It was wet, it was windy and my morning cycle was troubled by all the usual misgivings: am I going fast enough, am I going too fast, am I being a considerate road user, am I going to sit behind this car’s exhaust for five minutes if I don’t get over the junction now? Anyway, all this was going on when another thing happened: a cyclist breezed past me. This is not all that uncommon, but the guy was barely pedalling. And he was about 60 with a long silvery ponytail, a black skullcap and a bomber jacket. And his bike had a radio, playing the Grateful Dead. It was like a sequel to Easy Rider, but this time the long hairs had won.
Then I looked down. Looked down at the axle of the bike’s rear wheel. A big fat axle, so chunky it could hide a motor big enough to propel one man, his bicycle and his psychedelic rock collection along the commute at a pace the rest of us would have to get a massive sweat on to emulate. What a swizz!, I thought. What a cheat! I tried desperately to catch the bloke up and prove the enduring dominance of the human over insensate machines. I got nowhere near and broke down in a wheeze.
So imagine my surprise (or don’t, given that it’s a Boris Johnson initiative and I neither like, nor trust Boris Johnson) to hear that the London mayor is to introduce battery-powered bikes to the nation’s capital. “E-bikes are already big on the continent as they take the puff and pant out of cycling,” Johnson told his pals at the Evening Standard yesterday. “Once again London leads the way in Britain with new cycling innovations.”
This move may well prove to be successful. This is because it is aimed at getting people who normally wouldn’t cycle to think about doing it. And as the Guardian’s bike blog points out: “According to research by Transport for London, while the main reason people take up cycling is to get fit, lack of fitness is a deterrent to 8% of its respondents.” So for those people who can’t abide the thought of getting on a bike (or, more to the point, getting off a bike all sweaty at the end of a journey), the e-bike will help to wean them on to cycling. Perhaps even away from driving cars.
It’s at this point I realise that rather than seeing cycling as an environmentally friendly transport alternative, I see it as a device for the mortification of the flesh. Cycling, to my mind, is supposed to be puffy, panty and sweaty. It’s supposed to be something you’d rather not do; something you dream every day of replacing with a chauffeured helicopter with built-in spa. But something you continue to do all the same. And while you do it you do it silently and considerately, staying true to the spirit of the road (the driver who throttled me the other week when I stopped him performing an easy three-point turn may disagree with me on this).
What cycling is not, to my mind, is driving. And e-bikes are basically driving. Driving without road tax (I put that one in for the real drivers out there) and with added smuggery about “my cycle ride in this morning”. Further to that, half of the new cyclists won’t have a clue what they’re doing on the road. As transport lobbyist Jos Dings told the Evening Standard: “The amount of accidents involving assisted bikes driven too fast and causing serious accidents is a huge issue.” And then imagine those same cyclists pissed …
I realise my resentment towards e-bikes is unsophisticated, but believe me it’s real. And it chimes with a broader resentment I have against an emphasis on finding solutions to problems that don’t involve any hardship. This is most clearly seen in responses to climate change where the only palatable public option appears to be focusing on greater energy efficiency (which only brings about more energy use) or shooting sulphur into the sky. That’s the way we seem to like things nowadays and, until Russell Brand’s revolution comes along, I suspect it ain’t going to change. So bring on the e-bikes if you must, but I draw the line at the Grateful Dead.
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Walking the Brexit tightrope at Labour conference – Politics Weekly
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