the ubiquitous blog

The plan was simple, ride out to Gifford, have lunch, pootle around East Lothian for a bit and take some photos before going home again. Well, that was the plan. It was one of those autumnal days when the air was clear and the sun bright, so I packed my big camera in a pannier and we set off, heading out through Holyrood Park, with the intention of picking up the Innocent path below the tunnel. Arriving at the park, we found there were lots of people running along the roads. Although the roads are normally closed on a Sunday, there aren’t usually this many runners around, nor are they usually as muddy as this lot were. We noticed a sign proclaiming “Survival of the Fittest” and realised this was some sort of race, also they were being directed down the path towards the Innocent tunnel. At this point we decided to carry on to Duddingston instead and join the Innocent Path and the NCN 1 after that. So far so good.

At Brunstane we had the absurdity of having to carry the bikes over the footbridge to cross the railway line. This always grates, it is typical of the couldn’t care less attitude of British transport planners. This bridge could easily be made accessible to wheelchair users, parents with pushchairs and cyclists with a little thought, but no, just put up something that is inadequate and tell people to make do. Certainly in the past, the same attitude has been shown by Sustrans, describing this as part of a Traffic Free route and the National Cycle Network. Why do we have to put up with second rate crap? For that matter why does Sustrans think this is suitable for an international long distance cycle route? Rant over^*.

We departed the NCN1 at Whitecraig, and where we headed towards Smeaton Shaw, when we had to stop to investigate a strange rattling coming from the back of Ulli’s bike. It turned out to be a loose cable from her rear light, cable tided away we carried on. We had not gone much further, to the turn off onto the old railway line to Ormiston, when I noticed a strange rattling coming from the back of my bike. On stopping to investigate, I found this to be rather more serious. One of the bolts attaching the pannier rack to my bike was hanging loose and the spacer between it and the frame was missing (as I now have disk brakes, there has to be a spacer to stop the rack from pressing on the calliper and applying the brake). Fortunately we only had one pannier each, so I could swap mine onto Ulli’s bike. However I was reluctant to go on, as I was worried about the bolt shaking loose and being lost, so we decided to head home again.

On reaching the Esk, the bolt was still holding firm and Ulli suggested that we head to Musselburgh for lunch instead. We followed the path down the Esk to the town, but couldn’t find anywhere that looked interesting to eat. Rather than retrace our route, we headed west along the coast to Portobello. So it was that for a second weekend in a row we found ourselves on Porty Prom, this time I decided to get the camera out and take a few photos:

Looking across the Forth.

Porty beach on an autumnal day.

The tide was out, people were wandering about…

… and a dog was fetching a stick.

There were some odd looking vessels out the Forth.

Then, on the way home we took in the view of Arthur’s Seat from the other side, the low angle of the sun showing up the prehistoric cultivation terraces.

The morale of the story, it is always worth carrying a camera…

^* I have now been told that there is a way round without going over the bridge.

Three years ago I wrote a blog post called Cycle parking, please can we have more…, where I suggested that there was a need for better cycle parking facilities in Edinburgh, and particularly in the tenement areas of the city. A year on, I thought I had found a possible solution (although the Cycledock website suggests there is a problem with the company).

I then found that Spokes were also looking at the problems of cycle parking in Edinburgh and were lobbing on the issue. Moving forward along the time-line, a year ago it was starting to look like all the lobbying and campaigning was about to pay off, as the City of Edinburgh Council proposed a £50,000 pilot on-street residential cycle parking scheme.

I put in an application to be a part of the pilot scheme, as did one of the owners in the next stair. We were delighted when we were told that our street was to be included in the scheme, this was in March (four months after the closing date for application). A site visit was arranged for May, which proved to be very positive. We discussed: problems with cycle storage for our tenemented street, the range of available on-street solutions, security, issues around management and maintenance, even a setting up a ‘Not for Profit’ Locker Management business. It was agreed that secure, covered cycle parking was a must (maybe something similar to this) and that lockers were also an option. Following the meeting, copies of the minutes were circulated (in July), which owed the next steps:

1. Produce drawings showing positions and types of facilities.
2. Initiate TRO [Traffic Regulation Order] process for removal/relocation of Parking Permit Holder spaces.
3. Approach Streetscape with proposals showing locations and types of lockers.
4. Investigate security certification.
5. Produce ‘final’ design drawings for consultation with all parties.
6. Procurement.

That all sounds great, but that was the last my neighbour and I have heard.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Edinburgh people are being asked to remove bike lockers from their front gardens. All of which leaves one wondering what is going on at the City of Edinburgh council.

Update 16^th Oct 2012 – Received an e-mail today to saying:

Please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you.

We are still considering the points raised during the initial
consultation meetings (and some additional issues that we have become
aware of since), but I hope to have some preliminary designs ready by
the end of this month to discuss with all the applicants.

So it looks like there will be further progress soon.

Edinburgh prides itself on being the City of Festivals, there are festivals for The Arts (and their attendant Fringe), Books, Films, Science, and even Storytelling. Edinburgh also has ambitions to be a cycling city, it is the only city in the UK to have signed the Charter of Brussels and is committing 5% of the city’s transport budget to cycling. So with Edinburgh bidding to host the Grand Depart of the Tour de France 2017, could this be the time to start an Edinburgh Festival of Cycling? I get the feeling that it is, we could aim to have something up and running in 2013, so that by 2017 (and the possible TdF Grand Depart) it would be well established.

To be a proper Edinburgh style festival, it would have to be a city-wide event over at least a week, as a real showcase for all aspects of bicycle culture and the host city. Most Festivals of Cycling seem to revolve around the sport side of cycling, with a race or two, maybe a sportive and a family event tacked on the side. But there is so much more to riding bicycles than this! An Edinburgh Festival of Cycling wouldn’t just have a few cycle races and a closed road ride for families. It wouldn’t be about “Cyclist“, it be about people who use or who would like to use a bicycle for what ever reason, therefore it would have to involve a range of cultural events, across the city. These could include:

• a range of cycling films being shown in cinemas across the city
• exhibitions of bicycle art and photographic exhibitions
• a Cycle Chic fashion show
• a bicycle polo tournament in Festival Square
• Danny MacAskill revisiting “Inspired Bicycles“
• unicycle stunt displays
• talks about different aspects of cycling
• or even poetry readings

Other ideas could involve a bike breakfast for commuters and a Munich style night ride, a time trial around Arthur’s Seat, or how about Danish style cargo bike racing on the Shore in Leith, or even a Tweed Ride, so really something for everyone!

So who thinks this is a good idea? Who wants to help make it happen? Please get in touch.

Addendum: Since coming up with idea last night, it has been pointed out to me that Melbourne has a four week Bikefest festival which has some interesting ideas. Also that there was an Edinburgh Cycling Festival last year, which was a one day event, but it hasn’t been repeated. So I have started with the help of a few other people to organise The Edinburgh Festival of Cycling for 2013 which will take place between 15th and 23rd June, more information later. You can also find out more on twitter @edfoc.

This post first appeared on the STV Edinburgh website, as part of a series of articles for Bike Week. I have slightly rewritten and expanded it here.

As I have said before, cycling is a good thing, as it achieves so many policy objectives: it is clean, it is green, it reduces congestion, it can boost local economic activity. It is healthy – active people, such as regular cyclists, live longer and make fewer calls on the NHS. In addition, people who use active ways of travel to get to work are more productive, it is relatively cheap and therefore has great potential to save money (the future savings in health costs alone make worthwhile). Apart from all that, over distances of up to 10Km cycling is fast and efficient, it is also fun and increasingly fashionable. So it is no wonder that many people want to be able to use bicycles to make short journeys. Surveys have shown that up to 60% of ordinary people would like to be able cycle for transport on short journeys, at least some of the time. So what is stopping them? The answer is simple, they don’t feel it is safe to ride on the roads, and this is the major barrier to increasing cycling rates across Scotland.

When I first heard about the proposed Quality Bike Corridor between the King’s Buildings and George IV Bridge, I thought this was a great idea. I have been cycling in Edinburgh for nearly 20 years and must have ridden parts of this route thousands of times, starting from when I was a student at the King’s Buildings. Over the years I have noticed a number of changes around the city. In the early years there were the new, and then controversial, cycle lanes painted red at the side of the road, then the introduction of Advanced Stop Lines (ASL) at traffic lights. Over that same period, the annual counts of commuter cyclists carried out by the SPOKES Cycle Campaign, have risen steadily.

However, cycling as a share of all means of transport for all short journeys remains low. Why isn’t utility cycling taking off, when cycling is apparently booming and the City of Edinburgh Council has committed 5% of its transport budget to cycling? Part of the problem is the “dual network” approach. This is based on the idea that people will start off on the “family network” which is “catering for less confident cyclists” and then, as they gain confidence (and maybe have some training), they will “graduate” to using the “Quality Bike Corridors” as part of the “cycle-friendly city”. According to the council’s Active Travel Action Plan this is to “include on street cycle facilities such as cycle lanes, enhanced cycle parking/loading restrictions and marketing” [sic]. Here is the central flaw, this “cycle-friendly city” is aimed at “confident cyclists” who are happy to ride on the roads with the existing motor traffic. These are the people who are already cycling, not the ordinary people who want to cycle but don’t at present because they don’t feel safe. If the aim is to create a truly cycle-friendly city, then there would be no need for a “family network”, all areas of the city would be accessible by people riding bicycles, as almost all Dutch cities and many more cities across Europe are.

The section of the Active Travel Action Plan which deals with cycling recognises that “safety, and perceived safety, especially on busy roads” is a barrier to cycling. However, given the rising rates of pedestrians and cyclists injured on the roads across Scotland as a result of collisions with motor vehicles (Provisional results from Transport Scotland for 2011), it is time for a change in approach. We need to look to best practice internationally. In the Netherlands, where 25% of trips are by bicycle, the risk of being killed or seriously injured is over seven times lower than in the UK. The “dual network” approach does not in any way fit with the Dutch approach, which is based on the concept of Sustainable Safety. In order to make cycling as a means of transport attractive to the greatest number of people, the routes available need to be direct, pleasant and safe. It should not be required to make a choice between direct and safe, however this is implicit in the dual network approach. Only on the “family network” is there any form of separation or traffic calming (i.e., on quite back roads, which are quiet because they don’t offer direct easy access to anywhere). This is the central flaw to the “dual network” approach, that it is designed to avoid making any changes to the road environment which might “inconvenience” the motorist. For this reason, we have painted bike lanes which go around car parking bays on the “Quality Bike Corridor”, rather than removing the parking on main roads. In Paris before introducing their Vélib cycle share scheme 7000 car parking spaces were removed and cycle lanes introduced, the world did not end, the city did not grind to a halt.

I am not alone in being disappointed that the first “Quality Bike Corridor” has made no attempt to provide a separated on-street cycle lane, or cycle priority junctions (no, ASLs just don’t cut it). Many of the 3,000 people who Pedalled on Parliament feel the same disappointed that a more ambition approach wasn’t tried. There are cities in the UK which are experimenting with separated cycle infrastructure, among them Birmingham, Manchester, London and even Glasgow! Although none of these have cycling rates approaching those of cycle-friendly cities on mainland Europe. No, the Edinburgh approach is simply not good enough, we need change, we need to move forward and learn from our near neighbours across the North Sea.

Addendum: I have added a new post with images from the “Quality Bike Corridor”.

As readers of this blog will know I regard the introduction of 20mph speed limits as a good thing, and as I have said elsewhere, it has been known for well over 20 years that, as traffic speed increases, so does the risk to pedestrians:

• Hit by a car at 20 mph, 3% of pedestrians will be killed – 97% will survive
• Hit by a car at 30 mph, 20% of pedestrians will be killed – 80% will survive
• Hit by a car at 35 mph, 50% of pedestrians will be killed – 50% will survive
• Hit by a car at 40 mph, 90% of pedestrians will be killed – 10% will survive
• Hit by a car at 50 mph, >99% of pedestrians will be killed – < 1% will survive

Many drivers don’t think about the fact that at 30 mph, a vehicle travels 44ft (roughly three car lengths) every second and at 20mph a vehicle travels 29.3ft (roughly two car lengths). The average reaction time of drivers is between 1 and 1.5 seconds, it takes time to stop, drivers have to think ahead rather than just trying to react to the situation. Lowering the speed limit allows driver more time to think and therefore reduces the frequency of accidents collisions.

However, if a 20mph speed limit is to be effective it has to be enforced, so I was very disappointed be the following twitter correspondence:

@DrCarolineBrown #askLBP However, traffic support wardens carry out regular speed checks at schools, advising motorists of 20mph limits.

— LBPolice(@LBP_Police) June 19, 2012

@kim_harding you are right LBP said #20mph are not enforced but controlled with chicanes and speedbumps #edinburgh #cycling.

— Caroline Brown (@DrCarolineBrown) June 19, 2012

@LBP_Police no chicanes or speed bumps in my street; just (small) signs #20mph #edinburgh #cycling

— Caroline Brown (@DrCarolineBrown) June 19, 2012

@kim_harding seems like it, with enforcement only at/near schools!

— Caroline Brown (@DrCarolineBrown) June 19, 2012

which leads to the question what are 20mph speed limit for? Or for that matter what are the police for, if they lack any real interest in community safety? Clearly the police aren’t interested in saving lives by enforcing speed limits, which may go some way to explain why the rate of pedestrians being killed or serious injury on our roads is currently increasing. This will continue to increase until driver change their behaviour and realise that they have a responsibility to drive below the speed limits and stop killing people.