Cycling Embassy of Great Britain – the ambassador responds

The view from Cyclenation, the federation of cycle campaign groups:- (we don't have a space between Cycle & Nation, we don't recognise the difference.)

We sent a board member to the inaugural meeting of the CEoGB and he reported back to our meeting on the 5th Feb. Broadly speaking, we welcome a new voice for cycling, especially if it can reach out to new audiences that traditional cycling organisations have failed to reach. We do however deplore the disparaging remarks that have been made about people who have worked hard for cycling in the UK for a number of years and have actually chalked up some notable successes. We intend to keep an eye on developments.

Simon, Secretary, Cyclenation.

Wow, popular article.

I love the CTC. And John Franklin, and my lovely yellow jacket.

But I also agree with Hembrow - cycling remains a minority activity everywhere, except those places with good infrastructure. That's been the pattern seen over and over.

Cycling is wonderful, and resilient, but it's also fairly delicate - it needs support if it's to flourish.

We need some of that good stuff over here. I'll keep cycling in my yellow coat, but there's no way maybe 90% of the population will join me, unless we make it the most attractive option.

And my yellow coat is sadly not that attractive.

Yes, it's been a really interesting read so far… even the vitriolic bits. I'd particularly like to echo emilyobyrne's comments back on page one about the dangers of traffic calming measures for cyclists - bit of a hobbyhorse of mine. Think I might also take up Jim's suggestion and ask my local council to do a safety audit on the ones I have to negotiate on my way in to work at the risk of being squished by a speeding bus or lorry eager to accelerate up the hill and out of town - never mind that pinch point and the bloke on the bike.

I still want to ride on the road though.

@ Philiploy

Reading my post I see it is very sweeping. Sorry for that. Of course what you say is true. So I say, “fair enough”. You are very well placed to know after all.

I suppose my feelings (which are only mine and may or may not be widely held) are based on my experiences with my local LCC group. They were petrified of doing anything that might be seen as “political” or “left”. They were up for dealing with the council but only up to a point. Nothing that might upset the apple cart was ever going to happen. I attended numerous meetings with the local authority(corrupt/lazy) which allowed them to say they had “consulted”. In this borough, cycling is seen a Trotskyist plot and they remove facilities at every opportunity. Can you guess where I live? They totally ignored us, of course. I ended up feeling I had done the councillors a favour. It seems non-political to me because promoting cycling alone, despite engaging with authority, doesn't question the status quo of car dependency. It's a different and wider issue then just cycling.

Helping those who want to, to ride their bikes is good. Making it better for existing riders is good but to really get 30-40% of journeys is going to take some serious status quo rocking. That level would harm the UK car industry.... now that's properly political to me. I work full time as a Cycling Instructor so I have put my money where my mouth is on this point. However, I know that what I do won't get us to where we need to be. My thing is one to one. It's small scale and personal and very valuable to those who take it on.

I agree with you that under the surface there is a lot of consensus which is where I hope this will all end up. That is to say, “All together now!”. I still have energy for some really constructive efforts but not if what we are going for is nonsense like the Tavistock Place madness in the West End. We need the good stuff....

I sometimes think the lanes/roads debate is really a city/country debate. Where I live we need big segregated lanes, no question. If I was riding on “A” or “B” roads, I wouldn't want to be forced onto a substandard roadside lane which is certainly what would get built. Fair enough.

I like it that these young turks(sorry CEGB folks) say things like, “We believe that this will bring about nothing less than a transformation of our society.”. It's nice to hear people talk about society again. It's just a more political language then I am used to hearing from CTC.

I'd like to see more cyclists. I'd like to see more cycling culture. I'd also like to see the destruction of car culture and it's hideous effects on our environment and security. My lovely city is stuffed to the gills with concessions to car drivers. It makes it hellish and it is so unnecessary.

Ultimately, there will be fierce resistance to any real change. The increasing aggression toward cyclists in London recently, is only the beginning. We need to be MORE political and ready to upset those who want to maintain the status quo.

Hello Londonneur

If I was to hazard a guess as to where you live it sounds like Outer London? If they 'remove facilities at every opportunity', probably Barnet? Or Waltham Forest? (Hey, you're not Fr... oh maybe not, you're Londonneur!)

Yes, if 'Young Turks' manage to stir things up a bit (for a greater good hopefully), I guess this is no bad thing, and by definition it's not meant to feel comfortable. At our last Lambeth Cyclists meeting I did a quick straw poll with people afterwards during our 'social' part of the evening. The view that LCC should be more radical was a bit wider than I thought. As to another organisation forming, there were some quite sanguine views: 'let a thousand flowers bloom' was one quote.

The political point is interesting. I'm involved with the LCC in Kensington & Chelsea, and the political rhetoric I try and use with councillors there is one they understand. Thus, the bicycle is about 'personal choice/ freedom', or about boosting the local economy, or yes the Big Society why not?

Thing is, the bicycle can be a good for either the political left (bicycle as a means of emancipation for the common folk) or the right (bicycle as a tool of libertarianism). Use the rhetoric of the bicycle to suit the audience.

The rhetoric of 'society' by the way is very LCC, but it appears that hasn't been communicated widely enough.

Destruction of car society may be a tall order. Even the Dutch and the Danes haven't managed that.

@Philiploy

You clearly know your outer districts... I am not Freewheeler (Freewheeleur) but I feel her pain. Or is that, "his"? Hmmmmmm... Perhaps I should start a new blog.... "Bollocks Biking in Barnet".

Agree that one can sell cycling in a number of ways. Sometimes you just have to tell it like it is tho. I once went for a meeting with some of the local councillors and lawyers. I asked them if they were prepared to acknowledge that there needed to be change in policy around cycling in the bourough since there were almost no cycling facilities. They were not even asking for their allocation from TFL for cycle racks.... Mr Bellend (name changed to protect the guilty) told me that there was no demand for them and that drunks use them for seats. I then aksed him why we were all sitting there? Our LCC lot were the only people in the room not being paid to attend. Know the feeling? These lot will never shift unless the order comes from above.

Lots of new riders in London... It's time to go for it and just say, "hey! This is broken"... don't sweeten the pill. Let's just ask for what we really want. Less road space for cars and more for bikes.

"Destruction of car society may be a tall order. Even the Dutch and the Danes haven't managed that."

Actually, they have done... or near to it. I'm not for destroying cars or society. I love mine. It helps me do all sorts of things that would be way too dred to do by bike. It's the culture that puts the needs of drivers first that I want to see the back of. It's quality of life for the people who live by the road vs. people who happen to drive through. The Dutch have their priorities straight so Yes they have tamed car culture. People there CAN make different choises and they do. Sometimes they use their cars too.

"Build it and they will come. I see no other organisation that is really focussed on trying to achieve this other than the CEoGB..." I forget who wrote that, but there's lots of people writing that nobody prior to CEGB has been really pushing for segregated cyclepaths.

Have none of these people ever heard of SUSTRANS ???!!!

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my impression that SUSTRANS have been not only calling for but actually building segregated facilities for years. The only trouble is, they get forced into compromises that result in these facilities falling a long way short of Dutch or even average European standards.

I read that CEGB will be uncompromising in its demands for nothing less than the Dutch state of the art. Very good. In that case I will judge them by the quality rather than the length of new path constructed. But before we build any new ones, should we not bring what we've got already up to those Dutch standards?

Supporters of the CEGB pooh-pooh suggestions that campaigning for cyclepaths may lead to cyclists being banned from the road. Well actually, it's already happening.

A very good, I mean bad, example is the A90 between Edinburgh and the Forth Bridge. The cycling alternative is a twisty, hilly, badly surfaced and in places less than 1 metre narrow path, that bumps up and down kerbs where it gives way to sundry side roads and driveways. The local CTC didn't think that was good enough and proposed that before cyclists were banned from the A90, a segregated cycletrack should be built to standards of width and surfacing as per other European countries. But since SUSTRANS thought the aforementioned cyclepath was good enough to be part of the National Cycling Network, their demands were ignored.

That's what happens when the cycling voice is fragmented. Divide and rule by car-centric authorities. Fast riders lose the road and slow riders get a rubbish path that only confirms that cycling to work is a rubbish choice.

So there's a first priority for CEGB: get us a Dutch-quality cyclepath alternative to all the sections of general-purpose road where cycling is already banned. There at least, we have nothing to lose.

On reflection, it seems to me that the CTC/LCC and others are primarily concerned with promoting and protecting cycling and that is ALL. That is to say without any political element. An organisation like the CEGB on the other hand is concerned with wider change and sees massed cycling as a means to an end. Is that fair?

If so, then it may be that there is just a fundamental difference that can not be addressed. They are just going for different things at different scales.

I believe that in the case of the CTC, there has been a desire to be explicitly non-political to distance themselves from the association between cycling and socialism that dates from about 50 years ago.

I'm an LCC member and not involved in CEoGB at all but I've been watching its development. CEoGB seems to be reflecting everything I think about cycling in the UK and I wish them every success. I'll be joining as a member as soon as I'm able to.

I've lost count of the number of friends and relatives who express an interest in cycling, immediately followed by "but of course I'd be too scared I'd get killed". I don't blame them. I'm pretty scared myself sometimes. I genuinely can't see how my mother, my girlfriends, and my young cousins will ever even consider starting to cycle without proper segregated routes to places they want to go.

The argument that has been going on here seems pretty lame to an outsider. It seems to be all about one person's perception of being personally insulted, and people on both sides have been needlessly provocative and hysterical. Can we just give it a rest now and let CEoGB get started without hostile tweeting sessions every half an hour? Because everyone has a valuable part to play here, but all of this is making everyone look like a bunch of navel-gazing knobs (forgive the mixed anatomical similies).

would tend to agree that CTC and others are not lobbying hard enough for infrasructure that is good enough to get families to their schools and shops by bike. Full marks to those involved in the CEGB for trying to change this. Another year or two on these roads will be enough to kill any enjoyment of cycling in my kids. The way to change this is at a local level but we need a voice nationally arguing for change. The policy doc posted above by cycle nation is so inadequate that it is in itself good enough argument for bringing something like CEGB into being, just send me the membership form.

Come on Carlton - give the CEoGB folks a chance. You have said it yourself that proper segregated infrastructure can be really good. This is the whole point in campaigning for this, to avoid the excuses for cycling provision we get given in this country. There is a third way apart from integrated on one side or pathetically semi-segregated-cheap-soft measure-council excuses for cycling farcilities on the other.

You are a cyclist, I am a cyclist. We both can make our presence felt and integrate on normal roads. My young daughter is not a cyclist but I want to have no second thoughts about her jumping on her bike and going to school. The majority of the public that make short, single occupancy vehicle journeys are not cyclists either. People need to think it is easy and safe and proper infrastructure is the only way to appeal to the masses.

Build it and they will come. I see no other organisation that is really focussed on trying to achieve this other than the CEoGB and it is not a competition as they have stated that they want to work in partnership with other organisations.

This is the (public) peer review process in action! If, as a result of Carlton's concerns, the CEoGB's manifesto is a better document, then that's great.

Which makes me think Carlton's actually in favour, and wrote his piece to knowingly invoke the Streisand Effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

How many people now know about the CEoGB, that otherwise wouldn't have, because of his article?

Yes, I have a lot of respect for Carlton Reid. But on this issue I don't get what he is so agitated about.

Many years ago I worked at and commuted by cycle to a factory in the Teams area of Gateshead on the way home/to work I would call into the publishing office of a magazine called Bicycle Times to get my copy hot off the press, it was the mid 80s mtbs were new fangled I had just bought one (a cheapie)to commute with along a Sustrans route Carlton Reid had a pink Dave Yates very upmarket he worked for the magazine. He knows what he is talking about listen to him.

Come on, Carlton. That's a bit pathetic. (Perhaps you can add that word to your growing collection of all the bad words that people might have once used about you).

You don't seem to be alive to the double standards here.

You're quite happy to call us "segregationists", but you simultaneously consider the use of the word "vehicularist" to be an epithet.

You don't like people being disparaged, but you're quite happy to trot out Dave Warnock's comment, quote it out of context, and tweet about it being "scary."

And so on.

This is a debate. It doesn't seem like you've been in one before, judging by how sensitive you seem to be.

Fool. Smear. Shrill. Unhelpful. Irrelevant. Uncooperative.

I'll get my coat.

Carlton, please, you're getting ahead of yourself and are, I fear, at risk of making a fool of yourself. I would love to have a friendly and productive argument about these things, but that is currently impossible. I know others who have considered jumping in here too, but have decided against it for the same reason: productive debate is currently impossible here.

1. Calm down, slow down, and go back and read the chain of comments to remind yourself what was said by whom and where, and what exactly they meant. You've been emmersed in this argument for several days (and in campaigning for decades). Everybody else has been dipping in only when the time allows. So the things that you're seeing in these discussions are not the same things that everyone else is seeing. Your comments are jumping all over the place. Each time somebody responds to one of your claims the topic suddenly changes to some other irrelevant claim -- I'm sure that's not deliberate, just a result of this argument being distributed across several posts and mediums, but it makes it rather difficult to follow your reasoning. (And I fear you are losing track yourself as demonstrated with the misinterpretation of Mikael's "vroom vroom" comment.)

2. Slow down: the CEGB hasn't even launched yet. It was only even proposed a few weeks ago. The CEGB happens to be engaging in a fantastic exercise in 21st century transparency: it's composing a manifesto collaboratively in full view of anybody who wants to watch. I don't think any conscious decision was made to do something so radical: it just seems natural in the internet age. But I guess more should have been done to make it clear what was happening: you're looking at the drafts and discussions of an organisation that is still in the planning stage. Come back and criticise the manifesto when it has actually been agreed. At the moment you're criticising phrases and sentiment that individuals within the group proposed be in the manifesto but which they have already decided should not be (and have already removed from the latest revision on the website), often for the same reasons you criticise them. Every organisation has meetings where half-thought through ideas are kicked around -- you can't damn them for the ideas that they then reject.

3. Calm down: please re-read everything you have said about Freewheeler's comments and attitude, and your attempts to smear CEGB with them. I can assure you that it is not CEGB that comes across as shrill, unhelpful, and uncooperative each time you raise it.

How will we get from here to there: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katsdekker/5437787595/.

A ten-fold increase in cycling's modal share in ten years, eh, nine years.

How. That's all I want to know.

Not only are cyclists a diverse bunch, like me many are different cyclists at different times. Some days I'm a lycra nappy wearing roadie, mostly happily mixing with the traffic and others I'm in 'civvies' on a Dutch bike pootling to the shops or cruising around sedately wishing I had Dutch style cycling facilities. Having ridden extensively in the Netherlands I know what I'm missing. Would be great to see a little of it implemented here.

I have been riding constantly in London since 1981. Before that I was riding in New York City going back to the mid 70's (think "Taxi Driver" on a bike). In short, I am an urban utility cyclist - to the core.

A few things to say on all this:

- The CTC do some good work but they have never represented me or my aspirations as a cyclist as I have no interest in touring or time trialing. I became a member recently for the insurance alone.

- The LCC have never been attractive to me as I find them too soft. In my view they provide a stakeholder consultation box ticking service to local govt. in return for getting to be the stakeholder. They do not control their local groups enough. Some of them do not do any agitation at all. They often "sign off" on facilities that don't pass muster... in my view.

- The CEoGB, I think, is trying to reach out to people who are not attracted to the existing cycling groups. People like me perhaps. That may be a good thing.

- I had no idea that I was a "Vehicular Cyclist" untill I did the training to become a Cycling Instructor, three years ago. I very much dislike the way VC is described as a "cult" and "rabid" or such like. I have always used the road because there was never any choise. Now I help others to do the same. It is a precious gift that is for me to give to another. Don't dis me!

- The existing bodies have not "failed". They are powerless. We have been failed by successive corrupt government in the sway of powerfull lobbies. It is true that the CEoGB has only aspirations at the moment but that is not a problem... or is it? The segragation vs. intergartion "debate" is utter BS. It's not either/or. Don't dis each other!

- Jim has stuck his head above the parrapet(?) and in true british style has come under attack. The test of the worth of the CEoGB will be its membership numbers... It is true to say that they nay appeal to folk who are not catered for at the mo. We will have to wait and see. For my own part, I think we need someone calling for some of that Dutch stuff over here.

- I suspect it will suffer the fate of all UK cycling institutions. That is to be at the whim of succesive uninterested governments. The fall and rise of cycling will be down to larger socio-econimic factors that no org can effect. In the Netherlands they make decisions based on long term stewardship of their nation. We have never done that here.

Carlton, given your stated issue with 'disparaging comments' I found it interesting that you tweeted a link to this article as follows:

@carltonreid: This scares me: segregated route put in, cyclists banned from roads http://bit.ly/ezZo55

Good luck to the CEoGB I hope they manage to get something done.

Who are Carlton Reid and Jim Davis? I mean, I know who they are, but I wonder just who they think they are? Both appear ill-attuned to large portions of the cycling fraternity, and both appear unable to accept that there is more than one way to look at things. Cyclists are a diverse bunch of people - why shouldn't there be a diverse bunch of organisations?

Many are quick to note that segregated cycle lanes done badly are a nightmare. I agree - they are.

On the other hand, traffic calming measures done badly are also a nightmare.

Road narrowing to slow down traffic that means the cars have no room to overtake cyclists, resulting in frustrated and impatient drivers. Artificial pinch points that mean I have to dive out into the traffic flow to get round them. Or wobble through a narrow gully to the left - which I find nerve-wracking on account of the narrowness and the high kerbs. A line of parked cars on the other side of aforementioned gully so I have to throw myself in front of the cars now accelerating away from the obstacle.

These traffic calming measures are presumably designed to deliver traffic reduction and lower speeds, those preferred options from the oft-cited Hierarchy of Provision. I also presume they weren't what the CTC and others had in mind when they published the HoP, any more than when the CEofGB proposes dedicated cycling infrastructure it is aiming for the tiny, cratered, and randomly terminating cycle lanes that we are currently stuck with.

Can we at least keep the discussion focused on the relative merits of cycling infrastructure when implemented properly?