
As a major cross-borough route, the A112 needs a segregated Dutch-style cycle track along its entire length. Instead, the council is currently re-engineering lengths of it in Leyton to make it even more attractive for car use and car parking. And no one seems remotely interested in understanding why cycling is a deeply unpopular travel mode in what is a very compact but profoundly car-sick borough.

Dangerous Britain

2011-07-25T14:02:00.000+01:00

I remember once reading somewhere that everyone born in Britain stands a one in seventeen chance of being killed or seriously injured in a road crash during the course of their lifetime. I wish I could remember the source of that statistic but I can’t. I remembered it when I read this sad story:

Dad-of-two Karl Austin, of Biddulph, died on June 30 in a collision with a lorry near Derby on the A50. Today his wife, Linda, and his parents Keith and Joyce paid tribute to the race-winning cyclist.

His parents also lost Karl's sister, Kim, in a car accident in 1986 when she was 19.

Dad Keith, of Semper Close, in Congleton, said: "Having lost Kim it was the last thing we could ever have imagined was to lose both children. It's almost unbelievable but it's happened."

Bedroom collides with car

2011-07-25T14:00:00.001+01:00

A silver Vauxhall Astra is believed to have travelled down Manor Grove towards the junction with Meadstead Drive around 11.50am today, Saturday 23 July. It's thought the car went across the junction, through fencing, a garden and then through the front bedroom window of a bungalow.

A 13-year-old disabled boy was in the bedroom, sitting at a computer in his wheelchair. He became trapped underneath the car for at least an hour and had to be freed by firefighters.

The car driver, an 82-year-old local man, and his male passenger, also suffered minor injuries.

I suspect the significant factor in this crash is the driver’s age. In ‘drive until you drop’ Britain the system encourages the half-blind, stroke-stricken, heart-attack-battered geriatric to continue driving until such time as they crash, often with fatal consequences to others. And none of the three main political parties would have it any other way.

Selling cycling

2011-07-23T18:46:00.003+01:00

Charing Cross Road. It's a shame about the cycling environment, but not to worry - sect members can find all the necessary gear here.

the latest exciting ‘Green Olympics’ news

2011-07-23T18:44:00.003+01:00

One moment it’s fabulous cycling infrastructure, the next it’s sustainable fine cuisine.

Enjoy.

Conservative Party links to fossil fuel lobbyists exposed (or: how decision-making happens in Europe)

2011-07-23T18:43:00.001+01:00

Chris Huhne has ordered a private inquiry into which fossil fuel lobbyists "got to" the Conservative MEPs who defied David Cameron and voted down an ambitious carbon emissions target in the European parliament on 5 July.

New research by the Guardian and Greenpeace into lobby groups and businesses seen by Tory MEPs in 2010 reveals there were more than four times as many meetings with fossil fuel companies, carmakers and others against stronger action on global warming than with green businesses and those pushing for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The research by the Guardian and Greenpeace shows that the 25 Tory MEPs met at least 300 representatives from fossil fuel businesses and their lobbyists in 2010 at more than 200 meetings, compared with about 70 representatives from green industries or lobby groups. The research also found the Tory MEPs attended at least 100 meetings with gas and oil companies and 75 meetings with car manufacturers last year.

Ford was one of the most hospitable companies, enjoying meetings with at least nine of the MEPs, most of them more than once.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders was also popular, alongside Jaguar Land Rover.

The UK's Association of Electricity Producers, which has strongly opposed any increase in carbon emissions cuts, was well-represented among the numerous fossil fuel energy lobbyists, along with oil industry groups such as the UK Petroleum Industry Association.

Conditions for cyclists on Vernon Place

2011-07-22T17:22:00.000+01:00

If you are travelling in an eastward direction, Oxford Street (A40) in central London turns into New Oxford Street, which turns into Bloomsbury Way, which turns into Vernon Place. On Vernon Place there is a major junction where it meets the north-south A4200 (i.e. Southampton Row and Kingsway).

Two cyclists have died at this junction in recent years. In 2008 a woman cyclist was hit and killed by a lorry whose driver turned left at the junction and a little over a year later a woman cyclist was killed by a bus driver who turned right at the junction and did not notice her.

These are the conditions for cyclists just before that fatal junction is reached.

London’s so-called cycling revolution is largely made up of cyclists like this: confident, fast cyclists who are usually male, usually white, and usually in the age range 25-45. They are also usually professionals. Often they will be riding road bikes with skinny tyres and dropped handlebars.

The problem is, this kind of demographic restricts cycling to a fringe minority. And even assertive cyclists who take the primary position can end up experiencing problems.

The answer, as we know from extensive international experience, is the provision of facilities that separate cyclists from fast and aggressively-driven motor traffic. Training cyclists to pretend to be motorcyclists is not the answer.

476 bikes stolen in the London Borough of Waltham Forest in one year

2011-07-22T16:27:00.000+01:00

Bikes reported stolen in London over a one year period, listed by London borough:

Waltham Forest 476

See the figures for the other boroughs here.

Cycle Superficialhighway news

2011-07-22T13:55:00.000+01:00

This gleaming new Cycle Superhighway does look super, does it not?

These lanes cost about £10m each and if you haven't seen them they involve blue smoother surfaces and more branding and signage.

Funding is also aimed at businesses on the routes to encourage cycling.

Cop this:

Ten minutes later the pair came ambling back, one carrying a shopping bag from Tesco Express and appearing to check his receipt. The other appeared to be on hand to guard their dinner provisions. The footage was taken on Tuesday at 6.40pm on the northbound lane of Kennington Park Road, showing the patrol car in breach of signed rules stating drivers must not stop between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday.

spot the cyclist

2011-07-21T18:02:00.000+01:00

I took these pics of the Russell Square ‘improvements’ today, on the north side. On both sides the footway has been built out, narrowing the carriageway. On the side nearest the square the footway build-out incorporates parking bays (below) – exactly the principle which is being rolled out across Waltham Forest, to the detriment of safe cycling. The scope for segregated cycle tracks at this location is blindingly obvious. London remains one of the most backward, car-sick cities in Europe, still relentlessly promoting the parking of motor vehicles across the city centre.

Child pedestrian knocked down in Chingford

2011-07-21T17:59:00.000+01:00

RESIDENTS say a road bend close to where a 12-year-old boy was hit by a van yesterday is dangerous due to a lack of warning signs and traffic calming measures.

The collision which took place in Larkshall Road in Highams Park, near the junction with Coolgardie Avenue, left the boy with head and leg injuries. Witnesses said the boy got off a bus just after a bend in the road and as he crossed in front of it, he was hit by the van.

Carmel King, 63, who lives close to the scene of the accident, said: "This road is a nightmare. "Years ago there was a petition to get a crossing put in but it was put in further up the road.

"The speed that drivers come round at that corner makes the road very dangerous and they may not get to stop in time if something is blocking the road.

"When I get of the bus sometimes I have to stand on the side of the road for about ten minutes before crossing.

"They should have cameras here and signs because it might make people slow down."

it’s an Olympic rip-off!

2011-07-21T17:57:00.001+01:00

Eastway Users Group spent two years with the Olympic Delivery Authority drawing up the current approved plans for the high speed competitive cycle circuit, which crosses the River Lea to the east of the velodrome. But the body which was created in 2009 to oversee the park’s longterm development - the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) - submitted revised plans in March.

[So much for the consultation process.]

They want to move the cycle track eastwards, keeping it on the north side of the river, creating a park in Hackney’s northwest parklands on the other side of the river with unrestricted views across to the velodrome and access to the river.

Housing intended for Newham will then be squeezed out, but the ODLC wants to submit a planning application within 15 years to build mock-Georgian housing in the Hackney parkland, in the style of central London’s Regent’s and Hyde Parks.

Because after all mock-Georgian houses in the style of luxury residences in Hyde Park are so very Hackney, are they not?

And you can bet that these houses will require an access road and car parking for all the Audis, Mercs and 4X4s…

Cycling injuries rise in East London – and there’s been another London cycling fatality

2011-07-20T17:38:00.005+01:00

The number of cyclists being injured on Tower Hamlets roads has gone up by 12 per cent in the last three years.

Tower Hamlets fared better than other east London boroughs, as in Barking and Dagenham road accidents involving cyclists shot up by more than half and those involving pedestrians by almost a fifth.

Labour London Assembly member for the area, John Biggs, said the re-phasing of hundreds of traffic signals in the capital may be leading to increased traffic speeds which put cyclists and pedestrians at higher risk.

No surprise, really, since

What TfL have managed to do since 2004 is to preside over a road network so dangerous that it actually cancels out any safety benefit of the 170% increase in people riding bikes on the TLRN.

If TfL really want people to “catch up with the bicycle”, they have got to stop prioritising motor vehicle convenience at the expense of cycle safety.

Meanwhile last week, with almost no publicity at all (car-centric BBC London News characteristically ignored it) another London cyclist was killed:

A cyclist has died following a collision with a motor vehicle (Thursday 14th July) on Kew Bridge.

Eye-witnesses report that the cyclist was knocked off his bike whilst crossing the bridge.

Note the Comment of a local cyclist here.

‘serious disruption to the life of the community’

2011-07-19T18:16:00.003+01:00

Limo dependency in local government - latest

2011-07-19T10:14:00.001+01:00

Lord Hanningfield (alias Paul White), for ten years leader of Essex County Council, was a crook.

It was revealed earlier this week that internal audits in 2007 showed a lack of receipts for purchases on White’s corporate credit card. It also emerged he was spending about £5,200 a month on it and could sign off his own expenses.

With a record like that there’ll always be a place for him in the London Borough of Waltham Forest!

His Lordship was also fond of car travel.

His use of a chauffeur-driven car to ferry him from the council to the House of Lords focused attention on the authority's chauffeur service.

A Freedom of Information request by BBC Look East revealed the council paid £677,733 to run chauffeur-driven cars over the past five years. Liberal Democrat MP for Colchester Bob Russell said: "Frankly, I think it was an abuse. Essex did not need three chauffeur-driven cars. We know that because they've now cut it down to one."

Mike Mackrory, Liberal Democrat deputy opposition leader, said: "I find it quite extraordinary and one really wonders what on earth the journeys were and how that could be justified?"

The council now has one chauffeur-driven car, a Jaguar, used mainly by chairman Rodney Bass.

He told the BBC that if the prime minister could have a car, so should he, because of the number of functions he attends.

But it’s not just Conservatives who get up to this kind of thing:

The mayor of Tower Hamlets is spending about £1,500 a month on a chauffeur-driven car, it was revealed today.

Lutfur Rahman, who was thrown out of the Labour Party last year over alleged links with the Islamic Forum of Europe and alleged vote-rigging, was criticised today after it emerged he spends £72 of public money every day on leasing a Mercedes.

A spokesman for Labour-run Tower Hamlets said: "The sheer number of appointments he has to attend in any one day and the need to work while on the move means using public transport does not allow the mayor to perform his role in the most effective way."

Oxford Street collides with driver

2011-07-19T10:11:00.000+01:00

The driver was an employee of the famous Working Together For A Safer London organisation.

Road rage van driver chased emergency ambulance

2011-07-19T10:10:00.000+01:00

A furious van driver trapped a dying heart attack patient inside an ambulance after it clipped his wing mirror because he'd refused to move to let it through.

Dale Barker, 46, had pursued the emergency vehicle for more than a mile to Bradford Royal Infirmary and pulled up so close to the rear doors that paramedics could not open them to get the patient out.

Bradford Crown Court heard that the patient, a 42-year-old man, later died. Electrician Barker, of Bradford, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving last September. During the pursuit, which went on for 1.6 miles, Barker was also said to have followed the ambulance through a red light.

The Honorary Recorder of Bradford, Judge James Stewart QC, told Barker that he had made a stupid mistake. 'I accept that what you did was a momentary lapse,' the judge told him. 'You reacted angrily to the ambulance having struck your wing mirror.'

Barker was made the subject of a 12-month community order, including a requirement to do 150 hours' unpaid work. He was also banned from driving for a year.

cycling in Dorset

2011-07-19T10:03:00.001+01:00

It's the fastest way to get from one side of town to the other, it's cheaper than driving, better for the planet, healthier, more fun and it reduces congestion. Hurrah for the bicycle!

However, apart from not reading the Comments box (crammed with the usual hysterical cyclophobia – add murdering dogs to the inventory of cycling sin) you may wish to avoid busy roads, since

MOST of Dorset’s fixed speed cameras have been switched off, leaving just 15 to snap offenders.

The majority of the yellow boxes alongside the county’s roads are now empty.

But the casing will remain as a deterrent and cameras could be re-installed if a risk to public safety becomes apparent.

[Doncha just love that ‘if’.]

The news comes as figures reveal just £851,000 has been committed to Dorset Road Safe by Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset councils compared with £2 million two years ago.

The car-centric legacy of the ‘Green’ Olympics

2011-07-18T12:41:00.002+01:00

Millions of pounds have poured into the five Olympic boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Greenwich and Waltham Forest. New transport links have been built; old ones have been upgraded.

For many local people, the park is a cause for rejoicing. "Everyone's excited," said Samira, 15. "It's kind of bringing communities together."

That is one view. It is not Iain Sinclair's. The writer and present-day Cassandra from Hackney has declared war on the Olympics and all it – in its modern incarnation – stands for.

Dismayed by the temporary removal of beloved parts of the community – allotments, for instance, and football pitches – and repelled by the vision of a Westfield shopping centre springing up next to the stadium, he feels nothing but despair. "The Olympics have just been a huge engine for pushing through the corporate developments and the remaking, the rebranding of the whole area; it's been the thing that's made that happen faster," he says, adding: "Basically it's a conjuring trick to generate financing for a perpetual state of building and enclosure and an alphabet soup of crazy quangos that are telling you how wonderful everything is and talking up a spurious legacy which is in reality just a huge Australian shopping mall."

A disgruntled Waltham Forest resident adds in the Comments (it’s worth quoting in full):

Millions of pounds have poured into the five Olympic boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Greenwich and Waltham Forest.

Well, maybe the first four, but certainly not Waltham Forest, one of London's worst-run and sleaziest boroughs. The area of Hackney Marsh football pitches in the borough has been taken for a coach park, a much-used recreation ground has been handed over to the Olympics for portacabins, leaving schools without play space, and will probably be built on afterwards. The already-congested Leyton High rd is to be narrowed, to offer wider pavements to Olympic visitors, but nothing is being said about restitution afterwards. Leyton is a dangerously congested station, but nothing will be done to remedy this, and locals fear an Ibrox event. Whatever the outcome of the shenanigans over the stadium, we will almost certainly lose our local football team, to whose requirements the Council has been strangely generous in allowing residential development at the ground. The pitch will probably be housing in a few years time. £1 million is being spent to tidy a Potemkin walkway from the tube to the stadium, and we have just been given a list of the roads we shall not be able to use during the games. The Olympics feels more like an occupying army than an exciting cultural event, plundering what little we have here, and sending us the bill into the bargain. Its only merit is to make it absolutely clear that our rulers do not have our interests at heart.
It's depressing but not surprising to see the Guardian recycling Olympic PR as journalism, when consultation of our local paper could give the real picture.

Or indeed a local blogger. Because this is one of the car-sick gateways to the Green Olympics, an event which is doing nothing for conditions for cycling in Stratford. But then who would really want to cycle to the Olympics on fantasy Greenway cycle paths. Stratford's soon-to-be-opened Westfield shopping centre will have parking for 5,000 cars.

Meanwhile Charlie Holland brings exciting news of the Jubilee Greenway south of the river.

By the way, at the base of that stylish Olympic Greenway sign at the start of this post can be found graffiti, an empty cider can, and lots of little green bags containing shit. Which seems symbolic.

Traffic jam on Pall Mall: just fancy that!

2011-07-18T09:51:00.000+01:00

I noticed this on Friday’s London traffic news:

A4 London - Traffic congestion on A4 Pall Mall westbound in Westminster between the A4 Trafalgar Square junction and the St James's Street junction, because of new road layout.

Or to put it another way:

An ignorant cynic might suggest that relieving congestion by putting the streets back to how they were before they were reconfigured to relieve congestion... might not actually relieve congestion.

That’s because

The streets of the whole of Westminster, virtually without exception, are laid out with motor traffic the absolute and sole priority.

This latest futile exercise in attempting to evade the consequences of making car dependency more attractive than walking, cycling or using public transport has cost an amazing £14 million.

That cynic might further suggest that £14M would build a lot of cycle paths, which might encourage a few people to cycle rather than take a car or a taxi, and thus relieve congestion rather more effectively.

Bad Language

2011-07-18T09:38:00.000+01:00

The BBC ignores complaints and just continues in the old, old way:

A woman died when her bicycle collided with a car in west Lancashire.

Christine Favager, 69, from Ormskirk, was riding on Asmall Lane in Scarisbrick when the crash happened at about 1940 BST on Monday.

Lancashire Police said a 19-year old man was questioned on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and bailed pending further inquiries.

The local paper is no better:

THE community in Scarisbrick is reeling after the tragic death of a cyclist on one of its busiest country roads.

Christine Favager, 69, was killed instantly when her bicycle collided with a Vauxhall Vectra on Asmall Lane in Scarisbrick at around 7.40pm on Monday night.

Mrs Favager was known to cycle regularly from her home in Ormskirk along Asmall Lane daily, which residents say is a dangerous stretch of road.

I think when the facts are in it will turn out that the victim was simply pedalling along in her own quiet way when the driver who killed her slammed into her at speed, with such force that she was killed on the spot. In other words, the driver collided with her, not the other way round.

Henly’s Corner: Transport for London continues to lie

2011-07-18T08:42:00.000+01:00

Garrett Emmerson, chief operating officer for TfL London Streets, said: “'The works at Henlys Corner will bring huge benefits to all road users along the A406 North Circular Road

All?

The reality is that no one who can avoid it is going to walk down this 8-lane turbohighway which requires pedestrians wishing to cross the road to do so in four separate stages.

So who is to blame for spending twice the entire budget of the Biking Boroughs entrenching infrastructure so deeply hostile to anyone not in a car?

In 2002, then mayor Ken Livingstone was pushing plans for this junction to be redesigned, with bus lanes and cycle lanes. However, Barnet’s then Cabinet member for the environment, Brian Coleman, led the council’s effort to block these plans under the premise that they were “inadequate to deal with the issue of endemic congestion.”

As we know, Ken was ousted by the Conservative contender in 2008 and true-blue Mr Coleman went on to become the mayor of Barnet in 2009. The bus and cycle lanes were subsequently removed from TfL’s plans, which were then agreed with Barnet, and as you can see the work is now underway.

Whether it’s at Blackfriars or Brixton, Fulham or Finchley, Marylebone or Mitcham, TfL’s current priority remains the same: make travelling in cars easier and quicker at the expense of all other transport.

It suits TfL and the outer London boroughs to pay lip-service to cycling and walking while continuing to build motorways in the middle of residential areas (while closing bus lanes, cycle lanes and footpaths).

British policing: car-centric and unaccountable

2011-07-17T20:03:00.001+01:00

Oxford:

A COUNCIL call for police to enforce Oxford’s 20mph speed limits has been rejected. A senior officer spoke out after Oxford City Council passed a motion urging Thames Valley Police to crack down on speeding drivers.

Liberal Democrat Alan Armitage, who put the motion, said: “It doesn’t say much for the police that they don’t give a damn what the people think.

“It is a high priority for people in Oxford who are worried about protecting themselves and their children.”

Labour leader Bob Price said Beaumont Street and Park End Street were among roads which would benefit from enforcement.

He said: “We don’t expect police to focus all their attention on the enforcement of speed limits but, where you have places where it happens, there is a strong case for them using a short, sharp period of enforcement.”

In April, a police check outside St John Fisher Primary School in Sandy Lane West, found 44 of 110 cars over the limit.

This echoes what happened in York back in March:

City of York Council agreed to introduce a 20mph limit on a section of Fishergate which passes two primary schools,

The Fishergate scheme was opposed by North Yorkshire Police, who said it could make the area less safe and warned its officers would not enforce the limit.

Meanwhile in London, apart from episodes like this, which tell you everything you need to know about how far the rot has gone inside the Metropolitan Police, there’s this:

Dutch towns don’t have tens of thousands of uninsured drivers on their streets and unlike Newham, they don’t have to cope with a quarter of road casualties involving a hit and run driver.

In the nineteen eighties and nineties, the number of traffic police in London was halved. Some senior people within the Met even discussed closing the unit altogether.

The Met’s traffic unit has become very effective as a result of this close scrutiny of their work. One estimate shows they make seven times the number of arrests as the borough police. Given the historic decline in their numbers and the proven efficiency of the section, it is one of the last places the Met should be looking to find savings, yet Traffic is now dealing with a 10% budget cut compared to most sections of the Met who have a 5% cut.

At the last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority the Commissioner defended his decision to cut traffic police as the right one, as all sections of the Met were being asked to make savings. This simply isn’t true. The public affairs section, for example, has been given around a £1m of extra funding this year.

Ah, so! The money was needed to pay the sort of guy who earned

more than £1,000 a day to work two days a month as a public relations adviser to Sir Paul.

Sir Paul is a hero of the self-styled Association of British Drivers and Safe Speed (sic). The ABD identifies him as one of the ‘good guys’ (gals naturally don’t come into this masculine topic). Both cite his reluctance to take speeding seriously.

“There is a perception that people who commit criminal offences and who, quite properly and according to guidelines, get a caution, get an easier ride than those who speed at the lower end. Whilst clearly the comparison is not a helpful one, I do nevertheless have some very real sympathy for this perception. Any criminal justice system to be effective has to be seen to be fair. It just cannot be right when people feel that our response within that system is disproportionate.”
Paul Stephenson
Chief Constable
Lancashire Constabulary
2004-03-11

And ‘Safe Speed’ (sic) gloated:

Lancashire's chief constable Paul Stephenson has announced plans for a review of the way motorists are punished. The moves follow a lengthy campaign by the Lancashire Evening Post against the excessive use of speed cameras which won the backing of hundreds of readers.
Authorities in the county, which has more fixed speed cameras than any other in the North of England, Scotland or Northern Ireland, will now operate a "three strikes" rule, where instead of being hit with a £60 fine and three penalty points, motorists who breach the limit only slightly will be cautioned.
A second minor breach would lead to another caution and the offender being asked to attend a speed awareness course.
Only on the third occasion would a fine and points be handed out.
Drivers caught excessively flouting the law would still be subject to the normal punishment.
Mr Stephenson made the announcement yesterday at a meeting of Lancashire Police Authority. He said this system would allow more "discretion" and added: "My post bag is filled and lots of other post bags are filled. Many motorists who have committed offences at the bottom end of the spectrum do feel they have been punished too harshly."

Where does the Met Bus stop, apart from the Town Square Walthamstow yesterday?

Sometimes it's The Dot Stop and sometimes it's here!

Evening all.

Russell Square and Redbridge blues

2011-07-14T10:33:00.003+01:00

A fairly typical opinion to be found on cycling discussion threads and in comments boxes:

Segregated cycling (especially in somewhere like London) is little more than 'pie in the sky,' there is little enough room as it is for cars and pedestrians, to divide that space up further will be far too costly and cause far too much disruption. Shout all you like but no government will ever go for it.

And while the argument that there isn’t room on British streets for safe, convenient cycling infrastructure continues to be asserted (no matter how often it is disproved), these streets are being carved up in ways which make cycling worse, not better.

This is what’s currently happening in Russell Square (north side). A new segregated cycle track? I’m afraid not.

The footway is being widened and cyclists are being forced closer to motor vehicles.

The works are part of the Bloomsbury Corridor project that also covers Woburn Place, Tavistock Square and Russell Square. It’s an area that has become dominated by motorized road traffic and the idea is to make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists, as well as drivers.

Just round the corner is Woburn Place. A street which is five lanes wide. One lane is dedicated to free parking for just a tiny handful of black cabs. Woburn Place turns into Southampton Row, where earlier this week a massive articulated lorry ran over a cyclist in circumstances which are currently unclear. The Bloomsbury Corridor project does nothing at all to keep cyclists apart from huge lorries or other motor vehicles, it does nothing to stop rat-running through Russell Square, and it does nothing to deter or reduce the huge volume of motor traffic using these streets.

Meanwhile in the London Borough of Redbridge

NEW proposals to bring about a ‘step change’ in cycle use in Redbridge are to be discussed at council meeting on July 18. Redbridge Council recently received a grant of £385,000 from Transport for London to promote cycling in the borough.

And as part of plans to put the money to use, councillors will consider proposals for new cycle routes on many of the borough’s roads.

The Council has set a target to increase the number of journeys made by bike in the Borough from the current 1 percent level to 1.5 percent by 2013, in line with the Mayor of London's strategic goal to get more people cycling throughout London.

This ‘step change’ for cycling is a self-evident fantasy, since the capital sum involved is derisory, some of it will probably be creamed off for promotion (‘encouraging’ and ‘celebrating’ cycling) and the rest will go on infrastructure. The question is: what sort of infrastructure? The answer is cycle lanes painted on roads. In other words, a strategy which accommodates cycling to the presence and convenience of motor vehicles, not the other way round. And while many cycling activists continue to insist that there just isn’t the space for Dutch infrastructure, in Redbridge they are managing to find it – for extra free car parking, on the Woburn Place model. This is Baron Gardens, Redbridge. A street where residents enjoy private off-street car parking and the council obligingly supplies even more, in the middle of a very wide street.

Next door in Waltham Forest they have an even better idea. Converting footways and cycle lanes for free car parking bays. Wood Street E17. A model which is being rolled out across the borough.

Things are getting WORSE, not better.

Blackfriars Bridge: it’s war

2011-07-13T17:12:00.000+01:00

Boris Johnson and TfL are not going to budge an inch:

"My information is that the general speed [on Blackfriars Bridge] is nearer 12 miles an hour, therefore a speed limit of 20 mph isn't necessary and could be a serious impediment to smooth traffic flow," said the Mayor.

Ms Jones pressed the Mayor on why he was ignoring the findings of the report prepared by TfL in 2008. The Mayor replied: "I am told that it does not represent the best advice and therefore I am not pursuing it".

Let’s be clear that this is London cycling’s Tahrir Square moment. And its ramifications are much greater than simply cycling.

Blackfriars is about fighting the dirty, noisy, unpleasant and dangerous car-culture entrenched in our streets and in the minds of our city’s transport policy-makers.

If we win at Blackfriars, it can affect a lot more than just one bridge.

This is a test for London’s cycling community in all its manifestations, because whatever all the other differences are I doubt if there is a single cyclist in London who thinks that raising the speed limit here from 20 mph to 30 mph is a good idea.

I hope the CTC will get involved in this struggle and not just leave it up to the LCC. And also Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. And Living Streets and Climate Rush and all the other campaign groups.

In the meantime, don’t neglect the conventional channels.

The deadline for responses to Transport for London’s consultation Draft Network Operating Strategy is Friday. This is the document which sets out London Streets’ overall approach to the management and operation of the road network in London… as well as providing a framework through which to prioritise capital investment and ‘business as usual’ operational expenditure decision-making across the road network.

At the moment the strategy is all about cars, vans and HGVs, so it really is important that we get as many responses as possible from people interested in making London’s streets cleaner, more sustainable, more pleasant and less dangerous.

Met Commissioner Stephenson announces new lorry/cyclist initiative

2011-07-13T14:42:00.003+01:00

(A112. Yesterday)

In an exciting new Metropolitan Police road safety initiative, cyclists will be invited to sit in the cab of an HGV parked on double-yellow lines at a road junction in order to see how much more convenient it is for lorry drivers to flout parking restrictions and also what a really great view you get of the cycle lane you are parked on.

Having announced the new scheme, Commissioner Stephenson then left in his chauffeur-driven limo, explaining he had an important meeting in a bar where the editor of The Sun was buying him drinks.

The Green Olympics reach Walthamstow!

2011-07-12T15:34:00.004+01:00

This delightful advert for 'advanced fuels' has just appeared above the cycling-suppressing substandard advisory cycle lane on the lorry-sodden A503. It features a champion cyclist whizzing round an underground car park filled with BMWs. All in aid of fossil fuel dependency on behalf of a criminal corporation which is desperately trying to rebrand itself as Green.

And no one could deny that the arrival of the Olympics in this part of North East London is being keenly anticipated.

Bad Language

2011-07-12T14:47:00.000+01:00

Police are appealing for witnesses to a crash in Queensbury. A cyclist and a white van collided at 10.15am yesterday on the A644 Brighouse and Denholme Road close to Perseverance Road. The cyclist was with a group of eight other cyclists. He was towards the back of the group. He collided with the white van which was overtaking the group at the time. The driver then continued on without stopping.

This kind of language is commonplace in the British media, and the BBC is a prime offender

Another serious lorry/cyclist crash in central London

2011-07-11T15:35:00.003+01:00

This sounds bad.

A4200 Southampton Row Bloomsbury, both ways between A40 Bloomsbury Way and B502 Russell Square
A4200 London - A4200 Southampton Row in Bloomsbury closed and queueing traffic in both directions between the A40 Bloomsbury Way junction and the B502 Russell Square junction, because of a serious accident involving lorry and a cyclist

According to ‘Dooks’

Just passed what looked to be a very nasty accident southbound on southampton row. articulated lorry stopped in the road at an angle, a battered green ladies mountain bike by the side of the road a crowd of horrified onlookers and paramedics peering under the wheels of the trailer. ambulances were just arriving on the scene as i passed. Did not look good.

John Lew has posted this photo on Twitter (which I have cropped - the original is here).

The London Cycling Design Standards manual and the context of ‘a seamless transition’

2011-07-11T09:06:00.006+01:00

I was alerted to the existence of the London Cycling Design Standards manual by this comment

I wonder if the blueprint for Go Dutch should be for each borough to improve its A roads to the standards laid down in the London Cycling Design Standards manual - neither TfL nor the boroughs should be able to wriggle out of that, surely? But is it good enough for us?

No (in a word). Cycle tracks with ‘a desirable minimum width 2 metres one way and 3 metres two way’ would end up becoming the norm, not the exception.

Browsing through the manual I came across an example of ‘a seamless transition’ between two types of cycle facility, i.e. a cycle lane which turns into a cycle track. It was illustrated with a photograph of a location I instantly recognised. You can find it on page 73 of the manual (manual pagination), in section 4.2.44 (the fifteenth page of this chapter).

Annoyingly but typically the manual doesn’t identify the locations of any of its photographs. That’s unfortunate because cycling infrastructure often has a wider transport context (as I have suggested in connection with the photograph used by the CTC to illustrate its idea of Cycle-Friendly Infrastructure) or a revealing historical context (as David Arditti has shown in connection with Camden’s cycle tracks).

In this instance the example of a ‘seamless transition’ from a cycle lane to a cycle track is located in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It is such a marvellous piece of infrastructure that it is even promoted by Waltham Forest Council in one of its cycling leaflets:

The location of this cycling infrastructure is Forest Road (A503) eastbound, just after the junction with South Countess Road. What are conditions like for cyclists before they make the seamless transition from a cycle lane to a cycle track? The first photograph here will show you (and all the pics in that blog post show locations on this road). Another scene from the eastbound A503 in Walthamstow is shown here.

But leaving aside the topic of subjective safety and narrow advisory cycle lanes on major roads with high volumes of motor vehicles including lorries, there’s something else to be considered here.

The cycle track shown is very badly designed. This infrastructure appears in the design manual to make the rather obvious point that inter-connecting cycling infrastructure ought to have a smooth surface. To focus on that aspect to the exclusion of all others is to prioritise something fairly rudimentary and to ignore all the much greater design failings enshrined in this infrastructure.

For a start the cycle track here is only one metre wide, which raises the question of what it is doing being used to illustrate best practice in a design standards manual which recommends a two metre width as the ‘desirable’ minimum for a one-way cycle track.

Worse, it is located far too close to the adjacent parked cars. The safety zone designed to prevent ‘dooring’ is far too narrow. There is also no physical segregation to prevent cars entering the safety zone or the cycle track. If you look carefully at the council leaflet you’ll see it shows a car which has strayed into the safety zone.

There’s one other thing to mention. This cycle track no longer exists. Yes, this iconic ‘seamless transition’ which TfL is still using in its manual turned out to be a catastrophic failure. Its design was substandard and the council got rid of it. This is what this site has looked like now for several years:

What failed? The design was intrinsically substandard compared to a Dutch cycle track because it was only one metre wide. Worse, the two key reasons why this cycle track turned out to be useless was because it failed to prevent ‘dooring’ on the passenger side and because there was nothing to stop drivers entering the cycle track and totally obstructing it. This is indeed what happened when parking was tight. Drivers who couldn’t find space to park parallel to the cycle track simply parked at an angle, with their bonnets across the cycle track.

The council could have deterred this by the use of parking restrictions, protecting the integrity of the cycle track with a double yellow line ‘no parking at any time’ restriction. It chose not to introduce this rudimentary measure. More effective would have been a physical barrier in the form of bollards. It chose not to use this option either. Instead, it simply threw in the towel, moved the free car parking bays into the cycle track, and diverted cyclists around the re-located parking bays. The re-routed cycle lane has a safety zone supposed to prevent ‘dooring’ on the driver’s side but (i) it isn't wide enough (ii) it is only advisory (iii) the re-routed cycle lane is not protected by parking restrictions and double-parking across the cycle lane is commonplace, and indeed was occurring two days ago when I took these photographs:

The fact that a spectacularly failed cycle track which falls well below Dutch standards can find its way into Transport for London’s London Cycling Design Standards manual and still be touted as best practice years after it failed and was abolished is oddly revealing, is it not?

The failure of Waltham Forest Council to design an effective cycle track or to respond intelligently to those design failures when they were subsequently exposed is also very revealing of the low value which is attached to cycling infrastructure by local authorities.

A certain sort of cycling campaigner would doubtless argue that this episode proves that cycle tracks don’t work. The reality is that sub-standard cycling infrastructure doesn’t work, whether off-road or on-road. The replacement cycle lane is every bit as mediocre as the original cycle track.

By the way, if you look closely you'll see an advisory flashing speed sign has been installed at this site since it was converted from a cycle track to a cycle lane. It acknowledges the problem with speeding vehicles at this 30 mph location, which makes you wonder who thought it was a good idea to divert cyclists out into the face of speeding drivers. The sign appears to be broken and my impression is that it has not worked for many months.

Crime and Punishment

2011-07-11T08:57:00.000+01:00

The court does not tolerate violence against anyone

thundered Judge Nicholas Price QC as he gave an immediate custodial sentence to a student who confessed to throwing two placard sticks at police during anti-cuts demonstrations in March.

The Judge sent the student down for a year.

The courts have an altogether more relaxed and indulgent attitude towards wilful acts of aggression when the police officer is riding a bicycle and the defendant is a motorist:

Burnley Crown Court heard how Harrison had made nine attempts to run Detective Inspector Melvin off the road, trying to hit him on the pavement and making contact with his handlebars and causing him to veer into trees, with the result he came off his bike. He also threw coins and stones at his victim.

Boris Bikes Watch

2011-07-10T20:36:00.005+01:00

This bike hire van parked in the cycle lane on Southwark Street has received a parking ticket.

Originally delivery and collection of bikes was all going to be done by 'Green' electric carts, but somehow that never quite worked out…

Back to the future:

If we assume that the bike hire scheme really does reach the number of trips that its proponents say, this means it has a capacity to replace one in 400 trips. 0.3% of the total. And that's the best case if they complete the scheme.

i.e. on average these bikes will account for just 0.002 trips per person per day.

That's tiny. Barely a start, in fact. Where people really cycle they use their bikes an awful lot more than that.

There are 6,000 bicycles but instead of the projected 10 trips a day or 60,000 in all, at present

There are about 25,000 trips each day.

When a compulsive spinner like TfL says 'about 25,000' trips you can be quite certain this means 'less than 25,000 trips'.

Or to put it another way, as things stand

this is the equivalent of the average Londoner going out and returning home again about once every three years by using these bikes.

What’s more

a residual concern remains who is using the scheme: overwhelmingly white men aged between 25 and 44, many of whom earn more than £50,000 a year. For a scheme that has already cost £79m, with a further £45m for the extension to cover the Olympic Park next year, can we really justify this "posh-boy toy"? "If you look at the normal demographic for cycling, it's exactly the same," says Ranger. "But that will change as we move into year two or three and we see people getting comfortable with it."

So, is London in the midst of a "cycling revolution"? The mayor would say yes, but others are more sceptical. "It just isn't a cycle-friendly city," says writer Will Self, a "bikie" who is mildly disdainful of Barclays Cycle Hire. "I sort of approve of the idea of using crap cyclists to slow down the traffic stream but it's a bit suicidal – like throwing people over the top in some conflict."

Sounds like Will hasn’t heard of safety in numbers!

Cyclenation Watch

2011-07-10T15:58:00.002+01:00

David Arditti gives Simon Geller, Cyclenation and the CTC a good kicking here.

The Cyclenation website also stands accused of misrepresentation..

This brings me to Dave Horton and last month’s Building Cycling Cultures Conference in Leicester. As I pointed out recently, this was one piece of cycling news that the CTC website completely ignored.

No one could make the same accusation against Cyclenation. This is what the website reported:

Excellent and inspiring conference in Leicester last weekend

The whole event was well planned and included a selection of different cycling related events and activities.The tours in the morning took in the pedestrainised [sic] zone with cycling allowed, an architectural tour and a visit to 2 of the city's recycling projects. The visits to the 2 projects were really interesting and inspiring one was Future Cycles the other was Bikes 4 All both were excellent projects focussing on getting bikes back out there! Karen Overton from New york [sic] held a great workshop on her work in the city inspiring young adults and children through the power and addiction of bike repair.
The subject of segregated cycle lanes was covered by another visitor from New York. Jon Orcutt works for the New York Department of Transportation who have introduced a radical programme of new cycle lanes in the city and his presentation was both amusing and information.# [sic]
The main theme was one of understanding the findings and implications of 2 pieces of academic research one by Dave Horton (Lancaster University): Key findings from the Understanding Walking & Cycling project and the other by Rachel Aldred (University of East London): Key findings from the Cycling Cultures project. More discussion of these will be available soon but in the meantime check out the Cyclenation Googlegroups for a taster.
8th June 2011

source.

Reading this, you would never know what those Key findings by Dave Horton were. Five links are supplied but none of them is to those research results, which would obviously be anathema to John Franklin, since Horton believes mass cycling requires very high quality and continuous segregated cycling infrastructure on our biggest and busiest urban roads. Like the CTC, Cyclenation News fails to link to the two relevant features on the Guardian website. Instead ‘The subject of segregated cycle lanes’ is attributed solely to another speaker, and the link supplied is all about a cycle lane in New York, not the topic of segregation.

In other words, the issue of separate cycling infrastructure is fudged and evaded. However

discussion of these [Key findings] will be available soon

I’m looking forward to reading it.

Are the Metropolitan Police institutionally anti-cyclist?

2011-07-09T14:01:00.004+01:00

You might well draw that conclusion from the scandalous response of the Met to a violent assault on a cyclist.

But then people who report a stolen bike to the Met also aren’t overjoyed by the response.

And let’s not forget the case of the black cab driver who attacked Jared Kelly

The incident was recorded on Westminster council's CCTV cameras but was subsequently deleted, while the police say they have no details of one man who came to Mr Kelly's aid and who offered to be a witness.

Despite the best efforts of the Met and the CPS the cyclist was cleared.

Jenny Jones is a very cogent critic of the Metropolitan Police’s reluctance to enforce road traffic laws in the capital.

Historically, the Met has long incubated petrolhead’s policing.

Incidentally when women were finally allowed to join the Metropolitan Police, this was bitterly resented by the boys in blue. The Met didn’t believe that women should be involved in dealing with real crime so had to find something for these unwanted women to do. This was at the time when only the very rich owned cars, and when cars had running boards. The rich in London were annoyed because street urchins used to have fun jumping on to running boards and hitching a free ride, so the task of the first WPCs was allocated as cracking down on this serious anti-social behaviour which upset drivers.

Not everybody knows that.

‘Cabbies and cyclists have a common cause’

2011-07-08T10:17:00.009+01:00

Cabbies and cyclists have a common cause re access to the #ORN & should campaign and lobby and protest together.

And as anyone who has ever been on London’s Critical Mass will know, black cab drivers are just natural allies, are they not? They always want to join in, blowing their horns in solidarity and sometimes even jumping out of their cabs to engage in a vigorous discussion about the best use of road space.

A reserved lane just for black cabs and cyclists and Olympians in limos. What a marvellous mix that would make. But, hey, you can try that idea out any day on Euston Road! See if you can spot the cyclist.

Shortly after I took the pic above I heard a siren wailing. Look carefully in the photo below and you’ll see a yellow emergency ambulance. Its blue light was flashing and its siren was wailing. The ambulance was stationary. It was held up by congestion. Obviously the preferred TfL solution here would be to reduce crossing times for pedestrians, because after all that’s what 83% of pedestrians want. And as many top cycling campaigners will tell you, on London's narrow streets there just isn’t the space for a separate Dutch-style cycle track – anyone can see that.

Footnote

For some strange reason Euston Road is one of the most polluted areas in London. (Note that Boris Johnson's Air Quality Strategy includes the brilliant 'Changing signal timings to smooth the flow of traffic'.) On Wednesday there will be a protest.

The Information

2011-07-08T08:25:00.000+01:00

Reading Borough Council, like local authorities across the UK, is passionate about cycling.

The Council aims to provide better information to both existing and potential cyclists to enable them to make more informed choices regarding the type of route appropriate for their journey and ability.

And what better way of helping cyclists make informed choices than these new signs which began going up on the Thames Towpath between Caversham and Reading bridges last week - National Cycling Week.

Now read on.

'Two days of carnage' in Hammersmith & Fulham

2011-07-07T16:45:00.000+01:00

I won't stop cycling there but I do think London needs to aspire to the more cycle-friendly European cities.

I took a look at Hammersmith & Fulham’s Borough Cycling Stategy document. It looks to be quite a few years out of date. It says that locally

It is often difficult to find space for segregated cycle tracks.

Yeah, right. The Hammersmith gyratory, the Shepherd’s Bush gyratory… by the time you’ve accommodated three or four lanes of motor vehicles there just isn’t the space, is there?

Sadly, forces outside the control of the council are going to cause a shocking situation in August.

In the words of Cllr Nick Botterill, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Environment

traffic is likely to grind to a halt just so that a few cyclists can ride their bikes through Fulham.

Cycling protest – central London Wednesday 13 July

2011-07-07T07:46:00.003+01:00

SOHO SQUARE
Gather 6.30pm, Ride off at 7pm
Wednesday 13th July 2011

We’re acting because:
- Clean air in the city would prevent about 4,300 premature deaths each year.
- Breathing London’s air reduces the life expectancy of those who die prematurely from it by 11 years on average.
- Air pollution from our busiest roads exacerbates asthma and may cause it.
- Deaths and illnesses from air pollution in the capital cost up to £2bn a year.

Air pollution in London is the worst in the UK and among the worst in Europe, with fatal consequences. But we can do something about it. Climate Rush are organising a cycle flashmob.

Lorry/cyclist crash on Whitechapel Road (A11)

2011-07-06T16:58:00.000+01:00

The current London travel news:

A11 Whitechapel Road Westbound closed, queueing traffic due to accident, a lorry and a cyclist involved between A107 Cambridge Heath Road / Sidney Street and B108 New Road.

Due to an accident outside the Royal London Hospital police are directing all traffic into Sidney Street to join Commercial Road. Bus routes 25, 205 and 254 diverted via Commercial Road. Route D3 diverted via Cambridge Heath Road.

The sciatica defence

2011-07-06T07:49:00.002+01:00

Carlton Lewars, 60, of Gladstone Avenue, Tottenham, north London walked free from Southwark Crown Court after prosecutors offered no evidence against him.

He had been accused of causing death by dangerous driving after his bus hit Jayne Helliwell, from Braunston in Northamptonshire, as she cycled along Oxford Street in the West End of London in April last year.

Mr Lewars claimed that a sudden attack of sciatic pain meant that he could not control his foot at the time of the crash, and so was pressing the accelerator pedal rather than the brake.

Prosecutor Barry Gregory explained that the CPS had decided to offer no evidence in the case because “it is not now sure that the prosecution could reach the high standard of proving, so that the jury would be sure, that Mr Lewars drove far below the standard expected of a competent and careful driver given those medical circumstances in which it has already been shown that he would not have been able to forsee the sciatica coming on in the way in which it did, causing him to press the accelerator rather than to press or try to press the brake.”

Mr Lewars’ bus hit Miss Helliwell’s bike and then collided with another bus, before hitting a bus shelter.

Sciatica is a very common medical condition. If sciatica is accepted by the British judicial system as a condition which may result in loss of control of body functions, with lethal consequences for other road users, then plainly no one who suffers from sciatica should be permitted to drive any vehicle, whether a private car or a company vehicle.

As things stand this killer driver is perfectly free to continue driving.

This case echoes that of another recent one involving a cyclist hit and killed by a driver:

An investigation found she had made a 40-second mobile phone call to her husband three minutes before the crash, but there was no evidence she made a call at the time of the collision.

She was charged with causing death by dangerous driving and pleaded not guilty at a hearing last year.

In a dramatic turnaround at a pre-trial hearing yesterday Mrs Johnson sobbed as the case against her was dropped after the judge heard she had probably suffered a reflex syncope or faint.

In that case there was no evidence of a pre-existing medical condition nor any conclusive evidence that the killer driver had suffered from ‘a reflex syncope’ (there were other explanations available, the plausibility of which was reinforced by tangible evidence that the killer driver had been on a mobile phone shortly before she killed the cyclist). But again a hypothetical medical explanation was forwarded by the defence, never tested before a jury, and a killer driver was free to breeze out of court and get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle and continue driving.

In cases like these, killer drivers get it both ways. They are spared a trial and exonerated from all responsibility for killing a cyclist, but despite allegedly being prone to a medical condition which incapacitates them with lethal consequences for other road users, they are permitted to continue driving.

This, it seems to me, is NOT JUSTICE. A lifetime driving ban in such cases would offer some small consolation to bereaved families. (Who knows, it might well be that if a mandatory lifetime driving ban was made a condition of a medical defence being accepted in cases of this sort, then some killer drivers might actually prefer not to use this defence.)

Mind you, justice is not the word that springs to mind regarding the kinds of sentences imposed when there is a conviction.

Why cycle training has nothing to do with creating a mass cycling culture

2011-07-05T08:54:00.012+01:00

She won't be smiling for very long. Not cycling like that, not in London...

This blog has naturally been avidly keeping an eye out for responses to this research finding that mass cycling in Britain requires infrastructure in the form of segregated cycle tracks

Let's remind ourselves what Dr Horton says.

If we agree on the vision of mass cycling, and if we agree that getting there requires the replacement of the current car-based system by one based on bikes, then what might be the key features of this cycling system?

There are many. For example specific facilities such as high quality cycle parking; bicycle co-ops where old bikes can be re-cycled and cycling skills and knowledge learnt; bike shops; cycle training; events and activities aimed at inculcating the desire and capacity to ride. Although often massively under-resourced, many of these components of a bike system already exist or are being built. But going back to our research, the big one which jumps out – to the extent that it’s impossible to ignore – is an infrastructural one. The sheer weight of evidence that most people will not ride a bike on busy roads is unambiguous and uncompromising.

We need radically to restructure our urban mobility systems in ways which will get people out of their cars and make them cycle. Half of the infrastructural change required is underway – the push for a maximum speed limit of 20 mph on residential streets is gaining momentum. But the other half of the key infrastructural change required needs a similar push, and this push should be for very high quality and continuous segregated cycling infrastructure on our biggest and busiest urban roads, the kind of roads on which almost everyone today refuses to cycle.

Many cycling advocates have a good range of well-rehearsed complaints against segregated cycling infrastructure. It’s too expensive. There’s too little space. It’s too broad-brush a solution, and ignorant of the specificities of local context. But to find reasons not to make the required changes is merely to delay the outcome for which we are battling – mass urban cycling in England.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to the changes required is a lack of political will. But here we cycling advocates must get our own house in order first – unless we’re all saying the same thing, we’ve little hope of shifting the broader debates, and so transport policies.

Me, I see not a scrap of evidence that either the CTC or Cyclenation are willing to accept this message. Both organisations are at best equivocal when it comes to the issue of segregated cycling infrastructure. Neither sees it, as Dr Horton does, as a top priority. I just don’t believe that the people who run these organisations think that separate cycle tracks are the number one issue for cycle campaigners. The excuses why now is not the time to campaign for separate cycle tracks are limitless. But let's leave all that for another day.

For today let's focus on a response from David Dansky - Head of training & development, Cycle Training UK, London, SE16, who in the subscription magazine TransportXtra Issue 574 (1 Jul 2011), argues

it is exactly the measures Dave [Horton] is sceptical about that have contributed to London’s success as a cycling city. Transport for London’s behaviour change programme includes the congestion charge and a raft of adverts on billboards and TV promoting cycling using positive images of people riding in London, many without cycle helmets.

It depends how you define success. Modal share in Inner London is 3% and modal share in Outer London continues to stagnate at 1%. That to me does not amount to a successful cycling city. There is not a bat in hell’s chance that Boris Johnson’s target of 5% modal share for Greater London by 2026 will be reached (for the kinds of reasons I’ve pointed out here).

TfL itself admits that

Evidence suggests that the growth in cycle travel between 2001 and 2008 was largely caused by cyclists increasing their cycle trip-making. There is no evidence of a net increase in the number of cyclists overall

Mr Dansky asserts that

Whilst many people cite fear as one of the main barriers to riding and conclude that they would only ride if they were segregated from cars, many are happy to move from these segregated/quiet routes once they’ve actually experienced what it is like to cycle on roads. Both TfL and London cycling campaigners prefer the ‘whatever works’ approach, calming traffic where appropriate to integrate riders into the traffic stream, segregating when that works, or building permeable networks of roads. All these hard measures are supported by marketing and cycle/driver training.

To sum up, the way forward is a holistic approach based on assessing what works to encourage cycling while minimising risk from the danger at source.

I couldn’t disagree more. Firstly this claim that the London cycling promotion industry is interested in assessing what works rather overlooks its continuing indifference to the infrastructure behind Europe's most successful cycling nation. Secondly it is tautological because this industry is not remotely interested in public opinion; we know why most people won't cycle but the cycle promotion industry is not interested in responding because it patronisingly assumes it knows better.

The pepper-potting approach of ameliorating conditions for vehicular cyclists has demonstrably been a catastrophic failure and has suppressed cycling for decades, not enabled it. Cycle training at best teaches you to adapt to cycling among motor vehicles; it can do nothing for your exposure to risk from forces outside your control. That's why so many cyclists wear yellow high viz tops and cycle helmets; it's a symptom of anxiety. Nor does it address the problem of the sheer volume of motor vehicles in London. Leaving aside all the familiar problems of close calls, left hooks, speeding etc, the very presence of motor vehicles is a deterrent to cycling. They slow you down, block your cycle lanes, fill up your ASLs, and spew exhaust emissions in your face. Even low speed motor vehicles are a deterrent to cycling because they create a deeply unpleasant environment for cycling in, beyond the issue of personal safety. There's nothing relaxing about cycling on car-clogged streets.

There is also the issue of retention. You can persuade some people to take up cycling but how many stick at it? What little research has been done in this area indicates a high recidivism rate.

As I've pointed out before

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.

I checked out David Dansky on Google.

CTUK's aim is to normalise cycling - show that anyone can do it, that no special gear needed.

Ironically, a spot of Googling also threw up a journalist's account of trying out some cycle training:

Dansky quickly puts me at ease while I sign the requisite form saying that I can be abandoned if my behaviour is “deemed unsuitable” and that since I’m not wearing a helmet any mishaps are my own fault

Yeah, right...

CTUK's ambition of normalising cycling and showing 'that anyone can do it' is, of course admirable. But 'anyone' isn't doing it. London cycling is overwhelmingly dominated by commuting white male professionals aged 25-44. (TfL estimates that 54% of cyclists on Cycle Superhighway 7 earn over £50K.) Children have largely vanished from London's roads. Most cyclists cycle alone. You won't see many families cycling. It's just not relaxing.

The one area where cycle training is useful and might be expected to show results is among children. However The number of cycling trips made by children and young people [in London] declined between 2001 and 2006/07.

Mr Dansky’s cycle training promo image (above) reminds me of the kind of smiley-smiley stuff TfL puts out. I’m afraid if you put yourself in the fast lane like this you won’t be laughing for long. As we know, Gareth of Croydon cycles according to the rules in the recommended assertive ‘taking the road’ manner, and you can check out his numerous YouTube helmet cam videos to see the consequences.

I might be mistaken but I think the cycle training poster above shows someone travelling southbound over Blackfriars Bridge.

So let’s go there. Because the problem is the infrastructure, not how cyclists negotiate the presence of motor vehicles. This is a very uncivilised cycling environment and most people are not prepared to participate in it, even if some young male professionals are.

Robotic campaigners against Dutch cycling infrastructure

2011-07-04T09:58:00.000+01:00

It Was An Accident

2011-07-03T18:20:00.001+01:00

PHOTOS of a collision between a bus and a car at the junction of Hollybush Hill and Snaresbrook Road outside the Eagle Pub show the full extent of the impact.

Three ambulances attended the crash at around 1.50pm last Thursday (June 23).

A pregnant woman was taken to Whipps Cross Hospital with neck pain, while several passengers on the bus were treated for minor injuries.

Ken Wright, 70, of Malcolm Way took photos of the scene.

He said: “I was in my garden when I heard a massive thump.

“Police and ambulances were there very quickly and the road was closed for quite a while.”

Police are treating the incident as an accident.

But as someone remarks in the Comments box under the story

What is the car doing on the wrong side of the road? Looks like the car was trying to turn right, and underestimated the speed of the bus.

This is an extremely plausible hypothesis. The bus was heading north along Woodford Road (A11). The car driver appears to have been turning right into Snaresbrook Road. Provided that the bus driver was not exceeding the speed limit, the car driver was at fault, if this was the manoeuvre. In which case the driver was guilty of a calculated recklessness and should have been charged with a road traffic offence.

Of course if one of the drivers was taken ill or there was mechanical failure, then this was indeed an accident. But I think we can be reasonably certain that those were not the causes. One or both drivers did something wrong; the fault was probably entirely the car driver’s and the bus’s CCTV should have established the circumstances beyond reasonable doubt.

This crash happened not far from the spot where Barry Mannakee died. Although that death has attracted conspiracy theories, the circumstances were unambiguous – a motorcyclist who was speeding collided with a woman driver who emerged from a side road without first properly checking that the road was clear. If you think that such episodes are choreographed by MI5 you need to try cycling. You will then discover that although the roads are full of assassins it’s not personal – they are just people in a hurry.

A much more interesting issue than conspiracy theories involving MI5 is why the security services have never taken any action against ‘Captain Gatso’ and the people behind the Motorists Against Detection website, dedicated to petrol bombing speed cameras. Something which is apparently going to get worse now that Mike Penning, the ConDem Minister for the Slaughter of Vulnerable Road Users, is ordering that the figures for speed camera enforcement be published:

'The police are concerned that certain cameras may be vandalised more than they are now, but that's not a reason not to do it.'

Street furniture news

2011-07-03T18:17:00.002+01:00

Coming soon to a footway near you...

A Government Minister has clashed with BT over thousands of 5ft-high metal broadband cabinets cropping up in outlandish positions in the middle of residential streets.

Paul Burstow accused the telecom giant of behaving ‘outrageously’ after an elderly constituent woke to find one of the green broadband boxes blocking the view from her front window.

Which is somewhat hypocritical since it was a Conservative government which allowed the siting of such objects outside the remit of local councils.

In a civilised society local councils should have been given the power to determine the location of these artefacts. A civilised society would also insist that they be located in the carriageway, on a chicane, to provide additional motor vehicle calming and to provide local residents with some form of compensation for these ugly objects.

The cabinets, appearing across Britain at the rate of 200 to 300 a week, allow a fibre-optic connection to be made between the local telephone exchange and homes and businesses in the area.

Their dimensions vary, but most are 66in high, 47in wide and 17in deep.

BT does not need planning permission, except in conservation areas, to install the boxes.

BT Outreach are also good at obstructing cycling access, like here on Buxton Road, Walthamstow, the other day. Look closely and you’ll see that the van is displaying a blue badge. I think it’s marvellous that people with a severe disability can find employment driving vans, going up ladders and fixing telephone wires, don’t you? Well done BT!

160 mph driver shown mercy

2011-07-03T18:14:00.000+01:00

A businessman who reached the take-off speed of a passenger jet in his sports car to outpace police chasing him was spared jail yesterday.

Officers estimated that during a chase on a wet dual carriageway at night, Tobias Baker, 34, drove his Aston Martin Vantage at 160mph, the take-off speed of a fully loaded Boeing 757.

But after Baker admitted dangerous driving yesterday, a judge showed mercy on him after he claimed he would be unable to care for his sick wife if he was jailed.

Judge John Devaux told Baker:

“Happily there was no accident as a result of your driving and there was therefore no actual damage or physical injury to anyone.”

So that’s alright then…

The sentence has outraged road-safety campaigners, however.

Caroline Perry, of road charity Brake, said: “This person has shown a blatant disregard for the safety of others and could easily have killed someone.”

Chief Inspector Andy Dawson, of Suffolk Police, described Baker’s speed as “quite extraordinary”.

He said after the case: “It is disappointing to see that this man drove in such a hugely irresponsible fashion. It is lucky that he did not seriously injure or kill himself or others.”

However, if you are a male defendant appearing before Judge Devaux having been convicted of an offence which would normally result in imprisonment, it helps to have a wife who really needs you.

Bike Week's thrilling climax in York

2011-07-02T18:04:00.002+01:00

Yesterday saw a cycle parade through the streets of the historic city following a special service for cyclists at York Minster, while the racecourse played host to a range of bicycle themed attractions over the weekend, with an added feature being the arrival of a prototype Olympic torch on Saturday

Yes, please find a special place in your prayers for anyone who cycles in York and has to put up with infrastructure like this.

Clifton (A19). The Audi (above) is parked perfectly legally. And not far away, on the other side of the road, the cycle lane is also subordinated to the greater priority of supplying parking spaces on a direct route to and from the city centre.

Obesity rates soar among London’s children

2011-07-02T17:59:00.003+01:00

Obesity rates among children are higher than the national average in 30 out of 32 London boroughs.

Westminster has the most severely overweight 10- and 11-year-olds, with almost a third classed as obese, closely followed by Southwark and Newham, with over a quarter

Cyclist down on Lea Bridge Road, Leyton

2011-07-01T13:49:00.005+01:00

A MAJOR route through Waltham Forest was partly closed this morning after an accident involving a woman cyclist and an ambulance.

Emergency services were called just after 8.30am to the junction of Lea Bridge Road and West End Avenue in Leyton.

The cyclist, in her 30s, was treated for leg injuries and taken to Whipps Cross University Hospital.

Judging by the photos on the local newspaper's website, the bike was hit from the rear.

This section of Lea Bridge Road was identified by Waltham Forest Council’s 2011 LIP as the one with the highest crash rate involving casualties of any in the borough.

Meanwhile in the City today a tipper lorry collided with a woman cyclist.

Me, I was somewhere else – heading westbound on cycling-friendly Forest Road (A503). Conditions as below.

(Below) About 300 metres further on I encountered this car. It frequently parks here, quite legally, because it is displaying a blue badge. Even though this cycle lane is on a major route it is perfectly legal for the driver to park here for up to three hours, then drive round the block and come back and then park for another three hours, ad infinitum.

Some drivers think they can overtake you when you are passing this car, which is why I always pull out and ‘take the road’. Unfortunately a small minority of drivers regard this as a provocation and blow their horns and scream abuse.

Doubtless the blue badge on this car is legitimate, though in the wider context it is worth bearing in mind that

for the past two years, motorists criminally misusing blue badges have been able to drive around Waltham Forest without running the slightest risk that any action will be taken against them by the only two agencies empowered to act – the council and the police.

The real problem on Forest Road is the infrastructure. It would be perfectly feasible to build Dutch-style cycle tracks on this section of very wide road which carries huge volumes of motor vehicles in and out of London. The same applies to Lea Bridge Road.

Meanwhile

Tributes were paid today to a London cyclist who was crushed to death by a lorry as he cycled to work during the rush hour.

Father-of-one Peter McGreal, a web manager and trade union representative at London Metropolitan University, died four days after he was struck.

It is understood that the lorry was turning left and Mr McGreal was in its blind spot.

Charlie Lloyd of the London Cycling Campaign said: "We're concerned that the junction within the last two years has been turned from a narrow one-way street into a wide two-way street that has become a rat run for lorries."

‘the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year’

2011-06-30T17:19:00.001+01:00

The road casualty figures for 2010 have just been published

As far as cyclists are concerned

Although deaths and injuries fell significantly for motorists, pedestrians and motorcyclists, the number of cyclists killed rose for a third consecutive year. Deaths rose by 7% from 104 in 2009 to 111 last year, although the DfT says the number of cyclists rose by just 0.5%.

In fact the figures rose in all groups for cyclists - killed, seriously injured and slightly injured. But, hey, don’t let that get you down. With the right approach to statistics you can see that this is good news, since

In 2010, the likelihood of being killed while cycling was 54 per cent lower than in 1990.

This is reassuring, is it not?

Sadly there are still some cyclists who go round in ordinary clothing. It’s time to knock some sense into the heads of these self-destructive fools with this expert advice:

"Cyclists can help themselves by making sure they ride appropriately and make use of safety equipment and clothing. Wearing high visibility clothing, even during daylight hours, can reduce the likelihood of a collision and if one does unfortunately occur, the use of a protective helmet can significantly reduce the extent of injury."

Just fancy that! The cycling news the CTC didn’t mention

2011-06-30T12:12:00.003+01:00

The CTC website has a regularly updated page of online links to cycling news and stories from the national and local press, entitled ‘News From The World Of Cycling’.

I was glancing at the news for this month when it suddenly struck me what was missing.

The CTC rolling news is filed in chronological order. If you scroll down you’ll see that there were four links listed for 2 June 2011. These were (i) a story from the Independent about Olympic athletes who missed out on tickets, (ii) and (iii) the same story about how most British workers take less than half an hour to get to work, from the Daily Telegraph and Guardian Work blog, and (iv) a letter in the Oxford Times about statistics relating to cyclist-pedestrian collisions.

The next day’s cycling news, 3 June, recycles a classic local authority press release, bringing exciting news from oop north about tempting young people out of their cars: People will be urged to take up options, such as walking and cycling with grants for the introduction of bike parking at factories and offices.

There is no more news linked to until 8 June, when there’s a link to this inspirational revelation: The CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, has named Britain's best-performing pothole-filling council - and the award goes to Cheshire West and Chester Council. CWCC filled all 47 holes that were reported by cyclists via the CTC's www.fillthathole.org.uk website.

What I am leading to is very simple. There were two items relating to cycling in a national newspaper on 3 June which the CTC’s ‘News From The World Of Cycling’ chose not to mention. The first one was this and the second one was this.

Funny, that, wouldn’t you say?

A rubbish bike stand

2011-06-30T08:25:00.000+01:00

Old Church Road E4

Down memory lane: Blackfriars Bridge and the CTC

2011-06-29T19:55:00.001+01:00

Blackfriars Bridge, north end, as it is now.

Vicki McCreery had predicted the journey home might kill her. Days before she was crushed by a five-ton bus, she had told friends a new cycle lane over Blackfriars bridge in London would claim lives.

As hundreds of people gathered for her funeral in north London yesterday, relatives demanded to know why a lane meant to protect cyclists from other road users had cost the 37-year-old physiotherapist her life. The lane had been in place barely two weeks before she died almost instantly following a rush-hour collision near the crest of the bridge

Safety campaigners are stunned that permission was granted for a narrow cycle lane sandwiched between two fast-moving carriageways and one of London's busiest bus routes. Worse still, a steady convoy of buses is allowed to veer across the thin path reserved for cyclists.

Roger Geffen, campaigns manager at the national cycling body, the Cyclists' Touring Club, said a cultural shift was needed so that local authorities considered cycle lanes more carefully. They had 'been left to the most junior planning officers, and we need better guidance on dealing with major junctions.'

Tony Russell, who advises councils on safer cycle lanes for the club, said: 'There are situations where designs put the cyclist in a more dangerous position. Most accidents, though, are caused by motorists not being careful.'

David Arditti:

The article brings up problems with the position of CTC in the statements by Geffen and Russell. The author rightly attacks the British systems compared to the far better segregated bike engineering of The Netherlands and Denmark. But CTC has always tended to oppose the segregating of cyclists and motor vehicles on British roads, wrong-headedly (in my view) fearing it that creates more danger and marginalisation for the cyclist - when anyone who looks at the situation in continental countries can see that exactly the reverse is true - the danger and marginalisation occur here, where we try to combine cyclists and motors in the same unsegregated space, not there. Russell saying "most accidents are caused by motorists not being careful" is a silly statement as it misses the point. We all know that. The object of cycle engineering is to protect cyclists from the mistakes of motorists.

The CTC, of course, thinks that putting a cycle lane between two lanes of motor vehicles is best practice.

Another lorry driver hits a cyclist and doesn’t stop

2011-06-29T19:48:00.002+01:00

POLICE are appealing for witnesses after a teenager was knocked off his bike by a HGV in Heysham.

The 18-year-old was cycling from Morecambe towards Heysham along the A589 Heysham Road when he was clipped by the HGV at the junction of Seymore Grove at around 7.30am today (June 29).

The HGV didn’t stop and the teenager, who is from Heysham, fell from his bike suffering a number cuts and bruises. He was treated at Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

And now here’s the story of Mary Strutt.

Photo: The Courier

She recounted the terrifying moment when the lorry struck — crushing her beneath.

"I was conscious throughout and I felt the wheel running over my body," she said. "I heard the grinding, crunching sound as it went over me — and every time I close my eyes I hear it again.

"I thought I was going to die and so did the doctors. When I initially asked if I was going to survive, they said it was too early to tell."

Hackney Road tipper lorry crash cyclist dies

2011-06-28T17:32:00.004+01:00

Photo: East London Advertiser

The news has been released today that the cyclist hit last week by a tipper lorry which did not stop, died in hospital on Saturday.

It turns out that he was from the London Borough of Waltham Forest:

Paul McGreal, 44, of St John’s Road, Walthamstow was cycling in Pritchards Road, Haggerston, when he was in collision with a tipper lorry at the junction with Hackney Road at 8.30am on June 21.

He was taken to hospital in a critical condition and died on Saturday (June 25).

The yellow lorry did not stop at the scene but was traced later the same day.

The driver, a man in his 50s, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.

Mr McGreal

was thought to be on his way to the London Metropolitan University where he worked as a graphic designer.

He had suffered severe leg and pelvic injuries and died at the Royal London Hospital on Saturday.

An inquest is expected to be opened tomorrow.

It is believed he leaves behind a partner and toddler.

The M74, TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest

2011-06-28T16:08:00.002+01:00

When Mark speaks of Their 1960s-style obsession with accommodating motorised traffic at all costs is to the detriment of all others. he is referring to Transport for London. But the same transport culture rules in Glasgow, where any short term ‘benefits’ supplied by the M74 ‘improvement’ will be cancelled in the future: "In the longer term, Glasgow can expect slower journeys, worsening air quality and more cost to the local economy." Glasgow’s modal share for cycling seems to be one per cent or less – no surprise there. But, hey, there’s a way to turn that around: Let everyone know why cycling is healthier, greener, smarter and fairer. Yes, that’s the UK cycling infrastructure avoidance industry frothing away in its traditional fashion.

Meanwhile in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, the car-mad council is about to re-engineer High Road Leyton and High Road Leytonstone to create more parking bays on the footway and create lots of exciting new bike lanes, every one of which will incorporate a special ‘dooring’ facility. Yes, with a modal share of zero point eight per cent there is still work to be done to discourage cycling – or for that matter walking to school.

(Below) The recent Olympic heritage ‘improvements’ to Cann Hall Road, Leyton, designed to increase vehicle speeds, deter cycling and maximise on-street car parking by seizing footway space for free car parking.

BMW hit and run killer driver will soon be back on the roads

2011-06-28T15:54:00.002+01:00

Elizabeth Beach-MacGeagh, 20, was knocked down as she crossed a street in Barnet by a BMW doing 45mph in a 30mph zone. The driver, Aryeris Angelis, sped off without stopping.

But Angelis has some very powerful friends, which is why he was only banned from driving for two years.

Eight cyclists on Blackfriars Bridge: what they tell us about cycling culture in Britain

2011-06-27T11:07:00.006+01:00

I happened to be on Blackfriars Bridge on Friday afternoon and I took some photographs. When I looked at them it occurred to me that they reveal a lot about cycling in Britain.

First of all, take a look at the pic above. Four cyclists. They were riding fast and with confidence. Nearest are three male cyclists and in the distance is a woman cyclist. Two of the cyclists are wearing helmets; three are wearing high viz gear; the three males are all riding road bikes with skinny racing tyres, no panniers, and no mudguards (except for a rear mudguard on one bike). Two of the male riders have drop handlebars. The woman is riding a more normal utility bike with panniers. All four cyclists are riding alone; they are almost certainly commuter cyclists. They were probably all in the age range 25-35. Two of the male cyclists are wearing lycra shorts. In one sense the cover of the latest issue of London Cyclist is spot on. People like this dominate London cycling (a statement which is a description, not a moral judgement).

A moment later I spotted four more cyclists coming in the same direction over the bridge, all on hire bikes. They were evidently a family - mum, dad, and two young teenage children. My guess is that they were visitors to London. They were cycling in the relaxed fashion you see in the Netherlands - a cluster of people in normal clothes, without high viz gear or helmets.

The only difference, of course, is that they were shunning London's cycling infrastructure and using the footway instead. Their logic is not hard to understand: cycling on the footway felt safer, there were no traffic lights to hold them up, and they could cycle alongside each other. And who knows - maybe they made it as far as Westminster Bridge, and had an agreeable pedal back along the South Bank to their docking station. Or maybe they met someone in a dark uniform who gave them penalty notices, deterring them from ever going near a bike again in nasty, scary London...

By the way, look carefully at the pic above and you'll see a powered two-wheeler displaying an 'L' plate, who has already discovered that using a mandatory cycle lane to undertake motor vehicles is something you can do tens of thousands of times without fear of any enforcement.

(Below) Only a very confident and assertive cyclist is prepared to cycle in conditions like this:

Blackfriars Bridge is a cycling route which is not only subjectively very dangerous, but is also objectively dangerous:

The sign refers to this crash.

The battle of Blackfriars Bridge is, of course, now notorious.

What is to be done? Personally I think retaining a 20 mph speed limit and tinkering around with the design at the north end would be a very dismal outcome which would fail to change the reality that Blackfriars Bridge is only for the fearless cycling commuter. In that sense people like Futilitarian are quite right. But if TfL and Boris Johnson aren’t even prepared to yield even on the issue of a 20 mph limit, then pragmatically this makes a very good battlefield, because it draws together a very broad range of opposition. Victory for a permanent 20 mph limit on Blackfriars Bridge can then be followed by the demand for this speed limit on ALL the central London road bridges. This would need to be followed by more protests, demanding enforcement, because the existing 20 mph limit is plainly being flouted. After that? Cycle tracks on all the major routes in London. Easy-peasy.

Incidentally, notice how much of the 'traffic' in the background to these photos consists of black cabs.

Signs should always be sited where they least inconvenience drivers

2011-06-26T22:46:00.000+01:00

Holland Street SE1

Waltham Forest council turns a blind eye to drivers obstructing Leyton Bike Shed

2011-06-25T13:13:00.001+01:00

Last October I blogged about Leyton Bike Shed, comparing its provision with that found in the Netherlands. My post carried a photograph showing minicabs parked in the ‘no waiting at any time’ area, which includes the entrance to the shed.

When I went to the shed last week I was not unduly surprised to see the same two vehicles parked where they shouldn’t be (above). And the door, which is supposed to be closed, was wide open yet again.

And the automatic door is broken. The word ‘automatic’ has been crossed out and replaced by a handwritten sign which reads: UNLOCK + PUSH DOOR – PLEAS [sic] CLOSE AFTER.

And there you have it. A shoddy, substandard, poorly maintained facility, grossly inadequate in its provision, access to which is protected by parking restrictions which are daily flouted by the same vehicles. Very British-cycling, wouldn't you say?

It occurs to me that the Leyton Bike Shed may well turn out to be the closest mass cycle parking facility to the Olympic site. And who wouldn’t want to leave their Brompton here and trudge off to the Olympic ‘Village’?

And talking of the Olympics, CycaLogical has spotted an aspect of the orbital Jubilee Greenway which I’d missed:

The other miraculous thing about this world-class cycling route is you won't have noticed any roadworks going on during its construction. That's because they haven't built anything. In the words of Jim Walker, director of the Jubilee Walkway Trust, "We have worked out there is already a route you can follow - it's not something we have had to build." Awesome.

Bollard horror

2011-06-25T13:06:00.003+01:00

Personally I think they’re kinda cute… But it seems unlikely they will ever be installed, since reaction has been adverse.

What is striking about this scene is its barbarism. If you build a long straight road like this you should not be surprised that drivers will speed. Putting up a crappy little sign that reads SCHOOL will not affect their behaviour (even if they notice the sign, since some drivers will be concentrating on sending or reading a text message).

The pedestrian crossing consists of a traffic island, which doubles as a pinch point for cyclists.

This is a road designed to prioritise fast, smooth, convenient driving at the expense of safe, convenient walking and cycling. Few parents will want to let their child cycle to school on a road like this.

The final insult, evidently, is that parents doing the school run park on the pavement, which is what the bollards are primarily designed to deter. The local council could, if it wished, obtain powers to hand out tickets to drivers who park on the footway. But Conservative councils in particular are on the side of anti-social behaviour when the offender is a motorist. The police could take action but British policing has long been institutionally car supremacist.

In any case, debates about bollards entirely miss the point. Cosmetic additions to car-centric streets never address the core issues.

And if you design cars with a top speed of 146mph, you should not be surprised if journalists on major national newspapers get caught driving them at 40 mph in a 30 mph zone – nor that this criminally dangerous behaviour in the vicinity of a local cycling blogger is turned into an occasion for some laddish just-having-a-larf humour. From his article it seems that this is not Wollaston's first speeding conviction. And see if you can spot the difference between the headlines in the website version and the hard copy:

more Olympic Greenways fantasy cycling

2011-06-23T22:50:00.003+01:00

Today’s Evening Standard brings news of an £8 million, 37-mile Jubilee Greenway network that will guide spectators wishing to cycle between venues during the 2012 Games.

The map is deeply misleading. There is no continuous cycling route in the north east section. The Greenway route heading west from Becton terminates at the High Street, Stratford. It does not continue to the Olympic site but is closed until late 2014 by work on Crossrail. Cyclists wanting to access the Olympic Park will have to dismount and cross the road. However, one lane has been designated as a special Olympics lane which you enter on pain of a £200 fine. It is not clear how cyclists will cross to the other side. If they are somehow permitted to cross the multiple lane High Street, cyclists will then be expected to push their bikes along the footway for 400 metres to Pudding Mill Lane and follow a diversion to the Olympic site. At present parts of this diversion include the sign CYCLISTS DISMOUNT. However, when you get there you will apparently not be allowed to take your bike inside the site for ‘security reasons’. So you then cycle on to Victoria Park in Hackney, lock your bike, and walk back to the Olympic site.

In other words, don’t waste your time cycling to the Olympics. Go by jet pack.

(Below) The Greenway used to go in a straight line to the Olympic site. You can see the Olympic stadium in the distance. But now the route terminates at Stratford High Street and will not re-open until late 2014.

(Below) Welcome to the Stratford High Street urban motorway. If you enjoy cycling among lorries, this is the place to come.

Bike Week Blues

2011-06-22T21:19:00.001+01:00

(Above) Bike week propaganda.

(Below) Bike week reality. High Road Leyton.

Bicycle Association chairman Phillip Darnton said: "We know that 77 per cent of people in the UK own a bike, but only 14 per cent use them regularly and a major barrier to people getting back on two wheels is often something as simple to fix as a dodgy brake or puncture.

Andrew Pankhurst, from Cycling Scotland, thinks that learning to fix bikes will get more people cycling. He said: “So many people have got bikes languishing in sheds, gathering dust, when just a few minor repairs would get them back out on the road again.

“People have concerns about the safety of cycling, but statistically it’s one of the safest modes of travel. It’s maybe more the fact that people don’t feel confident on the roads when they’re sharing it with other traffic. Cycle training is a fantastic way of getting your confidence up on a bike.”

The two examples cited above are perfect instances of what David Arditti means when he writes:

The longer Team Green Britain, or any of the other organisations in the Environment Issue Avoidance Industry that is most of UK cycle campaigning (and, yes, this means you, CTC and CCN) [Cyclenation, whose new Honorary President is Philip Darnton] keeps wittering on about how people are not cycling because they "lack training", or "lack confidence on the roads", or "don't know what to wear in wet weather" or "can't find the right routes" or "lack the skills to repair a bike", or any of these other bits of patronising tosh, the longer we delay solving the problem, the more years go by with derisory levels of cycling in the UK, the more money we waste on ineffective cycle promotion and pointless studies of cycling, the more people take up cycling and then quickly give it up again, the more people die of avoidable obesity-related health conditions and from the effects of pollution, the more we destroy our cities and countryside with motorways and concrete and car-parking, the more we live in de-humanised car-centric communities

In 2008 Cycling Scotland carried out a survey into why cycling had such a very low modal share in Scotland.

When looking at the solutions people suggested for overcoming the barriers identified for cycling, the overwhelming request seems to be for segregated cycle facilities, away from traffic where possible.
The graphs show that while there is a widespread opinion among cyclists and non-cyclists that some form of cycle specific route would encourage them to cycle more, the preference is clearly for off road facilities. Both groups felt that these would be more likely to achieve a higher growth in cycling levels.

Having made a discovery that was unpalatable to its notion of cycling, the organisation then, by a curious sleight of hand, converted it into something else altogether:

One thing that is interesting to note is that despite large numbers of people saying they would like to see less traffic on the roads, their suggested solution to this is segregated cycle lanes. People seem to assume that the prospect of reducing traffic on the roads is not a realistic option, but if we are to act on the wishes of a public who want less traffic, then maybe traffic reduction should be something for us to consider.

Ah, yes – making ‘traffic reduction’ the priority instead. Well we all know where that came from.

Now here’s something which needs to be printed out in large capital letters and stuck on the wall above the desks of the aforementioned encouragers of cycling.

When I asked Klaus Bondam, the Mayor of Copenhagen, what was the most difficult but most important decision he has made to make Copenhagen cycle friendly he gave a clear answer: replacing car parking space with spacious, segregated cycle lanes.

Oh no, sorry. Today's Independent has a better idea for Bike Week.

How to feel confident in the saddle
Feel protected That means wearing a helmet

Yeah, right. See if you can spot the helmet in the photo in the previous post below.

Hackney Road cyclist critically injured by tipper lorry which did not stop

2011-06-22T15:05:00.008+01:00

Photos: London 24

On Friday an elderly pedestrian was killed on a pedestrian crossing on Marylebone Road by a tipper lorry. The victim has now been named.

Yesterday a cyclist on Hackney Road was critically injured by a tipper lorry whose driver did not stop at the scene.

Police are appealing for witnesses to a serious road accident in East London yesterday when a cyclist was seriously injured in a collision with a tipper lorry.

The cyclist, in his 40s, is in a critical condition in hospital following the collision during the morning rush-hour in Hackney Road, Bethnal Green, at the busy junction with Prichard’s Row.

The lorry did not stop at the scene, Scotland Yard confirmed, but has since been traced. The driver has been arrested in connection with the investigation and given police bail pending further enquiries.

The crash happened

in East London at crossroads that nearby residents say has been made dangerous by road ‘improvements.’

The cyclist was taken to the Royal London Hospital with severe leg and pelvic injuries after the accident in Hackney road, Bethnal Green, outside the Days Inn Hotel.

Families on Bethnal Green’s Minerva Estate nearby are worried about safety where the road crosses Temple Street and Prichard’s Row and want Tower Hamlets council to take action.

“They widened Prichard’s Row when the hotel opened two years ago. This is when the danger started, because they moved a pedestrian crossing further away—which means traffic coming onto Hackney Road from the side streets gets blocked and can’t go ahead or turn right.

“As soon as drivers see gaps, they put their foot down and shoot across—you don’t see them and they don’t see you until the last second.”

The families say they have complained for several months.

Transport for London: promoting asthma in children

2011-06-21T20:18:00.003+01:00

The health of tens of thousands of children could be at risk after it emerged that more than 1,100 schools in London are within 150 yards of busy roads responsible for high levels of traffic pollution.
The schools, from nurseries to secondaries, are near roads carrying 10,000 or more vehicles a day - a level leading European scientists claim in a new study could be responsible for up to 30 per cent of all new cases of asthma in children.

The figures, uncovered by the Campaign for Clean Air in London, also revealed that there are 2,270 schools within 400 yards of such roads.

Campaigners today accused Mayor Boris Johnson of failing to protect the health of Londoners and said he "has to act immediately to reduce the total number of cars on our roads".

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor's director for the environment, said: "The Mayor recognises that road pollution is a serious health issue for Londoners of all ages."

"He is doing all he can to tackle it across the whole of the city

Which is bullshit on an epic scale. Two examples of how TfL and the Mayor are promoting motor vehicle flow at the expense of pedestrians, cyclists, clean air, children's health, and a civilised London:

The Vauxhall Gyratory:

TfL's presentation reflects the Mayor's obsession with smoothing traffic flow rather than achieving modal shift towards more sustainable transport modes. Apparently removing the gyratory isn't a goer as it would require a 36% reduction in motor traffic in the morning forcing motorists to reconsider their mode of transport.

Unimaginable, doncha see. It's not desirable to reduce mindless motor vehicle use; we need to maintain the diesel particulate spewing, one person in a car, noisy central London experience.

The Tottenham Hale gyratory:

TfL justifies the incredible decision to remove an existing pedestrian crossing on the equivalent of an urban motorway.

The decision to remove this pedestrian crossing facility has not been taken easily. We considered how many people use the crossing as well as how many vehicles pass through the junction. We want to ensure that pedestrians have safe, convenient footways and crossing points. However, we also have to ensure traffic flow is maintained.

Which as far as cycling is concerned, amounts to what another cycling blogger has referred to as the historical lack of any coherent cycling policy for London, going back for at least the last 30 years.

(Below) It would be totally impossible to introduce a segregated cycle path on New Oxford Street because its three lanes are needed for empty taxis. Transport planning in London is all about balance, you see. And smooth traffic flow.