Is There Still An Active Travel Strategy?

A post in which I witter on about the politics (with a small p) of active travel. If you find this a bit boring you can skip to the end where there is some local interest in a link to a 1948 COI fi extolling the virtues of the New Towns

A couple of days ago I mentioned the ‘Active Travel Strategy’ had been pulled from the Department of Transport website but not from Department of Health’s. Interesting...

Public health is the reason there needs to be a policy to encourage behavioural change . We need to be more active because there is an obesity epidemic and the costs of dealing with all the related problems, such as diabetes, are rising fast and will be huge. These are costs for the health budget, which has burdens enough with an ageing population and the rising costs of treatments. However the expenditure for an infrastructure to encourage a healthy lifestyle would fall to transport, planning and leisure services departments and they do not necessarily have the same priorities.  The most likely bureaucratic outcome in such situations is nothing - stasis, inaction, a stand-off, followed by some empty gestures to show things have not been completely forgotten, whilst turf wars are fought.

Resolving overall priorities is what cabinet government is meant to be about but at any one time there is a clamour of urgent events forcing the long-term to take its place furtherand further back in the queue.

Especially when the health benefits are not direct and require a number of behavioural changes. It is impossible to say how many cases of diabetes will be avoided by an extra cycle path. You might have an enormous figure for the health implications of doing nothing but that is difficult to transfer to an individual planning application. 

In Victorian times there was a huge investment in public works to benefit public health as drains, sewers and water mains were built. But this was done to eliminate cholera, a disease that could strike anybody of any class.The cost was immediate and staring everybody on the face.  However obesity and health are mostly seen as lifestyle choices and matters of individual responsibility - there is not the same overwhelming urgency for collective action.

All of which is a long winded way of saying that I can understand the slow progress. In 2001 there was a Select Committee report on Walking in Towns and Cities, which concluded that pedestrians have been treated with contempt. Since then there has been little direct action. Cycling has fared a bit better and starting in 2005 there were some demonstration projects to increase the use of bikes in designated cycling towns. But now the body that organised those schemes (Cycling England) has been abolished and the largely positive evaluation report has been deposited in the National Archives 

As far as the Department of Transport is concerned the whole Active Travel Strategy seems to have gone to the same place. It does not help that the Department is car-centric with many of the new ministers pledging to end the war on the motorist. What war was that? As well as walking and cycling I also drive a car and I have failed to see the bullets.

The attitude of the Minister in charge of roads, road safety and deregulation (Mike Penning, MP for, ahem, Hemel Hempstead) is shown in these notes of a meeting he had with some cycling representatives. It does not give one a lot of hope.

But all is not lost. Although walking is still not treated with enough seriousness, there is some momentum behind cycling. The focus is very much on safety because that is an issue with direct impact (and the Times has to be commended for putting so much weight behind their  #cyclesafe campaign ) but if if that can cause a rethink in the provision of separated cycle paths and the design of junctions, we may be able to edge towards Amsterdam or Copenhagen

Actually planning for active communities is not new. It was widely accepted as a good idea in the post war period and was embodied in the layout of the first generation of New Towns (e.g. Hemel), as  illustrated in this rather wonderful COI film of the time. 

2001 Streak 96/365: Cycling as transport

2011 Streak 96/365: Cycle - 11.8 miles, Time - 47 min, Weather - sunny and warm

Today felt almost like summer it was so warm and sunny. The first bike ride of the year in short sleeves with the the delight of seeing everybody out in the open, looking just that little bit more relaxed and happy. I cycled passed fields with animals grazing and thought how nice it all looked. So today's picture is a sheep. 

My ride today was cycling as transport. None of this wafting around looking at the countryside and persuading myself I am doing good by getting exercise. This time I had purpose and not only did this give me a warm glow of inner satisfaction, it was easier than using the car.

Berkhamsted is about 6 miles away and for that distance I think the bike is quicker, once you have factored in the car overhead of finding somewhere to park. 

The interesting thing about transport choices is that we like our convenience front loaded. A number of surveys have shown (those are weasel words for me having been told this and not having any references to back it up) that when we go on journeys the car is seen as much more convenient because we can get in it straight away and be off, without any need to consult a timetable. However on arrival it is often difficult, sometimes fraught,and  mostly costly to park but because it is a deferred pain it is discounted. So many car journeys happen just because it is easy to open the door and get in.

I don't know what we can do about this. It is a deep seated instinct to take the initially easy option and once done frequently enough it becomes a reflex. Encouraging more people to walk or cycle is very difficult because it means breaking ingrained habits. (Diets face exactly the same problem as well all tend to fall back into established patterns).

When you have a population with increasing health problems because of weight and inactivity and when you have problems with oil and the need to limit consumption because of climate change. Increasing walking or cycling is an obvious policy. But just how do you do it?

I fully understand why people who have not been on a bike since childhood are reluctant to start riding again. It is both scary and difficult. Somehow we have to make it as easy and painless as possible, which involves investing in infrastructure, and this is where it becomes interesting. In political terms because it is very easy to make statements about the desirability of everybody doing more exercise and cutting down on car use right up until the point when you need to spend money. Then good intentions are usually seen to be just that - good intentions.

Irrespective of infrastructure another component is to try to create a climate where walking and cycling are both seen as being natural and common - not freakish. This is a matter of momentum, where if more people do it others are encouraged to try, and talking so that it becomes a topic on peoples' mind

We might not be like Holland or Denmark but we can take inspiration from them. I recommend The Copenhagenize blog. 

P.S I like the cycling version of the Hitler bunker scene I found on Copenhagenize. Because it is about Vancouver, a city I have been to a few times, and know the streets they are mentioning and could picture what they were talking about. It was a nice reminder.

2011 Streak 75/365: Linemen

2011 Streak 75/365: Cycle 12 miles, Time 55min, Weather - as if smothered in grey mist

This is another in the 'men at work' series of photos. 

When I see people working on overhead cables I actually feel a slight pang of ancestral association. Both my father and grandfather were, at some point in their lives, telephone engineers and so would have spent time up telegraph poles. 

In those days they would have scaled them using the triangular footholds nailed each side of the pole. You rarely see those poles now, why would you when we have cherry pickers? Watching the men work I thought how much more difficult it was in the old days, how limited your movements would be when you were at the top; also how much safer it is working from a platform. Nevertheless if you were young and fit there must have been an exhilaration to climbing up poles as opposed to being lifted up.

After I took this picture I cycled on into the mist. I think the dial marked 'spring' has been turned back a few notches because it was cold as well as murky.

On the country roads I was passed by a few cars and one of the things I noticed was their courtesy. They slowed, waited for the appropriate place to mark and we exchanged nods and smiles. It was all quite civilised -not at all like the culture wars that seems to be breaking out between cars and cyclists. Perhaps that is more of a city thing. This war seems to have become especially vitriolic in some parts of America at the moment and resistance to plans to create more cycle lanes in New York has become newsworthy. 

Let me recommend this article by Tom Vanderbilt, which explains much about the American attitude to cycle through the device of following one person's long distance commute.

Cycle Facility

Juneathon day 29: cycle 21.7 miles 1hr 43min

I know there is a well establish website with photos of idiotic cycle facilities but nevertheless I feel I should join in with a picture from today’s ride.

This is your basic cycle lane: a little bit of red edged with some white lines, not much wider than a bike. However our wonderful traffic engineers have obviously given it extra thought. “What happens” they wonder “at those points where pedestrians want to cross the road?”

Obviously waiting for a gap with no cars or bikes would be very difficult so they need to be able to do it in two stages: first avoid all the bikes, pause and then wait for a gap in the cars. Genius! To allow this to happen they have altered the line of the curb, bent the cycle lane and built a little traffic island. The result is that it is impossible to cycle round this barrier at normal speed so there is no point in using the cycle path and the pedestrians don’t have to worry about looking out for cyclists before reaching the island.

The sad thing about bad cycle facilities is that some of them are so bad they are laugh out loud funny, yet they have cost. Resources are put into their creation and the authorities can turn round and say we spent so much on promoting cycling but it hasn’t worked so we might just as well forget about it. The cyclists look on bemused and wonder what sort of training and qualifications traffic engineers have to have and whether it contains a module on making things useful. (Just look at a few of the pictures here, here, and here).

Enough whinging. The cycle facility made no difference to my ride, I was soon out onto quiet country lanes, cycling through woods or past farms. It is odd, I live in an overcrowded part of the world, and towns and major roads are proof of this, but when I am out on these little byways I feel I could be in a world of my own. Anyway, after a fairly relaxed ride, I came home, listened to some Jan Gabarek, ate a sandwich, drank a mug of tea and thought pleasant thoughts

Juneathon statistics 29/29
Run 20/29
distance 155.39km
time 14hr 45min
Cycle 6/29
distance 103.5 miles
time 7hr 59min
Gym 3/29
time 2hr 05min

Sports Bike/City Bike

At the moment I feel very sluggish. For every step forward there are two back; for every fresh start a new stop.

Having my jaw excavated did not really affect my exercise programme, as it was only one day off and my target is five sessions a week. However this week has been far worse, far, far worse: only one measly session. Pathetic!

The cause was my own carelessness. I was bending over in an awkward position, trying to undo a nut, when I twisted to stop something falling. There was a twinge and my back went. Although the pull itself was not serious the result was an inevitable seizing-up of all back and shoulder muscles to compensate and protect. I could walk stiffly but running was impossible and I did not fancy the crouched riding position on my bike. All that was left was a bit of gentle moving about. Sometimes it is hard not to feel that I am falling to pieces.

I know one of the preoccupations of runners (every runner?) is injury but it can become tiresome to dwell too much on the problems. I hate the thought of becoming someone who is constantly checking their state of health, as it is only a short step from that to becoming the sort of person who answers the question 'How do you feel?' in detail rather than with a simple 'Good!' Being one of the worried-well would be more than my self image could take.

So I tell myself, yet again, that sometimes you just have to ride with things and accept that "is is is and ain't is ain't". What ain't at the moment is me as a finely tuned athlete; what is, is the need to build back slowly and rediscover the fun. That is all.

This video is from an
Australian blog which promotes Dutch style city bikes as a way of encouraging urban cycling> It tells me something about my current situation. I should not worry about trying to be sporty (or pretend I am faster than I am). I should just get out there and tootle around. As the video says riding a sit up and beg is still riding a bike.