The Media and the Message

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What with the ongoing Times Cities Fit For Cycling campaign, and the significant debates surrounding the Parliamentary Enquiry into Cycling, it’s easy to forget the typical media take on cycling. 

Yesterday we welcomed members of Cambridge Cycling Campaign to Bremen for a tour of the city’s infrastructure. The fact that the Campaign contacted us, rather than the ADFC or the local authority, is itself a significant reflection of Bremen’s lack of official international engagement. But we were more than happy to offer a semi-outsider’s narrative of why our home city is so cycling friendly.

The tour itself took in a series of examples of infrastructure that explained the historical and cultural stories behind Bremen’s remarkable status as the German cycling city – one of the first cycle paths (early 1900’s) along Am Wall; the rather tired and ageing cycle paths of the 1920’s that are suffering from tree roots, the site of the great battle of the 1970’s, Mozartstrasse, that stopped the building of an urban motorway through a residential district and helped transform the city’s transport policy; the resultant calming of the area through a series of one-way streets for motor traffic, all passable two-way for cyclists; the provision of decent-quality cycle paths along all major routes; and some of the most recent developments, such as a new protected cycle lane on Herdentor, created through the conversion of a full-width traffic lane. 

Throughout the three-hour tour, we were followed by a very friendly camera crew from Radio Bremen, who wanted to produce a short piece for that evening’s local news transmission. Now we were so caught up in preparing the content of the tour – you know the stuff, history, culture, technical standards of infrastructure and so on – that we quite overlooked the media take on what we were doing, and how it might be redacted by our nice TV crew.  Radio Bremen, along with the wider trend in broadcast television, is increasingly interested in populist angles, amusing titbits that make the audience smile, but might not impart much knowledge about the subject in question. But sometimes it works.

Let’s have a bit of fun ourselves, shall we, and consider the piece that went out last night her in Bremen:

Viewers who understand German will have already taken in much of what is to follow, but for the rest here is a brief explanation.

The opening intro describes Cambridge as the city with the highest number of Nobel Prize winners in the world. But here comes a delegation from the city who want to learn something from us, ie German cycling culture. We cut to the first shot from the report – of James, the most eccentric-looking (ie typical English prof type) of the delegation (as it happens I would add one of the most intelligent and thoughtful). Cue Elgar music and the first voice over “This here is for many, many Bremer the worst of all – a bicycle journey around the Stern roundabout….But for the lobby group from Cambridge, it’s a paradise”.

James explains to camera why it is good (the cross-hatching separating cyclists from traffic), and that it’s something worth trying in  the UK. First statement of disbelief from the reporter, given that this roundabout is an accident hotspot. But bear in mind, the whole point of introducing the cross-hatching, which was added just 3 years ago, is to try to reduce these accidents. We filmed previous visitors (from Newcastle Cycling Campaign) to this roundabout last year:

Another member of the Cambridge Campaign, Klaas Brumann, then explains a key point – that Bremen motorists are much more mindful of cyclists than their English counterparts, and this helps at the roundabout.

On to another scene, and another Cambridge campaigner, Martin, marvels at the quality of Bremen cycling infrastructure. Second statement of disbelief from the reporter. “Strange, we Bremer are not so enthusiastic. The cycle paths are too narrow, and haven’t been improved enough”. The dearth of cycling infrastructure in England is then explained.

We then cut to a shot of a row of parked kids bikes, probably outside a kindergarten. We explain how good infrastructure means freedom for kids on bikes, even at the age of 4. And for German viewers, it is explained that young kids “don’t cycle”. Not strictly true, of course, they “play” on their (normally stabiliser-equipped) bikes, but don’t go to nursery on them.

The piece ends with a funny quip about one universal characteristic of cyclists everywhere – their hatred of car drivers. We return to James, who declares that “pedestrians deserve the best surface, cyclists the second best, and motorised vehicles the worst. Motorists don’t need a flat surface.” Even so, the reporter is happy that visitors to Bremen have come, seen, and enthused about cycling in the city.

Did it work? I suspect the piece made Bremen viewers smile at the stereotypical English James. And in between the smiles, perhaps it was helpful to remind people that they’ve got, by international standards, a good quality network of cycling infrastructure. Even we can get too caught up in the internal debates around the Bremen Traffic Development Plan, and forget the solid grounding that underlies much of what is done in Bremen.

What we don’t see in this particular edit is the scene right at the beginning of our tour, when we are showing the map of Bremen cycling infrastructure to our visitors, and the looks of disbelief on their faces.

As we explained, every red line on this map represents a cycle path. And every busy, main road has a cycle path alongside it. This is something that campaigners in the UK can only dream of. Yet it is now built into the DNA of Bremen (though not all German) traffic planners. Busy main roads must provide for good quality, safe and attractive cycling infrastructure. This is what makes Bremen a cycling city. This is what the Cambridge visitors really appreciated.

March 2013 members’ monthly meeting

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Spring is on its way, and our bikes and new family accessories are about ready for the good weather. But meanwhile, we need to campaign for more cycling-friendly infrastructure in Darlington. We shall shortly be launching a revamped website that highlights what is needed to make cycling mainstream – Cycles, Cyclists, and Cycle Paths!

Our March meeting at The Traveller’s Rest will focus on these three issues:
* Cycles: our fleet of beautiful dutch bikes, folders and hybrids is being complimented with a new range of accessories to help the family get into cycling.
* Cyclists: that’s you, the members of Darlovelo.
* Cycle Paths: Darlington was until recently a Cycle Demonstration Town. But what now?

Hope to see you on Thursday.

Traveller’s Rest, Cockerton. Thursday 21st March, 7-9pm

Cycling City in the Sunshine

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 This winter has been one of the greyest on record in Germany. Never mind the cold temperatures, it has been the permanent cloud that has really got the population into a depression these last few weeks, with few people venturing out in their spare time. There was really only one exception – the wonderful Bremen tradition of Kohl und Pinkelfahrt in January and February. 
But yesterday the first sunshine for what seemed like months finally arrived, and today it was even slightly warm. And in Bremen that means that thousands of people, young, middling and old, meet up along the river after school or work, or if they’re lucky earlier in the day, to soak up the joy-giving rays of sunshine. And inevitably, most of them get to and from the river by bicycle.
Many people gather in groups on the river dyke to chat, play ball games or have an impromptu drink. Groups like this one, older teenagers, will have cycled at least 2 or 3 kilometres from school, and will be cycling another 3 or 4 kilometres to their various homes. In towns and cities where cycling is not the norm, these events are unlikely to take place. Schoolkids who rely on public transport, walking, or even worse being collected by mama taxi service, find it a real hassle to take such a detour on their way home. But here it is part of the deal that comes with the independence cycling offers.
The great thing is that, on days like this, all kinds of people arrive by bike to enjoy the sun, side by side, in their different ways. As we moved along the river, our first thought was that a fair number of people might have arrived by some other means, since we often spotted them without bicycles. But then we watched as individual started to head off home and, almost inevitably, they walked the 30 metres or so to where their bicycle was parked before cycling off. Far more people, it seems, are cycling into the sun today.

When Will People Ditch Their Cars?

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Last week we attended a further round of public engagement in Bremen’s ongoing Traffic Development Plan 2025. One of the interesting discussions we had involved another woman from the Viertel, our area of Bremen where private car mobility has only an 18% split, whilst cycling accounts for 28% of trips.

Despite such low car usage, our streets are still full with parked vehicles, many of which apparently belong to local residents. The woman we encountered at last week’s meeting would appear to be typical of a lot of our fellow locals, in that she said that she “only rarely” uses her car for special trips out of the city. Most of the time, she guards “her” precious parking spot by not using it. We asked her what “rarely” meant and she replied with “perhaps once or twice a month”.
Of course we were somewhat taken aback by this. The Viertel has a comprehensive car sharing scheme, with 10 different pickup locations within an area no larger than two square kiometres. Why not save money and use this instead? No, she said, she had already done the figures, and reckoned that it was “cheaper” to keep her own car.

Intrigued, we decided to look at the figures for a typical car owner in Bremen ourselves, and compare these with the car-sharing scheme. We pay €9 a month as a couple to be members of Cambio, plus a per-hour and per-kilometre charge. But as long-term members, our tariff is no longer available. So I checked the Cambio website for the latest figures.

A new member now pays a one-off joining fee of €30, and a monthly fee of just €3. Charges for car use vary according to the size of the vehicle (another advantage, having access to small cars or large vans), but a medium-sized car costs €2.90 per hour and €0.36 per kilometre. So a typical trip to an out of town furniture shop or village cafe could take up to 4 hours and involve up to 40 kilometres of driving. The cost of such a trip would be:

(4 x €2.90) +(40 x €0.36) = €26

Our lady from the Viertel said she uses her car “once or twice a month”, so lets say twice a month. On that basis her first year costs for being a member of Cambio would be:

€30 + (12 x €3) + (24 x €26) = €690 per year.

Now let’s look at the costs of running a private car in Germany. The ADAC, Germany’s motoring club, provides an online tool to calculate the costs of running a private car. Here you can choose a car model and check running costs. One medium sized vehicle in the Cambio fleet is the Opel Astra Estate. According to the ADAC, this will cost an owner at least €571 per month to own, or €6,852 per year. This figure assumes a number of underlying assumptions, which may not be appropriate for our Viertel lady, however. First, they start with a new car, at a cost of €21,115. Anyone who knows the Viertel will realise that this is definitely not a place for a new car. On the other hand, Cambio cars are rarely older than 3 years, and often spanking new. So it would be fairer to assume that the private car purchase would be of a second hand car. The ADAC figures include a depreciation figure of €305 per month, so if we take a 3 year old Astra Estate, the market price becomes

€21,115 – (36 x €305) = €10,135

Spread over a life of 7 years, that would mean a monthly cost of €120.65, without taking any borrowing costs into account. The ADAC tool then adds to this capital cost repairs and fixed costs of €169 per month. Our “twice a month” trips involve 80 kilometres, which in an Opel Astra estate would mean some 5 litres of diesel @ €1.42 per litre, or €7.10 per month. This will mean our second hand Astra, used twice a month, would cost

12 x (€169 + €7.10) = €2,113.20 per year.

This is over 3 times the cost of using Cambio. So why does our good lady still believe that owning her own car is cheaper? Well, perhaps she doesn’t really use her car “one or two times a month”. Just as British voters historically find it embarrassing to own up to voting Tory, perhaps she is under-estimating her use to make it look good. Let’s say she uses her car twice a week instead. On this basis, Cambio’s costs would rise to €2,770, compared to €2,241 for a private car. This might be one explanation.

But more likely, the up front costs of running a car are forgotten. We notice an awful lot of vehicles standing in the same parking spot for weeks on end. Car ownership in the Viertel is still high. But as the official figures show, car use is low. Many car owners conveniently forget the costs of buying a car in the first place when calculating running costs. And of course there is a reason. Other, non-financial, advantages to car ownership include convenience (as long as it can be parked outside your door), flexibility (especially when compared to public transport) and that most difficult of areas, the car as an extension of the self (identity through car ownership). Consciously or sub-consciously, car owners like to factor these in, especially where there is no car share facility nearby, public transport is poor, and car culture dominates.

Yet in the Viertel, none of these apply. And the bicycle satisfies all three advantages. Could it be a quirk of Bremen’s transport history that a cycling culture has been developed alongside an equally strong car culture? The fact is, once the car is gone, we always think twice about hiring a Cambio car. Do we really need a car for this or that trip? 95% of the time, the answer is no. A bicycle, or for longer distances a train plus a bicycle, is more attractive. So in the end we use Cambio about 6 times a year.

As a footnote, new figures have just been published showing what the average German spends on motoring in his or her lifetime. Typically, Germans drive for 54 years of their lives, and spend €332,000 in the process. That’s €6,148 for every year. When compared with what we spend on our Cambio membership and on public transport, about €1000 a year between us, it’s nice to know that we are saving enough for a comfortable retirement.

Farewell Cycling Campaign – Hello Darlovelo

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Yes, I realise it’s more than a year since anyone posted here. There are good reasons.

Firstly, due to a gradual reduction in active members, Darlington Cycling Campaign took the decision in 2012 to merge its activities with Darlovelo. The latter had recently been restructured by its members, with the aim of expanding its campaigning role, so it made sense to combine our efforts. Darlovelo’s website is currently undergoing a number of updates that will reflect this change in the near future.

Secondly, all our contributors have over time become otherwise engaged. Richard & Beatrix are working in Bremen on cycling policy in Germany, Mike is a full-time family man, and Duncan is now working at Bikestop, leaving little time for any of us to provide a regular input.

Be that as it may, those of us who are members of Darlovelo will do our best to sustain this blog as the voice of cycling campaigning in Darlington by mirroring posts from the Darlovelo site. Meanwhile, if there are any other budding cycling campaigners who would like to get involved, please get in touch.