Thoughts from a new member of Cambridge Cycling Campaign

Joined @Camcycle yesterday specifically to support their resolution to adopt their own Space for Cycling as something to measure proposals for cycle provision against. And it was passed, despite society grandee Jim Chisolm (in my view wrongly and triumphantly) implying that the specific wording of the proposal watered this down. If Jim is proved right and this is not implemented as a tool to measure all such developments against, I think the Campaign will be a laughing stock.

A few reflections on the AGM (my first Cambridge Cycling Campaign meeting in donkeys years) from a new member...

(1) The attendees are, for the most, chaps. Older (40+ if I'm being generous), middle or upper class (posh, as you'd call them in my home town), educated, and everyone was (I think) white. The kind of people who look like they read the Daily Mail so they have a good reason to be offended. People who know what hummus is. There's a really big problem with the campaign group claiming to represent cyclists in Cambridge, who are nothing like so homogeneous. There are a few younger folk and a few ladies - but its not a good mix by any means. Cycling to work today I saw hundreds of other cyclists - white, black, Chinese, South Asian,young, old, women, men... you know, the kind of mix of people you see every day in one of our most cosmopolitan cities. I've always been concerned that the Campaign is assumed by so many to speak for 'cyclists', and I'm more bothered by that now than I ever was. 

(2) Voting. Well, I get that having a system that allows you to 'reopen nominations' if no one standing for a post is approved, or why you'd need a system for ridding yourself of bad committe members, but the idea that you can vote for or against a candidate? That ain't the way. Sorry guys, but I suggest instead that you need a system whereby you allow the committee to suspend membership thereof with, say, a 2/3 majority committee vote, of any committee member who has brought the organisation into disrepute, which I suspect is what you wanted to achieve. Please, ask the members if they'll grant you that. 

(3) Ambition - its good to see that there are plans to go bigger with a new employee for the campaign. Its good to see that the changes to membership fees were implemented to allow that to happen. I'm not entirely convinced that the job, as briefly described, is as yet fully thought out, but I wouldn't expect that it must be yet. Good idea.

(4) Martins summary of whats happened in the past year. Far too diplomatic. The Catholic Church and Perne Road represent stealing cycling funds and spending them on cars - just come out and say it straight. The County have some decent(ish) ideas but please call bullshit when you see bullshit. You've done some good stuff - but I'm left wondering what you gain from not being far more forthright in criticism of utter crap. The response the Campaign issued to the Catholic Church junction was good - time perhaps to write a very scathing post-mortem thereof?

All in all, if Space for Cycling becomes a yardstick against which roads and cycling provision are measured, this marks a coming of age for the Campaign, as it moves on from lilly livered, bland acceptance of sheer rubbish foisted on us in the past out of fear of rocking the boat and losing even the value-less facilities we have. This is where the Campaign becomes what cyclists need, where it might really start representing the broad mix of cyclists here, and where it may even see a broader demographic join up. Or, its where it fails to do so - and we look on jealously while London starts to build the infrastructures that have been eloquently described by Cambridge Cycling Campaign folk in Space for Cycling. 

It'll be interesting to see.

'Improvements' in Kings Hedges and Arbury - Part 2.

In my last post, I criticised plans for pedestrian and cyclist 'improvements' in North Cambridge.

And I promised ideas for how to make it better.

Lets begin by looking at where the whole scheme (arguably) has its way in to this part of the City - the Mere Way/Arbury Road junction.



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So its a big, wide approach route. And I'm proposing that we should punch straight over the grass verge opposite on to the quiet Nicholson Way route.

Pan left and you'll see a little used cycle route - little used because it goes nowhere. Click forward once, then look to your left and you'll see why, the cycle lane turns sharply across Arbury Road with no real incentive for cars to stop. It becomes, quite literally, a cycle lane that goes across the main road with no signals, no information for motorists to know what it is, no waning... Its  meaningless, mostly ignored facility which motorists might or might not stop for. It leads you to a churned up path that is in dire need of routine maintenance, passing along the North of Hanson Court.

Now, pan right and look Southwards down Arbury Road - you'll see around 40 yards further on a turn off to the left which takes you to a handy cut through to Roxburgh Road if you're a cyclist. This is the route used by many cyclists going to and from the Science Park, and it could be part of a truly excellent set of facilities for riding in the North of Cambridge.

You'll also notice a quiet back-road running parallel to Arbury Road. So why not, if we're looking to improve things for cycling here, provide a safe cycle cut through linking that road directly to the junction? If the plan is to create a better route for cycling and walking, then cut straight from the back-road to the junction, which may be replaced with a raised junction anyway, linking the existing (useless) cycle facility to it by a continuous cycle lane in a new design requiring traffic Southbound on Arbury Road to give way to traffic from Mere Way? Give priority to the Arbury Road/Mere Way route (which also benefits bus riders, this being the route of the Citi 1) while proving a cut-through to a quiet road on which cyclists could turn right to get to the Roxburgh Road route or Left to get to the proposed improvements on the Rec' ground.

Much of the plan seemed to be about getting people to St. Laurence School. Having made a safe point to get to the quiet route parallel to Arbury Road, all we now need to do would be to sort out the muddle on the other side of Arbury Road - here, this is what you'll see if you've crossed over Arbury Road and you're now riding North towards the school.



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For some reason rather than having a simple, single surface to ride on we've got to zig-zag on needlessly narrow (arguably) shared use, before ending up at this junction...




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So now to get to Ashvale, a quiet suburban route taking me directly to the school and which is a natural route to take from the end of Nicholson Way/Hanson Court, I need to go round a blind corner at the garages, zig-zag a railing and drop off the kerb into traffic that probably hasn't even indicated at another mini-roundabout? No, no, no - connect this corner up with an off-road cycle route that links here (Albemarle Way) with Nicholson Way/Hanson Court and now we've linked the School with Arbury Road, and linked the North/South route to the Science Park too.

At the end of Ashvale there's plenty of room to build wide, fully segregated pedestrian and cycle routes both to the school and all the way back to Arbury Road - coming out more or less where the cycle route currently does. This would connect to the recreation ground (as in the original plans). And unlike the original plan, this gives us a safe, simple, easy route to navigate that avoids Arbury Road and provides the kind of quiet infrastructure parents are looking for to get to the school, while also assisting fast, adult commuters connecting to the Science Park or to the City Centre from further up Arbury Road, or from the South.

Turning North from there we've got a rather needless layby and bland, featureless stretch of hedgerow - get rid of them and extend the cycle route all the way to the shared use facility that comes round the corner from Kings Hedges Road. It isn't a great shared use route (none of them are) but it may as well connect.

Frankly, I'm ambiguous about the St. Albans Road junction. I approve of changing the priority there as is proposed, but I think we're kidding ourselves if we say thats for cyclists or pedestrians - its to tame motorists, and that should never come out of funds that are, allegedly, for active transport.

By my reckining, we lose three parking spaces in my proposed solution - two on Nicholson Way and one at the end of Ashvale.

Lastly, re-surfacing the paths around the recreation ground behind the school is common maintenance work. It is disingenuous of the County Council to say that this is an improvement, it blatantly isn't. By all means, re-surface this route, but not from developer funds earmarked for improvements. For once, can't we have maintenance money to maintain and spend improvement money on improvements? 

Arbury and Kings Hedges 'Improvements'

Thanks to Hester who shared a link that we're maybe getting some 'improvements for cycling and walking up in North Cambridge. Lets take a look at what is proposed.

Here's where they're talking about (this from Cambridgeshire County Councils website)

Its the orange bits under discussion, and this includes the awful junctions of Arbury Road and St. Albans Road and Mere Way, alongside the baffling Kings Hedges Road junction and a little loop around the 'Rec. If you look at said loop, you'll see that one of the orange lines is (almost) a straight ccontinuation of Mere Way, continuing the line of the old Roman Road, possibly the oldest extant route in the City.

The first thing you'll notice, before even looking at the details, is that it doesn't join up - the remainder of Arbury Road (both heading South East from Mere Way, and between the junctions) is to remain dreadful. And I mean dreadful - its plagued with antisocial parking, fast motorists accelerating in anticipation of or escape from the A14, and it being relatively long and straight they'll take outrageous liberties overtaking cyclists with inches to spare. Will improvements solely at the junctions make Arbury Road more appealing to cycle on? Will they hell - from the outset this proposal does nothing to make cycling more appealing in the area.

Lets go from the North end downwards. At Kings Hedges Road we're promised tarmac over the dirt track that cuts the corner to Kings Hedges Road - and for some unknown reason it'll be a shared use facility, linking to a shared use light to cross Arbury Road which then goes back on to the shared use path on the other side. You'll note that there is plenty of space on either side of this junction to widen the path and create segregated cyclist and pedestrian facilities, but 'shared use' is such ingrained dogma at the County that they've not even given us this as an option. So here, at the first hurdle, this fails - for no adequately explained reason this is yet another facility that just is not good enough.

If we head South we get to the next bit - some changes to traffic calming on Arbury Road (link to PDF file here). Colour me unimpressed - shared use facilities alongside a narrowed road? So if we choose to ride a more continuous route along the narrowed road we'll get honked at and bullied by angry motorists who want us out of their way on the narrow section and on to paths covered with pedestrians going to and from the school? So I'm meant to use a shared use section for a small part of a journey down a road, despite now having to give way to pedestrians and motorists as I enter and leave the facility? No way! Not now, not ever - this is a bad idea. By all means narrow the road, but give us dedicated cycling infrastructure in its place. We're narrowing the road and restricting the layby without doing anything positive, at all, for cycling. And by making it shared use we're making it considerably more hostile for pedestrians.

If we move down to St. Albans Road we've got three proposed solutions (link to PDF file) to replace the mini-roundabout. The first is a simple t-junction, that maintains the wide, car-centric sweeping curves of the junction that will encourage drivers wanting to turn left onto St. Albans Road to left hook northbound cyclists. Pedestrians wanting to cross St. Albans where it is narrower will still have to walk way down the road before getting to a safe point to cross. The other two options - both of which turn the main direction of traffic from Arbury Road on to St. Albans Road, will likewise mean cycling North or South bound we'll have to deal with crossing a stream of traffic to continue a journey either from St. Albans to Arbury Road or just to continue on Arbury Road. There is no provision, of any sort, for cycling in this part of the plan - all three proposals just make this differently hostile. This isn't about managing the route for cycling and walking, its about managing the increased flow of car traffic on Arbury Road and needs to be rejected entirely until a better plan is put forward or paid for directly from funding for roads, rather than funding from developers. It doesn't benefit the people living here, it benefits those passing through.

Fun and games continue as we keep heading towards Cambridge on Arbury Road (yet another PDF download, sorry). And its more of the same - if I want to keep cycling up Arbury Road towards Kings Hedges Road I've got to cross a stream of traffic. If I want to turn right from Mere Way on to Arbury Road I've got exactly the same problem with cars not giving way from the left at the proposed junction as I do at the old roundabout - and I see no reason that won't be compounded by cars turning off from Arbury Road from my right to continue down Arbury Road.

There's nothing for cyclists here. Oh, thats right, its a raised junction. So we'll be looking at a surface that cracks and becomes uneven with the weight of heavy vehicles. Brilliant.

There is nothing for cyclists in any of these plans. Nothing. Nada. Zip diddly squat. Its money being spent on 'sprucing up' the roads to control motorist flow without giving the slightest throught of any sort to cyclists and pedestrians - we've got a moved crossing, and thats it. 

But what about that cycle route round the rec ground? Well, here they propose using this developer money for routine maintenance. I kid you not. Look, here's what they say: 

We are proposing to widen and resurface the paths on King’s Hedges Recreation Ground (including the Pulley play area) to improve access to St Laurence’s and other cycle routes in the area. The paths are both local and strategic cycle routes but they are currently narrow and in poor condition.

Or, in other words, they're going to resurface the paths that are hard to get to anyway, which ought to form part of an excellent strategic North/South route through Cambridge but which do not. They're taking developer money and using it on very long overdue maintenance rather than on anything new. They'll maybe be a bit wider, although in truth they're lined by grass rather than roads so they're not really giving us more space for cycling at all. 

This is a pathetic waste of money when there are simple ways of improving the lot of cyclists and pedestrians in Kings Hedges which are being completely ignored. Bluntly, this is a moronic set of proposals from an organisation bereft of imagination or ideas, a council machinery that misses few chances to display how much it hates cyclists through inadequate or downright dangerous infrastructure. It achieves little or nothing for active transport in the North of Cambridge, and very likely gives us yet another mish mash of bad shared use for aggressive motons to try to bully us on to. Saddest of all, there really isn't any reason why some very simple things can't be done to make the area much better for active transport. I'll go in to that in my next post...

Why can't Cambridgeshire Constabulary make things easy?

Below is a copy of the email I just sent to Cambridgeshire Constabulary, the PCC (Graham Bright, about whom I have been less than complimentary) and to Cambridgeshire Constabulary complaints department. How do you think this'll go down?

With bewildering advances in technology allowing people to commit quite new crimes, in new ways, I don't find it quaint or endearing that Cambridgeshire Constabulary want me to do the equivalent of shout in a tin can on the end of a bit of string to report an incident...

Dear Sir/Madame, 
Firstly, I would like to draw your attention to what I believe may be evidence of the use of a mobile device while driving, in Cambridge, in a tweet. This can be seen here:  

https://twitter.com/DrBrie/status/525266164436729857

For convenience I have also included a scree-grab.

Obviously it is illegal to use a mobile device while driving, even if the vehicle isn't moving at the time. The tone and content of the tweet show a certain aggressive tone, which for me makes this seem really rather sinister. The perspective from which the image is taken appears to be the drivers seat. 

Could you please investigate this, and respond with an appropriate incident number and a rough idea what (if anything) you plan to do.

Secondly, I have to comment on how silly your procedures for reporting such things are. I initially tweeted a link to @cambscops, which I would hope ought to bring this to the attention of police staff to make a decision on whether it should be pursued. I was directed to phone 101, which would of course necessitate reading a long URL down the phone, a procedure likely to result in errors and a waste of time. After waiting around 5 minutes to get through first time, I was then cut off, and the second call took 14 minutes to get hold of someone, who took a long time to find an email address to make the report to. Said address (xxxx@xxxx.xxx.xx.xx) could very easily be shared on your website to facilitate rapid, easy communication but it is not. 

Bluntly, if I report something I think is illegal to the Police by any means, at all, it is surely beholden on the police to take that report and do something with it, rather than respond that it is being reported in the wrong way? It appears that you are trying to minimise the number of incidents that are reported by making it needlessly hard to report. 

I have copied in Cambridgeshire PCC, Cambridgeshire Constabulary Complaints department.

Yours Sincerely,

My name
My address

Perne Road and Cambridge Cycling Campaign

Reams of blogroll devoted to this awful new scheme are already being flushed down the information supercarsey. Many of us predicted it would be awful. It is awful. It is already the site of people getting hurt.

So I don't need to add much in the way of criticism to a scheme that was obviously bad from the outset and which has entirely lived up to our low expectations - the blogs listed above already adequately rip this to shreds.

But I do want to remind everyone that Cambridge Cycling Campaign quite inexplicably gave grudging support to this scheme. It appears that doing 'something' was seen by them as sufficient reason to support yet another crap installation at enormous expense to the cycling budget. They supported this to demonstrate that 'Dutch' geometry is right, that its not dangerous, despite the fact that dreadful off-road shared facilities would undoubtedly make said geometry dangerous to cyclists as we're squeezed off in less space than we were previously, with confusing on/off road signs putting us and motorists in each others collective blind spots just where we'd all like to accelerate away. Its almost like the campaign thought Perne Road was taking one for the team so we get a better facility later - despite there being no evidence that this would be the case.

And Camcycle have been tetchy with the way bloggers and cycling journalists have covered this.

Guys, I know, there are some good folk at the Campaign. But you need to chill out and accept that you got this wrong - through your irritable criticism of those covering this story you look like patsies for the County Council, apologists for hazardous infrastructure.

You never, ever answer the simple question - if cyclists don't hold out for genuinely top quality cycling infrastructure here, in Cambridge, right now, then where and when will we? If you keep supporting schemes like this then we will keep getting schemes like this. 

Bluntly, when will you learn?

Victim Blame (again)

Its that time of year again. Nights drawing in, a new academic year, and we're bombarded with messages telling us to have bike lights, hi-viz, helmets, etc. All the stuff we get every Autumn, ignoring the reality that every safety measure we as cyclists can employ won't add up to a hill of beans next to the carnage wrought by motorists - and many of us will be asking ourselves how much victim blame amounts to an acceptable word of caution, and how much is too much?

Again, this coincides with the emotive subject of victim blame in rape being in the news, this time from Judy Finnegan. I gather she's a daytime television presenter married to Alan Partridge.

We'd all agree that suggesting not getting so drunk you're vulnerable to assault (of any kind) is good advice. And minding your drink so no one slips you anything you don't want is a wise precaution. We might go so far as to recommend not wearing something or acting in such a way as to send a message you really don't want to send while at a location in which you may be exposing yourself to risk. But I also hope we'd all agree that none of this is in any way a valid excuse for a rapist - while its fair to advise taking care in a hostile world, we don't any longer absolve the criminal from responsibility for his or her actions based upon the behaviour of a victim.

Ms. Finnegan rather made a mess of things in her brief foray into the area. She's not the first and she won't be the last  to try to say something uncontroversial (rape is always wrong, punishment must reflect the specific crime) and make a pigs ear of it due to brevity/language/no brain buffer between the idea and vocal chords. I get why people are offended by what she said, and from the rapidity and tone of her apology so does she.

So lets compare that with how journalists and 'celebrities' regularly cover cycling. Here in the telegraph for example:

From what I observe, a fatal combination of poor riding skills, a complete disregard for the Highway Code, and the temptation of turning a gentle ride to work across Battersea Bridge into the final stage of the Tour de France, are just as equally to blame for the number of accidents on Britain’s roads as careless drivers.

Of course, we know this isn't true - cyclists are not to blame in 93% of their deaths or serious injuries on the road. That means if we changed our behaviour and got nothing wrong, ever, we'd see very little change in cyclist injury in the UK. The above statement from the Telegraph is an example of horrifically wrong victim blame - and this is a paper with a strong pedigree of vile cyclist hate. 

Lets turn to the good old Daily Mail. Well, lets give a link where one of the articles therein is dissected. I wouldn't wipe my arse on that piece of shit 'paper', I'd feel dirtier afterwards. Noreasoned thought there - the article contains collective blame, stereotyping, 'some of my best friends are...', etc. Prejudice based wank without a any sense or integrity to it.

Maybe local journalists, with a penchant for communities being better places by being quieter, less polluted, cleaner, fitter places might be less obviously frothing at the mouth anti-bike loonies? Oh. Maybe not. In fact we see the victim-blaming mantra writ large, trollumnism with the entire focus being on cyclists. 

How about the 'quality' peridicals? No? 

Stereotyping, and blaming cyclists for others harming them, is so common as to be unremarkable. No one challenges it. You can start a conversation with 'bloody cyclists'.  It has perfused every part of our culture and society. It infects our legal system (I refer you to the Cycling Lawyer blog for all too many examples of people killing cyclists and getting away with it because the cyclist who was right in front of the driver 'came out of nowhere' or 'the sun was in my eyes', or even 'because its a dangerous road').

As a society we try to have it both ways, and we fail - either victim blame is bad, or victim blame is good. We can't sub-divide based on whether the victims are doing something that we don't do - if they're acting within the law (or even outside of the law) and get hurt or killed due to the actions of others, which is the case with the vast majority of cyclist injuries, then this remorseless victim blaming has to end. And we'll only get there if we make all of the crass, lazy, downright offensive stereotyping of cyclists that we see in our media a thing of the past.

By all means, advise cyclists to have lights. Spend about 2% of your effort or bile relating to cyclist safety on this, about the proportion of deaths and serious injuries this causes. Anything more? You're victim blaming scum.

The Telegraph vs. Cyclists?

The cycling twittersphere is rather in a tizz about this article here, followed by the events described in this rather one-sided version here. 

To summarise - the Telegraph opinion piece didn't get past basic trollumnism. I can pretty much  (and cruelly) paraphrase the entire article with 'as a cyclist myself, with no reference to recorded accident cause statistics, I'd like to associate with negative, stereotype based generalisations about cyclist behaviour being the cause for their untimely but deserved deaths at the hands of more virtuous drivers - how DARE any of them use helmet cameras to record incidents where they're forced from the road and waste police time on those who intimidate them with their cars'.

There was, understandably, quite a bit of online response to this ugly, victim blaming, clumsy anger-piece. I've covered victim blame before, and little more needs to be said other than that Critchlow is both demonstrably wrong and indefensibly lazy in his portrayal of cyclists. His article will be interpreted by those who already hate us as an endorsement of mistreating cyclists on our roads, and I can't condone any part of it. It doesn't even make sense - does he think helmet camera riders have some sort of death wish, that they go looking for trouble to have some kind of confrontation to post online? Does he believe that cyclists seek to encourage motorists to use their vehicles as weapons against us? Its very hard to dismantle his article without feeling that his writing comes more from prejudice than rational, impartial observation. And he's not just a trollumnist, he's a cyclist himself. Two unremarkable kinds of cyclist hate rolled in to one unpleasant mess.

The Telegraph is rather robust, on occasion, with how it discusses cycling. Or, to put it another way, it occasionally revels in irrelevant, petulant cyclist hate, and while there are some decent articles this kind of pandering to moton-angst is the baseline to which the this rag tends to return, and this encourages precisely the kind of behaviour that cycle helmet cameras are worn to protect us from. Bluntly, the Telegraph encourages anti-cyclist hate with this kind of writing.

Considering how low these blows strike, its rather a surprise to me that John Stevensons comment was taken so to heart - especially as coverage of the incident in the Telegraph seeks so hard to stress how fearlessly their man has served his country and reported from war zones. I wouldn't condone Stevensons tweet - but come on Telegraph, sort your life out - can you not put more effort into resolving this and asking that the two gentlemen shake hands? You need to accept that this kind of article, inciting hate against any group, including cyclists, is flat out unacceptable, and that even people who ordinarily show impeccable judgement may not strike a good balance in responding to this kind of pathetic slur. You need to raise your standards above basic rabble rousing.

So, gents, on the remote chance either or both of you read this, can you call truce and settle this? Here, now. Accept that the article was misguided and offensive and that the response over the top. Both of you apologise and move on?