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ansfer of ideas about the role of cycling in the future urban environment is not limited to the britain cian ginty of the campaigning organisation irish cycle says campaigners are as they are everywhere a mixed bunch some see the netherlands as a good example of a number of examples across europe others including myself see the netherlands as the best example and the example we should be mainly following if we want mass levels of cycling in 2015 i led a group of eighteen people on a cycling study tour in the netherlands a mix of councillors campaigners consultants and department of transport officials the positives from that so far is that the councillors are looking for better standards and some campaigners asking why can t we do it more like the dutch classic dutch style cycleways allow for easy servicing of businesses it s often imagined in the uk that segregated cycleways prevent servicing of businesses but those who actually been the the netherlands or denmark have seen that this is not true the transformation in british cycle campaigning policy has been an enthusiastic adoption of the idea that we can learn from our european neighbours and that we do benefit from participation in a wider european community both officially and at grassroots levels brexit may not seriously damage intra european tourism but it may well reduce opportunities for people to live and work in other countries and to discover aspects of those countries that are worth importing back home more seriously it may be that the inward looking mind set may spread its tentacles in british politics and lead to a rejection of all things european making it more difficult to campaign to go dutch mark treasure chair of the cycling embassy of great britain says i don t know if brexit is going to be helpful as it could become less easy to transfer ideas and people johnson s successor as mayor of london labour party member sadiq khan has promised to continue his predecessor s cycling policies but he is showing signs of rolling back on plans johnson left in the pipeline what an irony it would be if eurosceptic johnson s european inspired legacy of a high quality cycle network were allowed to wither by the pro europe khan cycleways and congestion getting beyond the windscreen mentality 15 wednesday mar 2017 posted by paulgannonbike in uncategorized 5 comments a new fact has entered the common psyche namely that london s congestion is caused by 18 kilometres of physically protected as opposed to painted cycle lanes in central london an accomplice fact is that these same cycleways are also responsible for central london s pollution michael gove mp as part of a brexit committee meeting in parliament with sadiq khan asked london s mayor do you think that we might more easily be able to meet the very welcome things on air quality if we were to revisit exactly how the provision of bike lanes has been implemented in effect gove was claiming that removing cycle lanes could be key to tackling london s illegal air quality needless to say it didn t occur to gove to consider whether london s air quality problems have only started since the cycleways were implemented in the last year or so the only other factor gove raised as a potential cause of congestion and pollution was the regime which allows so many roadworks to operate in london at the moment gove claimed that there had been a 200 increase in the number of roadworks on london s roads over the last few years what gove didn t consider is the fundamental cause of london s pollution and congestion a decades long policy of standing idly by while the city had become clogged with motors in the outskirts as well as in the heart of the city regrettably khan gave a rather limp response blaming any problems on the way in which construction of the cycleways was organized by the previous mayor boris johnson though he did point out that fewer than 2 of our roads presumably meaning tfl roads as opposed to roads that are the responsibility of london boroughs have segregated cycle lanes tfl s roads statistics show that the average speed of motors in london continues to decline as it has done for some years now now down to 7 8 mph however those statistics also show a slight recent year on year decline in the volume of traffic in central london down 3 4 percent in summer 2016 from summer of 2105 thus the search is on for culprits people mention various factors such as an increasing number and duration of roadworks increases in construction traffic increased numbers of delivery vans carrying goods ordered over the internet the rapid increase in public hire vehicles phvs primarily new uber vehicles now about 120 000 seeking customers in london alongside a slightly sagging number of about 21 000 black cabs but most attention has focused on the immensely popular with cyclists cycleways such as that running along the embankment towards the houses of parliament what is notably lacking in this whole debate about the new cycleways is any enlightening quantification of the relative contributions of the various potential causes what for example is the actual contribution of the rapidly increasing number of phvs on london s roads to congestion and pollution there are some 600 licensed issued every week i e 31 000 per annum if the black cab lobby is to be believed assuming that the average length of a modern motor car and a small amount of inter car space is about 5 metres the present fleet of 120 000 phvs when stationary requires 33 times the total length of london s new cycleways the space requirement is of course dynamic and increases when the vehicles are in motion so in movement the phv fleet requires 99 times the total length of the infamous cycleways the numbers would be higher if we were to include black cabs together indeed cabs and phvs account for 68 percent of all car traffic in central london it s worth noting that at the present rate of increase the new phvs need as much space as all the cycleways every six weeks when stationary when moving new phvs soak up as much space as all the cycleways every two weeks if tfl and the mayor were building cycleways at the same rate i e 18 km every two weeks we would indeed be talking about cycleway induced congestion if we are serious about discussing the causes of congestion and pollution surely we would look first at reducing the primary emitters of pollution and the primary creators of congestion given that this one category of vehicles has an increased demand for road space about 100 times as much as the cycleways if we were serious about understanding what causes congestion and pollution we would be looking at the bigger problem and not resort to having a pop at cyclists as being responsible for congestion and pollution generated by others there s another factor that is ignored in the assessment of what is behind the shrinking availability of road space ever expanding size of cars this too has an effect on the road space equation but how often do you see it mentioned other than as a another burden on the hard pressed hard working much deserving motorist just trying to park in the supermarket s ridiculously narrow parking places no doubt we are expected to use our common sense and dismiss such as a silly point as not to be taken seriously as a contribution to congestion while we can blame cycleways i can see for myself on my local high street that widening the parking bays has narrowed the available carriageway and whereas two cars could pass alongside a lane of parked cars that it no longer possible and they have to wait or to not wait for the cars in the other direction to pass i ve not heard a single squeak about the congestion and pollution caused by these wider parking bays in contrast to the way the subjects come every time anyone suggests a serious cycle scheme an ever increasing amount of road space capacity is being lost to ever bigger motor vehicles but that s anecdote so instead allow me some leeway and let s delve a wee way into what we can work out the calculations here become a little bit more assumption based but let s say that cars have become about 10 percent bigger in terms of road space occupied over the last say 20 years there are 2 600 000 cars registered in london if we work out the average extra space occupied length x width by those cars we get a figure of about 2 127 000 square metres a little bit of calculator work shows that this is 4 123 times as much space as occupied by all the london cycleways assuming 3 5 metres wide and 18km in length this is almost certainly a considerable underestimate for a number of reasons first the motor vehicle space requirements boom has been most marked among popular car models the space requirement of the ford fiesta has grown 20 percent that of the vw golf gti by 25 percent of the vw beetle by 23 percent of the fiat 500 of by 47 percent and of the mini a whopping 75 percent so taking a 10 percent increase is conservative second the calculation applies just for like to like models and doesn t take into account the immensely popular new types of vehicle such as the people carrier and the suv which have replaced many smaller cars third as we are talking purely about cars we are not including the extra space requirements of bigger light goods vehicles and bigger lorries combine these factors and it is easy to see that the growth in vehicle space requirements is not a trivial matter the ballooning size of the modern car photo richard ambler yet the extra space demand of bigger motors is a problem that the experts manage not to see for all the repeated droning on about congestion created and pollution caused by cycleways we can see that simple obvious factors such as the explosion in phv numbers and the growth in space requirements for each individual motor vehicle are between one hundred and many thousands of times more significant there is a nice dutch saying meten is weten alas the closest english translation to measure is to know is somewhat less poetic than the original but it does all the same reveal that the puff and hyperbole of the cycleways cause congestion and pollution campaign is born out of the willful ignoring of the real factors that are the main primary causes of these problems i know some cycle campaigners will see dark forces of managerial capitalism at work in this wholly unbalanced accounting of the contribution of cycleways to pollution and congestion but there may well be a simpler explanation or more likely that there is more than one explanation what i call windscreen mentality cycleways are visible and recent and there is recent congestion ergo cycleways must be responsible it s a form of tunnel vision whereby every aspect of transport policy is determined by what the driver can see from looking forward they see themselves a heading towards a narrow road where two lanes merge into one or they see red traffic lights ahead or horror of horrors there s a cycle lanes they think without it they could get ahead not realizing it would just be to get to the next set of red lights half a second sooner windscreen vision has it that it is narrowing roads traffic lights or cycle lanes are responsible for slowing their speedy progress through city streets not too many too big vehicles the dictum here is to see is to know so no need to waste time looking into measuring and understanding the changes around us in this world view cars haven t got bigger but parking spaces and carriageways have shrunk it s obvious you can see it for yourself it s the flat earth theory of congestion after all to the human eye the horizon is clearly flat indeed i was prompted to this thought by an item on the radio about the problems faced by drivers as they try to squeeze their over sized cars into parking spaces in car parks a vox pop voice actually said yes the spaces have shrunk for car park management companies supermarkets local authorities etc this is a real problem as making bigger spaces means fewer spaces which in turn means lower income or increasing charges to maintain income whatever clearly car parking capacity has been shrunken by car obesity as grown ups we need to stop ignoring this issue and ask how this arms race in vehicle size affects the capacity of our roads just as it affects car parks and what can be done about it in his polemical blogs robert wright a transport correspondent for the financial times as well as a cycle blogger http invisiblevisibleman blogspot co uk 2017 01 a past mayor miserable blogiversary and html argues that cyclists need to accept that the cycleways have contributed to congestion while there are plenty of other factors restricting london s road capacity it seems fanciful to imagine that cycle facilities alone can remove capacity from busy roads and have little effect on congestion it is certainly clear the capacity of london s roads fell around the time the new facilities were built it is not unreasonable it seems to me for sadiq khan and mike brown commissioner of transport for london to seek to reduce the effect of any new facilities on congestion before giving them the go ahead there is room indeed there is urgent need for a mature discussion about the effect if it is demonstrably measurable of cycleways on congestion in a dynamic time adequate assessment i e allowing sufficient time for bedding in and motor traffic adjustment but until those pointing the finger at cycleways acknowledge that there are much greater factors no such grown up discussion can take place the ball is in their court hit the ball straight and we can return the compliment treat cycling differently treat it as an easy scapegoat for the decades long shortcomings of british transport policy and expect a fierce insistent resistance i think it s entirely reasonable for sadiq kahn and mike brown to work out what is actually causing congestion and to come up with a plan for addressing those actual causes what is not reasonable is to blame cycling and to demand that cyclists fess up to causing congestion to do so would be politically suicidal for the cycle lobby as the assertion of cycle lanes causing pollution would rapidly become ingrained and immovable we have no real choice but to point out that the figures simply don t justify that argument subscribe entries rss comments rss archives july 2020 march 2020 july 2018 april 2018 july 2017 may 2017 march 2017 december 2016 september 2016 june 2016 may 2016 april 2016 august 2015 february 2015 january 2015 december 2014 november 2014 october 2014 categories dangerisation active travel act wales bloomsbury brexit bus industry propaganda bus stop bypass cycle superhighway cycleways cycling and class cycling and walking cycling in the netherlands economics of cycling floating bus stop royal college street space4cycling tavistock place torrington place uncategorized wales meta create account log in blog at wordpress com subscribe subscribed 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