Britain: More training but less cycling

On the back of an announcement of more money for child cycle training, the Department for Transport in the UK has released a report titled "Cycling to School - A review of school census and Bikeability report data". Sadly, this confirms what I wrote last November about how an emphasis on Bikeability and Cycling Proficiency have failed British cycling.

The new figures shows again how the rates of children cycling to school remain extraordinarily low in the UK. The change over the period of 2006 to 2011 is given as -0.01% for 5-10 year olds and +0.06% for 11-15 year olds. This is also presented as a change of 0% for all ages combined.

I have no doubt at all that those who train child cyclists in the UK do so with the best possible motives. However, effort shouldn't be confused with success. Sadly, the effort of the people doing the training is being squandered on something which looks good in press releases ("More money for school cycle training" !) but doesn't actually make any real difference. While British children are being trained in large numbers, this does not lead to them cycling. Conditions on the streets of the UK simply remain too unpleasant and too dangerous for more than a very small proportion of parents to allow their children to cycle.

There are also new figures for the whole population's cycling activity. These show that the average of 16 bicycle trips per person per year in 2006 has changed to an average of 15 bicycle trips per person per year in 2010.

Both these sets of figures come from a time when many people in the UK have spoken of growth in cycling. While growth is often reported in the UK, those reports are often not based in fact. There's a long history of unsubstantiated claims.

This is not real progress. Real growth can be measured and would appear in these figures. All that we've been able to see for many years in the UK is a change in the least significant digit of a small number, and these new figures again show a continuation of the same statistical noise as I wrote about in 2010.

For comparison, the Dutch population makes on average about 0.8 trips by bike per day, which is equivalent to about 220 trips per person per year. The UK's figures are far lower and as you can plainly see, it's not only children who rarely cycle in the UK, but adults also find the conditions for cycling unpleasant. In the UK, "cyclists" continue to cycle, while the majority of the population continues to think it is too dangerous to cycle.

When even many campaigners in Britain continue not to ask for enough and don't aim at the right people to make a real difference, it's hardly surprising that the government doesn't do so either. To know what is really going on, campaigners need to become less easily satisfied and more critical of claims that cycling is growing.


If you look at the figures for cycling over time, it is very easy to see that the UK has not developed a set of policies which have led to a real increase. It is important to recognize this truth, not to imagine that a non-existant cycling revolution is taking place, not to believe deliberately confusing hype and not to look in the wrong direction for solutions. Rather, it is important to acknowledge the facts for what they are. Yes, it's unfortunate that cycling has stagnated at a very low level. However, by acknowledging this fact, there is a base to work from. What's more, by accepting properly gathered statistics, there is a yard-stick against which any future progress can be measured.

I took a cycling trainer course when I
lived in the UK. Unfortunately we
were told we had to advise children to
hug the kerb putting them in danger.
That's why I never trained children.

For cycling to grow, real change is needed. An emphasis on "soft measures" such as training has failed in the past and will continue to fail in the future. Cycle training and marketing of cycling are but a small part of what is required. These measures do not work in isolation from changing the streets for the simple reason that they do not solve the problems that people face when they try to cycle.

There will be no real increase in cycling in Britain until real funding is provided, excuses stop being made, and the country starts to copy the best parts of the best examples without misunderstanding the intent. This is the only way in which the conditions which can result in real mass cycling can be created.

Update 2013
My attention has been drawn to a very interesting graphic from Joe Dunckley showing the impact of cycle training on the frequency of cycling in the UK.

The data came from Transport for London's Attitudes to cycling report and shows that after they've had cycle training people are as likely to cycle less as they are to cycle more.

More on exaggeration and broken promises. And as for cycling to school, even pre-schoolers can be seen riding their own bikes to day-care in the Netherlands. From an average age of 8.6, very nearly every Dutch child rides independently. See also the Cyclists in the City blog for another view of the same figures, while Joe Dunckley provides a humourous take by pointing out that "press releases announcing the annual funding for cycling training that they've been funding for decades now outnumber actual cyclists".

Wake up Britain, there's work to be done !

Two interesting items tonight. First of all, tomorrow is the Official Launch of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain.

At 11:30 AM, you are asked to show your support by turning up at the South side of Lambeth Bridge in London. There's a short tour of 500 metres in length which will include "London's worst bike lane" on the way to a celebratory picnic in Victoria Tower Gardens on the other side of the river.

Full details on the embassy website. Sadly, I won't be there. However, if I were in the UK, that's where I'd be tomorrow. This new group is perhaps the best hope that Britain has at the moment to ever achieve a mass cycling culture.

The second item in this post is included as an example of why the Embassy is so important. I've mentioned before how children in the UK are increasingly threatened by yet at the same time more dependent on cars. Now there's more bad news:

Peter Miller writes that "there will be no ‘travel mode’ question in the next school census". His suggestion is that the ministers involved are trying to bury bad news by simply not bothering to collect this data. The graphs on the right, of modes of school transport from 1995 to 2010, show why they might want to.

For both 5 - 10 year olds (top) and 11-16 year olds (underneath), cycling is the pink line, lurking at the bottom of the graph. Dark blue represents walking, still large, but dropping. The yellow line shows an upward trend. That's children being driven to school.

There's quite a contrast here. While Britain concentrates on the wrong solution, Dutch children on average travel independently to school from the age of 8.6. They do so safely in huge numbers, also making school trips and going to sporting events by bike. Dutch children are not only very safe on the roads, but they're also very happy. The reason for this happiness is known to adults as well as amongst the children themselves. Freedom makes a huge difference. When the BBC asked, one of the children answered that "the bike is actually really important".

Cycling starts with the young. The Dutch started the modern transformation of their cities by looking first at the welfare of the young. A good turnout of children at the embassy picnic tomorrow would be very good to see.

The good people of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain came on a study tour to see how the infrasturcture of the Netherlands changes cycling.

Playing Out

Playing Out is a project in Bristol in the UK which closes streets so that children can play. It's a great idea, illustrating the loss in freedom of children at the same time as giving a chance for proper outdoor play, even if only occasionally and not with a permanent change to the streets.

I quite often cover the rights of children playing in the street.

Dutch woonerven ("Home Zones") are similar in concept to "Play Streets" which used to exist in the UK, but the concept seems to have been forgotten.

It's worth bearing in mind that the turnaround in prospects for Dutch cyclists, adults as well as children, came about in large part because of looking at improving conditions for children. There are far more parents than "cyclists" in the UK. They're a much more powerful lobby group, and no-one can argue that the rights of children are unimportant.

The Netherlands also has an organisation which organises play in the streets. The Buitenspeeldag - Outside play day is on the 1st of June this year, and many streets across the country will be closed completely for play.

I came across this via Mark at IBikeLondon.

Yellow school buses for Britain again ?

I covered two year ago how the Yellow School Bus Committee in the UK wanted to introduce US style school buses. This organisation was established and sponsored by a bus company, and it was quite obvious that they would benefit from the proposal more than children riding in the buses.

Now the CBI (Conferederation of British Industry) is at it. They "want to see more use of US-style yellow school buses to cut school-run congestion." Apparently "the average length of journey to school for 11-16 year-olds rose from 2.8 miles in 2000 to 3.4 miles in 2006... It is estimated that 12% of school pupils would use such a service, which would eliminate 130 million car journeys a year (saving 55,000 tonnes of CO2). This would cut rush hour car traffic by 2.6%."

That's right, this again has nothing at all to do with making children's lives better, but they'd like to see children kept out of the way of important people in cars. Here in the Netherlands, children quite routinely make much longer journeys by bike to get to school. They can do so because of the infrastructure.

Where are the calls for similar infrastructure in the UK, reducing dependence on motor vehicles by increasing the directness of journeys and the subjective safety for cyclists, and giving children a greater degree of freedom ?

If the CBI really is concerned about the cost to business due to congestion then why don't they really, seriously, try to encourage more cycling ? If cycling in Britain reached Dutch levels not only would it save British businesses 2.5 billion pounds per year, but it would also do a lot more for the environment than the CBI's motor vehicle oriented "low-carbon transport roadmap," in which the only mentions of changes to infrastructure are in terms of charging stations for electric cars. Yes, it seems they really do believe that the problems caused by cars can only be solved by more cars.

Freewheeler covered this story from a different angle.

See our selection of products for cycling with children and other blog posts about school travel, Dutch children and the UNICEF child well-being index.

Car mad Britain - and its effect on children

A few news stories from Britain caught my eye this week. The first involves a father who has been driving behind his child who walks to school in order to try to keep him safe.

This is as fine an example of a lack of Subjective Safety on the roads of the UK as you're likely to see. Children should be safe to travel on their own, especially by the time they're 11 years of age. However, perhaps there is another way:

Another story I spotted was a story about a rise in driving lessons for children aged 11 and up. A spokesperson from one of the companies involved, Kim Stanton, from Young Driver, said: "We are teaching youngsters the vital skills they are going to need in later life to drive.

Also from the article: 'Brian Mooney, from the Association of British Drivers, said he thought it was a very good idea. "Anything that gets young people accustomed to the car and a bit of responsibility and co-ordinating movements, is a good thing..."'

"Vital skills", getting "young people accustomed to the car". Where can this lead:

A primary school in Cambridge has decided to support a campaign to stop a road (which they're not even on) being transformed to be better for cycling, "due to concerns about where parents will leave their cars when they drop off and collect their children."

The photo shows what the very same school looked like when we took our children there, by foot, five years ago. Neither the police nor the school authorities appeared to have any interest in the problems caused by such parking, and it can only have got worse in the last five years with such car centric attitudes. There are more photos.

The short sighted stupidity of this is quite incredible. I mentioned a few days ago that cycling and walking rates by children were plummeting in the UK while the rate of children driven to school has risen. Is it any surprise that this is happening when even schools are amongst those working against children walking and cycling to school ?

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how schools here are implementing stopping bans specifically to avoid this sort of situation from ever occurring.

And of course there are plenty of other posts on this blog about children. This is also a good chance to mention again the Beauty and the Bike project about why teenage girls in particular do not cycle in the UK. I've now seen the film, and read the book. Both are excellent (I'm in it for a few seconds, as is my youngest daughter, but it's not about us, and we were not paid!)

It's perhaps not surprising that Britain's children, amongst the least independently mobile in Europe, should also be the least happy. The father who drove behind his child later wrote a very good letter "Why do drivers have more rights than the rest" about this experience. Peter Miller also wrote about it.

Stopping ban by schools

No-stopping in school hours outside schools
in Groningen

Groningen has recently implemented a stopping ban by many of its primary schools. This is to spread to cover all schools in the city within a two and half years and will be rolled out as the safety of home-school routes is enhanced.

This means it is now illegal to stop with a car adjacent to the schools between 8 am and 4 pm on week days. i.e. No children may be taken to school by car.

By British or American standards, the rate of children being taken to school by car is already extremely low. Just try to spot any children being taken to school by car in this video shot at a local primary school.

Of course, a good idea like this won't just stay in one place. It's also spreading to other towns within the Netherlands. Perhaps it can also spread outside this country ?

It is vitally important for cycle campaigners to campaign for children. Today's children are tomorrow's cyclists - or perhaps not if the infrastructure isn't good enough and streets are so subjectively unsafe that parents won't let their children cycle.

And further afield ?

In Cambridge, schools look like this
due to parents dropping off and
picking up their children.

Like most countries outside the Netherlands, Britain could do with trying this. Here's the scene that we saw every day outside Mayfield primary school which my children attended in Cambridge. Virtually all the cars in the picture have brought a child to school. Even the car in the middle of this road junction is parked, as is the one in front of it which is obstructing the dropped kerb.

Another view of the Cambridge
school on another day. Children
do not drive. Their schools should
not be dominated by cars.

When "everyone else is doing it", there is no legal enforcement against illegal parking, and there are generally no really safe ways of getting to the schools by bike, is it such a surprise that parents see driving their children as the only safe option ?

But before a ban can be successful there needs to be a proper alternative provided. There needs to be proper safe cycling routes to schools so that it is possible for children to cycle alone or with their parents.

Update 24/2/2010 Mayfield primary school in Cambridge, the school next to which the photo just above was taken, has now decided to campaign against a ban on parking in a cycle lane on a road a few hundred metres from the school on the grounds of "concerns about where parents will leave their cars when they drop off and collect their children". They are prioritizing parents' cars over the safety of children who might cycle, even on roads at a considerable distance from the school.

Update 2011 Despite the school, and others, protesting against them, the very timid proposal of slightly widening cycle lanes on one road in Cambridge did go through - but what they did was to a much lower standard than it should and could have been. Note that this doesn't change the situation on the road which the school itself is one, as that's in a different road. Similar scenes to those in my photos continue at that school and many others in the UK, and other countries.

Update 2013

Parents waiting outside a Groningen primary school for younger children as older children ride by. On a study tour in June we saw a parent stop her car at this school illegally. Other parents were shocked and deliberately blocked her way. After driving her car home, the driver caught up with us by bike to explain, apologise and ask me not to report her to the police. As it happens, this driver really did have a good reason to do the wrong thing on this occasion. It was never my intention to cause her a problem, but this demonstrates how great the social pressure on parents not to drive to school is in Groningen.

There are more posts about school travel, including videos and photos of schools and children on bikes. Also see posts about the problems facing British children vs, the joy of being a Dutch child.

Do the British love their children too ?

It's a rhetorical question - of course they do. However, it does not always look much like it. Today I read in the Cambridge Evening News about how following a crash which involved two children going to school in Cambridgeshire on a dangerous road, a school bus has been laid on for others with the same route. However, this has resulted in the bus being withdrawn for another 57 children and they will have to make a similarly dangerous journey by other means.

The truly absurd thing about this is that the distances involved are so short. Sawston to Great Shelford was my commute for nearly two years when I lived in that area. It's a distance of under three miles ( 5 km ). These children should all be able to cycle that distance, and this is where they are really being let down. Why is it that British people put up with conditions on their roads which put their children in danger ?

And as cycling campaigners, where exactly do we expect the next generation of cyclists to come from if children can't ride their bikes such a short distance to school in safety ?

It's a societal problem, not just a cycling problem. And it's not the only societal problem that Britain faces. The UK has the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe (the USA has a rate much higher again), a high rate of drug abuse, a knife crime problem, a problem with out of control teens, and the highest rate of binge drinking in Europe. There is a relationship between the policies which make for safe cycling and the social policies which lead to a happy childhood. The top four countries for cycling are also the top four for childhood happiness. Compare the experiences of British children with those of Dutch children.

Whether you are British or not, how does your country measure up ? What are your roads for ?

Note
Because the Dutch love their children, they campaigned for them. A 98% reduction in child road deaths has been achieved in the Netherlands.

My rhetorical question received an answer three years after this article was written.

A similar story came up a few months back. If the question in the title sounds vaguely familiar, that's perhaps because it's similar to the one posed in this 1980s pop song.

A "mammoth school run"

The Cambridge Evening News today has a story about a fourteen year old secondary school student who has missed school for six months and whose parents are now moving house because the council insisted that he travel to a school 7 miles ( 11 km ) away. This, according to the paper, is a "nightmare journey". His father said the daily trip "including a taxi ride to the nearest bus stop, an hour-long bus journey and a 15-minute walk to the school" was too much. It apparently took 75 minutes all added together.

Earlier in the year there was another story about school transport near Cambridge. In this case about children being expected to make their own way to a secondary school which is less than 3 miles (4.5 km) from their home. There were protests from parents when the council suggested that children should make this journey by walking or cycling instead of by taking a school bus.

I have some sympathies. While the distances in both cases are short, I know the area and I wouldn't want my children going that way either.

The path shown is on the route which the second lot that I link to would have to take. It is little over a metre wide, and that's for bidirectional use by bicycles as well as for pedestrians. The road alongside, with no separation from the path at all, has a 60 mph (100 km/h) speed limit.

I put the yellow lines on the photo to illustrate a problem caused by inadequate lighting. Instead of proper lights which illuminate the path from above, feeble solar powered LEDs have been put into the surface of the path where the yellow dots are. If, after dark, you ride between the lights, they encourage you to ride as if the dropped kerbs line up. Soon after the installation of these lights, I rode along there on a moonless night and... had my first crash in many years when I hit that kerb ! The other problem with such lighting is that it hides anything else that might be on the path - such as the width restriction (yes, it gets narrower) caused by a bridge a bit further along, branches that might have dropped onto the path and which could get get stuck in your wheels etc. (I should point out that after many complaints, additional LEDs have been installed near junctions. However, they still don't light the path).

For all of what is wrong with this, this is in many ways the good bit. When it reaches the outskirts of Cambridge the path disappears and children are expected to "share the road" with cars.

School cycle journeys become a problem in the UK because the facilities that children are expected to use are simply not good enough. There is no consideration of subjective safety, and it would seem no consideration of any other kind of safety either ! It's hardly surprising that British cyclists worry about segregated cycle provision, and generally prefer to ride on the road even with the 100 km/h traffic, when this is what cycling provision tends to look like in the UK. It's also hardly surprising that only 1-2% of journeys in the UK are by bike, because the majority of the population will never find such conditions to be acceptable.

And here ?
As ever, the Netherlands does it rather better. Cycle paths here are wide, smooth, well lit and go places in an efficient way. All the villages around Assen are joined to the city by decent quality cycle paths. Here is a part of one of them:

The cycle path is wide and smooth. There is a separate pedestrian path. There are proper lights which illuminate the path. The junctions have lights which give priority to cyclists. The road is quite separate from the cycle path. What's more, on this stretch the road is a through route only for buses, and is otherwise used only for access by residents. There are no fears about letting one's children cycle here, and the result is that they do.

At the school my daughter attends in Assen, all the children arrive by bike, including those who live 20 km (12.5 miles) away. This has many advantages. One of our recent visitors commented "I've not seen a single fat child." Also, parents don't have to provide a "taxi" service.

Come on Britain, build the infrastructure ! If the infrastructure had been there for the boy in the story he could easily have got to school in under half an hour on his bike.

We have more stories about school travel, which you may like to note, doesn't stop in the winter either.

The junction shown in the video is on the route of the Study Tour. Read more about issues facing British children and how they compare with their Dutch counterparts.

Old British Street Signs included the possibility of a "Play Street", a woonerf like concept

Some time ago while looking through an old set of encyclopaedias when I found some pictures of road signs.

Two of the interesting signs are shown above.

I've never in my life seen a "play street" sign in the UK, and these days the country seems to have great difficulty in putting up 20 mph speed limit signs, let alone 15 mph signs. However, both of these things were apparently possible in when my old encyclopaedia was printed back in 1959.

The same encyclopaedia also includes the following passage:

"Road Safety
A motor-car, motor-cycle or any other mechnically-propelled vehicle is a lethal instrument ... A great deal of fun has been made of the man with the red flag who walked in front of the early cars ; yet the authorities of those days had the common sense to foresee, however dimly, the consequences of letting mechnically-propelled vehicles loose on the public highway."
...
"The general mixture of cars, motor-cycles, pedal cycles, and pedestrians has resulted in a toll of death, bereavement, and maiming that is horrible to contemplate and that constitutes a shame and a disgrace to 20th-century civilisation. It is a disgrace because most accidents are avoidable. Mechanical causes (like the failure of the steering gear) are nowadays rare. Bad weather, especially fog and icy roads, can at any time be dangerous. But the great majority of accidents occur because someone has forgotten the basic fact with which this article began - that a mechnically -propelled vehicle is a lethal weapon."
...
Growing accident rate
There were, of course, accidents in the days when all or most vehicles were horse-drawn, but the real slaughter did not begin until 1919, with the great development of motor transport after the First World War. No road-accident figures were published until 1909 ; and it was not until 1930 that the reporting to the police of such accidents became compulsory. For the ten years from 1929 to 1938 the casualties on the roads of England and Wales were:

Killed: 68,548
Injured: 2,107,964
Pedestrians Killed: 33,319
Pedestrians Injured: 760,472


And here ?

Of course, over here you quite commonly find the equivalent of both of the signs above, in the form of the woonerf sign which is very common in housing developments and the 30 km/h (18 mph) sign which is to be seen at the edge of all residential areas.

The blue sign shown here is that which you find in a woonerf, or in English "living street". This is the modern equivalent of a play street, and the sign shows kids playing as being larger, and more important, than cars. There is a video showing streets built along these lines.

Update: Anneke in her response to this item tells me that the speed limit in a woonerf is "walking pace." i.e. about 5 km/h

2011 update: In 2010 there was some confusion about this in the comments (below). People were quite insistent that "play street" was just a place-holder name or a concept that was never built and that they never actually existed and for a little while I wondered that as well. However, then TH posted some very compelling evidence that the post was correct in the first place. Click on the photo for more information:

Cycling with children can be made easier and more convenient

The road sign pictures at the top are taken from "The Book of Knowledge" sixth edition printed in 1959. The photo of children on a play street came from the londonplay website. While play street signs are not easy to find in the UK now, woonerf signs are very easy to find. The woonerf sign came from a signpost just around the corner. There are many of them all around the Netherlands.

School buses

An American style school bus

There are no school buses in this country. There are companies which have a few of the traditional yellow school bus as used in the US, but they hire them out for corporate events, weddings etc. and do not use them to take children to school.

Children here predominantly cycle. We were told by a local secondary school teacher than the cycling rate to his school is 100% in the summer, dropping to around 95% in the winter. Some children cycle daily round trips of up to 40 km ( 25 miles ) in order to get to school. and back home.

Children attending primary school also cycle. This video, which I took a few months back when it was -2 C ( 28 F ) shows a normal school run at a primary school. It could have been taken on any day.

At this location, two thirds of all primary (elementary) school children arrive at school by bike.

This is the result of having infrastructure and a social environment which feels safe enough that people let their children ride bikes to school.


Amsterdam - child cycling under pressure
But wait, what's this article on the right ?

The headline reads "Amsterdam first years not happy cycling". It discusses how in Amsterdam the cycling rate for children in the first year of secondary school has dropped such that just 53% of children in the first year of secondary education cycle to school every day, vs. 89% of children over the entire country.

The reason most given not to cycle is the heavy traffic and the risks due to it.

The article also goes on to say that of those who cycle daily, 43% have fallen from their bikes at some point - mostly by crashing into other cyclists. The low quality of cycling infrastructure in some parts of Amsterdam is part of the reason why.

Why include this piece ? It's the same story as above. A high degree of subjective safety is vital if you want people to ride bikes. Amsterdam appears to many foreigners to be a paradise for cycling, and it has the highest cycling rate of any capital city in the western world. However Amsterdam is not a leader within the Netherlands. The city doesn't have the lowest rate of cycling in the Netherlands, but it most surely doesn't have the highest either. For all its charm (Amsterdam is really a marvelous city for many reasons), conditions for cycling in Amsterdam are not so good as in many of the other cities in this country, and that is reflected in a cycling rate which is lower than it otherwise might be.

The only "school bus" in Assen is part of a small fleet of
special buses which can  be hired for special events. You can
also choose the British double decker or Indonesian Bedford.

In the Netherlands, having only just over half of all children in the first year of secondary school cycling each day is something that is recognized as a problem. It's something to work on and improve. Note that it can be expected that by the second year of secondary school, rather a higher percentage of the children will be cycling.

And in the UK ?Instead of looking over the North Sea and taking note, the UK is as ever looking for advice in the opposite direction - across the Atlantic. There is a move with the Yellow School Bus Commission to introduce American style yellow school buses to the UK. This commission is ignoring the factors which make people continue to feel that their children are unsafe on the streets and if successful it will further reduce the opportunity for British kids to get exercise. It will also, of course, cost a fortune. Instead of spending on infrastructure which enables a truly green form of transport, the government will end up buying diesel to power buses and produce fumes on the streets. Should I be surprised that this commission was established and is sponsored by a bus company ? Is this proposal for the benefit of the children or of bus company shareholders ?

Children with disabilities ?
Children with disabilities can't always cycle to school and for them an alternative is provided. To minimise the number of private cars used on the school run, mini-buses are provided which call to each home to pick the child up in the morning and which return again after school. However these minibuses are not available to children who can make their own way to and from school.

The American school bus photo at the top is a public domain image which can be found here. The article is from the ANWB*Auto paper published on the 11th of September.