Two Londoners killed in two weeks as a direct result of TfL and Boris Johnson's appalling and inhumane management of London's roads. We need dedicated safe cycle lanes and we need them before even more Londoners are killed. #space4cycling

Photo from the scene this morning where a Londoner was killed by a lorry driver while riding a bike through Holborn. Via @BezTweets

This morning another Londoner (later identified as Alan Neve) following TfL's advertising and choosing to go from A to B by bike was crushed to death under the wheels of a lorry; this time it was at Holborn, right in the heart of Central London.

TfL continue to prioritise 'traffic flow' over the safety cyclists, but don't seem to realise that the amount of congestion caused by serious collisions like these clogs up the road by far more than their inhumane 'traffic flow' policies speeds up traffic. The roads would be faster for everyone - including motor traffic - if safe, segregated cycle lanes were built.

Boris Johnson said after Philippine De Gerin-Richard was killed by a lorry driver while riding a Boris Bike at Aldgate earlier this month that instead of separating cyclists from fast-moving motor traffic (especially 20 tonne HGVs) the real way to stop the relentless killing and maiming of Londoners who choose to travel by bike was to simply get more cyclists on the streets:

"the thing that makes cycling safe in London, is when people have the confidence to do it in numbers; the more people [on bikes] you can get on the roads, the safer it's going to be for everybody."

As today's awful fatality shows, Boris Johnson was talking absolute crap.

Encouraging more cycling in London in current conditions will lead to more people like Philippine De Gerin-Ricard (who was a regular and experienced Boris Bike user) being needlessly crushed to death under the wheels of London's motor traffic. Photo via Evening Standard.

If you mix even more cyclists with deadly and irresponsibly driven motor vehicles and you simple find even more Londoners being killed by motorised traffic.

This is what we are seeing now.

Police are already investigating whether the absolutely atrocious road design of Cycle "Superhighway" 2 (on which three cyclists have been killed in the last two years) led to Philippine De Gerin-Richard being killed. This is because rather than building a segregated cycle lane at Aldgate - as is the norm in Tokyo, New York, and countless other major cities - TfL instead force cyclists and traffic to share a 'general traffic lane' which simply results in Londoners being squeezed to death under the wheels of 20 tonne lorries.

In Holborn, TfL have chosen to do exactly the same thing.

The safe (and illegal!) route for cyclists travelling from Theobald's Rd to Oxford Street is to travel down the contra-flow bus lane on Vernon Pl then Bloomsbury Way (pictured on googlemaps below). There is a 20mph limit here, little room to overtake and the buses are often slowing to stop at bus-stops, so cyclists are (by London's laughable standards) relatively safe.


View Larger Map

However, TfL and the Metropolitan Police force those choosing to travel by bike (and thus creating space for others on the tube etc.) to take a four-lane gyratory route through Holborn instead, fining those Londoners (like myself) who put safety first and actively avoid roads on which they could very well be killed.

Excellent illustration courtesy of Andy Waterman

As Andy Waterman explains about the route which TfL and Boris Johnson currently force cyclists to use:

"Going round involves dropping onto Holborn and negotiating four lanes of traffic. I've done it every day since [almost being fined for taking the safe route] and it makes even me, an experienced cyclist nervous. Motorbikes buzz you, taxis rush red lights to get through and huge trucks obliterate the view. It's hellish."

Today, another Londoner has died because not only have TfL consistently failed to build a safe cycle network through Central London, they have made it against the law to use the only relatively non-lethal route that exists.

I very much hope that TfL are prosecuted for manslaughter, both for the three Londoners killed on the Cycle "SuperHighway" 2, but also for this latest, avoidable, needless, tragic death.

In response, the London Cycling Campaign are holding a Protest Ride tomorrow (Tuesday 16 July) at 6.30pm starting at Russell Square.

If you are reading this, you really should attend.

Current plans for development of both Aldgate, Bayswater, and Haymarket include plans for virtually no segregated cycle lanes whatsoever, despite tens of millions of pounds being spent on each of these schemes and a TfL 'Cycling Vision' budget that is near £1 billion. It's a complete lie to say there isn't the money to make our roads safe for cycling. The authorities just need to stop designing them in ways that freely mix cyclists and lorries.

Unless you want to be the next Londoner to be crushed under the wheels of an HGV, you need to make it clear to the Mayoralty and local authorities that forcing cyclists to share 'general traffic lanes' with lethal and deadly motor traffic is no longer good enough.

2000 Londoners rode through Aldgate last Friday to protest at a lack of #space4cycling.
Boris Johnson's response: absolutely nothing. And another Londoner killed as a direct result of London's road design on Monday morning. Grim.

Why the BBC's 'War on Britain's Roads' was complete rubbish

Many people have criticised the BBC's recent 'War on Britain's Roads' programme so I know I'm hardly the first person to be saying these things. Yet, the programme was so infuriatingly banal that say them I must.

While being an hour of reasonably well-produced television, 'War on Britain's Roads' was brutally misinformed as to the real reasons that cyclists and motorists come into conflict on our streets. The programme went for the 'human-angle', interviewing both cyclists and motorists involved in incidents and eventually implicitly concluding that we should all get along better and perhaps lorries should have more mirrors and sensors on them.

A taxi driver very dangerously cuts up a cyclist. Rather than this just being condoned out-of-hand so we can all move on, we are interested treated by the BBC to 'both sides of the story'. This is bullshit. The taxi driver was at fault. He shouldn't have passed the cyclist so close. He could have killed the cyclist. Why can't this just be accepted as a fact?
If the cyclist can knock his frame to tell him he's too close, then he's too close. There shouldn't be any debate over this.

This is all 'true'. But it's also the sort of trite rubbish that a child could come up with simply by imagining a road that's being used by a cyclist, a motorist, and an HGV.

There is no pathological, eugenic difference between Britons and Hollanders.

The reason Dutch people do not have a 'War' on their roads is that Dutch roads are designed so that cyclists and motorists can both use the roads safely.

This is done in many ways. One of these is putting in cycle lanes on most roads where cars are doing 30mph or more which prevents motorists becoming angry about cyclists slowing them down when they want to drive at 30mph or above.

Do the BBC recommend implementing more and better cycle lanes, even implicitly? 

No. They seem to imply instead that motorists should perhaps maybe calm down a bit if they don't have space to overtake, and cyclists should maybe just bite the bullet if they get hit because they're 'taking control of the road'. (and on that note, can you think of a more idiotic and unnecessarily inflammatory way to describe cycling in the primary position?)

Similarly, after focusing on the tragic story of a young woman who was killed by a left-turning lorry, did the narrator draw the conclusion that enforcing a London-wide ban on HGVs that lack industry-standard mirrors and motion sensors would be a good idea?

No. It was simply left to the woman's bereaved mother to pursue her solo-campaign with the lorry companies that still fill our streets with dangerously ill-equipped vehicles. But why should this be one woman's responsibility? Anyone can get killed by a left-turning lorry. It's everyone's responsibility. Yet the BBC's opinion seems to be that people who (idiotically?) choose to cycle are some 'other tribe' that need to fend for themselves and don't come in for the basic rights of government-led safety that any normal citizen is entitled to.

How many of these cyclists have a head-cam? None. The BBC failed to mention that the agressive head-cam footage used for the programme was completely unrepresentative of both the cycling style and experience of the majority of Britain's cyclists who rather surprisingly don't choose to cycle on road-bikes at 30mph.

I could go on all day about the problems with the programme, but I'll end with a final thought:

Throughout we were treated to a fair range of clips of motorists behaving badly, then cyclists behaving badly, in what I presume was an attempt to give a 'balanced view' of the situation. Yet, did the narrator mention that in the case of motorists behaving badly cyclists die (119 so far in 2012; a five-year high). And did the narrator mention how many motorists have been killed by cyclists jumping red lights? I confess I don't know the exact figure off the top of my head but I imagine it's somewhere around zero.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not condoning red-light-jumpers for a second. But there is, at least for my money, a complete difference both in degree and consequence between the crimes of bad driving and bad cycling.

I would have preferred it if BBC's 'War on Britain's Roads' could have pointed this fact out. Or if one of the cyclists interviewed had had the presence of mind to do so when confronted with the extreme footage of a messenger race at the end of the programme, instead of blithely suggesting that a "punch in the face" was the solution to the 'everyday' problem of a bicycle courier competition held for a cash-prize 6 years ago.

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If you'd like to make a complaint about the programme you can do so in about 2 minutes here. (The BBC do at least have a very quick and easy online complaint-making system in place...)

For two much more thorough and better researched pieces on the same subject please also see:

- As Easy As Riding A Bike's excellent recent article: That 'war' on Britain's roads - the statistics
- Peter Walker's latest piece in The Guardian: BBC's War on Britain's Roads: even more fake than we feared

Some thoughts on 'SkyCycle': a further defence of Boris Johnson's cycling credentials

Clearly we can all take as read that the SkyCycle idea publicised earlier this year is absolute rubbish and neither practically nor financially viable. However, I would argue that putting it on the table was actually a very shrewd move by Boris Johnson and co at TfL.

Snazzy (if completely unrealistic) computer animations like this help capture the tabloid imagination.

Unlike, for instance, a proposed protected cycle-lane (which all cyclists would much more prefer) SkyCycle plans are 'sexy' and thus got significant tabloid coverage. This publicity constructively helps to put cycling on the map to the general British populace as a viable mode of transport, and reinforce the idea that cycling conditions in this country are currently substandard and something needs to be done.

Furthermore, by giving the impression (whether correct or not) that they have pursued and then discarded the SkyCycle scheme, if Boris Johnson and TfL then turn around and say (as they do appear to be doing now) that what we actually need are early-start cycle-only traffic lights and cycle bus stop By-Passes, then their arguments have significantly more clout with those that oppose improving road layout for cyclists. They can say, 'look, we've looked into a number of options but a protected cycle lane and reduced motor traffic capacity is really the only solution'.

Perhaps I'm being too kind to Mr Johnson, but I don't think it's wise for cyclists to underestimate the depth of anti-cycling feeling that a politician like Boris has to negotiate in order to deliver any lasting road layout solutions; especially when these very solutions will often result in increases to average motor traffic journey times in London.

Surprisingly good plans from TfL for Bow Roundabout Junction Review

TfL have just released some rather radically effective new plans for Bow Roundabout. They propose:

1. Cycle-only early-start traffic lights with a cycle-only Advance Stop Box which will be 18 metres deep. This is an unsatisfactory compromise solution that has been effectively critiqued by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) here.

2. Cycle Bus Stop By-Pass. This is, by contrast, a very impressive idea since it will prevent cyclists coming into conflict with buses at the bus stop on the approach to the roundabout. Buses are a inescapable feature of London's traffic and as such are not going to go away anytime soon. However, cycle bus stop By-Passes are a very rare, even non-existant, sight in London at present. The implementation of a successful and popular Cycle Bus Stop By-Pass at Bow Roundabout could pave the way for their installation across London's busier roads which is really a very exciting prospect indeed.

(For pedestrians getting off buses that need to cross the By-Pass, TfL are also intelligently proposing a specific pedestrian crossing on the cycle lane which is visible on the map below. This is a much better idea than having a general-crossing free-for-all for the duration of the By-Pass because it limits pedestrian-cyclist conflict to a specific area and gives cyclists a specific location where they need to look out and give way to pedestrians, thereby reducing the risk of pedestrians and cyclists not seeing each other.)

Map of proposed changes. Click here for a PDF download of the image.

I would urge, in no uncertain terms, that anyone interested in Cycling in London visits https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/betterjunctions/bow_roundabout and takes the 'Online Survey' sometime between now and 19 Dec 2012 in order to let TfL that they are doing the right thing.

It's just as important to let know organisations like TfL know when they are doing stuff right as it is to let them know when they are getting it wrong (c.f. the closure of Upper Ground covered impressively well by Cyclists in the City).

That way we can hopefully see more Cycle Bus Stop By-Passes (and Cycle Early Start systems) being rolled out all over London; i.e. not just at junctions where people have to die before TfL start doing anything about the road layout situation.

#cyclesafe

Doubling of Boris Bike Fares from 2 January 2013 - DISASTROUS move by Boris Johnson and TfL

EDIT (25/4/13) - As predicted... Boris Bike rentals drop by a third in the first three months of 2013 (and that's despite an overall increase in the total number of journeys made by bike in London, and large amounts of 'cycling publicity' caused by our new Cycling Commisioner)

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From 2 January 2013 daily access to the London Cycle Hire Scheme will double from £1 to £2, weekly access from £5 to £10, and yearly access from £45 to £90.

This is an absolutely atrocious move by Boris Johnson and TfL at just the point when cycling in London generally, and usage of the Boris Bikes, seems to be on the rise.

As this blog has previously argued, one of the principle advantages of the London Cycle Hire Scheme (if not the principal advantage) is the low cost of renting a Boris Bike, making it in almost all situations the cheapest way of getting around London short of walking.

Increasing the charge for access fees by 100% - while bus and tube fares rise by only 4.2% - will completely destroy London Cycle Hire's position as the cheapest form of transport in London, and make single bus and tube journeys, in certain situations, a cheaper way for a Londoner to get from A to B than renting a Boris Bike.

Similarly, raising the price of annual subscriptions will make it much harder to woo new members to the scheme and may convince many existing customers (like myself) to choose not to renew their membership next year.

Yearly membership to London Cycle Hire to double from £45 to £90 from January 2nd 2013.

While their might be a very slight uptake is usage from certain sections of the upper-middle classes that will inevitably see a more expensive product as worth buying simply on account of its higher price, the overall and unavoidable effect of this price hike will be to further to cement an image of cycling that is centered on the rich, white, middle class.

This is exactly what cycling shouldn't be.

Cycling is the cheapest, greenest, and healthiest mode of transport known to man. It should therefore be associated with all social groups, especially lower-income segments of the population.

Instead Boris Johnson and TfL's latest decision will only further entrench a completely unnecessary and invalid view of cycling that is restricted to 'lyrca-louts' and 'arsehole-bankers'.

Moreover, if the doubling of rental costs results in a dip in Boris Bike usage, this fare increase could very well lead to an increase in cycling deaths and fatalities in London.

Over the past few years large numbers of Boris Bikes in Central London have helped to calm traffic and make the streets safer for everyone. This benefit to all Londoners that choose to cycle (or walk) will be lost if Cycle Hire usage declines.

This blog has championed Boris Johnson's efforts in the past, but this fare increase is idiotic, incompetent.

Worse, it will in any case be ineffectual, since too few Londoners use the Boris Bike scheme to contribute anywhere near the billions of pounds needed for the continuing tube upgrade (and £180 million which the new routemasters cost). The fiscal burden should instead be borne by the tax payer, and tube and bus users themselves.

If you believe that the planned price rises are ridiculous and cretinous, please feel free to drop Barclays Cycle Hire, Boris Johnson, and TfL an email and let them know your thoughts.

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Please see also similar responses from The Evening Standard, I love Boris Bikes, and The Telegraph on this issue.