Cycling - what is needed for London

Jeremy F.Parker 3 Jan 98

• encouragement,
• education,
• engineering, and
• enforcement.

• research.

Encouragement

We must get bikes on the present road system now. We must encourage people who are almost cyclists to get on a bike. we must encourage people who ride in one place to ride in others. We must encourage people who ride short distances to ride longer distances.

1. We must do this by distributing the London bike map to as many public places as possible. It should be on display

   - in the window and on an inside wall of all outdoor equipment sellers and ski shops, especially those trendy ones in South Kensington and Covent Garden
   
   - at all main line railway terminals
   
   - anywhere where one drops off or picks up cars: car hire places, garages, park and ride locations etc.
   
   - on the wall of gyms (especially in front of the exercycle machines)
   
   - on notice boards beside such places as the Thames Path and by bike paths in the Royal Parks
   
   - at the Design Centre bike exhibition, and at exhibitions of new architecture
   
   - and of course in the window and on the wall of every bike shop and bike centre

2. We must revise and reprint the old LCC NW London and NE London bike maps, to supplement the present LCC map and correct its south-of-the-river bias.

3. We must reach new arrivals in London and give them the idea of cycling. We should leaflet every university fresher, and have estate agents leaflet everybody who moves house. The leaflets should be geared mainly towards cycling in general, although they should also carry a subtle recruiting pitch for the LCC

4. We must encourage riding by emphasizing the selfish benefits of cycling: To hell with the environment. Ride because it is fun, fast, healthy and life prolonging, because it enables you to show off your superiority in skill, and knowledge, and because it enables you to own equipment more unnecessary than a Rolex watch.

5. We must encourage riding by developing a standby plan, in advance, for publicity and help in case of such emergencies as tube strikes, or pollution episodes, to advise and help potential cyclists. We must encourage people to take rehearsal bike trips to check the routes out, just in case.

6. We should try to get the CTC/Bart's "Guide to Cycling in and around London" and the Cycling World "Cycling in London" revised and reissued

7. we should try to get a book published along the lines of the AA's "Town Tours of Britain" We could call ours "Town Tours of Britain" also, but ours would be for bikes, instead of for pedestrians, like the AA's.

Education

1. We must encourage riding by encouraging the use of the `London Cyclist' to educate our members in good urban riding techniques. I understand that John Franklin has has already been invited to contribute an article. We should try and get articles from other authors as well: Patrick Field, Rob Van der Plas, Howard Boyd, John Allen of Boston, John Williams of Missoula, Montana, John Forester of Palo Alto, John Schubert from Pennsylvania.

   We could also use London Cyclist not only to tell our members about good cycle facilities, but also to warn them against advocating facilities which are not so good

2. We should define what knowledge a "competent twelve year old", the hypothetical customer of the London Cycling Network, should have. "Nothing" is not an acceptable answer. The knowledge of the graduate of a RoSPA course seems appropriate. Children may well be better cyclists than adults. They have had less opportunity to pick up misinformation.

3. Once the knowledge is defined, we must try to ensure that children, and their parents, actually have that knowledge, and that other adults have it too, particularly those who influence others.

4. We should start an LCC seminar/course on dirty urban cycling tactics. BUT we should limit admission strictly to those who can prove that they have taken a course, and passed, in proper cycling techniques

5. We must encourage riding by trying to kill all publicity that says cycling is impossible under present conditions. We must kill such campaigns as: you can't cycle without: spacer flags/tabards/3M's reflecting material/helmets/Sam Browne belts etc. we must kill the idea that normal people can't cycle except on special paths/lanes/routes/facilities

6. We must encourage riding by encouraging the idea that saying that,"cycling is dangerous" is equivalent to saying that, "I need to learn more technique", and equivalent to saying that, "I do not know, as yet, how to take care of my children".

7. We must encourage riding by emphasizing, with a poster campaign in cooperation with road safety officers, that cycling is safe, and that cycling can be safer, by being in control:

   - be safe by keeping away from the kerb
   
   - be safe by controlling the traffic behind
   
   - be safe by helping lorries to get round corners
   
   - be safe by learning to negotiate right turns and left filters
   
   - be safe by stopping cars from cutting across you
   
   - be safe by learning to surf the roundabouts
   
   - be safe by reading a book, or taking a course
   
   - and teach your children to be safe in traffic as well

Engineering:

1. Emphasize that the entire road network is the London Cycle Network, and should be treated as such. It should stop efforts to define some different network.

2. Encourage traffic congestion in London, to help cycling compete against other modes.

3. Emphasize that what is needed to improve the road network for cyclists is spot improvements, not the definition of some roads as "routes"

4. Support traffic restriction, by such methods as traffic cells, rather than supporting traffic calming

5. Support counterflow bike lanes on all one way streets, except small gyratory systems. Redesign all counterflow bus lanes to allow bikes.

6. Convert most bike lanes, and their adjacent general purpose lanes, to "wide curb lanes"

7. Drop campaigns to "take roadway width from cars", and replace it by a campaign to restripe roads into fewer lanes, but with the curb lane wider. Taking away parking causes moving traffic to move faster, and the sporadic illegal parking means that it does not really provide extra width for cyclists. Taking width away from moving cars must not be used to wall cyclists into inferior bicycle Bantustans. Wide curb lanes are better than bike lanes.

8. Abolish roundabouts, or else get their diameter and roadway width reduced.

9. Install more traffic islands at intersections to make it easier for bikes to turn right or cross.

10. Rate, for ease of cycling, all London streets (except minor back streets), as many American towns have done. Publish the results as a map. Use the information to help decide where improvements are needed, or conversely, not needed.

11. Monitor London's streets for amount of cycling, and compare this with the amount there "should" be. Treat absence of cyclists as an indication that changes are needed, rather than treating the presence of cyclists (as the old GLC did) as being such an indication. Models do exist, and can be improved, to work out what sort of bike flows might exist, just as models exit for predicting car flows

12. Restore London's drinking fountains and public toilets

13. Erect more flagpoles and weather vanes, to tell us what the wind is doing

14. Re erect the milestones on London's old turnpikes, so we can calibrate our bike computers.

15. Put distance markers round the Outer Circle in Regents Park, the Ring/Carriage Drives/Park Lane in Hyde Park, the carriage Drives in Battersea Park, and the roads inside Victoria Park, Finsbury Park and Richmond Park. Close off the westernmost carriageway of Park Lane to cars on Sundays. Encourage posy road racers to use all these parks, as they use New York's Central Park.

16. Introduce tourist routes, similar to the Jubilee walk for pedestrians, to be marked by a blue line in the road, as used for the London marathon. There should be a leaflet for the routes, describing the sights along the way. Two possible routes have already been devised,and could be introduced very quickly, the "Sights of Central London" circular route from the CTC/Bart's "Guide to Cycling in and around London", and the "Tour of the Sights of London" route from Cycling World's "Cycling in London". (The back of the latest LCC map has a couple of routes also, but I don't think those are as good, unless you are a Sloane ranger, or unable to get away to real country.)

Enforcement

1. Support police campaigns against riding without lights at night, running red lights, and riding on the pavement.

2. Start a campaign of radio equipped decoy bikes to entrap bike thieves. It should be an objective to reduce bike theft by enough to allow short term parking without locking the bike.

3. Cameras on buses to deter cars from entering bus lanes are not enough. Fixed cameras are needed as well, to detect cars when only cyclists are legally using the bus lane.

Research

We need answers to the following questions, which apparently the neither the government nor the councils are trying to answer. Now that the London Cycling Network is one third complete we should be observing the completed sections to see what lessons they can teach us.

1. Why are people so much less willing to cycle for other kinds of utility trips than they are to commute by bike?

2. Are the distances people are willing to walk for a trip consistent with the distance they are willing to ride? (I believe the answer is yes). What would make them increase those distances?

3. Are the accident reductions claimed in the LCN cost benefit study starting to happen? What kind of accident effects is the LCN having?

4. Do people shift routes towards or away from LCN facilities? Do they take up cycling more or less if facilities exist? And what kind of facilities?

5. Does traffic calming or restraint have any effect on cycling in London?