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Chris Boardman (via YouTube).jpgChris Boardman has sold his car and is working part-time at Halfords
Keen to see more people transition from driving to cycling, Chris Boardman is leading by example. Despite working as Greater Manchester’s cycling and walking commissioner while living on the Wirral, the nation’s most prominent cycling campaigner recently sold his car.
“I've been using the bike to commute because I've been helping out in my local Halfords in Bidston,” Boardman told the Telegraph.
“When they had a massive increase of orders and no staff, I helped to build bikes one day a week. I said: ‘Okay, I will go two months without a car and see what it's like’ – and it was fine. So I've given up the car. That’s quite a big step.”
He believes that this is something a lot more people could do.
“Cycling is safe, cheap, and quick,” he says. “If you try it, most people will stick with it.”
Boardman suggests keeping a car as a “comfort blanket” for two months and to try travelling by public transport, cycling and walking for that period to see how it goes.
“I live by an old Beeching line – a disused railway – and it’s just 30 minutes to a station that links to Liverpool or Chester, so I can get to Manchester for work.
“Without insurance, fuel and maintenance, I am already saving £800 a month.”
That isn’t to say it’s as simple as just making up your mind to do it though. He says safe space is the number one thing needed to persuade more people to cycle to work – because even if cycling is statistically safe, it doesn’t necessarily feel like it.
“Either you turn off the traffic, take the traffic speed down, reduce the volume on roads – or create separate space for cyclists,” he says, explaining the ways in which a safer environment could be achieved.
Expanding on this, he repeats his statemetn that the next two weeks will set the transport agenda for the next two decades – a comment that is becoming something of a refrain of late.
At one point during lockdown, cycling had doubled on weekdays and more than tripled at weekends – although with more and more cars back on the roads, we now seem to have passed that peak.
Even so, Boardman says those numbers are evidence of the latent potential for cycling.
“In some places we have seen 300 per cent increases in bike journeys,” he says. “You turned off traffic. You gave people a safer environment. And more people have been using bikes.
“We’ve shown we're just as capable of being a cycling nation as anywhere else in Europe. So in the midst of this crisis you think: actually we could change the future here.”
He goes on to suggest car-free days as a way to engineer a similarly encouraging environment for would-be cyclists.
“We could start with one day a month. That’s what they did in Bolivia and it's had a massive effect.”
Dealing with local councils on a day-to-day basis has however given him a sense of how difficult it can be to deliver meaningful changes to infrastructure.
"At local council level it gets harder because if you reallocate road space you will cause a traffic jam for drivers and they're going to start screaming at you. And now the traffic has returned so it’s harder. But we have the potential to make big changes.”
As we’ve been reporting regularly, the Government recently allocated £250m of funding for emergency active travel measures, such as pop-up bike lanes.
While every single council applied for money, the Department for Transport (DfT) has given some only a fraction of what they requested, informing them this week that it wants to see “an even higher level of ambition” in future proposals.
Those who made stronger bids have in some cases received more money than they asked for.
Almost inevitably, the Telegraph also questioned Boardman about cycle helmets, which he has previously called “a red herring” and “not even in the top 10 of things you need to do to keep cycling safe.”
He framed his response in terms of the broader message that helmets and hi-vis convey.
“Messaging is something the car industry has known for decades,” he says. “You don't see a car advert with a car sitting in a traffic jam. You see it on big open roads.
“So we shouldn't be showing cyclists in body armour and high-vis. We should show it how it can be. And cycling can be nice.
“The beauty of cycling is that it is simple. You can wear your work clothes and just ride to work. You don't have to be sweating. You don't need special clothes. That's the bit we forget.”
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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56 comments
Sorry about the road furniture, that would have been me on my way to work.
I think Boardman is pretty good, and so are his bikes- although I haven't got one and I recently advised my daughter to get a Whyte. I disagree with him on trivial points: you are invariably sweating and you do need special clothes. However, he is aiming at what I think is the largely fictional group of new cyclists who will still be cycling when the relentless p*****g rain is back and they have experienced the great mass of psycho-drivers and the police - two groups who are of the firm opinion that if you can't take being hit, you should stay off the roads. It's not that they can't see you, they just think they are entitled to squeeze through at speed in any conditions and if you have to manoeuvre to avoid potholes, puddles or glass while they're passing it's hard luck.
I am sorry but this is completely BS.
Just few:
just a few
It depends a lot on where you live. I used to live in Cambridge and cycled to the office every day, and only very rarely did it rain. I wore normal clothes every day, as did the vast majority of cyclists I saw. "Normal clothes" can of course include a waterproof jacket and trousers if it's raining, but they don't have to be cycling-specific - most people probably already own at least a waterproof jacket.
22 miles is also an unusually long commute - the average commute is somewhere between five and 10 miles (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...)
I'm not convinced you need hi-viz if you have a good set of lights - although if you want to go down that route, a cheap hi-viz vest is hardly a substantial barrier.
"Cycling is safe" is a very subjective statement. Certainly it's not as safe as it could be, but equally it's not as dangerous as some people might think it is.
Cycling IS safe.
It just doesn't always feel safe...
Move closer to work
1. Hig Viz is useless at night. Reflective is far better. Got one from Aldi for a tenner. Fine for rain too. I think you would struggle to find anyone in UK who doesn't own a rain coat.
I've saw some data a while on the chances of being rained on whilst cycling to work. It worked out at a surpringly low average of 7-12 days a year. That was research based on data, not an annecdote.
2. Living a long way from work is a bit bonkers really.
3. Cycling is not inherently dangerous.
Risk of head injury per million hours travelled
Cyclist - 0.41
Motor vehicle occupant - 0.46
Pedestrian - 0.80
Motorcyclist - 7.66
Source...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0001457596000164?f...
Flourescent clothing is best in low light conditions, including while raining.
Reflective is better at night.
Hi vis is a combination of both elements, so far from useless at night. A top cannot be described as being hi vis just for being bright yellow, orange or pink without the reflective strips.
Duh! Brain fart time. Confused hi-viz with flouresvent because hi-viz often gets used to describe florescent jackets/bibs.
I wish we could clone Chris Boardman so we could have more of them, doing other useful things in government. He's one of the few people around who speak sense, and so well articulated.
I would challenge him to ride my route to work in work clothes without sweating, though maybe as a former pro and olympian he could...
Hope he's not suggesting we all get a job at Halfords and start selling Boardman bikes, no thanks mate, I would rather watch paint dry.
I might have misread but I don't think he is
"Without insurance, fuel and maintenance, I am already saving £800 a month.”
You'd have to be doing thousands of miles every month to spend that, there's no way you can replace that much distance with a bike and the train, and still save money what with train fare being more expensive than driving
I think he's excluding those costs and stating the saving of the ownership/lease/PCP cost of his car. Some car though at £800 a month/£9,600 a year.
For reference, a top of the range Ford Smax is the best part of £500 a month on PCP, which is 43k new, and there are a LOT of new cars that cost more than that
Insurance, fuel and maintenance, he didn't mention PCP or leasing. You don't have to buy a car through either of those anyway, you can buy a car for the cost of some bicycles and sell it for the same amount a year later
It says in the 3rd paragraph of the Telegraph article,before it goes all paywall, it was an Audi A5
An Audi eh? I never had CB down as a twat. I wonder if his had the optional extras, indicators.
Before all the Audi drivers come down on me, this is a joke.
It's not a laughing matter - those indicators make my blood boil
Bl00dy h3ll! Really? That's about the size of my mortgage...
If you own a car then what is the cost of ownership? You've already spent the money, it's a sunk cost. Households don't have to worry about accounting concepts of depreciation or balance sheets.
yep, I think a more reasonable figure is £350 a month for leasing/tax/insuring a modest modern family car.
a while ago I took a break between leasing vehicles over the summer and put the money saved towards a new road bike. was supposed to be for 6 months, but I kept it going 2 years. it's more do-able than you might think and was great for my health. but there were things that were just not possible without a car, such as taking the kids to swimming lessons after school in the winter (a 25 mile round trip), so we leased a car again for that - expensive swimming lessons!!
Swimming lessons would be good for those car clubs, although when just checking in my town, it appears the club is defunct !
yep a car club would have been great for that, but unfortunately nothing local to us (even better would be a swimming pool in the town!)
It might be, but that's not really relevant. He wasn't discussing what the average savings might be - only what his personal savings were.
fair enough - just think of the bike I could have bought if my lease car was £800 a month...
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