Singletrack article - nails it.

Was planning an analysis of Wiggos comments.

Turns out its already been done, more or less perfectly.

Advice for local council candidates regarding the cycling survey...

I don't know if its something that candidates to become councillors here look forward to or dread, but a bit of a local tradition is that Cambridge Cycling Campaign come up with a list of questions that they forward to all of the candidates, and a little birdie (well, Al, in a tweet) hinted that the questions for the forthcoming council elections are almost ready.

The responses make great fodder for the rest of us, and I've covered them before in blog posts such as those linked to here. But this time round, before the questions go out, I've a few things to suggest to those who might be about to fill out their responses.

1. Actually answer the questions

You would think this is obvious, but there have been plenty of 'no comments' or words to that effect sent back. And many more where the answers are every be as uninformative as that - such as telling us that its a leading question without ever explaining why.

Look, either answer the questions or don't, but stop assuming that the very act of responding to the survey is validation.

2. Don't give stock answers

This is something Labour have been particularly guilty of - its like the answers are variants of a theme, like they're reading from a guidance document. Its not clever, its not interesting, its just a well organised way of not really telling us what you think. By all means give the party line, but most of the questions won't be about what the party line is because they're about very, very local issues - please, answer specifically and honestly.

3. Don't treat the questions as a threat

Seriously, some of the answers in the past have been ridiculously defensive, even evasive. Stop for a moment and ask yourself what this is for - if you treat a set of questions from cyclists as hostile, are we likely to believe you won't treat cyclists as hostile?

4. Give us detail

Don't say you're positive towards cyclists. Don't say you support cycling. Tell us what you'll do and how you'll do it - tell us where and how you'll do stuff to make cycling better. In many wards ALL candidates will say they support cycling - the one who stands out is the one who tells us how.

5. Know your ward

If a question is about a specific location in your ward, go look at it, maybe even go ride it a couple of times. THEN answer. If you answer that you don't know the location and don't use this as a chance to get informed then what are you doing in local politics anyway?

So thanks for reading this - and please, if you're responding to the survey from the Cycling Campaign then follow these 5 bits of advice and you'll not go far wrong. 

'Cyclists Beware' Stickers - A Condition of Use?

We've all seen them. 

They come in various sorts, but they're all essentially giving the same message - don't try to pass this vehicle in the blind spot on the left (or occasionally at all), the driver can't see in that space so you're putting yourself at risk in doing so. And it sounds like eminently good advice if its an articulated lorry, but since this sticker appeared its finding its way onto smaller and smaller delivery vehicles which really oughtn't have sucky visibility.

Most would agree with the advice of not slipping down the side of large vehicles in that way, but I'm sure many of us would question the presence of such an advisory note on, say, a transit van. And while these things are getting ever more common it doesn't look like cyclists opinions are being sought over what this means for our safety - which is allegedly what they're for.

I'm not opposed to this advice - but I think it has to be two-way. If you put one of these signs on your vehicle you're admitting that such a vehicle isn't really very good for safe use in a multi-mode environment. I would argue that for a city such as Cambridge the presence of such a sticker tells us straight away that your vehicle needs to stay the hell out of the city centre, and I would urge our City and County Councils to discuss implementing this as a simple measure to make cycling safer. Urgently. These companies are telling us flat out that their vehicles are not safe in the presence of the majority vehicle type in the centre of Cambridge - what possible excuse can there be for bringing unsafe vehicles into the city centre?

Health and safety is more than how the hazards we pose should affect the behaviour of others around us - its more important, and more responsible, to limit to the hazards we ourselves pose by modifying our own behaviour. Does your vehicle have a massive blind spot, presenting such a hazard to others that you cannot safely be passed on the left (or the right)? Is that space so dangerous that a cyclist needs to be warned? And you coexist in city traffic with cyclists and may often end up slowly passing them, putting them in that (invisible) space for such an extended period of time that other road hazards may distract you from them? That isn't okay.

I propose that such a warning sign is primarily about the hazards posed by that vehicle, not the behaviour of others not in that vehicle. You want such a sign on your lorry? Great, thanks for the advice, but it means you can't overtake cyclists on any road where any congestion may lead to stoppages. I propose that such a sign is useful, but it is absurd to suggest that if putting a cyclist in your blind spot is dangerous that any driver of such a vehicle can reasonably choose to do so. Want a cyclists stay back sticker? Fine - the price is your vehicle isn't allowed to overtake cyclists in any non-national speed limit road. In a 20, 30 or 40mph zone especially you cannot overtake cyclists if your vehicle has this sticker - and if the purpose of such a warning is the safety of the cyclist, there is no arguable case against this proposal.

So you see more cyclists jump red lights?

"So how come I see so many cyclists jumping red lights?" or some variant thereof is the constant background hum to any kind of discussion on cycling in the UK.

"A driver came right out and side swiped me"

"Really? Thats terrible, I saw someone jump a red light on his bike!"

"Oh? Good for you, now fuck off you unsympathetic bastard, I thought you were my friend but you bring me this shit in response to some fucking moton trying to kill me?"

Well, thats what you want to say, but you don't, because we're British and we seem to think its fine to rain hate down on us for being cyclists and because we don't want to make a scene. But why do we keep hearing this?

Lets assume for the moment that all road users are just people, lets cross off the mode of travel under their name for the moment and say people are more or less the same. It would follow that roughly the same proportion of people in each group would be likely to break a rule if they thought they could get away with it without hurting anybody. Shall we say 1 in 10?

So a driver gets to a stop line with a red light, there's a 10% likelyhood he'll go through it if he can get away with it. Or, in other words, there's a 90% chance that the driver will stop. And if caught behind the first car, the second driver in a line can't jump the red light - there is therefore a 10% chance that a driver can jump red - a probability of 0.1. Its also likely to be the case that unless they jump red as soon as the lights change from amber, they won't be able to do so because there's just nowhere a car can go across a busy junction, so unless the car driver who will be willing to jump red is at the front of the queue and within a narrow time window (as likely as not therefore 'amber gambling' or accelerating hard as the lights change to red) its just not feasible to jump a red light in a car. It does't matter how many car drivers are there - the chance of a red light being jumped by a car driver is independent of how many drivers there are.

Lets look at cyclists now - every cyclist has the opportunity to jump a red light at every single junction. We can, if we want, usually filter to the front. So if there's one cyclist, the probability of there being a red light jumping bike rider is 0.1. If there are two the maths starts getting more fun... 

Both jumping the red light would be 0.1 times 0.1 - or 1 in 100. Both not jumping red would be 0.9 times 0.9, or 0.81 (81 times out of 100 you'd see neither jumping red). So in other words you'd see at least one of them jump a red light 19 times out of 100 - and this can very easily be well after the light has changed to red because a cyclist can not only always get to the front but can jump the light at any time.

So lets say on your daily commute you go through 10 sets of lights and at each set there are 10 cars other than the one you're in. The probability of  a driver jumping a red light at one of those lights is easy to calculate - and its as near as dammit 69% chance. But lets also say that because only the first car can jump red, and you can only really say with certainty a car 1 or 2 places in front of you has jumped the light (the vehicle is the same size as the car you're in after all), you'll only see a fifth of them. So 13.8% of your commutes you'll see a red light jumping driver.

Lets now assume that at the same junctions there's the same number of cyclists - that means you've a hundred cyclists with a chance of jumping red - there's a 99.99% chance of seeing a cyclist jumping a red light (in fact by the time you've passed your fourth junction there's a 99% chance there's been a cyclist jumping red).

The simple truth is that we're all just stupid monkeys, and regardless of the mode of travel you'll find people who think they can break the rules and thats all fine. That you see more cyclists than motorists break a particular rule doesn't mean that they're worse offenders - it just reflects what you're in a position to see and the opportunities they have. 

Your belief that cyclists are worse than motorists for jumping red lights doesn't mean that cyclists really do break the rules more - it just means you've not done the maths. 

Cambridge Cycle Point - Britains first multi-storey bike park

I paid my first visit to Cyclepoint this morning, and I really liked some of what I saw.

Sorry, everyone else has been way more enthusiastic than I am about this. Don't get me wrong - its going to be really useful for commuters. And its a massive improvement on the bike racks that used to be under the linden trees on the edge of the old car-park, where (according to Cambridge urban legend) they placed the bike parks so that the aphid shit fell on them after motons repeatedly complained about sticky paintwork (yes, aphids shitting sugary stuff like rain from linden trees is a thing, look it up). We're not twisting our ankles on coarse gravel to squeeze into a space where there are no more spaces. Its immeasurably better than it was.

But I don't get why its what it is. Have a look at the video and think about it...

Access is currently through the area that seems to be an eternal building site around the station - its not clear that we'll be able to ride right up to the bike park when its done but I live in hope.

First things first - I don't want to dismount to enter a bike park. There it is. When its quiet there's plenty of room to ride in, its dumb to ask anyone to dismount. Would you tell motorists to dismount and push at the car park entrance? No? Well bugger off with your dismount sign, you're an idiot if you think thats worth having. 

You'll notice I was on my Elephant Bike, a big beast for sure but not an over-sized steed. As you'll see, all of the spaces on the ground floor which it was anticipated might be left for big bikes and old folk were full of pretty normal sized bikes. All of them. And they're ludicrously laid out, if you push a big bike round to find a space you'll be lucky to get it out without clattering other bikes. And this is when when we get to the most inexplicably silly part of the design. The stairs. 

Yes, the stairs. Stairs that have to be shallow enough so someone can push a bike up the ramp next to them, so they're shallow enough such that riding up really wouldn't be all that big a deal - stretch it out a little longer and it would be an absolute doddle to ride up and down them. But, no. Stairs. In a bike park. Presumably because we just can't have something that's indisputably good.

Upstairs its fair to to say that the raised racks are massively better than the old ones outside were - but to be honest a pile of bricks and a good spring would have been better than those. They're quite easy to use if you've a light-enough bike without a basket on it but in a million years I'd never get the Elephant up on it. There were some 'ordinary' slots free though, so I'd have been able to lock up had I needed to. Whether that'll still be the case as the place really picks up (after half term!) may be another matter!

So, not bad all things considered, and I'll look forward to it actually being finished. Very close to getting things just right - but there are some things that need to change.

Firstly, while I don't imagine it'll work I'd like to see some signs telling people to put lighter bikes up stairs and up on the higher racks, to leave some spaces for cargo bikes, big bikes, old folk, etc. Secondly, the lift-up racks will need maintaining in all sorts of ways that the outside lift up racks weren't. Moving parts are great if looked after. Thirdly I think the layout downstairs is failing already - you'd not build a car park such that its physically impossible to wheel a car out without clattering in to another, it makes no sense that to do so with bikes. 

But all in all? Massive improvement, a hugely needed facility and one that'll be interesting to watch in use. If only it wasn't for those bloody stupid stairs.

The Aged Nimby. Enemy of all that is good.

The whole City Deal thing in Cambridge has really brought to the forefront the key battleground between reasonable, sensible people who simply want to get where they're going with the minumum of hassle and one of the most dangerous, angry and unstable demographic in this city or any other - retired old farts.

The argument goes something like this.

Normal Person: I'd like to get where I'm going without spending twenty hours per week commuting. To achieve that I'd like there to be a route that isn't totally congested with cars burning fuel just to sit still - that means we need to re-evaluate how we use some of our road space. Oh, I'd like my children to be able to breathe without the air being made toxic by all those cars too.

Nimby: But I'm not going to lose my parking space and some of us NEED our cars to get where we're going.

Normal Person: Your parking space thats outside the front of the driveway on your house thats worth, what, a million and a half quid? The one in addition to the two parking spaces on your own property? And from which even if you want to drive somewhere you can't because the road is full?

Nimby: But that would mean cutting down the TREES and turning this all over to buses and cyclists and not old, world hating FARTS like us!

Normal Person: Yeah, but we can select better trees to create better public spaces - besides, no one can do anything fun in those spaces now because they're entirely dominated by cars, meaning no one can cycle, the bus takes just as long, how is your way going to solve anything!

Nimby: RIGHT THATS IT. I'm writing to my councillor, repeatedly, and petitioning, and making sure that everything is run by and for old bastards like me.

Don't take my word for it. Have a look at these people here. Do you need to even read the article to know that they tell you they want to make the road safer and better for bus users and cyclists but basically oppose every measure that might achieve that? That they'll probably chain themselves to their parking spaces rather than see anything done to make the road safer for thousands of people who use it?

The problem here really is very simple - in Cambridge, as elsewhere, there's a resident population of people in and around the city who are basically doing okay. They're usually old, have huge wealth in their homes. and they resent anything that might change, well, anything. They 'care' that everyone who's younger than them is basically fucked over by their generation and priced out of the cities, out of home ownership, and into long, soul destroying commutes, but they care more about keeping things as they are. And they seem to have endless time to dominate council committee meetings, to reinforce the stale prejudices of blue rinsed nimbys on councils. They'll get indignant that dull, stunted, boring trees might be cut down to make way for a way more creative and suitable plating scheme which would also make the roads safer and cleaner for everyone involved. So there will always be an idiot councillor willing to make dick-ish comments to play to them in the audience.  

But the key point, the unspoken take home message from everything they bring to local politics is that the Nimbys offer no solutions to any problems that we have. All they bring is an aversion to change, any change, even one that won't make their lives measurably different in any way. That a change benefits someone else is enough for the Nimby to oppose it.

You see the thousands of poeple queuing on routes like Milton Road, Histon Road and Arbury Road up and down the country? The ones who drove to get a bus or then to cycle, and who spend an hour, two hours a day to commute to their 40 hour per week jobs and the same time home again? The one's who, because the older generation climbed the property ladder and used Nimby planning rules to pull that ladder up after them don't have the time or energy to even be aware of whats happening in transport planing? They're the ones the doddery old curtain twitchers are fucking over with their lame opposition to transport improvements. It isn't just the cyclists who they only have platitudes for, its everyone who isn't them. Its you. Its me.

I put it to you, dear reader, that we need to impress upon our politicians, local and national, that the old farts will die eventually - stop running our entire country for them before that happens, or we'll have no truck with you after. You want us to trust you? Then listen to those who represent the future. 

The Foraging Bike. How depressing.

I'm a cyclist.

And a forager.

There, I'm outed.

Forager, you ask? Why are you saying that here? Whats that got to do with the price of rhubarb? Nothing. Except that cycling and ferreting around in the woods for food are an almost perfect synergy - they're both great practical, thrifty, healthy, simple and easy ways of making your life better. So one would think I'd look rather kindly on this. But I can't, I just can't. I'm drawn to it as something that I feel should delight me, but which completely misses the point.

If you can't be bothered to look at the link, its a foragers bike. Its a solid, old fashioned design, no doubt well made and well appointed. Its branded River Cottage, thats the telly chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall chap who years ago made 'A Cook on the Wildside' and whose chunky River Cottage cook-books sit un-opened on the shelf opposite the Aga in your middle classed friends kitchen (and which are among my own most used cookery books - River Cottage Cookbook is genuinely an inspiration and if the self-sufficiency lifestyle is one you dabble in are truly invaluable). 

I really have got a lot of time for HFW. I never really warmed to his telly programs, but I'm not a big fan of cooking on the googlebox - its his books that are so good. His approach to good ingredients, animal welfare, seasonality and sustainable cooking is spot on. Genuinely brilliant. And I do love a good solid bike. But such a bike is the precise antithesis of what you want for foraging.

I usually take my chunky old hybrid bike foraging. Its not a glamorous bike, but its got wide tyres and a tough frame - its more mountain bike than fast commuter. And I take a pocket knife (usually a mushroom knife), and a rucksack containing paper and plastic bags. And I'll bungee a basket to the pannier rack. What I don't take is multiple baskets (although they're great if on foot), pans, a portable stove, chopping boards, bottles, and a positive armoury of cutlery and knives. Bluntly I'd rather have the carrying capacity to bring back a good haul of mushrooms, greens or fruit. The other advantage of such a bike is it'll cope with any kind of slope, I can lift it over a fence or a style, I've carried it over rivers, its good on mud, and best of all it cost me under three hundred quid, about eight years ago. It didn't cost me the best part of four grand like this one would. 

I dunno, maybe I'm just being a grumpy fart, but this thing gives me the shivers. Yeah, foraging is sort of aspirational, about finding high value ingredients and impressing your assistant bank manager friends. But its also about adding tasty, nutritious, exciting and free things to your diet. Likewise, 'cycling is the new golf' and has been for so long its better to say that cycling used to be golf. But its also the cheapest, simplest, lowest impact means of getting from place to place. To combine foraging and cycling in a package that comes to pennies shy of £4000 and which comes with more accessories than a spoiled girls Barbie is to so completely miss the point of both as to be laughable.

Riding a bike to pick wild food has been the means by which I've eaten well through the parts of my life when I've been skint. There were times I was struggling to pay rent but I could still have a good dinner almost for free - and now the conflation of cycling and foraging is branded, packaged and sold for a kings ransom? Fuck no.

This, I suspect, isn't the bike of a committed forager or a practical cyclist - its a sign that both activities have now transcended the mere practical, and are aspirational. Want to keep up with the Jones's? This is the bike for you. Put it in the garage behind the Prius, and drive the Landy to work.