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news
Cycle parking - Cambridge © Simon MacMichael.jpgUK’s cycling infrastructure “seriously lagging behind” bike-friendly European cities, according to new safe cycling ranking
The UK “continues to lag seriously behind its European counterparts” when it comes to safe, connected cycling infrastructure, a new global ranking of bike-friendly cities has revealed.
According to US-based advocacy group People for Bikes’ City Ratings, a data analysis tool ranking cities and towns across the world on how amenable they are to cycling, Cambridge tops the chart as the UK’s most bike-friendly city, but only sits 11th overall when compared to the rest of Europe, while 16 of England’s 20 highest-rated boroughs are in London.
First established in 2017, People for Bikes’ City Ratings tool scores and measures the quality and connectivity of each city’s cycle network, including its protected cycle lanes and bike paths, along with its low-speed limits and safe crossings for people on bikes.
Of the 83 UK locations measured by the group, up from the 53 included in the list last year, Cambridge comes out on top with an average score of 84 out of 100, with the city faring especially well when it comes recreational cycling (which scored 87), and for cycling to shops, core services, and jobs and schools (87, 85, and 83 respectively).
Just behind were the London boroughs of Hackney and Islington, which both scored 82, and feature in the top 20 globally when ranked individually.
“This high performance from London boroughs shows what can be done when there is clear funding and political commitment to more bike infrastructure,” People for Bikes said.
London’s average score, however, was a paltry 69, lowered by its worth three boroughs for cycling, Bromley, Harrow, and Barnet, which scored 52, 51, and 50 respectively.
Greater Manchester (49) and the West Midlands (46) fared even worse, however, leading cycling campaigners in Birmingham to point out that people in the city want to cycle more but are let down by a lack of safe roads and infrastructure.
Responding to the City Ratings report, which also gave Birmingham an individual score of 54, Mat MacDonald, chair of Better Streets for Birmingham, told the Birmingham Mail: “It's encouraging to see Birmingham’s score in this index increasing, but there’s a long way to go before people feel secure enough to take shorter journeys by bike in this city.
“Time and time again, polls and studies show that many Brummies want to cycle more but lack the safe roads and infrastructure to make it a reality. If the council is really serious about its vital ambition to reduce car journeys, it needs to step up its game and deliver both the big projects and community quick wins that will enable people to make the switch to cycling.”
Meanwhile, the campaign group Walk Ride GM said that Greater Manchester placing four of its boroughs in the bottom 12 places in the UK – with Bury placing second bottom with a score of 39 – was “unacceptable”, and criticised the disparity between Manchester itself (which scored 64) and the surrounding area when it comes to safe cycling.
Only Leigh-on-Sea in Essex finished lower than Bury in the UK rankings, with a miserable score of 35, including just 11 for the ease in which cyclists can reach major transport hubs.
Elsewhere, Edinburgh scored 78, placing 10th in the UK, Cardiff scored 70, Glasgow 60, and Belfast – where campaigners have long decried the inaction that has left it trailing behind the UK’s other capital cities on cycling – just 46.
The City Ratings picture for the UK looks most bleak when compared to the rest of Europe, where The Hague came out on top with a score of 89, making it the best large city for cycling in the world according to People for Bikes, while Brussels and Paris followed closely behind on 87, with the group extolling the “bold and drastic action that Mayor Anne Hidalgo has taken since first being elected in 2014” in Paris.
Lyon and Utrecht both scored 86, while Leuven, Munich, Amsterdam, the small Dutch cities of Almere and Eindhoven rounded out Europe’s top 10.
“The aim of this data is to spotlight the best cities and towns for cycling, as well as provide city leaders and local advocates with actionable insights to make cycling better in their communities,” People for Bikes president Jenn Dice said.
“This comes at a time when political parties will be making commitments on transport and laying out their vision for active travel heading into the general election.
“The data for England clearly shows not only a divide between London and other cities but between England and other European countries. We’re hopeful that the data surfaces valuable lessons for local authorities, advocates, and everyone who wants to see more and better bike infrastructure.”
Dice continued: “Cambridge’s top ranking and the strong performance of several London boroughs demonstrate what is possible with committed leadership and investment in safe and accessible biking.
“Through City Ratings, we want to celebrate these successes and provide actionable steps for city leaders and advocates to improve bike infrastructure in their communities. As political parties outline their visions for transportation and recreation, they must prioritise active transportation to create healthier, more sustainable cities.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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As I have mentioned before in the comments section - I live in London and Paris. And I cycle in both. Parts of central London are excellent (as the article mentions) But the difference is that Paris, in my opinion, is more contiguous. In Paris one can cycle for kilometres and kilometres on contiguous, quality infrastructure. In London not so much. One has to plan a bit more in London and be prepared to either detour to stay on a 'quiet way' or cycle with heavy traffic for sections. In Paris less so. The other thing I notice in Paris is the large number of very expensive bikes locked up in the street. In London leaving an expensive eBike locked up outside is mad. In Paris bike theft doesn't seem to be a thing.
In Paris bike theft doesn't seem to be a thing
Yet another Brexit Bonus: separating us from countries where the professions just don't seem to be up to the job!
The difference might be more related to 19th century Hausmann, than the policies of the mayors of these cities...
I'm a bit surprised here, I've never seen as many pickpockets in any other city (and that despite avoiding this city as much as I can), and had 2 well locked bikes stolen in other parts of France. Maybe you live in the 16eme or things have changed recently... or owners of expensive bikes can afford to replace them more often this way, thanks to their insurance?
UK’s cycling infrastructure “seriously lagging behind” bike-friendly European cities..
I do so love the English understatement.
I'm interested in what the criteria are for the ranking. I moved to Cambridgeshire from Leicester a few years ago, and find Cambridge and the surrounding area much worse for cycling than Leicestershire.
There are none at all, these People for Bikes rankings are completely subjective and are effectively just click-bait. Ignoring them completely and going for a ride is the wisest response.
For someone who lectures folks a lot you could take a second to check your facts before you post stuff which wasn't instantly disproved or just irrelevant...
https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org/about/methodology
OTOH it's a comments forum, so why should you or anyone bother? Knockabout? Have at it!
I've not come across these folks or their evaluation criteria before so I'll have a look. Certainly media loves reductive scores they can use to compare stuff - without the boring effort of analysis. And in general I'm inclined to agree that many of these ratings - especially ones conducted remotely - seem quite at odds with reality. BUT that is a subjective judgement by we, the people doing the cycling in these places!
PS. it's a fine afternoon here so I will definitely take your last suggestion!
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/06/17/people-for-bikes-explains-why-chi...
and
https://chi.streetsblog.org/2024/06/25/response-to-another-awful-people-...
For examples of how their alleged "methodology" is implemented. The only piece of data that matters at all are speed limits, which is completely nonsensical.
Which is their entire point -- click-bait. The rankings are composed to be the opposite of whatever people expect, so that when they read them, they are inclined to investigate further because they think "That cannot be right!" And that drives (digital) traffic, which is their entire goal.
Chris, you ought to know by now that I don't just invent my material.
Ah - my pedantry got the better of me. When you said "subjective" presumably what you meant was "I don't agree with the details of their methadology or the notion of doing any such thing" *?
Thes folks apparently call theirs it a "City Rating" - caveat lector! For an actual subjective rating I would suggest the Copenhagenize index (is this still going?) which just happens to put Copenhagen at the top! *
Is there anything subjective about the method? Arbitrary (and arguable), yes, because they assign "scores" to different environments and pick e.g. what a "metro area" is etc. That's a pretty common thing in setting up metrics, no?
Or do you have evidence they are actually fixing this (by not following their methodology) or they've deliberately targetted Chicago? Streetsblog seems to feel the latter but doesn't actually evidence this? The ratings group seem to have open-sourced what this actually amounts to (some software) and to use open source data. So anyone sufficiently interested could check that...
...Like you - I wouldn't be! I don't think their particular method is a great way of assessing things. I feel the same about other such rankings. I would say the problem might actually be a lack of subjectivity - how it actually feels there! Narrative, not just a number or two.
Mind you - perhaps just looking at behaviour is a good one? As an extremely crude indicator "cycle helmet index" has been proposed - if everyone's wearing one it's probably not so great for cycling. Or cycling modal share - if people are cycling, they are. But even that ... are people cycling in parks / for recreation, or are they enabled to cycle journeys for work, to school, to do the shopping... Are they cycling on the pavements (or the UK's "shared used" which generally means the same) in conflict with pedestrians (see Japan - keeps coming up!)? Or do they have their own spaces for fast, efficient cycling (perhaps with few or no traffic lights)?
That's not what they say in their methodology. I'm not clear on their terms but if you have what they call "Protected Bike Lane" ("cycle path" in UK speak I guess) they give a good score and road speed is irrelevant. If there are "buffered bike lanes" (I think they may mean "protected bike lane") speed matters but not as much as if it's "share the road".
* Spoiler - it's pretty good, lots of people are voting by riding bikes: but in my subjective analysis they're missing some things. What they've done may be interesting to people (other than yourself) looking to move towards mass cycling though [1] [2] [3].
It is well-nigh impossible to find people who have been to any of these places, who agree with these nonsensical ratings. How is that possible, apart from via fraud? At absolute best, People for Bikes are so thoroughly incompetent that they should be completely ignored.
And yet, my statement is confirmed by the responsible party, in the first article I posted. Were Chicago to lower its speed limits -- without changing actual speeds at all -- it would rocket up these fraudulent rankings.
And that despite the fact that many of the streets in question already have mid-block speed bumps, so achieving the posted limit is actually challenging for most drivers and vehicles.
With respect to your second comment about click-bait and the state of digital journalism, yes I am aware -- but that doesn't mean we have to pretend that People for Bikes are anything but professional trolls. Nor do we have to fall for their annual rankings troll. We can, and should, just ignore them completely.
[ People disagree with the ratings ]
Well that would be "subjective"... Anyway, I'm also shaking my fist at them for some of the relative rankings of places I know. Probably fair in that the places at the bottom would be generally less pleasant to cycle in than places at the top. But aside from civic officials who probably still don't care about these numbers yet anyway, what's it for?
Last bit of pedantry - that is true, but that is not because "The only piece of data that matters at all are speed limits". As Streetsblog acknowledge the city doesn't have a network of separat cycle paths:
If they had a citywide, connected, protected bike network - at least if they're not "fraudulent" in doing what they say they're doing - Chicago would get a better rating (and likely one of the best in the States)!
Having been drawn into pedantry about something of truly small importance (someone's list of "best" stuff... which didn't even actually measure e.g. how many people are riding) I must stop commenting on these things and spend that time
out ridingperhaps doing a bit of digital safari across the pond. Of course, that doesn't show traffic volumes over the day, or convey the feeling of someone passing me at 30mph, or indicate the ratios of careful, careless or reckless ones...In which case, we would see some agreement and some disagreement. We do not see that, however. We see almost universal disagreement.
Generating clicks, as I said.
Per the People for Bikes representative, Chicago would go from nearly-last to first with lower speed limits. So again, as I said, it is the only piece of data that matters.
Chicago has vastly more, and vastly superior, dedicated cycling infrastructure than almost all of the cities which are ranked higher in this fraudalent list.
The difference between those cities is that the listmakers subjectively decided to call virtually every street in Chicago "high stress", without any rationale except for the speed limit -- which as noted, is meaningless both due to traffic enforcement, and the actual infrastructure in-place on many of those Chicago streets which prevents most traffic from even reaching the speed limit.
All of which was ignored in pursuit of clicks -- as I've mentioned.
Welcome to the
internetroad.cc site. They occasionally run articles explaining how their business is funded. And it's not though their subscriptions or selling their signature socks.I suspect you're going to find much to be happily irritated about.
For their method see here. Short - as I understand it they've combined a computational analysis of maps to graph connectivity between places e.g. where people can cycle. They've then summed the relative stress for cycling those journeys between places. They're rating that by the signed road speed / road type / cycle infra if any.
In my view far more interesting (this seems somewhat of a theoretical exercise) would be analysis based on actual data e.g. who is actually cycling and where e.g. perhaps from Strava plus some thoughtful analysis. Or just a survey.
Cambridgeshire vs. Leicestershire - that's slightly counterintuitive to me but been some years since I've been to either. What are the differences?
Cambridgeshire: It’s impossible for me to get into the city without traveling on a horrible main road with no cycling facilities.
Whilst there are lots of bits of cycling infrastructure it is mostly of the box ticking type e.g. a footpath changed to shared use despite being extremely narrow with no changes other than a sign going up, ‘murder strip’ type white lines painted on roads, cycle lanes which allow cars to park in them. Cycle lanes which suddenly stop and spit you out onto extremely busy roads.
Also, in general the roads tend to be narrower, which increases the opportunity for close passes and there are less alternative routes from one place to another, meaning it is harder to choose a route with lighter traffic.
Leicestershire: although there are probably less cycling facilities in general, the stuff they have put in recently seems to be going where it is needed and much better thought out. The roads tend to be wider, both in the city and surrounding countyside
its the thoughtful analysis thats the key, rather than just the data, as Ive seen councils take Stravas metro data, and come up with all manner of wacky interpretations of where,what,why people were cycling from it, and then try and implement new schemes based on that misunderstanding.
like some of their latest thinking from this is cyclists will ride much longer routes to get to places as long as its part of a signed route, so they only have to infill the bits between existing routes, rather than plan safer direct routes.
Let's be clear on this; cycling is prevalent in Cambridge 'in spite of' some dire so-called cycle infrastructure, not 'because of it'.
Ive been witness to numerous highway 'planning' meetings where it is clear a blind driver without a licence would come up with better intra-modal designs than whatever the highways people call themselves these days.
In general, UK highway and policing culture has driven cycling off the road. It is rotten to the core and explains the rampant pavement blocking Range Rovers and entitled Audi drivers happy to use their two tonne machines to threaten people walking and cycling on the Public Highway.
This toxic culture pervades into the CPS, juries and judges.