Cycling England says that a tiny (by the standards of billion-pound road projects) £70m a year investment in making cycling easier and more accessible would have a huge impact. Fine so far as it goes, but why are they thinking so small?
This Sunday many of the streets of central London will be closed for Freewheel, which has been hugely oversubscribed; 38,000 have signed up, although the original limit was to be 30,000. That’s a small representation of the huge pent-up demand for being able to cycle in safety and without fear – to be able to use the roads as a right, a right that of course already exists every day in law, but which is not acknowledged by many drivers.
You can get a sample of the feeling that freewheelers are craving most mornings on the streets of Bloomsbury in central London. We are close to, and sometimes (as during the recent Tube strike) at, the point where the bicycles are the dominant road users – sheer numbers mean they are able to feel secure, comfortable, at home. The existence of a range of traffic-calming measures to keep the more rampant drivers in check is helping; I find sports car drivers are amusingly enraged by the fact that you can get through the streets quicker than they, and they hate it when you have to brake behind them because they are so slow through the chicanes. (And I’m no speed cyclist.)
It is a tiny part of London, probably replicated in only a handful of cities around the country, but it is a vision of a greener, safer, healthier future. What, after all, are roads for?
Having just been in Liverpool, I saw at uncomfortably close hand the 60s and 70s idea of that: enormous, fast ring roads bulldozed through communities that deliver speed, sure (well until the next patch of gridlock), but that have destroyed the communities through which they’ve sliced, made pedestrians act like heavily hunted deer, and made cycling an impractical dream.
But go back further, and back to basics, and you’ll realise that what roads are for is for people to get around, and get together. Both of these are options only very poorly delivered by the motor vehicle, which as a species quickly forms impenetrable, stationary packs, while keeping the individuals in them isolated and contained.
Walking, cycling and buses (when not on roads clogged by private cars) by contrast, get people around quickly and cleanly while allowing them to be together, to interact, from the simple “thanks” from a cyclist to a pedestrian who looked rather than stepping out into her path, to the neighbours who’ve bumped into each other and are now having a good old chinwag.
I cycled in Beijing a decade ago, and was amazed by the broad boulevards packed with flocks of cyclists. I’m not expecting to see the Euston Road (a fume-choked raceway between Paddington and Euston stations) looking like that any time soon, but there’s no reason why most smaller roads shouldn’t be quickly and relatively cheaply converted. A 20mph speed limit would be a good start, and could be implemented instantly, with cheap traffic-calming measures added as soon as possible. (My experience in Bloomsbury suggests chicanes and road narrowing are more effective and less noisy than speed bumps – and create more pedestrian space.)
Of course there will always need to be some motor vehicles – Freewheel isn’t a practical model for every day; the disabled need to be able to get around, goods must be delivered and some tradespeople must take multiple heavy tools to work. But they don’t need to speed to the next red light at 30mph plus or to bully pedestrians and cyclists with abandon; they need to be on the people’s roads as a privilege, a privilege to be exercised with discretion and care.
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