Cycling UK Forum

James Wyburd wrote: I didn't joined the CTC to support a campaigning bureaucracy.

It takes all kinds, but I would leave the CTC if they stopped campaigning.

James Wyburd wrote:I didn't joined the CTC to support a campaigning bureaucracy.

The annual accounts should give some idea as to how much is spent on campaigning, versus other benefits of membership. If the ratio isn’t to your liking there might be other cycling organisations you could join instead.

I, personally, think that cyclists need all the campaigning they can get - the local politicians here think cycling is for children and not a serious mode of transport at all. Compared with the success of the campaigns from local organisations for mobility impaired people, we’re hardly noticed

Whatever you do, please keep riding your bike: every cyclist on the roads helps!

Hear hear! (all of it).

Two points

The fact that motorcycles are guilty of going too fast for the conditions, is very obvious to any one who rides a motorbike. Doing 20mph is often too fast for the conditions eg ice, fallen leaves, gravel, diesel etc etc. A motorcyclists life is full of hazzards, just like a cyclists. To link this to a speed limiter just shows the author doesnt know what he is talking about.

The claim is that motorcycles cause more fatalities 'mile per mile' if we cyclists are calling for banning road users on the grounds of accidents 'mile per mile', we are going to be calling for having ourselves banned before the motorcyclists even.

James said:

For example, new emissions requirements came in during 2007, and most motorcycles (eg all Triumphs) now use fuel injection. The notion that current motorcycles pollute more per mile than cars is absurd.

Quick question, and generally speaking: how do larger motorcycles compare with cars for fuel efficiency, bearing in mind cars can take five people and motorcycles two?

Here in Colchester, most of our short lengths of bus lane are open to motorcycles, but I have opposed this for larger motorcycles on environmental grounds: what is the rationale for giving them this advantage if they are using more fuel per seat than a car? I'm open to answers on this one!

Roger Geffen's response is detailed through necessity. He wouldn't be worth his salt unless he went into such detail, and it is this attention to the nitpicking aspects of the arguments facing cyclists that makes the CTC worth the money I pay each year.

Finally, I think the anti-cycling editorial preference of MCN needs to be questioned. Cyclists and motorcyclists, like cyclists and pedestrians, have more common ground than differences. We shouldn't be at each other's throats ... the Clarksons of this world must be rubbing their hands with glee.

chiefsub68 wrote:James said:

For example, new emissions requirements came in during 2007, and most motorcycles (eg all Triumphs) now use fuel injection. The notion that current motorcycles pollute more per mile than cars is absurd.

Quick question, and generally speaking: how do larger motorcycles compare with cars for fuel efficiency, bearing in mind cars can take five people and motorcycles two?

Here in Colchester, most of our short lengths of bus lane are open to motorcycles, but I have opposed this for larger motorcycles on environmental grounds: what is the rationale for giving them this advantage if they are using more fuel per seat than a car? I'm open to answers on this one!
.....

I have a 600cc sports tourer bike. Whenever I've checked it I get around 60mpg

Considering most cars on the road have only one or possibly two passengers, and only average around 35mpg - the motorbike's the much better option re environmental grounds.

Secondly, by being able to filter through traffic motorcyclists are not contributing to congestion, so again reducing pollution.

I mostly use my motorcycle at the moment for commuting to Bristol on the rare occasion I go there (£20 fuel bill, opposed to £130 train fare, plus it's up to an hour quicker). In Bristol motorcycles are allowed in bus lanes. That is perfect as it is much safer to filter past the queue with ample space and causing no issue to cyclists, than it is to try to get past the queues without entering the bus lane (as I have to do locally).

At 18 and just having started cycling I joined the CTC, cos my fellow cyclists were members, for the membership benefits, for information and the love of cycling, meeting others, exchanging news etc. I was not aware ofit being a political organisation, but soon realised that it was.
Had we not had the CTC fighting for our rights since it's inception I dread to think where we would be......
Remember it is because of the CTC we can still enjoy cycling, the wind in our hair and the sense of freedom it brings.

True 'nuff. It's worth bearing in mind all the same that the CTC has made some strange calls in the past, like campaigning against rear lights, so it's important debate isn't stifled.

There are many other countries who enjoy cycling, some in much greater numbers and safety than the UK, without the CTC's intervention. I'll be coming up to 30 years as a member soon but I don't go along with everything mindlessly. Remember it's square, suburban Britain where the real power is and we haven't made too many inroads into that constituency.

We need a politically savvy organisation to press for better provision for cyclists. The CTC has developed good lobbying connections over the years.

Yes, some of the campaigns are whacky IMHV, but every member can and sometimes does take positions against CTC campaigns from time to time and no-one gets gagged as a result. Debate is healthy - like this one.

For instance - the access to coastal footpaths (on another thread - visit it to vote) is a good example of a whacky waste of CTC campaigning energy and funds.

mhara wrote:We need a politically savvy organisation to press for better provision for cyclists. The CTC has developed good lobbying connections over the years.

Yes, some of the campaigns are whacky IMHV, but every member can and sometimes does take positions against CTC campaigns from time to time and no-one gets gagged as a result. Debate is healthy - like this one.

For instance - the access to coastal footpaths (on another thread - visit it to vote) is a good example of a whacky waste of CTC campaigning energy and funds.

Absolutely.

We need political representation to prevent our rights being eroded.

I'd argue that the CTC is for cycling, and the protection of cycling rights. It is for politics.

Gazza

There's an argument that the CTC's campaign victories have been modest, though in fairness that's against a road freight lobby/ anglo-saxon car hegemony/ politically individualistic tide that makes for loss limitation rather than real gains.

It would be good to see cycle lanes on the lines of the very best european model and/or blanket urban road limits of 20mph but that's a big ask against a backdrop of total car culture.
I worry that cycle use is increasingly seen as an option for fit, aspirational, road savvy adults (a bit like Edwardian times really) rather than the disenfranchised who might have most to gain from its adoption but we've been down this road before.

Roger, we were not born yesterday.

If you want to "call for limits on the power and speed of motorcycles" you say you "urge the Committee to press the Government to reconsider these options"

They are the same thing in lobbying speak. You know that (or you should).

Any decent points the CTC may want to get across are undermined by riddiculous campaigns like this. "Oh yeah, the CTC - they're the ones that want to ban motorbikes over 125cc"

Cyclists have ligitimate concerns about motorbikes on cycle tracks.(though these are often 125 and below). They cause us no problems on roads. Certainly less than cars.

As a cyclist I do not care how many motorcyclists are killed on the roads. (As a human I care deeply, but not as a cyclist) .

I think this letter shows you have slipped over from cycling concerns to a very narrow, non-cycling related, road safety concern. The link you were able to establish in your letter to the board was very tenuous and the length of it indicates you know this too.

cg

James Wyburd wrote:I recently joined the CTC for the love of cycling, in the hope of learning from others and broadening my cycling horizons.

However, what have I found? Not an organisation which "makes cycling enjoyable, safe and welcoming for all", but an historic club which has been taken over by council members and staff who see the club as a vehicle for political goals and personal ambitions.

Perhaps you should have done a bit of research into the unceasing campaigning / 'political' activity of the CTC over the last 125 years or so before joining! For example, the mass cyclist demonstrations organised by the CTC the 1930's...

http://www.thebikezone.org.uk/thebikezo ... /1935.html

glueman wrote:It's worth bearing in mind all the same that the CTC has made some strange calls in the past, like campaigning against rear lights

What was the reason for this? The CTC was quite sensibly arguing for the principle that motorists should always drive at a speed which would enable them to pull up in the distance they could actually see to be clear, as illuminated by their headlights, even when on a dipped beam. If they had won this particular battle the roads would be a lot safer today, and not just for cyclists. Nowadays pedestrians have just about been bullied off the public road by private cars but back then plenty of pedestrians walked Britain's roads, and groups such as the Pedestrians' Association supported the CTC as they knew that pedestrians, being unlit, would be in even greater danger from motorists who felt justified in assuming that if they could see no red light ahead, the road was clear and they could put their foot down.

Tragically, the concerns of the CTC and Pedestrians' Association were vindicated a few years after rear lights were made compulsory for cyclists. On 4 December 1951 a bus driver, assuming that because he could see no red light in front of him the road was clear, ran into the back of a column of Marine cadets in Chatham, Kent who were marching to a boxing match, killing 23 of them. At the time this was Britain's worst-ever road crash. In response even traditionally motor-centric papers such as The Daily Mail showed signs of outrage against the "social sin" of road deaths and the "idol" of speed, calling for the more stringent application of the law and also arguing that "the motorist controls the high-speed lethal instrument, and the main responsibility rests on him. Death or maiming are dreadful penalties to exact from a pedestrian for an error of judgment or from a child guilty only of being a child." Of course it wasn't long before it was back to business as usual...

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We value speed more than we value human life. Then why not say so, instead of every few years having one of those hypocritical campaigns (at present it is 'Keep Death off the Roads' - a few years back it was 'Learn the Kerb Step'), in the full knowledge that whilst our roads remain as they are, and present speeds are kept up, the slaughter must continue?

George Orwell 'As I Please' The Tribune 8 November 1946.

Last night Radio 5 had a phone in about who is the most irresponsible - drivers or cyclists. The road lobby had some journalist I'd never heard of who hated cyclists for their smugness, cycling had a writer from The Independent who regularly jumped lights and saw no problem with everyone else doing it. He didn't seem too bothered about people riding on the pavement either. He also thought helmet compulsion was a good thing and there should be more cycle lanes. So in a few minutes he'd divided drivers and cyclists.

His cloudy vision is typical of many new cyclists, expediency rules and the warm glow of individualism and mild anarchy means the group good never gets a look in. It's up to the CTC to sift through these vying desires and come up with a workable plan.
Personally, I feel obeying the laws of the road would have the greatest positive net effect on cycling. Another caller, a cycle trainer, summed it up - he said they were now educating people to sit in traffic not filter through it. That way riders can be seen and have to be acknowledged as part of the traffic. Scampering out the way may seem like an individual triumph but it lasts a few seconds and ensures motorised traffic never have to fully acknowledge what having bikes among them really feels like.

As a fuddy duddy I find it galling that London is becoming a cycling free for all and the untypical nature of bicycling there is broadcast as symptomatic of all riders. The fear is that riders are acting like the worst sort of drivers (which no doubt many of them are), individualistic, bullying, careless of the rules of the road and stealing a march by swapping their car for a bike - that will bring down a heap of unwanted cr@p onto all our heads.
The CTC has some serious thinking to do about how it sees such riders. A sneaking admiration for the weight of numbers is no good if some politician courting popularity starts bringing in dumb rules that most of us don't need.