Monthly Archives: April 2007

Selling biking to the Dutch

Posted on by Posted in Bikes, inspiration

If ever there’d be television ads for bicycling in the US, you can be sure they’d feature locations the actors drove to, and a whole lot of helmets and other specialty clothing. Dutch bicycle advocacy ads, in contrast, feature couples making out on a (single) bike, helmetless children on bikes, business suits and dresses on bikes blasting through motor traffic outside the lines, Saddam Hussein on a bike shooting Americans, and the pathetic qualities of drivers and driving, including the possibility of a car bomb taking you out. “Bicyclists live longer.”

Found on the excellent Cleverchimp blog.

“Bloody cyclists!” – a rebuttal of some anti-cyclist propaganda

Posted on by Posted in cars, inspiration 2 Comments

“Bloody cyclists!” – a rebuttal of some anti-cyclist propaganda

This is a note prompted by recent anti-cyclist propaganda in the press. Although the cause of the ranting was, in this case, the presumably intentional misreporting of the EU’s proposed Fifth Motor Insurance Directive, this is not the first time that journalists have chosen to pick on cyclists. Increasingly drivers seem to believe that the road belongs to them and anybody who strays onto it is asking for trouble. But it doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to all of us, and the cause of road fatalities is not vulnerable road users straying into the motorised lions’ den, it’s careless, thoughtless, aggressive drivers.

The “usual suspects” of these rants are: cyclists don’t pay road tax, cyclists don’t have insurance, cyclists don’t have to pass a test, cyclists jump red lights and ride on the pavement and cyclists should be on the cycle paths.

Good Time to Review Ambitions

Posted on by Posted in cars, infrastructure, pedestrians, politics, Ring Road, routes 1 Comment

15 months ago, The Guardian published a feature story by Matt Seaton about Darlington’s ambitions as a Cycling Demonstration Town. The article was based on a long interview with then Cycling Officer Oli Lougheed.

Despite Oli’s apparent chipper attitude to his job, with £1.5m rolling in from Cycling England to spend over 3 years, he moved on to Manchester shortly afterwards. But the article is instructive in laying out both the short-term ideas and long-term ambitions/vision of the local authority.

As we argued at our recent Symposium, the local authority alone can be quite good, if they get it right, at short-term plans. Witness the near doubling in cycling in Darlington over the past year. But long term ambition requires much more. Some quotes from the Guardian article are instructive:

Under the new scheme, Darlington’s transport team plans to put in nine or 10 “radial routes”, running from the periphery right to the centre….The new radial routes will reassign priorities where they intersect the ring road, and will make all the formerly pedestrianised areas dual use. The philosophy here is that cyclists can coexist perfectly safely with walkers, European-style; where it is clear that an area is dual use, cyclists automatically adjust their behaviour, slowing down and riding sensibly….”The object is to create boulevards rather than traffic corridors,” says Tim Crawshaw, the council’s chief designer of the public environment.

“The difficult thing is that you build the infrastructure and promote it,” says Lougheed, “but it takes years for people to change their habits.”

The hierarchy of road users that transport officers like Lougheed now work to reads as follows: disabled and visually impaired people first, pedestrians next, then cyclists, public transport, delivery vehicles, cars used for business with more than one occupant and, at the bottom of the heap, single-occupancy motorists.

As I cycle down a broad residential street with Lougheed, he tells me how a simple measure like taking out the central white line will reduce traffic speeds. Without the sense of a safe, segregated corridor down which they can drive at 35mph, motorists instinctively move towards the middle of the road. But then they become aware of needing to drive more slowly in case they meet a car coming the other way. All of a sudden, they’re driving at 25mph – just because a white line has been taken out.

The Cycling Campaign has been doing considerable research on peoples’, and especially motorists’ habits. Yet we see very little sign yet of these being challenged by, for example, reassigned priorities where radial cycle routes intersect the inner ring road. Indeed, the current works behind Marks and Sparks indicate otherwise – cyclists will cross the ring road with pedestrians at a Toucan crossing.

With Darlington something like half way through its Cycling Demonstration Town period, this would be a useful time to reassess these ambitions:

*Were they really there in the first place, or was this just media spin?
*Will we still get our 10 radial routes, or have some been dropped?
*What happens when radial routes hit the inner ring road?
*How does the hierarchy of road users tally with the allocation of road space?

These and many other questions should not only be asked of the council. The reason why ambitions change or get dropped is as much through political opposition as lack of political will, and in Darlington there are certainly at least two outside lobbies who are doing everything they can to keep cycling at the very bottom of the hierarchy or road users.

But Darlington cannot simply “demonstrate” to the rest of the country what can be done. We also need central government support to get further up that hierarchy. Depressingly predictable, then, that our leaders failed to see the connection between the recent petition to 10 Downing Street (to give cyclists and pedestrians priority over motorists at minor road junctions) and their “new orthodoxy in transport planning”, the hierarchy of road users. RIP Joined Up Thinking.

Skaters banned from Pedestrian Heart

Posted on by Posted in Pedestrian Heart 4 Comments

SKATEBOARDERS could be fined up to £500 each for skating in Darlington’s new-look town centre.

Darlington Borough Council has proposed the ban after receiving complaints from the public.

Shoppers have complained that the skaters could injure shoppers and damage the surface of the newly-laid Pedestrian Heart.

Northern Echo: Skaters warned: Stay out of centre or face £500 fine

The story seems to suggest that the main reason for the ban is because of safety concerns, and this seems to be how the disability group see it: “Skaters can really cause damage. They really put off partially-sighted people, and people in wheelchairs from coming to the town centre. There are places for skateboarders to go and that’s where they should be. I would really like the same rule to be introduced for cyclists. They are just as big a problem.”

However, sources at the council have confirmed to Darlington Cycling Campaign that the only reason for the ban is the fear of damage being caused to steps and stonework which, obviously, responsible cycling would not cause. Also, as cycling is a form of transportation whilst skateboarding is purely recreational, there is a significant difference between the two.

Vanunu Freedom Ride

Posted on by Posted in rides

Mordechai Vanunu spent 18 years in prison for telling the world about Israel’s secret nuclear weapons. He is still being held under detention today.

Cyclists on a Freedom Ride from Faslane to London will pass through Darlington on Thursday 12th April at around 12 noon. You can get more details about the ride at the Freedom Ride site. We’ll try to get details of their route in the next 24 hours, but we expect they’ll be coming down the A167, so may like to view our previous post about the Newton Aycliffe – Darlington route!