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N-S cycle superhighway (still from @Lakerlikes Instagram)Daily Mail declares war on cycle lanes
“Cycle lane lunacy!” runs the headline. “The new blight paralysing Britain.” You’ve got to hand it to the Daily Mail – they know what vocabulary to employ when they take against something.
Although the article is framed as being about Britain, it’s fairly apparent that this is primarily about London and the construction of cycle superhighways.
The first example given is the East-West Cycle Superhighway along Victoria Embankment.
“Where once it could hold four lanes of traffic, a quarter of the road has now been given over to a dedicated two-way cycle lane. Traffic has been brought to a virtual standstill.”
So one lane has been replaced by two. Traffic has been brought to a standstill by the addition of an extra lane.
The piece continues by pointing out that “vehicle speeds in Central London have fallen to 7.4mph — slower than a horse-drawn carriage in the 18th century.”
Slower than a bicycle, they might add.
While there is an acknowledgement that the construction work causing traffic disruption is not solely due to cycle superhighways (the City currently has the largest volume of building work taking place since 2008), it adds that, “while construction projects will eventually end, cycle superhighways will permanently impact upon ‘road supply’. Simply, there is less road space available for normal traffic.”
It would be easy to conclude that the newspaper doesn’t see any connection between ‘abnormal’ traffic volume and the number of cars on the road. However, it has long been keen to support its position by also portraying cycle lanes as being rarely used.
An article from back in August showing cyclists passing a short stretch of bike lane at a set of lights was branded inaccurate and "one-sided" by Transport for London (TfL). The organisation pointed out the route is not actually a cycle superhighway, and is also not yet finished.
The images had been presented as evidence that the cycle superhighway programme was a waste of money and cyclists responded by posting pictures of other infrastructure that is sometimes not used on Twitter, including roads, and tube trains after hours.
In their latest story, the Mail spoke to motorists stuck in a jam beside a cycle lane to the south of London’s Blackfriars Bridge. Most said that while the lanes were busy with bikes during rush-hour, they could be ‘almost empty’ at other times.
1,200 cyclists PER HOUR using new cycle superhighway
The article quotes TfL as saying that segregated cycle lanes affect just three per cent of roads in central London with surveys showing that there has been an average 60 per cent increase in cyclists using the new routes compared to before the improvements were made.
After then citing figures released earlier this year by the Department for Transport which indicate that traffic on Britain’s roads reached its highest ever level in 2015, it concludes that, “motorists are struggling to understand how spending money to further reduce the capacity of the roads can possibly be the way to solve an immediate problem.”
If they’re struggling to understand, maybe it’s because of the way it’s been explained to them.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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44 comments
What do you expect from a paper that supported the fascists before WW2
Embarrassing Truth #23: lots of politicians and newspapers did.
Just imagine if all those cyclists, rather than taking up a 6ft x 2ft rectangle (ish) suddenly jumped in their cars and took up a 6ft x 12ft rectangle instead.
its not the cyclists or cycle lanes causing congestion, its the fat, ugly Fail readers in their tin boxes.
Love these pictures, when they crop up. They sum everything up so well. Wish we had posters of these all over billboards.
Ah, so that's why I got a honk from a driver this morning as I cycled in the main carriage way, who then gesticulated at the (crap) shared use cycle lane/pavement as he overtook me (so I didn't exactly hold him up).
Must have got his blood up reading the DF while eating his cornflakes, and probbly further stewed in the queue of metal boxes near the local hospital staff car park that I filtered merrily past on the offside (or "weaving in and out" in his head).
The Times changed, it took the awful, pointless death of someone who worked there, but then they became very much behind better conditions for cyclists. I wonder if the Mail might change without needing such tradegy.
Can we get rid of the Daily Mail? Using their words there is less space on the newsstands for normal papers.
They should rename the paper the Daily Fail
Frankly, I would be worried if the Daily Mail considered my preferred mode of transport (that's cycling) normal!
Could be worse... they could be blaming immigants on bikes, or immigants on bikes causing cancer while causeing a blight on blighty. Mental!
"Cyclists cause congestion"...LOL
I was pretty right-wing as a graduate, living in London. Was actually the shock of London coming from a small town that brought out a right-wing streak in me for some years, oddly enough.
"normal". Love it. Wonder how many HGVs and parked delivery vans they had in central london in the days of horse drawn carriages.
The Daily Mail as normal can't even get their facts right:
On long streaches of the Embankment before the Cycle superhighway their was coach parking on the river side. As coaches are wider than normal vehicles, this made the left hand lane too narrow for cars and Taxis. So it was one lane westbound for larges streaches.
Motor vehicle traffic on the old design Emabnkment was also slow, but use to be stop-start between lights and points of congestion.
Comments section of the rag: "By posting your comment you agree to our house rules"
I didn't read the house rules, but judging by the article I assume that I'd have to write a load of bullshit containing spurious claims backed up by quotes from the first white van man I could find…
It must also be ok, possibly mandatory, to not do any genuine research, gather any data or check your facts.
If unused transport capacity (e.g cycle lanes not in constant near capacity use) is what they are worried about, then may I suggest that whilst waiting in the next traffic jam (e.g caused by too many cars waiting to negotiate a junction) that they put down their mobile phones for a few minutes, turn around and contemplate the number of empty seats in their own vehicle and maybe the vehicles around them.
Oh but that's different!
Most people don't think of it like that, they think that their fifteen by seven foot piece of road is their's, and the similar piece in front is that person's, and so on. They don't consider that their fifteen by seven is containing a vehicle built to carry four or five or seven people, so three quarters / four fifths / six sevenths of it is wasted space that could be put to better use.
There's also the sheer mass of motorised vehicles.
It sometimes seems mad to me, watching endless streams of cars, when i think about the sheer tonnage of metal and plastic being carted about constantly, all over urban areas, just to convey a small number of people relatively short distances. The biological componant presumably makes up only a small proportion of the total mass being moved around, requiring all that energy expenditure.
And then to put the kybosh on it, I have to breath in the clouds of crap they put out while they are doing this.
But its cyclists that are 'taking up space'. Sure.
I reckon the total number of Daily Mail employees who cycle to work is...zero
Undoubtably wrong, their offices are in the middle of London (Kensington High St) so it's probably quite high. That won't stop the proprietors and Paul Dacre treating them with contempt. Nor would they be the first case of a London employer objecting to cycle infrastructure without consulting their staff. St Thomas springs to mind...
I do wonder about DM journalists. They are likely to be well-educated graduates, metropolitan, cosmopolitan people. Some, as suggested, may even be cyclists. Yet they churn out hateful, disingenuous, divisive filth day after day, usually about minorities of one form or another.
I find it hard to believe they believe their own words. Do they really just do it for the money...? Or do they hold their noses and hope it'll help them get a job with an organisation with some standards and decency?
Ever read 1984? Clearly some serious doublethink going on at the DM. There'd have to be. Like Dacre railing against the EU on the one hand whilst raking EU subsidy in as a landowner with the other...
I think the only one who actually cycles is Peter Hitchens - and he's as 'maverick' a right-winger as his brother was a leftist.
I think the only one who actually cycles is Peter Hitchens - and he's as 'maverick' a right-winger as his brother was a leftist.[/quote]
---------------
Actually, Hitchens has written some very interesting anti-car articles.
Example from:
18 January 2012 1:34 PM
One Reason Why I hate Cars, and a brief note on Lifestyle Choices
On Sunday morning a woman rushed out of a side road in a quiet Oxford suburb, violently knocked me off my bicycle and mangled the machine I was riding.
Quite understandable, some of you may think. It’s the only sort of treatment I would understand. But in fact the person involved had nothing against me, didn’t know me, and was quick to apologise for the hurt (even quicker and more comprehensive, once she had been given quite a large piece of my mind). She also paid for the damage to be repaired.
But, as some of you will have guessed, there was another element in all this – an element which makes an apparently shocking and inexplicable event make perfect sense.
My assailant was driving a car.
read article here
.......
I think our roads are statistically safer largely because soft targets, particularly child cyclists, have almost entirely retreated from them. But the roads are not really safer. It’s just that people have learned to avoid them unless they themselves go out in armour, and have narrowed their lives as a result.
Remember of course that the majority of people employed at the DM aren't journalists. They'll have a big old head count doing sales, operations, advertising, creatives, unbelieveably talentless web developers, and then all the HR, accounts and admin people you need to make that lot work. Of the journalists, many will be self employed, especially the clickbait opinion writing trollumist shites who produce this stuff by order for the editors. You may remember Andrew Gilligan's comments about Angela Epstein after she wrote some similiar guff in his paper.
^^^ this totally. Ive never met a DM journalist yet that I know of, but do know some folk who've worked at the Sun who are very pro/keen cyclists and met some interesting freelance writers who wrote copy for both Independent and Daily Star papers at the same time. They just get given a subject to write an article on, and they write it to the best of their professional ability, with very much the target audience of that newspaper in mind and the number of page hits it might cause, because those are ultimately the people that buy the newspaper,and that generate the ad revenues, that keeps the paper in business and more work coming their way. They leave their politics and personal views outside, and if they cant do that, or find its too much of a conflict, they quit and try and find work elsewhere.
theres not anywhere near as like a "you write for this newspaper therefore you must agree with everything it prints" attitude in journalism, as people like to make out.
It's like we've all said before: has the Daily Fail considered what would happen if all of us weirdos on bikes decided to use 'normal traffic'? If every one of us was driving a car, one person per car (as seems standard for most rush hours)? Are they sure that's what they want?
By 'normal' I assume this is translated from 'lazy, bone idle drivers who can't be bothered to get on their feet, get on a tube or bus or dare I say it...ride a bike'
The problem with freedom of the press, is that whils some use it for constructive purposes, to name and shame law-breakers and uncover the truth about shocking events, many use it to write drivel.
The Daily Fail has repeated written downright lies, yet got away with it
I don't think they take this to the logical conclusion.
First, they need to remove the cycle lanes, then they should remove all the pavements and convert the extra space to roads. The next step would be to remove the underground system and replace the train stations and tracks with some nice fresh tarmac. That'd get the London drivers moving nicely!
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