Long Term changes in public opinion towards motor traffic in London, and the death of Dr Katherine Giles due to collision with a lorry while cycling in Victoria

The tragic death of a brilliant young scientist in Central London a few days ago, killed by a lorry driving into her as she cycled through Victoria, reminded me how important it is that cycle infrastructure in our capital changes for the better (and how appallingly dangerous Victoria is to cycle around). The fact that this death warranted in-depth coverage from the BBC, ITV, The Times, and Sky News, as well as an immediate political response from Boris Johnson (viewable in this ITV video), also had me thinking slightly positively about the future of cycling in London.

I read Ian McEwan's novel Saturday (2005) recently and was struck by how unconsciously car-centric it was. If you haven't read the novel, it's basically a day in the life of a neurosurgeon whose lives a financially confortable life in Central London. On the day in question this main character, whom we are repeatedly led to admire by McEwan, chooses to drive to his local sports club in a large Mercedes in order to play a game of squash. His squash partner, an anaesthetist, drives too.

This is despite that the day in question is 15 February 2003, the day 2 million people entered London to protest against the Iraq War, blocking many major roads. This is despite the fact that the neurosurgeon in question runs the London marathon every year and is highly concerned with keeping his fitness up. This is despite the fact that his squash partner, an anaesthetist colleague, goes to the gym every day. This is despite the fact that both men live in Central London, where their squash club is also located, meaning they could easily walk, jog, cycle, take the tube, or even a bus.

Yet despite all of these 'push' factors our admirable neurosurgeon rejects any form of remotely active travel and chooses to navigate the various road blocks around London instead, returning after a gruelling squash game to park his car right outside his house in order to avoid any walk to his front door.

Later in the novel McEwan describes in an overwhelmingly positive way what would I would imagine to be in fact an extremely tedious drive through traffic from Warren Street out along the Westway to Perivale. He notes the joy his 'man-of-our-times' protagonist feels at moving around London in his car with the noxious fumes (to which the neurosurgeon is himself significantly contributing) locked safely outside.

Finally towards the end of the novel McEwan's protagonist contemplates both the extremely high volume traffic of the Euston Road and the incessant buzz of planes flying over London into Heathrow as if both were completely unalterable facts of our urban existence, and more strikingly, things to be savoured and enjoyed by a 'Good Londoner'.

The Euston Road. Not something to be savoured or admired. Something to be changed.

Obviously this all says a lot about McEwan, but I would argue it also says a lot about public opinion in 2005, and in the previous decades. In 2013 I would be surprised to find an equally successful novel that employs a similarly car-centric protagonist.

Because, in fact, both the Euston Road and Heathrow are negative aspects of our urban lives, and both are alterable. The revolutionary new designs for Parliament Square and Blackfriars by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) show that change is possible all over our city. The current storm over potentially expanding capacity Heathrow also demonstrates that urban dwellers are becoming less and less accepting of the harmful effects of local airports. 

Moreover, the implementation of large scale infrastructure projects such as The Tube upgrade, Crossrail, London Cycle Hire, and Boris Johnson + Andrew Gilligan's Vision for Cycling in London (all implemented after 2005), show that politicians are now willing to invest huge amounts of money and political credibility into financing incredibly ambitious non-motorised methods of transport  at least in urban areas.

Crossrail is costing the government billions of pounds and will increase London's entire  non-motor transport capacity by 10%.

City-changing improvements in cycle infrastructure cannot happen without large scale public support behind them, and the ideologies that they embody. This public support didn't exist in the second half of the twentieth century which is one reason we have so many horrible gyratories in London. However, there are hopeful signs that car-centric thinking is becoming less popular and we will have the political power to implement big changes in London in the early twenty-first century.

After all, all these gyratories were all installed in the last 50 years, so they can surely be taken out again in the next 50 years?

It's important for all of us to realise, unlike McEwan's protagonist from 2005, that urban motorways like the Euston Road are not enjoyable, nor immutable facts of London-life. Neither is having the luxury of on-street parking right outside your house (unless, of course, you are mobility impaired). In fact, luxuries such as this can easily accumulate and kill you through obesity.

The parking restrictions in large amounts of Central London next Wednesday for Margaret Thatcher's funeral (organised with barely a week's notice) will be implemented with no trouble at all. So why do we accept the lie that such high levels of inner-city car parking are 'necessary' the rest of the time?

Similarly, many major roads will be closed for much of the day for Thatcher's ceremonial funeral next Wednesday. Will business grind to a halt? Will money as we know it cease to exist? No. London will be fine. If you closed the inner-city tube lines on a weekday... then you'd have problems.

Thatcher's funeral will see all motor traffic removed from a large swathe of Central London on a weekday with barely a week's notice. Any problems? No. So why do we 'need' this motor traffic capacity the rest of the time?

We should remember that, like on-street car parking, the high level of motor traffic in Central London that we have at present isn't a 'necessity' either.

Ironically, the passing of Thatcher marks the point where we are going to see a similar decline in her incredibly flawed policy of promoting motor-traffic at the expense of all other forms of transport in our cities.

Thanks in part to pressure from cycling bloggers, as the BBC's Tom Edwards has highlighted, change is coming (an overwhelming show of hands at a recent London Cycling Campaign Policy Forum reflects the newly positive outlook of cycle campaigners).

Warren Street, a street which Ian McEwan's protagonist drives down in Saturday (2005) is now closed for traffic 'Except Cycles'. If McEwan wrote the same novel today his lead character would probably cycle or take the tube instead of driving in order to travel around London. Photo courtesy of Cyclists in the City.

Saturday proves it. Camden proves it. Hackney (where more people now cycle than drive to work!) proves it.

Disgustingly cycle-toxic politicians like Kate Hoey, Richard Tracey, and Mark Field need to watch out or they may not be in office come 2015...

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Dr Rachel Aldred, Chair of the LCC's Policy Forum, discusses the same phenomenon in a very interesting post on her blog, as do both City A.M.'s Alexander Jan and The Guardian's Oliver Burkeman in recent articles.

There is also a fantastic recording of Andrew Gilligan's talk and Q&A at the first London Cycling Campaign Policy Forum (8/4/2013) which you can listen to or download (right click on the link and then click 'Save Link As...') here.

Finally, here is a link to Boris Johnson speaking extremely intelligently and cogently about his new cycling policies on The Daily Mail (no less!)... who'd have thought it...

Conservative AM Richard Tracey's cretinous contribution to the London Assembly's investigation into cycling in London

Having just watched the live feed of the London Assembly's investigation into cycling in London today (11/9/2012), I felt obliged to record the idiotic comments of Richard Tracey (a Conservative London Assembly member, representing Merton and Wandsworth) for posterity on the internet.

Here's a photo of Conservative Richard Tracey looking substantially less fat than he did on my web-feed today. Maybe he could take the advice of the Danish Cycling Embassy and prolong his life by 6 years by cycling to work and losing a few pounds?

The London Assembly had very intelligently invited two experts, from Holland and Denmark respectively (two countries where cycling is both much safer and much more widely practiced than in London), to speak on the issue of cycling in London. The Dutch and Danish experts made many incisive comments about the importance of building safe cycle infrastructure, for instance segregating cycle traffic away from fast moving motor traffic to provide real protection for cyclists. Unfortunately Richard Tracey's contribution did not match their intellectual standard.

Among other questions Richard Tracey seemed very concerned to know just how large Copenhagen and Amsterdam were in terms of population size. Given he's paid £53,439 a year to be a London Assembly he perhaps could have gone to the trouble of consulting wikipedia for this information before the meeting in question, and subsequently avoided wasting everyone else's time. But no. He's too lazy. He's Richard Tracey.

Having established the population sizes of Copenhagen and Amsterdam (500,000 and 1,000,000 respectively) Mr Richard Tracey then jingoistically remarked that they were both smaller than Birmingham, the UK's second largest city. Looking around the conference room for encouragement for his completely irrelevant comments, Mr Richard Tracey then pondered if Birmingham was indeed the UK's second largest city, or whether it might be Manchester. Mr Richard Tracey then concluded that he was initially correct. It was Birmingham. [Again, none of this was remotely on topic. What on earth is this man being paid £53,439 a year for???]

If Mr Richard Tracey was aiming to make a point about journey distance (and hence undermine a pro-cycling argument by conjecturing, even though it has been conclusively proved otherwise, that Londoners make so many long-distance trips that a high modal share of bike use is impractical) he completed missed the mark by asking about population size instead. Was this a bit of completely pointless Capital City Cock-Wagging by our elected representative? ["My capital city's bigger than yours! Thanks for taking all the trouble of coming to London and giving us the benefit of your vast experience! Joke's on you cause my ears were closed you European Pricks!"] Just to clarify those are Richard Tracey's words, not mine.

In fact, the extremely high population density and comparatively small road space of London actually makes a very high modal share of cycling eminently practical, for a reason so simple that even Mr Richard Tracey can understand it: bikes take up far less space on the roads than cars. In London we have lots of commuters and a strictly limited road space. Therefore we need more cyclists in we want to ease inner-city congestion.

This photo (borrowed from the excellent Cyclists in the City) shows about 20 rush-hour cyclists fitting into a space that would only hold 2 cars. Imagine how much worse the traffic would be for Richard Tracey if all of those cyclists were in their own cars, creating a 20 car traffic-jam stretching far back over Southwark Bridge.

Having watched Richard Tracey wasting about 10 minutes trying to undermine the London Assembly's distinguished guests because their cities were smaller than his, I thought he would now shut-up. But, unfortunately he didn't.

Moreover, can you guess which reputable newspaper Mr Tracy decided to draw on for his next 'intelligent' contribution? Was it The Times' CycleSafe campaign, highlighting the shockingly high numbers of cyclists that have died on our streets? Was it The Independent and The Guardian repeatedly calling for London's authorities to do more for cyclists. Was it The Economist cogently (as always) arguing that cyclist numbers in London have been increasing while cycle infrastructure has been staying static, and massive investment is now needed to make cycling safer and therefore more attractive to Londoners? Or was it even The Telegraph arguing that cycling should be our national sport, and listing the many ways in which regular cyclists pay an astonishingly positive contribution to our economy?

No. It was The Daily Mail which published an article about a (possibly fictional) woman that got hit by a cyclist. Now, I am in no way condoning anti-social cycling (if this incident did indeed occur). But Richard Tracey is seriously missing the issue here. Insultingly so. If we are to talk at a public meeting about safety incidents involving bicycles in London, should we not be remembering the many people that have lost their lives on Bow Roundabout before we consider anyone that may or may not have been brushed by a bicycle on a pavement? These people are dead now. The Daily Mail columnist's mother (if she exists) is still alive. Surely those that died on Bow Roundabout represent a much bigger issue?

But no. Richard Tracey continued on, quoting from online media created only for the most intellectually limited members of our literate populace, and called for compulsory bicycle number plates so the anti-social perpetrators of these crimes could be caught. Mr Tracey, if you're going to put the focus on justice, how about calling for greater punishments for the van driver who killed a 12 year old boy last Thursday? Or the driver that seriously injured a Paralympic cyclist last year? David Cameron spoke yesterday at the Olympic Athletes' Parade about his son now - in the post-Olympic aftermath - wanting to be "like Bradley Wiggins". But did David Cameron mention any safety measures that would make his son, and many other sons like him, allowed to have the option of cycling safely segregated from life-threatening high-speed traffic, like the aforementioned van driver? No, David Cameron didn't.

Caroline Pidgeon, the leader of the LibDems on the London General Assembly (pictured here), does genuinely understand cycling and cyclists in London. But she is unfortunately hampered by having to work with buffoons like Richard Tracey. The man's an idiot and I'm quite frankly amazed that one single Londoner voted for him in 2010. I am even more shocked that the London Assembly have allowed Tracey to be a member of the Transport Commitee.

To return to my final point with regard to Richard Tracey and the London Assembly meeting. When Dr Rachel Aldred and our Dutch and Danish friends were very cogently outlining the limitations of many of the current Cycle Superhighways (especially CS2 which runs, as blue paint, from Bow, down Mile End Road and Whitechapel Road, to Aldgate), Richard Tracey was extremely keen to know what the "trade-offs" would be to installing safe, protected cycle lanes for Londoners to use. Clearly Richard Tracey was cacking his pants about the impacts of any slight reduction to London's motor traffic capacity.

But as Dr Aldred very acutely observed, many of London's key roads were closed or constricted during the Olympics. Did we have chaos? No. Not at all. London ran better than many of us have ever seen it run. Moreover, all available studies have shown that road congestion simply expands or contracts to meet road capacity. So, just as building the massive M25 did nothing to alleviate London's long-term traffic congestion, because traffic simply increased to accomodate it, limiting traffic flow on many major London carriageways by the installation of segregated cycle lanes is not going to lead to an explosion of road congestion; traffic levels will simply decrease to accomodate the reduced capacity. So would Richard Tracey kindly stop cacking his pants? No.

I've written here in defence of Boris Johnson's cycling credentials. I argued that the biggest opponents to safe cycling in London are local politicians, often councillors, that have no interest in installing safe cycle infrastructure in their boroughs, where they have almost complete control of street layout since, by law, the local council is the local highway authority. This morning at the London Assembly we heard of Newnham Council's depressingly successful opposition in 2010 of TfL's, and Boris Johnson's, plan to extend Cycle Superhighway 2 - literally just 'blue paint' - into their borough. We also got to see, and hear, one of these anti-cycling councillors 'in action' at the council table: Mr Richard Tracey.

An example - on Whitechapel Road - of the horribly obstructive blue paint of the CS2 that Newnham Council so righteously opposed. I wonder how the traffic can flow at all on this street with that barely visible blue box getting in everyone's way.
Future Cycle Superhighway construction needs to be a hundred times more ambitious.

If you think that Richard Tracey needs to bring his views up-to-date with the 21st century - and lets not forget this a man who was in Thatcher's Tory Cabinet of the 80s, a government which designed most of the 'killer-junctions' which TfL are now improving - drop him an email at Richard.Tracey@London.gov.uk and do please let him know just how regressive and unhelpful his views are.

If you are a resident of Wandsworth or Merton you could also contact Richard Tracey as a constituent of his through www.writetothem.com

After all, we live in a democracy and cyclists using online communication channels recently managed to get Richard Nye to publicly apologise for saying "the only good cyclist is a dead one". Richard Tracey's road management policies aren't much better than Richard Nye's anti-cyclist editorials, and unlike Mr Nye, Mr Tracey has far more power to do cyclists actual harm through these policies.

So I think it's worth all of us dropping Mr Tracey a line at Richard.Tracey@London.gov.uk and letting him know that his idiotic contributions to today's debate simply weren't good enough.

(I didn't see the start of the debate so if I missed any more puerile questions from Richard Tracey do please add them in the comments section. Politicians like Richard Tracey, and Conservative MP Mark Field, need to be brought to public account with the cycling community, so we can all stop simply 'blaming-Boris'.)

Those interested can also watch a recording of the entire meeting here: http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/webcast/transportcommittee110912.asx (Richard Tracey begins his idiocy at about 1hr 40minutes) or read a transcript of the meeting here: http://www.london.gov.uk/moderngov/documents/b6950/Minutes%20-%20Appendix%202%20-%20Transcript%20Cycli.pdf?T=9

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Other posts on Richard Tracey being a buffoon: 

- A Personal Note to Conservative London Assembly Member Richard Tracey by Cyclists in the City - Nov 2011
- The chutzpah of Richard Tracey by As Easy As Riding A Bike - Jun 2011

In Defence of Boris Johnson's cycling credentials

EDIT (25/3/13) - 6 months on from writing this blogpost I feel my qualified support for Boris Johnson has been vindicated. 

Change is coming!

In early March 2013 the Mayor, along with his new cycling commissioner Andrew Gilligan, announced a whole host of innovative measures to improve cycle safety in the capital, primarily through segregation, segregation, and segregation.

A superb analysis of the Boris Johnson's 'Vision for Cycling in London' by Cyclists in the City can be found here.

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The more I inquire into local cycling infrastructure projects in my area the more I have come across local officials telling me, "well, the Mayor supports this, but we don't want to go through with it so it hasn't happened".

Amateur photo from today (2/9/2012). How many of London's other politicians are regularly seen cycling?

Among other projects, I have been told there is strong support from Mr Johnson for putting segregated lanes on major carriageways in Kensington and Chelsea, and for permitting cyclists to cycle in Hyde Park between Lancaster Gate and Queensway (allowing a 'full circuit' route to be created for cyclists travelling around Hyde Park so they don't need to use Bayswater Road). The proposed cycle lanes have been blocked by local authorities worried about restricting road space on what are already 4-6 lane roads while the cycle route through Hyde Park has been blocked by Royal Parks officials worried about the hazards new cyclists might pose to pedestrians. These people seem frustratingly oblivious to the far greater hazard posed to cyclists now as they are routinely forced to share lanes with motorists overtaking them at over 60km/hr down Bayswater Road and other London carriageways that lack even the most rudimentary cycling infastructure.

If Boris is being given a pro-cycling spin even by his antagonists in local government then he must to some extent be fighting the good fight on behalf of London's ever growing number of cyclists. Indeed, it is very easy to overestimate the amount of power that Mr Johnson actually has as mayor; the London mayoralty has only existed since 2000 and is much weaker constitutionally than its equivalents in America, which has a far more federalised government, granting significantly more power than we do to authorities sitting between the local and national. Even TfL only run 5% of London's roads. Essentially, if the local authorities don't want their local Cycle Superhighway to be segregated then it won't be segregated. End of.

So this post is a plea, of sorts, for London's cycling community to not give BoJo quite so much ire. Or at least direct that ire somewhere else.

I'm not saying that every decision or comment that Boris has made in relation to cycling in London has been a good one (although I am an umitigated suporter of the Boris Bike scheme and its rapid expansion).*

But all of my inquiries into local cycling infrastructure so far have uniformly given the distinct impression that the real opponents to good cycle infrastructure are the (often Conservative) local councillors and MPs of Central London who see a cyclist doing 25km/hr in a Royal Park as an intolerably dangerous hazard not to be countenanced, but a regard a motorist doing 48km/hr (30mph) down a residential street as a basic human right not be curtailed with speed bumps or poxy 32km/hr (20mph) speed limits.

Space for even an advisory bit of 'blue paint' on Bayswater Road (pictured here)? Local councillor says no. It would hold up the taxis, which are probably empty anyway. Plus local councillor needs sufficient spare space to have a large chevroned area in the the middle of road serving no purpose whatsoever. (these people are idiots).

It is these councillors and MPs (Conservative Richard Tracey AM - London Assembly - I'm looking at you...) who are repeatedly opposing cycle lanes which might restrict the constant flow of Taxis, Minicabs, and Chelsea Tractors (all stupidly large vehicles) through the already narrow streets of Central London.** They don't seem to realise that getting more people on bikes will actually create road space since someone cycling somewhere takes up so much less road space than someone driving somewhere.

It is these councillors and MPs who, despite all their talk of an 'Olympic Legacy', oppose the removal of on-street car parking to make way for safe and direct contra-flow cycle lanes, because losing a fraction of the borough's parking spaces would make it more difficult for their constituents, and themselves, to easily keep 2 or 3 cars in Central London.

It is these councillors and MPs who, quite frankly, couldn't give a solitary shit about creating more cycle racks in locations that integrate with other transport networks and discourage thieves.

It is these councillors and MPs (Conservative Mark Field MP - London and Westminster - I'm looking at you...) who still cling to Thatcherite pro-automobile policies from the 80s that are completely unsuitable for 2012 due to various geopolitical and societal changes over the last 30 years; e.g. global fuel squeeze, highly politically volatile oil-rich Middle East, desire to exit Afghanistan and Iraq, climate change, pollution in cities, road congestion in cities, national recession, growing health problem of obesity, global green movement, significantly improved London public transport system, and the lack of a British-owned volume car maker that lobbies for demand stimulation (although we do now produce very successful Brompton Bikes which improved cycling infrastructure would certainly stimulate demand for).

Therefore, it is these councillors and MPs that the cycling community should (primarily) be having a go at. Not Boris. 

In fact, you can even do it yourself, using www.writetothem.com to contact your local politicians about their cycling infastructure policies in your borough. 

With local elections coming up in 2014, and the popularity of utility cycling set to continue increasing over the next two years, these regressive politicans might even get nervous and start publicly collaborating with TfL's and Boris's repeated efforts to build safe Cycle Superhighways through their boroughs... So email them now and let them know you're not happy with their current policies!

(comments welcomed)

* i.e. the whole 'smoothing traffic flow' idea is deeply flawed; faster traffic logically means more pedestrian and cyclist deaths (but on bright side it seems like the Mayor - hopefully - might have dropped that now).

** I know that Taxis and Minicabs very occasionally operate at capacity take 4-5 people but the vast majority I see on my travels around town either have just the driver, or the driver and one single occupant. It is a ridiculous management of street space to have so many of these barely filled vehicles constantly bowling around our city, especially during a recession when the vast majority of Londoners can barely afford taxis anyway.

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EDIT (18/9/2012): Sir Malcolm Rifkind (who I originally targeted in this article as the 'anti-cycling' Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea) has today written to me saying that he is actually supportive of proper cycle infrastructure, pointing to this article in the Hammersmith & Fulham Chronicle - published ten days after this post - where he states that:

"a long-term paucity of proper cycling infrastructure has forced many cyclists onto busy roads, where they are bound to come into conflict with drivers of cars"

Arguably he's thinking clearer than CTC (The National Cycling Charity) when it comes to highlighting the patent and obvious flaws of an approach where cyclists integrate with traffic on busy roads, although the headline of the article in question - 'Let's encourage cyclists who obey laws of the road' - is admittedly rather too Daily Mail for my tastes (and has been parodied here).

In fairness, I believe I unfairly misrepresented Sir Malcolm when I wrote this article, and that he's clearly leaps and bounds ahead of some of his Conservative colleagues, such as the infamous Richard Tracey. 

Still, would be nice to see his signature on The Times's #CycleSafe Early Day Motion (EDM) and British Cycling's Justice Review Early Day Motion (EDM), and as he's my MP I'll keep on pestering him until he signs them; as you should all do with your MPs too.