Inadequate infrastructure causes injuries. Better infrastructure prevents them. Learning from two minor crashes. Mini Roundabouts are unsafe for cyclists

My mother lives in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset, England. Just before Christmas, my mum was involved in a crash while cycling. She had right of way when turning right on a mini roundabout. A driver coming from her left drove into her without seeing her.

My mother was following the line shown in red. The crash happened at the blue cross. See it on Google Maps.

The driver who hit my mother is not a bad person. She was apologetic from the start, took my mother to hospital and has checked up on her since then. The driver also paid for repairs to the bicycle and admitted liability to the police.

My mother was not seriously hurt, but her minor injuries have caused pain for some weeks now. A couple of days ago, my Mum collected her bike from the bike shop which made the repairs and rode it home. That's brave. Many people never cycle again once something like this has happened to them. While careful cyclists rarely have collisions anywhere in the world, including the UK, cycling becomes subjectively far less safe for people who have had this type of experience.

Crashes like this are quite common in the UK. They're usually referred to using the word "SMIDSY" ("Sorry Mate, I Didn't See You") as that's what drivers say so very often to the people who they have injured.

However, while crashes like this are common, they are rarely the result of deliberately dangerous behaviour. This is why neither legislation against drivers nor additional training are likely to make such events less frequent.

Another view of the same location. The red line shows the route that my mother takes to ride her bike home from the town centre.

The Blame Game
Who should we blame for this crash having occurred ?

My mother is a very careful cyclist and was riding according to the highway code when the crash occurred so she can't be blamed. The driver of the car has to take some responsibility because it was her action which caused the crash.

However it would be a mistake to think that these two parties are the only people involved. We need to look at why the driver made the mistake. This didn't happen for no reason at all, it was at least in part the result of the environment. Because crashes like this continue to occur I don't find it constructive to continue to blame either of the two principle actors.

It's not just Burnham. Britain has many
mini-roundabouts. This one near our old
home in Cambridge often caused us
problems by bike. Car crashes also
occurred. At least one person has died
at this junction since we left the UK.

This is a busy road junction yet it's designed as a mini-roundabout. Mini-roundabouts like this can be quite efficient for motorists but many cyclists find them to be dangerous. On a mini-roundabout, people have far less time in which to make a decision than they do on a full-sized roundabout. This leads mistakes being made and makes it far easier for motorists simply not to notice bikes and their riders amongst the more common and far larger motorized vehicles.

The speed limit at this junction is 30 mph (50 km/h). Burnham doesn't have any lower speed limits than this, not in residential areas which should not be used as through routes by car nor even by schools, even though schools exist for children yet children never drive cars to school.

The petrol station adjacent to the mini-roundabout adds more uncertainty. This station has a total of three entrances and exits, one in a side road and two of which divert traffic onto and off from the mini-roundabout. Passing drivers may also be distracted by reading the advertised fuel prices.

While both cyclists and pedestrians have no choice but to use this junction to get across the town, there is no provision here for cyclists to ride around the junction safely nor even to help pedestrians to cross the road.

The mini-roundabout is in the distance in this image, this is the road along which my mother was going to cycle in order to get home. Is this an equitable way to allocate space ? Both the mother with children and the person in a disability buggy have to use extremely narrow pavements while drivers enjoy wide lanes. The closest safe provision for crossing the road as a pedestrian is behind the camera.

Just like in other towns in the UK, planners here have only considered motor vehicles as a mode of transport. However, even that has not been done very well.

British Road Design
The roads in Burnham-on-Sea are very typical for a British town. I rode across this junction hundreds, if not thousands, of times when I lived in Burnham in the 1980s and 1990s. There has been no significant change to the roads in thirty years.

While British roads have not changed in design in the last thirty years, that is not true of the Netherlands. Sustainable safety principles applied progressively to Dutch roads in the ten year period between 1998 and 2007 are credited with having reduced the fatality rate by 5% per year. While the number of injuries for car occupants in the Netherlands is at around the same level as in Britain, pedestrians and cyclists are safer here than in the UK. Dutch children are far more likely to be independently mobile than British children and they are much safer than their British counterparts as they make their way around.

Comparison of the same road as above in Burnham (left) and a similar road and junction in Assen (right). The overall width of pavement, cycle-path and road at this point in Burnham is somewhat narrower than the example from Assen. Nevertheless, despite having less space overall, the British example allocates more space for cars even at this narrow point: the driving lanes in Burnham are about as wide as the driving lanes in Assen and the car parking lane, even though no parking is allowed. Extra width could be allocated to pedestrians and cyclists even here, but that isn't done even further along the road where it's much wider. Note also the smaller corner radii into side roads in Assen to reduce speeds and make crossing easier and lower speed limits in all residential streets. The width of the driving lanes of this street in Assen were reduced in 2008.

Burnham-on-Sea is a small town (the population is less than a third that of Assen at under 19000 people) but the roads in the town are always busy with cars. As in most of the UK, there is little alternative but to drive. Very few people will ever feel comfortable to cycle when the infrastructure design makes it so obvious that drivers are preferred over cyclists. In these conditions, people often believe driving to be a necessity.

When we visited in October, we saw that cycling provision is still virtually non-existent in Burnham. Enthusiastic cyclists ride their bikes, but there is little to attract those who are not enthusiastic cyclists. Many of the people who we came across who cycled used the pavement and apologised for doing so, or avoided the direct routes by using back streets and narrow pedestrian only cut-throughs.

The red line at the left shows part of the route taken by my mother to get from home to the town centre. The green line on the right shows the only cycling infrastructure in this area, a cycle-path built on the edge of a new housing development on the Eastern side of the town. This single path is of relatively good quality by British standards but it's not very useful because it skirts around the town and doesn't provide a direct route to common destinations. A very finely spaced grid of high quality cycle-paths is required to enable safe mass cycling. The blue line on the far left shows where Sustrans tell cyclists to ride along the beach.

Where the best cycle-path in Burnham
crosses a minor side-road, the corner
radius is large to enable high speed
when entering the residential streets
and drivers have priority. Also note
how much space is allocated for
driving vs. other modes.

A recently built housing development on the Eastern edge of the city provided a single cycle-path. However, this path is compromised in quality (narrow, gives way at all side-roads, low social safety) and doesn't actually go anywhere very useful. It skirts around the edge of the new homes where it was easy to build rather than going where it would provide a useful route.

There's a stark contrast between the housing development in Burnham-on-Sea which is typical for Britain, and what we've seen with a new development built on the edge of Assen which is typical for the Netherlands. In the Dutch example, cycling is not an afterthought. Not only was this development designed to enable most children to cycle to school but the new suburb also came with all facilities including a pedestrian and cycle friendly shopping centre. What's more, not only does the new development in Assen have an extensive network of internal cycle-paths, but it its construction also involved extensive works to provide a direct, unobstructed and nearly car free route to the city centre by bicycle.

Is everything perfect in the Netherlands ?

The collision in Assen took place at
this junction in an industrial estate

We go to some lengths to point out, both on this blog and on the study tours, that the Netherlands is not perfect. While the overall standard of the Netherlands is very good, there are plenty of places in this country where the infrastructure is not yet up to scratch. Plenty of work remains to be done. We have observed that those places which have inadequate, old-fashioned, infrastructure are often the scenes of collisions.

This is a long, straight road with lanes
just as wide as those used in the UK.
Drivers often exceed the speed limit
of 50 km/h in this location. No cycle-
paths here to keep cyclists safe.

This was illustrated in the last week because a friend of ours was involved in a very similar crash here in Assen to that which befell my mother in Burnham-on-Sea. Like my mother, our friend was bruised but not seriously injured. Her bicycle had some damage. The car driver in this case initially wanted to leave the scene of the accident but did co-operate.

It's often the case that people from outside the Netherlands overestimate the effect of "Strict liability" law. This was not a deliberate act and law does nothing to prevent accidental crashes. The driver simply "didn't see" the cyclist when he used a junction to turn around. No change to the law can prevent crashes because they address the wrong issue. The law does provide the useful service of ensuring that the crash victim will have her bicycle repair paid by the insurance of the driver.

Proper cycling infrastructure in this location almost certainly would have prevented the crash from happening because this removes the chance for a collision to occur. There is easily enough space for a cycle-path along this route and it is highly likely that one will be built in the future. The Western end of this area is to be rebuilt in the next few years and I expect to see changes for cyclists when that happens.

The route taken by the Assen cyclist through the industrial estate is shown as the bottom line, in red. The location of the crash is shown by the blue cross. No-one used this as a through route until very recently when a new bicycle bridge joined the short green section of cycle-path on the right to the red road. There are many cycle-paths in Assen and they go to all destinations. The longer green line across the top shows one good quality route (mainly cycle-path) to the same destination. This shortest safe route is 0.8 km longer for this particular journey, hence the desire to save time by choosing the red line. As the red route now makes a useful bicycle through-route, it is imperative that a cycle-path is built alongside it to improve safety.

Bad road designs are unsafe

Further along the same road, still in the
industrial area, there's a painted mini-
roundabout (new since we moved here)
Dutch drivers cut corners just as British
drivers do. This type of infrastructure
is no more safe here than in the UK.

Bad infrastructure in the Netherlands is no more safe than is bad infrastructure in the UK. Where conflict is caused by road design, problems of safety also arise.

In the post second world war period, the Netherlands and the UK were transformed by the rise of the private car. Starting in the 1970s, the Netherlands took a different path. Some forty years have now elapsed of this second phase of transformation. People now take priority and road safety has improved by a huge margin.

In some places, old fashioned and unsafe infrastructure remains in the Netherlands. In the case of the street featured above, it affected relatively few people until the recent opening of a cycle-bridge made it into a short-cut for some journeys by bike. It is now important that this street too needs to be updated to make it safe - part of an on-going process.

Book a Study Tour in order to find out about
what works and what does not work for cycling
in the Netherlands.

Just because something exists in the Netherlands, that doesn't mean it works well for cycling. Many things can be found on the road network of the Netherlands or are promoted by Dutch companies but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to copy all of them. This is why we offer independent advice about infrastructure. We're in a unique position to understand and explain, having experience of the UK and the Netherlands, and we have no company's product to sell.

My mother and Kona are not the only cyclists in Burnham-on-Sea. This town is also home to the world's oldest triathlete.  On the theme of the last paragraph above, some may remember that I criticized a Dutch company last year who offered "Dutch" infrastructure which was not the same as they would build in the Netherlands. Public companies are amoral. Just because they have Dutch roots that does not mean they're interested in cycling. Profit is their motive. The same company has now become involved with achieving consent for a shiny new nuclear power station just 10 km from my mother's home. That's not very "Dutch" either - there are no nuclear power stations under construction in the Netherlands near the mothers of the people at the top of Royal Haskoning.

Has Britain progressed in the last six years ?

This is the first of a three part series. See also "Has London progressed in the last six years?" and "Has Assen progressed in the last six years?"

A view from the ferry - The white cliffs of Dover are infinitely more attractive than the view of Dunkirk at the opposite side of the channel.

I spent most of the last two weeks of October in the UK and it gave me much to think about. It's three years since I last wrote about my thoughts after visiting the UK. As I've now lived in the Netherlands for twice as long as I had when I wrote the previous impression, it's time for an update.

In the first week, we first visited my family in the South West (Somerset) and then Judy's family in the East of England (Lincolnshire) before returning home to Assen. With four people aboard, a motor car is by far the most straight-forward and economical way of making the journey. I'm a reluctant driver but convenience won out in this instance. That's why we drove our car nearly 2500 km in one week in October - a huge increase on last year when all our journeys by car added up to just 2044 km.

The driving experience

This is the road which awaits both drivers and cyclists arriving in Dover by ferry. It's not inviting by bicycle and few people cycle here. When hundreds of vehicles leave the ferry at the same time and each is trying to get out of Dover faster than the next one, it looks a lot busier than this.

Driving across several countries was interesting. Our route took us across a good part of the Netherlands, from one side of Belgium to the other and through a small part of France before crossing the channel and driving a considerable distance in England. There are many contrasts.

British drivers genuinely are treated
worse than their counterparts elsewhere
but not necessarily in the ways they
think. I don't understand why parking
spaces in the UK are so narrow and
awkward to use. In many car parks it's
almost impossible for drivers and
passengers to use their doors without
risk of contact with an adjacent car,
wall or concrete post. None of these
cars is ours, BTW, so don't blame me
for the slightly crooked parking.

I've come to expect dangerous stunts from Belgian drivers and was not disappointed on this occasion (apologies to Belgian readers). However, British drivers have easily the worst lane discipline, seemingly being allergic to the "slow lane". Driving in that way effectively reduces a three lane motorway to two lanes and leads to more congestion.

Britain has the lowest motorway speed limits. 70 mph is a mere 112 km/h while speed limits in France, Belgium and the Netherlands are generally 120 km/h or 130 km/h. Britain also seemingly has the worst traffic jams. We found ourselves in heavy traffic, often slowing down or stopping, for the entire 370 km distance between Dover and Somerset along the M20, M25, M4 and M5. This was on a Sunday afternoon and early evening, not at a peak time.

However, it's not all bad for the British motorist. British petrol was the cheapest that we found on our journey. It was slightly cheaper than in Belgium and about 10% cheaper than in the Netherlands at the moment. We made sure we filled up our petrol tank before boarding the ferry to return home. So let's have fewer complaints about the cost of motoring and perhaps more about the ridiculously pokey car parking spaces in Britain.

Finally, with regard to driving, only Britain has Cat's Eyes. These are a wonderful invention which improve the safety of Britain's roads after dark and in bad weather. Other countries should take note !

Counting bikes

In Burnham-on-Sea, Sustrans simply
gave up and told cyclists to make an
inconvenient detour onto the beach.
I tried cycling here as a child. Bicycle
tyres sink into the sand and salty sand
damages your bike.

We didn't cycle at all on this trip but Judy and I did try to count every cyclist we saw. Our total came to just 20 in six days.

As you might expect, sporty "cyclists" in the UK almost always ride on the road. It's too inefficient to do otherwise. We also saw very few children cycling to school, which makes a huge contrast with the freedom on offer to Dutch children. Those children that we saw riding to school were mostly on the pavement (sidewalk), which is illegal. Some adults also used the pavement; they passed us very carefully and two of them gave unprovoked apologies for their presence on the pavement but clearly they felt safer riding slowly in this way than by "taking the lane" on the road.

Amongst those who dare to cycle at all, fluorescent clothing and helmets are the norm, even for adults, even in small towns, even when riding on the pavement. In fact it seemed you don't even need a bicycle to require special safety equipment. Children riding scooters (relatively commonly seen, perhaps because they're considered to be a more socially acceptable way to travel on two wheels on the pavement than by using a bicycle) often wear helmets. It is clear that a lack of subjective safety has a roll to play in the submissive attitude of the average British cyclist versus their confident Dutch colleagues.

A short trip to the sea-side
Weston-super-Mare's population is about the same as that of Assen but like all British towns, it is far more motor car oriented than any Dutch town. There is some cycling infrastructure in Weston, but it is very compromised and doesn't reach the city centre. This infrastructure also doesn't reach so far as other nearby towns. Weston is not unique in this, it's quite close to normal for the UK.

Ice-cream bicycle. One of a number of
bikes displayed temporarily in the
Weston-super-Mare museum.

Just like three years ago, there were a handful of people cycling in Weston-super-Mare. However they were once again a marginalized minority. Cycling is not normalized in British towns as it is in Dutch towns.

We heard of an exhibition of bicycles in a local museum and this was quite amusing to look at. Sadly, though, even this small exhibit featured more bicycles than we saw being ridden around the town itself.

Part of the route to Weston. Does this look like an inviting place to cycle ? I've done it before on my own and also with Judy. However we didn't ride along it this time with my family. Unsurprisingly, we saw no-one else cycling here either. Cheap petrol on the left.

My mother enjoys riding quite long distances in the Netherlands, and the distance between my mother's home and Weston is not far at all, just 17 km. Unfortunately, making this journey by bicycle would have meant riding on an A-road, which apart from the danger simply doesn't lead to cycling being a lot of fun. The distance between my mother's house and my sister's is even less, but it may as well be a thousand miles due to the design of the roads. Cycling is not attractive on roads like this.

A-roads are designed only for cars
For most of the distance between Somerset and Lincolnshire we used motorways, but the final part of the journey was on A-roads. We saw no cyclists at all during the relatively long distances that we travelled on A-roads. Cycling campaigners in Britain have fought for decades to retain the right to ride on these roads but in practice only very few people are interested in exercising this "right". Traffic volumes and speeds (60 mph = 100 km/h) are simply much too high. Such challenging conditions are common in the UK and taken pretty much for granted by long distance cyclists in that country but I have never found their equal in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands we often ride long distances but never have the stress of "sharing" the road with high speed motor vehicles because there is always either a cycle-path or the road has very few cars.

A coffee stop at a place with cycling infrastructure

Wilford at least had some cycling infrastructure, but this also was tokenistic. Next to a  large and busy road was a narrow cycle-path which within the 100 m of path visible in this photo manages to give way to a pub entrance, include signposts for drivers mounted right on the narrow cycle-path and then gives up altogether at the traffic lights, ejecting cyclists into an advanced stop line. To make a right turn here cyclists were either supposed to cross to the third lane or make an unassisted crossing of four and a half lanes of traffic which would be changing lanes a few metres before the junction. Neither of these is close being a safe and convenient situation.

We stopped for coffee at a town called Wilford. This location actually had cycling infrastructure but it was very far from ideal. Nevertheless, even bad infrastructure like this often proves to be more attractive for cycling than riding on the road and while cyclists remained a small minority at this location we did see several cyclists here in the space of about an hour. All of them were riding on the badly designed cycle-path rather than the busy and unpleasant road.

Small villages and country roads dominated by cars
One of the things which remains remarkable to me about the UK is how competitive minor roads are with motorways so far as motor vehicle travel times are concerned. In the Netherlands there is a huge difference in the journey time that would result from taking mostly 60 km/h country roads vs. 120/130 km/h motorways. Country roads in the Netherlands are designed so that they deter usage as a through route. The result is that country roads in the Netherlands are remarkably empty of cars and villages are quiet places to live.

A minor road in the countryside in Lincolnshire. It's so narrow
that vehicles clearly leave the road regularly to pass each
other but even here the speed limit is 60 mph (100 km/h)

Britain has not tried this approach. In Britain, the speed limit not only on rural A roads but also even minor countryside roads is usually 60 mph (100 km/h) while the speed limit on the motorway is only slightly higher at 70 mph (112 km/h). As a result, journey times on rural roads, even minor roads, provide very good competition to journey times on motorways and people use them a lot to make their journeys as making a detour to a more major road will only add time. Even when such roads pass through villages and right next to homes, the speed limits remain much higher in the UK.

On rural and village speed limits, touring cyclists and villagers could have a common cause. If lower speed limits on country roads and through villages (a good start might be to leave the same numbered boards in place but swap to using km/h instead of mph) were achieved, even at the cost of higher speeds on the motorways, this could encourage drivers away from the small roads and onto the motorways, and this could help to make the countryside a much more pleasant place to live and cycle.

View of Stamford in Lincolnshire. A very pretty town which is
sadly dominated by traffic which is directed through the centre.
Stamford's population is but a third that of Assen, but it has a
hundred times the traffic problems. We saw no-one attempting
to cycle through this town as we passed through it.

It's remarkable to my eyes, adjusted as they are now to the Dutch norm, that the huge adverse effect of high volumes of traffic are seemingly ignored in British villages and towns. Surely towns which rely largely on tourism would be more attractive to tourists if they did not have a constant stream of noisy motor vehicles going past them. However, this is often the situation in the UK. Our GPS directed us to drive through Stamford because the main route goes right through the town. This is really a very pretty town, we once went there on an excursion from Judy's parents' house. However it's unfortunately somewhat blighted by traffic.

In some ways I find it remarkable how this has been allowed to happen, but actually it's not so different from what happened in the 1960s in the Netherlands and what the Netherlands could still be like if action had not been taken. The difference now is due to the Dutch having decided to change their environment starting decades ago. Many scenes from modern British towns still look very much like photos from Assen before the town was improved starting in the 1980s. It's not just Assen that has done this, but every Dutch town.

Why is Britain still following the wrong path ?
Despite Britain having a bit of a problem with its current account balance and even though only one in seven of the cars sold in the UK are made there, car sales still seem to be thought to represent "growth" and "economic confidence" even though a "significant proportion" of them are bought on credit. Car sales are booming and the result can be seen everywhere in the form of traffic jams in which those imported cars burn imported fuel at an ever increasing rate. This is not good for Britain's fragile economy.

People who choose to cycle in Britain remain marginalized by both the conditions on the roads and planners who simply do not take their needs into account. Those cycling facilities which exist remain piecemeal and substandard, designed neither to maximise efficiency nor safety of cycling and giving up where they are most needed. It's quite obvious why enthusiastic cyclists often ignore such facilities, though it's also quite obvious that many people find even inadequate facilities more attractive than riding on the road.

When we got back to Assen it didn't take us long to count 20 bikes. Just one group of school children visiting a museum near the city centre had more than 20 bikes between them. Schools in the UK don't dare to make school trips by bike.

Unfortunately, despite the already very low level of cycling in the UK, the British government is actually expecting that cycling will decrease further while they expect car usage to continue to rise. This is being justified in part due to the aging of the population, which makes no sense at all when the UK doesn't remotely approach its full potential for cycling for any age group, not even the youngest. In any case, aging of the Dutch population has been accompanied by a rise in cycling from an already high level, made possible because of an ever improving standard of infrastructure and planning in the Netherlands.

Every mass cycling event demonstrates the huge suppressed demand for cycling in the UK yet there has been no growth in recent years. Riding a bicycle makes sense to most people only when they can be confident about their safety and expect it to be convenient.

Many promises have been made to cyclists in the UK in the last six years, but none of them have led to continued progress in cycling. In part this is because cycling is still seen as a minority activity rather than being something of vital importance to the next generation.

We run infrastructure study tours and can
demonstrate to any British planners and
politicians exactly how and why the Dutch
infrastructure is so effective.

Real change requires real commitment of funds. Given that it costs less to build cycling infrastructure than not to build it, this really should not be difficult to arrange. Change will also require political emphasis and for planners to learn how to improve conditions such that everyone can cycle.

Driving is seen as the only way to travel in Britain because it is by far the easiest option. This is due to policies which have prioritized the car over all other modes of transport for decades. It was a choice, and this choice could be changed.

For now, Britain still sees more roads for more cars as a good thing. The country is still trying to build the dream of the 1950s.

Building roads encourages more use of cars, the profits from which are largely made in other countries, the running of which requires imported fuel and the health effects of which cause thousands of deaths each year due to crashes and air pollution.

Building of cycling infrastructure leads to health benefits for the entire population, in particular to healthier happier children, less noise and air pollution, and it even helps to reduce the outward flow of money from the country.

Having lived for six years in a country which benefits so obviously and so greatly from all these things, it's rather sad to see that other nations, including the one in which I was born, can't see how these things would also benefit them. Where is the political leadership to change countries for the better ?

A view from the ferry on the return journey. At Dunkirk, France welcomes visitors with a splendid view of the largest nuclear power station in Western Europe, Gravelines. It's right next to the dock. The news in the UK during our visit was largely about the British government's recent decision to guarantee profits to a French/Chinese consortium who will build a new nuclear power-station near my mother's home. I can't say I'm enthused about this on any level.

Part two covers my second week in the UK, in London, including experience of riding a Boris Bike.

This is the first of a three part series. See also "Has London progressed in the last six years?" and "Has Assen progressed in the last six years?"

In other news, India seems to be copying the British approach. Note that while Petrol is often a few pence per litre cheaper in the UK than in the Netherlands, diesel is generally cheaper in the Neherlands than in the UK. The cost of motoring is not why the Dutch cycle.

Reflections on England

The Morris Minor is a classic British car. Over a million were produced between 1948 and 1971 and they are still sometimes seen in use, including this example.

I just spent a week in England, visiting my family. It was great to be back. I had crumpets for breakfast, curry for lunch, and can report that English beer remains much tastier than Dutch beer. I enjoyed it very much, and even visiting it as a "foreigner" I found much to enjoy. It does help that my family live in one of the nicest corners of the country.

However, not everything is wonderful. I read in a newspaper while over there that the number of cars on Britain's roads have increased from just over 26 million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009, a rise of nearly 20% in just four years - a period only slightly longer than we've lived in the Netherlands. Considerable growth since the last time I looked at car ownership rates in Britain.

This growth was obvious on the roads themselves, and not only at school time, as in this photo, or rush hour. It didn't seem to matter what time of day or night it was, the roads had lots of cars on them. Often enough to cause a bit of a traffic jam, even at the most unlikely of times. For instance, we even found ourselves in a jam on the way to small a market town in the west country at 7 o'clock on a Sunday evening.

The UK's current transport secretary recently reminded us "that over 80% of all journeys are undertaken by car." He's absolutely right, and it will likely remain the case. It's the only means of transport which he, and the rest of the government, actually encourage in the UK at present. While it's not necessarily convenient due to the number of other motor vehicles on the roads, in very many cases it's the least bad option open to people.


I flew to Bristol and my mother came to meet me at the airport. As a pensioner, she is entitled to a free bus pass, so she left home in Burnham-on-Sea just after 2 pm to arrive over three hours later on the last bus to go to the airport from that direction. She covered 30 km in a fair bit over 3 hours, or an average of under 10 km/h.

I, on the other hand, left home in Assen somewhat after 3 pm, taking one of the regular trains (every 30 minutes) from Assen to Schiphol airport 200 km away in order to arrive a long time before the flight. I waited, got bored, bought a book, ate some food and eventually boarded the aeroplane and flew to Bristol Airport for 19:30. Just over four hours in all, and 800 km covered at an average of 200 km/h.

On the map: I started at A, my mother started at B and we met after comparable journey times at the white dot somewhat closer to B than to A.

In fact, transport remains a complete pain in England... unless you have a car. My original intention had been to make the entire journey between our home in Assen and my Mother's home in Burnham by public transport. However, while it's easy to cover the 200 km distance from Assen to Schiphol Airport (trains run every 30 minutes), it's not easy to cover the 30 km distance between Bristol Airport and Burnham on Sea. While my flight was to land at 19:30, the last bus running in the correct direction was the one my mother got off of at around 17:30, so I'd have had to find some other way of making the journey.

I checked out the other options and found nothing which wouldn't be expensive, take a long time and in at least one option would leave me waiting at a remote unmanned railway station at which I could easily miss the very last train of the evening. Not attractive at all as something to rely on, especially with the risk of delays. A taxi was an option, but it cost a good percentage of the price of a hire car for the week, so I arranged a hire car.

Having a hire car was interesting in itself. Naturally I picked the cheapest option available on the website, as they all do the same thing: roll along on four wheels at the speed of the same traffic jam, and the cheapest being the smallest it also is the most economical on offer.

However, the car was of interest to many people, who asked me the same question: "What hire car did you get ?" If it'd been "interesting" like the old Morris Minor at the top of this blog post perhaps I might have known what it was. There it is to the left, Small and blue. Not worth too large a photo. It worked well enough.

It seems to me that British people are on average rather more interested in cars than is good for them. In one sense this is understandable. On hearing that I normally drive rather infrequently, more than one person responded by saying that they "couldn't manage without a car". It's easy to see why people believe this, given the way the country's transport infrastructure is arranged. For many people it is genuinely difficult to imagine living without a car in the UK. Given the ubiquity of the car as the only way of getting about, it's perhaps also not surprising that the most popular TV programme in Britain is now the execrable Top Gear, the presenters of which, and presentation style of which, seem to have taken over many other BBC programmes.

I did a small amount of cycling myself, around Burnham on Sea where I lived with my family as a teenager. I used my father's old bike, and rode as I always did in the UK: "vehicularly" (as the American's put it). i.e. big and bold and taking the lane when I needed to. It's not particularly pleasant, and conditions which require such behaviour from cyclists lead to cycling only ever being a minority pursuit, as could be seen by the small amount of cycling in the area, and its domination by a young adult demographic. However, this is the only way to survive in such conditions. Few people see this as something they want their loved ones to do. It's part of the reason why 70% of the British population never ride a bicycle at all.

Burnham is still a nice little seaside town, but as it's in Britain it's also still a nice seaside town which is dedicated to cars. There's plenty of car parking, and while the area at the sea front is wide and could be quite pleasant to cycle along it is still out of bounds for cyclists. This photo shows the spot where on an out of season day in the 1980s, with almost no-one around, a teenager version of myself was assaulted by an angry local Conservative councillor who pushed me off my bike to uphold his personal idea of what "the law" ought to be.

The neighbouring towns of Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare are just 9 and 11 miles away (14 and 17 km) from Burnham. These are easy distances by bicycle in the Netherlands. Distances which many school children cycle to school and back again every day. However, not so in the UK. By bike, these neighbouring towns remain unreachable to any but the brave, as getting to them requires riding on narrow A-roads with 60 mph (100 km/h) speed limits and heavy traffic. Almost no-one ever makes such a journey of such a distance by bicycle. My mother, my sister and her teenage children have never done this. It's not safe by any definition.

Conditions for cyclists have not improved. Cycle paths remain almost non-existent, or very compromised in the few places where they do exist. Where on road cycle lanes exist, they remain narrow strips at the edge of the road which lead cyclists to ride through potholes while positioning themselves too far to the left around awkward "traffic calming" obstacles. Unsurprisingly, cyclists remain a very rare sight. Some youths cycle, and apart from that I saw a handful of utility cyclists (mostly riding the ubiquitous "mountain bikes") on the move during my week in England and three or four quite "serious" types on racing cycles.

On returning home I found out that the government in the UK has (as I mentioned in passing was likely a few weeks back) now decided to definitely scrap funding of Cycling England, the organisation in charge of promotion of cycling in the country, saving enough to build just 5 metres of motorway. The UK government instead seems to want to promote electric cars, the buyers of which are having their purchases subsidized. As ever, Britain is ignoring lessons from the Netherlands, even ones which you might think would fit in with the demands of Britain's pro-motoring policies, such as that encouraging cycling improves conditions for drivers.

And then there is the CCTV. There is masses of it, everywhere, on the streets, in shopping centres, in shops, all "for your safety" of course. Some of it even claims to make the town "brighter safer." Mind you, apparently the French are providing pretty good competition on installing CCTV these days.

Yes, there is even CCTV in the pub. But let's finish on a more positive note:

Brown, warm, completely non fizzy. The best beer in the world.

Veggie curry pub lunch.

Onion Bhajis and Mango Chutney.

I know it is counter to the reputation that many people think it deserves, but Britain is actually quite a good place to eat and drink.

Update
A week or so later, it got worse. Read another post reflecting on the demise of "Cycling England."

Thanks to freewheeler for the tip about the Independent article. He also has more on the demolition of Cycling England. In case you're wondering, the ominous grey buildings in the middle of the blog post are Hinkley Point nuclear power station, which is visible from the sea front at Burnham. Electric cars are the future, apparently, so expect more of these.

Cycle Friendly Zone Ahead

Unless more is done than erect signage, it can sometimes be difficult to tell a "cycle friendly" zone in the UK from one which is less "cycle friendly".

The photo shows a sign in Highbridge, Somerset, England. It was taken a couple of weeks ago by a friend passing through who had seen this arrangement of "cycle friendly" sign and lots of traffic and thought it funny.

As it turned out, this sign is in a place which has some significance for us.

Some years ago, my wife and I had our first home together just a couple of hundred metres from this sign.

Years before that, this road was part of my cycle route to work. It wasn't always particularly pleasant to cycle along here, however I was part of that small minority who get around by bike even if the conditions are not good.

In 2006, with a friend, I passed this spot on my ride between Land's End and John o'Groats.

This point is between my parents' and my sister's home. They only live 10 miles (16 km) apart from each other, which is a short distance by bike, but it may as well be a thousand miles when there are obstacles like this in the way.

What could be nicer than grand-children cycling over to see their grand-parents, or the whole family going on bike rides together with a picnic. If this was the Netherlands, such things would be possible. However, in Britain it is not possible. The lack of proper cycling infrastructure means that my nieces have grown into adults without ever making that journey, and that my parents would never consider riding in the opposite direction either (even though they find riding here to be very pleasant). Riding in this location is something that few would encourage their loved ones to do.

I don't criticise anyone for not cycling in conditions like this. If I still lived there I also wouldn't be encouraging my children to cycle their journeys. In fact, I might have stopped cycling myself by now too. That's what people do. I've met any number of people in Britain who cycled when they were young, but gave up as they got older, including friends of a similar age to myself. If conditions are not pleasant, people don't tend to cycle. Riding along the busy A38 and through cramped areas like that shown are enough to stop virtually everyone from riding, and the result is that despite this area of Somerset being just as flat as much of the Netherlands, the cycling rate is very much lower. Close to zero.

Over here it's very different. It's always pleasant to make such journeys by bike, and that's what everyone does. My children regularly make longer journeys than this to visit their friends. Not only does this mean my children have far more freedom because we moved to the Netherlands, but it also means that Mum and Dad are free from having to act as taxis. The habit isn't lost as people age, either. Even the over 60s make 24% of their journeys by bike.

For cycling to increase in popularity in the UK, provision for British cyclists needs to move well beyond just putting up a few signs. So long as infrastructure puts cyclists in the way of drivers, cycling will remain a minority pursuit. A high degree of subjective safety is vital if the habit of cycling is to be encouraged and retained as people get older. We're not traffic calming, we're people.

While this location was particularly interesting to us because of our connection to the area, the situation is far from unique. There are thousands of locations across the UK which look a lot like this. Thousands of locations that put off all but the most keen cyclists. By comparison, take a look at the way a Dutch city has been changed over time, or look at a typical route between towns.

We're running Study Tours over here for councillors, campaigners, planners from the UK to come and experience the difference between cycling in the Netherlands and cycling in the UK, and to see for themselves what the results are in numbers of people cycling.

The photo was taken by Simon Nuttall on holiday in the west country and is used here with permission. The original photo is online, and shows even more cars along with the location...