You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

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mjr
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by mjr »

Bmblbzzz wrote:I don't think there's any problem believing that perceived danger is a barrier. That doesn't mean though that removing the perceived danger would on its own lead to an appreciable increase in cycling.

I think that's fair. We need to focus on making/keeping it convenient, healthy and as fast end-to-end as motoring (not actually as difficult as one might think, even in suburban areas), but silly short-hop motoring is the current habit and we'll need to give people reasons to break that habit to get an appreciable increase in cycling.

Given we're not government and can't just congestion-tax cars off the road, what can we do? Schedule "health rides" to get people back on their bikes and show them the nice routes around town? Put signs up at the exits of urban firework display car parks saying "if you'd come by bike, you'd be home by now"? :twisted:
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by meic »

There are plenty of roads and times that I will not cycle around here.
Even if the danger may not be as bad as feared the aggression, agro and intimidation is too much to take. I dont know if my various neighbours who have tried cycling out of the village would have ever persisted in doing so, but their emotions on returning from their first ride and having been shaved off by numerous cars was genuine enough and without doubt the reason they didnt try a second time or allow their kids to do it.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Bmblbzzz »

mjr wrote:
Bmblbzzz wrote:I don't think there's any problem believing that perceived danger is a barrier. That doesn't mean though that removing the perceived danger would on its own lead to an appreciable increase in cycling.

I think that's fair. We need to focus on making/keeping it convenient, healthy and as fast end-to-end as motoring (not actually as difficult as one might think, even in suburban areas), but silly short-hop motoring is the current habit and we'll need to give people reasons to break that habit to get an appreciable increase in cycling.

Yes, that habit takes a lot of breaking, partly due to the factors that put people off other modes but mostly because of habit and laziness. Making cycling (or walking or buses or skateboarding or whatever) more attractive -- both more attractive than now and more attractive than driving -- is not going to achieve a lot, I fear, without at the same time making driving perceptibly (to the norm of public and media opinion) unattractive.

Given we're not government and can't just congestion-tax cars off the road, what can we do? Schedule "health rides" to get people back on their bikes and show them the nice routes around town? Put signs up at the exits of urban firework display car parks saying "if you'd come by bike, you'd be home by now"? :twisted:

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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

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Bmblbzzz wrote:Yes, that habit takes a lot of breaking, partly due to the factors that put people off other modes but mostly because of habit and laziness. Making cycling (or walking or buses or skateboarding or whatever) more attractive -- both more attractive than now and more attractive than driving -- is not going to achieve a lot, I fear, without at the same time making driving perceptibly (to the norm of public and media opinion) unattractive.

Again, I don't think it's simple laziness and I think we make no friends by throwing that accusation at potential cyclists. Also, I don't think we need to make driving unattractive because it does that itself (jams, collisions, pollution, stress) - I feel we just need to publicise its drawbacks more because they're pretty much ignored by public and media opinion as the way things are at the moment. Mahoosive traffic queues are incorrectly blamed on road layouts or traffic light timings or even cyclists, rather than an inevitable consequence of too many motorists trying to fit down medieval streets - or even some narrow 1970s streets!
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Bsteel »

Bmblbzzz wrote:Yes, that habit takes a lot of breaking, partly due to the factors that put people off other modes but mostly because of habit and laziness. Making cycling (or walking or buses or skateboarding or whatever) more attractive -- both more attractive than now and more attractive than driving -- is not going to achieve a lot, I fear, without at the same time making driving perceptibly (to the norm of public and media opinion) unattractive.


I think for many the problem comes before the journey starts, the car is conveniently parked outside and requires no change to clothing or additional equipment and the journey can start immediately. Whereas the bike maybe locked away in a safe place so needs to be removed before use and the rider may also decide it requires a change of clothing or extra equipment in order to ride it. just those extra steps can be enough to stop it being used.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by horizon »

There seems to be some peculiar statistical relationship between those who choose to cycle (or at least try it out) and those who by nature are risk averse, unsteady on their feet, naturally unassertive and fearsome. However, these nice, shy, retiring people (mainly kindly middle-aged women) only form around (let's say) 20% of the population. Get back on the road and you find what the risk-taking other 80% is doing. That's right, they are determinedly in their cars, speeding, cutting up cyclists, using their mobile phones and hustling the driver in front. At home, they're soaking up the latest advert extolling speed and acceleration. They have no intention of even giving it a try.

A few years back I had a friend who swore blind that cycling was far too dangerous and that he would never do it. I for my part would get out from his car after a lift shaking and sweating from the white-knuckle ride I had just experienced (that's actually happened with several other people too).

I am less interested in the well-meaning people who have tried it but the ones who never would but give you all the nonsense about danger (largely caused in fact by themselves).
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by amediasatex »

Well we largely already know why people choose to use cars to get around, so perhaps the group we should be asking/surveying are those that currently walk and use the bus to get around?

They're not already entrenched in car ownership and use, yet choose to either walk, or use a service that costs money and time (bus) over cycling.

Obviously you'll get some answers about carrying things and children from some people but for the rest, cylcing would be quicker than walking, no more exposed to the weather (and for less time), cheaper (and possibly quicker) than the bus, certainly more convenient than waiting or scheduling your day around a bus timetable so why do they not cycle?

is it simply 'fear' or something less tangible like the perceived effort in terms of physical exertion? Or a mix of both, and additional factors like parking and route choice etc.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Bmblbzzz »

mjr wrote:
Bmblbzzz wrote:Yes, that habit takes a lot of breaking, partly due to the factors that put people off other modes but mostly because of habit and laziness. Making cycling (or walking or buses or skateboarding or whatever) more attractive -- both more attractive than now and more attractive than driving -- is not going to achieve a lot, I fear, without at the same time making driving perceptibly (to the norm of public and media opinion) unattractive.

Again, I don't think it's simple laziness and I think we make no friends by throwing that accusation at potential cyclists. Also, I don't think we need to make driving unattractive because it does that itself (jams, collisions, pollution, stress) - I feel we just need to publicise its drawbacks more because they're pretty much ignored by public and media opinion as the way things are at the moment. Mahoosive traffic queues are incorrectly blamed on road layouts or traffic light timings or even cyclists, rather than an inevitable consequence of too many motorists trying to fit down medieval streets - or even some narrow 1970s streets!

Laziness was a bad word choice on my part. It's not necessarily or physical laziness but a preference for (perceived or actual) convenience. The points Bsteel makes are good examples. That convenience may be more perceived than actual but that's another problem we have to deal with. Publicising the drawbacks of driving over other modes of travel is a start, but that's not going to get more than a grumble out of most people. Similarly, publicising the advantages of cycling is not going to get more than "So what?" or "Yes but" from most. Visible and dramatic differences are needed along with understanding that the differences are down to choice of mode and choosing driving brings advantages (peak speed, load carrying) at great personal cost (increased journey time, high parking charges, etc -- and these will probably need to be swingingly so).
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Wanlock Dod »

mjr wrote:Mahoosive traffic queues are incorrectly blamed on road layouts or traffic light timings or even cyclists

As long as we blame the traffic congestion on these issues we can, as a society, maintain the collective belief that we can build our way out of the mess we have made. If we were to accept that there would be plenty of room for everybody if we didn't all choose to use our cars at once then people might start to consider the alternatives more. I suspect that there is an element of waiting for the critical piece of road development which will suddenly free the whole area from traffic congestion which contributes to the justification by many people that they are doing the right thing. If they didn't believe that better times, with quicker journeys, were ahead then they might give more consideration to the alternatives. We've never managed to do away with congestion by building roads, but we have certainly seem to have managed to persuade people that it is pointless considering any alternatives.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by RickH »

mjr wrote:We need to focus on making/keeping it convenient, healthy and as fast end-to-end as motoring (not actually as difficult as one might think, even in suburban areas), but silly short-hop motoring is the current habit and we'll need to give people reasons to break that habit to get an appreciable increase in cycling.

The figures in the Greater Manchester Transport Strategy (link) are disturbing, if not unsurprising - half of all journeys are less than 2km & 38% of those are made by car! by my reckoning that is 19%, almost 1 in 5 all journeys, are car trips of 2km (1.25 miles) or less. They also estimate that physical inactivity is costing the health service in Greater Manchester £35 million per annum!

GM short car journeys.JPG


On a more positive note - Mrs H & I were in Manchester yesterday & had some time to spare so we walked down Oxford St through the University campus. The number of bikes parked outside buildings must be at least 10x the number when I was a (cycling) student there back in the late 70s/early 80s. The new cycling facilities & general car ban (buses, taxis & permit holders only) makes it much more pleasant to walk (& cycle too although I've not actually been through there by bike since they re-did it). A quick traffic count at one previously very busy set of lights at about 5:15pm showed 20+ bikes, 3 buses, 2 taxis & 3 cars on one phase heading out of the city centre. Maybe all is not lost. :)
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Bmblbzzz »

All is not lost for cycling, but might be for driving. There are far more cyclists in the university areas of Bristol than there used to be (though my comparison is with late 80s not 70s) but there are also many more cars in the university car parks and generally. Cycling numbers are so low compared to other modes that if they doubled overall, we wouldn't notice much of a dent in (motor) traffic.

Perhaps controversially on a cycling forum, but I don't think we should actually be trying to get people out of cars into bikes. It's great if we do, of course, but if we aim at it, it just looks partisan. By we, I don't mean just CUK etc but government etc. What we need to do, for the good of everyone, is to get people out of cars full stop. Doesn't then matter much if they bike, walk, bus, ferry, skateboard... Less traffic = cleaner air, quieter towns, better physical health, better mental health, more exercise, more social interaction, more play for children, more room for housing and other buildings, more local shopping, more pounds in our pockets, happier people. It's for people not cyclists and that's by far the more likely to succeed.
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Re: So there you go - forget your Dutch-style cycle facilities

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PH wrote:I understand much of the Netherlands infrastructure came about in the 70s as a result of the oil crisis, when people were open to the idea of change.

The Netherlands had a great deal of cycling infrastructure already, prior to the 70s. What turned around in that decade was that they stopped dismantling it to make way for increasing motor traffic and started building more and better facilities. And the main force behind this turnaround was not the oil crisis but the huge numbers of Dutch cyclists, especially children, who were getting killed by that increasing traffic. The reason this happened in the Netherlands and not here, is that cycling has always been huge in Holland.

Some cycling campaigners would have you believe that there's nothing special about the Netherlands, nothing they've done that we couldn't easily copy. They will tell you that cycling declined in the Netherlands just like it did here. In percentage terms, so it did, to about a third of its post-WW2 peak, but from a MUCH HIGHER PEAK.

Once the Dutch had replaced all the bicycles stolen by retreating Germans, cycling accounted for up to 90% of urban trips. The comparable figure for Manchester in the 1940s was about 30%. That's nevertheless a great deal of cycling, a level produces those iconic images of workers all-a-wheel pouring out of factory gates as the end-of-shift hooter blows. Fast-forward to the 1970s and British cycling levels have fallen to a meagre 10% of trips in towns. In the Netherlands meanwhile, cycling has also fallen to a third of its former level, but still accounts for about 30%.

So: the Dutch turned things around when cycling was still a mass movement, accounting for just as much of the traffic as it EVER did in postwar Britain. Meanwhile, the new drivers responsible for the other two-thirds of Dutch traffic found themselves in what the Military call a target rich environment! What turned things around in the Netherlands was not the oil crisis - though it probably helped - but public outrage at the slaughter, particularly of children, almost all of whom cycled to school. And in 1970s Holland, with most adults and everyone's children - irrespective of wealth or position - still using bikes for at least some their everyday journeys, there were still a lot of votes in cycling.

In Britain it was much easier to ignore the smaller number of deaths. At only 10% of trips it looked like cycling was on the way out. It made as much sense to build facilities for that as for riding a horse to work!

Cycling didn't die out of course, but remains stuck at a vestigial level, where there's not enough of it going on to justify the construction of a quality of infrastructure that might make it an attractive alternative to driving - except in places where driving is totally impracticable.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by reohn2 »

The problem as I see it and CJ alludes to it his post,is that we(UK society)aren't making motoring impractical in areas where it should be made impractical,namely town and city centres.
I've blown this trumpet on the various pollution threads over the years,stop motoring where its doing the most harm and people will find alternatives,one of those will be cycling along with public transport.
And more people will cycle when they find a viable,safe and practical solution to their tranport needs,they won't do that if the car is available,convenient and unfettered IMO,and part of that is fear of the unfettered and convenient motors along with no alternative but to share space with those frightening vehicles.
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Re: So there you go - forget your Dutch-style cycle facilities

Post by mjr »

CJ wrote:
PH wrote:I understand much of the Netherlands infrastructure came about in the 70s as a result of the oil crisis, when people were open to the idea of change.

The Netherlands had a great deal of cycling infrastructure already, prior to the 70s. What turned around in that decade was that they stopped dismantling it to make way for increasing motor traffic and started building more and better facilities.

I think a key part there is "and better". The 1960s Netherlands cycling infrastructure was pretty much the same sort of crap that was built in Britain around that time, but whereas they built better and I doubt much of the crap hasn't been replaced yet, ours continued to get worse.

CJ wrote:Some cycling campaigners would have you believe that there's nothing special about the Netherlands, nothing they've done that we couldn't easily copy.

And what's wrong with that? Copying what they've done would be fairly easy - but increasing cycling to their levels still wouldn't be easy because we're starting from a rather different position.

CJ wrote:Cycling didn't die out of course, but remains stuck at a vestigial level, where there's not enough of it going on to justify the construction of a quality of infrastructure that might make it an attractive alternative to driving - except in places where driving is totally impracticable.

Thank you Private Fraser, but I respectfully disagree with the implicit assertion that we need lots of people swimming across a river to justify building bridges.
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Re: You can forget about your Dutch-style cycling facilities

Post by Vorpal »

I haven't been able to find any documentation about this, but my colleagues tell me that 30 years ago, Norway was headed much the same way as the UK.

They did two things about it: improved infrastructure and heavily promoted active living

For infrastructure, they took main roads out of the town centres & residential areas by building bypasses or tunnels, pedestrianised town centres (but allow cycling), built new parallel cycle paths along interurban roads, and introduced (very) limited permeability in many residential areas. New housing estates are motor-traffic free, like in the Netherlands.

For promoting active living, they used many resources and organisations, including health service, schools, local government, media, and advertising. They prescribed activities to people who were overweight, provided activities through community organisations, subsidised sports clubs for kids, advertised about the benefits and convenience of cycling, and built a public transport network that means people can get around most urban areas by bus (or tram or underground in Oslo) almost as fast as they can by car, and cheaper than parking in the centre. They also kept up the public pressure for people to be active. While it may have been less of a cultural shift for Norwegians than it would be for Britons, I don't think that it is outside the realm of feasible. But it does require political will. And whilst British politicians have their thumbs in the automotive pie, that ain't gonna happen.

The Norwegian Venstra party (which means 'left', but is actually fairly centrist) ran the last campaign with 'People not Cars' as a central issue of their political platform.
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