Getting ̶1̶0̶0̶,̶0̶0̶0̶ 50,000 people back on their bikes.

[TonyR]

It's all very well getting these people out on their bikes, because they have functioning bikes.
What about the untapped number of bikes left to die in sheds because of a simple repair left undone.
To get these bikes on the road it might have been better using the money to support members (sorry, supporters) to link with the owners and to do simple, safe repairs to get these bikes back on the roads.

A good many of those bikes will be BSO's which were beyond redemption with a wrench even when they were new let alone after years of neglect.

As for using members, I can see enormous liability problems when something bad happens from maintenance poorly done by an unqualified amateur wrench sent by the CTC. It would probably also decimate the LBSs as their service income went to amateur volunteers doing it for free (how do you distinguish someone genuinely wanting to get their unused bike back on the road from someone wrangling a free service for their regularly used bike?)

[Vorpal]

Sorry.
Pedantic head on, and repeating myself ..........

100,000 people back on their bikes?

Does he mean 100,000 more people on bikes, or 100,000 people BACK on their bikes?

There is a big difference IMHO.

Well, most people have used bikes at one point or another. It is, however, a significant point, and it matters whether 100,000 people are getting back on bikes they already have (I guess this happens most days ), 100,000 people are getting back on bikes they haven't ridden in a while, 100,000 people who haven't ridden since they got cars are getting back on bikes.

To be fair, any single solution: training, changes to the law, better infrastructure, etc isn't going to solve the problem. What one needs is a holistic approach that uses a combination of these and many other things. Alas, such an approach will cost a bit more than £1m.

Yes, I agree, and it aligns with what I usually say when these threads come up.

As to getting 100,000 on bikes - yes, spread around the country it won't be that noticeable. However, if it could be done in one area then it would stand out, and it would show other areas that uit was possible and that they could follow suit. But that's not to say that having 100,000 new cyclists across the country isn't a good thing!

That would be great, but what about the last couple of go-rounds? Take Cycling Towns. Some were quite successful. Where is the plan for the new cycling towns? implementing the lessons learned from the first set?

[Si]

Where is the plan for the new cycling towns? implementing the lessons learned from the first set?

http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/bbb a holistic approach which is implementing the lessons learned from http://bikenorth.birmingham.gov.uk/

[CJ]

Training people to cope with the danger and inconvenience of cycling, although useful at the individual level, is not the answer. Rather than trying to make new cyclists one at a time, we need to put all of our effort into demanding changes to the law and the infrastructure that make cycling safer and more convenient for the whole population at once, or at least for all the people living in an area.

Training people to understand the difference between the perceived danger and inconvenience and the reality is very much a good thing and IMO very much part of the answer.

When one has to cycle on a 70mph trunk road , like James Stephenson did for the last time on the first day of this year, because it is the ONLY convenient way home from work and the Highways Agency are too cheap to extend the cyclepath one more mile to the next junction, there is no difference between perception and reality.

[PH]

Training people to cope with the danger and inconvenience of cycling, although useful at the individual level, is not the answer. Rather than trying to make new cyclists one at a time, we need to put all of our effort into demanding changes to the law and the infrastructure that make cycling safer and more convenient for the whole population at once, or at least for all the people living in an area.

Training people to understand the difference between the perceived danger and inconvenience and the reality is very much a good thing and IMO very much part of the answer.

When one has to cycle on a 70mph trunk road , like James Stephenson did for the last time on the first day of this year, because it is the ONLY convenient way home from work and the Highways Agency are too cheap to extend the cyclepath one more mile to the next junction, there is no difference between perception and reality.

With every sympathy for the family and friends of James Stephenson, that's cheap points CJ.
I'm not an apologist for any sub standard or inadequate provision, or denying that there are dangers to cycling. Yet I stand by the belief that the danger perceived by many non cyclists is far more than that experienced by most cyclists. If that wasn't the case I don't think many of us would cycle.

[CJ]

PH: UK is more than TWICE as lethal for cycling, per km cycled, compared to any comparable but more cycle friendly country such as Germany, which as a consequence has FIVE times as much cycling. (Never mind flat little Netherlands and quiet little Denmark: Germany is a far closer match for UK, having a very similar historic level of cycling, population density and mixture of terrain.)

But it's not just danger, it's also inconvenience: the one-way systems that take no account of topography and make no exceptions for cyclists; the cycle routes that always have worse surfaces, with more hills and further 'around-the-houses' than the roads; the roadside paths that make cyclists give way to every side road - even driveways; and a victim-blaming legal system that lets drivers kill cyclists (like Michael Mason) without so much as a slap on the wrist.

When you consider how horribly Britain treats its cyclists, we have a remarkably high rate of cycling already. If you can show me anywhere just as bad for cycling that nevertheless gets a lot more people doing it by dint of training and brainwashing, I'll eat my saddle!

Chucking a few quid at cycle training is a displacement activity that helps society forget about the cruel reality of those "cheap" points I insist on making.

[SA_SA_SA]

The highways agency could reduce their inappropriate 70mph limits*.

I don't understand why they don't get in trouble for negligence: if 70mph is correct for special roads where slow traffic is banned how can it be correct for public all-vehicle roads? Are they unsueable?

*Then the Police and courts could enforce it when there becomes a will.

[Vorpal]

The highways agency could reduce their inappropriate 70mph limits*.

I don't understand why they don't get in trouble for negligence: if 70mph is correct for special roads where slow traffic is banned how can it be correct for public all-vehicle roads? Are they unsueable?

*Then the Police and courts could enforce it when there becomes a will.

Yes, they are unuseable, or as near as.

Negligence? The problem is that they measure 'safety' by how many cyclists are killed there. No cyclists killed? No problem.

60 and 70 mph limits apply to many of the most direct routes in the UK, and places where there are simply no reasonable alternatives for cyclists, except to join a busy A road take their chances with the traffic.

[SA_SA_SA]

....The problem is that they measure 'safety' by how many cyclists are killed there. No cyclists killed?....

except that there obviously are as mentioned above....

[Vorpal]

Yes, and I don't mean to belittle what happened

But the point was that accident rates are often low simply because cyclists don't dare to use a particular road. Even so, within the system, one fatal accident involving a cyclist, may be statistically dwarfed by the numbers of accidents involving motor vehicles. Or it may just be considered an anomaly, if it isn't just (indirectly) blamed on the cyclist being there in the first place.

[SA_SA_SA]

I would have thought those arguments could be demolished in court....

[PH]

CJ: Following through your links, there's statements like;
"Cycling is often perceived as a dangerous activity and this is often a big factor that discourages people from cycling. "
"in this regard, cycling is no more dangerous that similar activities such as DIY, gardening or even walking through an urban environment."
"Risk Decreases the More People Cycle."
"Like any activity, cycling incurs dangers. However, they are not unreasonable dangers compared to other activities. "

Every single cyclist's death is a tragedy, every single one. In Germany, in Holland, in the UK, every single one.
I'm out there every day, I know there's dangers.
The most common answer that I get when I ask why someone doesn't consider cycling is the danger, when I say it's no more dangerous than walking, they simply don't believe it. That's a difference between perception and reality.

UK is more than TWICE as lethal for cycling, per km cycled, compared to any comparable but more cycle friendly country such as Germany, which as a consequence has FIVE times as much cycling.

Where is the evidence that that the cycling rate is a consequence of the lower death rate and not the other way round?
We can argue chicken and egg all day, but where cycling has increased accident levels have reduced. I think there's plenty of evidence to support that.

[Vorpal]

Where is the evidence that that the cycling rate is a consequence of the lower death rate and not the other way round?
We can argue chicken and egg all day, but where cycling has increased accident levels have reduced. I think there's plenty of evidence to support that.

We don't have any evidence, as far as I know. All we have is a correlation.

What we do have some evidence for, is that reducing thre number of people who die on the roads is a matter of engineering.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/ ... em/382995/

[TonyR]

What we do have some evidence for, is that reducing thre number of people who die on the roads is a matter of engineering.

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/11/ ... em/382995/

Not really. From the linked article:

When Vision Zero first launched {1997], Sweden recorded seven traffic fatalities per 100,000 people; today, despite a significant increase in traffic volume, that number is fewer than three.

Except in the UK recorded traffic fatalities fell from 6.2 per 100,000 in 1997 to 2.75 per 100,000 in 2012, the same percentage fall as in Sweden and an end result which is better. And all done without the benefit of a Vision Zero programme, or, most here would probably suggest, any programme at all, and very much higher levels of traffic. Which indicates that whatever they did, either it was copied in the UK or it actually didn't achieve anything. Even the US has fallen over that period, although not by as much, from 15.7 to 10.7 deaths per 100,000 population.

Which is a big part of the problem in this space. Lots of claims are made but few stand up to scrutiny.

[CJ]

Where is the evidence that that the {German} cycling rate is a consequence of the lower death rate and not the other way round?

Both are consequences of two facts that are strikingly perceptible to any Briton, immediately upon riding a bicycle in Germany. Firstly he'll find that it is rarely necessary to ride amongst high-speed traffic, thanks to the wide, well-surfaced, well swept cyclepaths alongside most main roads. And secondly he'll be surprised by how deferentially the drivers behave wherever cycles mix with other traffic. Cycling there is not only safer, but feels safer by an even greater margin.

The trouble with Britain is that people drive in a most impatient manner, that could not be better calculated to put people off cycling! It's probably not deliberate - not most of the time. It's because we have half the motorway mileage of any comparable country, so there's a lot more people driving on the same general-purpose roads as we must also cycle on, and because English-speaking culture holds cycling in contempt. In our culture is is more than okay to be horrid to cyclists and this combines with a victim-blaming legal system to minimise the consequences of injuring a cyclist to a legal slap on the wrist (if you're unlucky) accompanied by sympathetic 'there but for the grace of god go I' noises from fellow drivers.

Lets look at another demographically and geographically comparable country, i.e. Italy, which is just as densely populated as UK and Germany, with a mix of flat and very hilly terrain and without Germany's pretty good cycling network. For Italy is just as poorly provided with only a few bikepaths - mostly rubbish - as Britain. Cycling nevertheless feels a fair bit safer there thanks to the usual continental presumption of driver liability, should one allow their vehicle to collide with a cyclist or pedestrian. And I guess that's the main reason Italy has twice as much cycling as UK.

It can't be the Italian cycle racing culture, because France has that too, as well as driver liability, and yet does not cycle any more than Britain. The popularity of cycle sport doesn't seem to have much impact at all on the overall amount of cycling. To really boost that it seems that you need to get the urban masses using bikes for daily transport - and to escape the city on high days and holidays. France being half as densely populated as the other countries I've named, there will be fewer people in cities. A rural population cycles less, so this will counteract the greater safety one feels when cycling in French traffic.

I think you're wasting your time trying to persuade people cycling isn't dangerous here, because the minute someone gets out on the road on a bike, the massed ranks of Britain's motorists will get to work persuading them that really it is!