Overwhelming support for giving up more road space to cyclists,........

[mjr]

the decline?

Maybe not the greatest graph, but all I've seen show pretty much the same thing: falling cycling in the UK, whether measured by % of journeys, number of journeys, distance per person and so on. Some show a slight increase in the last few years but it still seems like it could be just a blip on a near-zero flatline.

 

[mjr]

As they say, there are lies, damn lies and statistics...

Yet the same guy reportedly said figures won't lie, but liars will figure.

Anyway, feel free to show evidence that cycling hasn't declined, if you can. Usually the best we get is people saying it doesn't matter in some way.

 

[Drago]

A few facts and figures for you...

• Daily cycling journeys in London have almost doubled between 1990 and 2013.

• The mileage cycled in the UK is up 20% over the last 15 years from 4 billion kms in 1998 to 5.1 billion kms in 2013.

• According to the 2011 Census, 741,000 people use a bicycle as the main form of transport for getting to work in England and Wales, up by 90,000 from 2001.

• The 2013 National Travel Survey shows that the number of people cycling once or twice a week has gone up by 30% between 2003 and 2013.

The only people who seem to think that cycling is in such dire straits in the UK and in need of more infrastructure are the 'professional' cycling 'advocates' and town planners. Those of us who are actually out there cycling know it is a very different story.

1990 being the year the bicycle was invented.

 

[mjr]

A few facts and figures for you... between 1990 and 2013... the last 15 years ... 2011... between 2003 and 2013.

Yes, and they're not the "decades" before that I said had the decline, where most cycling groups were concentrating on fighting for theoretical road rights.

One could suggest what changed: 1986 completion of Bristol and Bath Railway Path; 1995 National Cycle Network starts; late 1990s onwards - Cyclenation groups (LCC and siblings, then called Cycle Campaign Network) start adopting "hybrid" road/tracks policies which developed into today's space4cycling approach; 2012 (I think) - even historic cycleway-opposer CTC adopts hybrid policies.

The only people who seem to think that cycling is in such dire straits in the UK and in need of more infrastructure are the 'professional' cycling 'advocates' and town planners. But then again, they're the people with a self-interest in spreading cycling doom and gloom.

Well, I'm none of the above, but then again, I don't think "cycling is in such dire straits". I do think there was a huge decline while too many "advocates" seemed to be concentrating on berating cyclists like me who grew up riding near cities with cycleways as being too wimpy to ride on increasingly cycle-hostile main roads. The ideas of journeys being more fun (and not in a masochistic way) seemed foreign to them.

Those of us who are actually out there cycling know it is a very different story.

Yes, and those of us with memories longer than a few years remember the tidal flows of cycling commuters in every town and village and know that most places aren't back to anything like that level yet. (Still only 5.1 billion kms in 2013? I think it was something over 20 billion km in 1950, with a smaller population of about 50million people, but I can't find the source for that right now.)

PS: If you're going to quote figures make sure they come from a reputable source and aren't just chunder churned out by some CEGB acolyte who was combining graphs taken from a third party publication.

I clicked through and thought Rutgers University working from DfT and Netherlands Ministry of Transport was fairly reputable. If you're going to quote figures, link or at least cite all the sources, please, or don't your claims stand up to the same scrutiny? Or was the earlier "lies, damned lies and statistics" a self-description?

 

[benb]

Some people may not need proper cycling infrastructure, but that is only going to consign cycling to forever being a niche transport choice.

Proper Dutch infrastructure, including segregation, is a necessary precondition for mass cycling.
If someone aged 8-80 cannot feel safe when cycling, then it is not fit for purpose.

 

[summerdays]

Some people may not need proper cycling infrastructure, but that is only going to consign cycling to forever being a niche transport choice.

Proper Dutch infrastructure, including segregation, is a necessary precondition for mass cycling.
If someone aged 8-80 cannot feel safe when cycling, then it is not fit for purpose.

I agree to an extent, but you are never going to have segregation on every single road, or if we are it's going to be a long time in the future so you still need the right attitude from drivers respecting cyclists, and the courts to deal with those who don't give us that respect.

 

[mjr]

Proper Dutch infrastructure, including segregation, is a necessary precondition for mass cycling.
If someone aged 8-80 cannot feel safe when cycling, then it is not fit for purpose.

Ahhh, let me disagree with the other extreme too! We need protection, not merely segregation. Segregation is what UKIP was pushing for in its 2010 manifesto, to limit cycling to the current crap by denying access to nearby roads, instead of needing to build cycleways that are actually good enough that people would choose to use them.

 

[benb]

Ahhh, let me disagree with the other extreme too! We need protection, not merely segregation. Segregation is what UKIP was pushing for in its 2010 manifesto, to limit cycling to the current crap by denying access to nearby roads, instead of needing to build cycleways that are actually good enough that people would choose to use them.

Well I did say proper Dutch infrastructure.

We know what works, it's simply a lack of political will that has left us 40 years behind the Dutch when it comes to encouraging mass cycling.

 

[benb]

I agree to an extent, but you are never going to have segregation on every single road, or if we are it's going to be a long time in the future so you still need the right attitude from drivers respecting cyclists, and the courts to deal with those who don't give us that respect.

Yes, we do also need that as well.

 

[mjr]

Both remain largely bottommed out from then. I am not seeing any great indication of ongoing decline in UK levels there, nor any great increase in Netherlands ones.

Two things: the population of the Netherlands is growing too (so even keeping the same per-person total reflects a widening gap in the total national distance); there looks to be a slight upward trend in the Netherlands since the late 1970s while the UK flatlines - debatably because it's hard to fall below the rump of us nutters who would probably keep cycling even if it were banned completely.

Well I did say proper Dutch infrastructure.

I think we need proper English infrastructure. It's likely to be heavily influenced by the lessons learned by others, including Dutch, but there will be local differences. What we need is to make sure they're the right ones and not sacrificing safety like many farcilities do - it's no good being "Dutch-quality" for the safe-ish straight wide 400m and then dumping cyclists on the corner of a T junction (Norfolk screwed up and built one of these last year).

We know what works, it's simply a lack of political will that has left us 40 years behind the Dutch when it comes to encouraging mass cycling.

Amen to that. With political will, everything could become possible: fix the infrastructure, enforce traffic laws and test if that helps enough, build new cycleways, relink great country lanes cut off by bypasses and so on.

 

[mjr]

A slight upward trend is not the sea change that we are told came about from the stop the murder of the children campaign and wide scale building of segregated facilities though.

Well you'll need to take that up with the people who told you that. It wasn't me. I believe in neither a great "sea change" that will reverse the decline overnight, nor in the compulsion aspect of segregated facilities. I do find that protected spaces, modal filtering, park routes and so on make my cycling more enjoyable.

 

[Pete Owens]

Maybe not the greatest graph, but all I've seen show pretty much the same thing: falling cycling in the UK, whether measured by % of journeys, number of journeys, distance per person and so on. Some show a slight increase in the last few years but it still seems like it could be just a blip on a near-zero flatline.

Well certainly not evidence of a current declining trend.
Lets look at look at what the graph actually shows:
1. Historically the NL has always had a cycling culture. (In Holland vs Germany football matches the chant "Give us back or bikes" refers to the preceding period)
2. Post war, cycling declined in both countries (a bigger decline from a higher base in the NL)
3. Since 1970 cycling levels have been more or less stable in both countries - though since 2006 cycling has been growing in the UK we are now back above 1970 levels

There is nothing in the graph to support the oft made claim that the Dutch created their cycling culture out of nothing by changing course in 1973. Indeed, if you were to plot km of cycle infrastructure for each year on that chart you would see an inverse relationship.

 

[Drago]

Those crazy Dutch!

View: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRfluaMKoOY

 

[mjr]

There is nothing in the graph to support the oft made claim that the Dutch created their cycling culture out of nothing by changing course in 1973.

Ah, another claim not made here.

Would you agree it's a fair illustration that cycling in the UK declined in the decades before, say, 1990?

 

[mjr]

This is the claim that is made, that around 1973, the dutch made a conscious change about the relationship between people in cars and people on bikes. They built a whole new network of segregated facilities and everything was better.
This is the model that people wish for here. The graph you linked doesn't support the story though. Why is this?

Mainly because the claim is subtly misstated in order to construct a strawman, such as suggesting there was a snap change at some fixed date and that it was a whole new network (even the linked video shows the earlier network which is rather like most of the junk we have in the UK today). Anyway, argue with yourselves about made-up claims: it doesn't really interest me.

I note the reply quotes but still completely ignores the question about why the graph was actually posted: would you agree it's a fair illustration that cycling in the UK declined in the decades before, say, 1990?

We tried for so long to encourage people to ride among motors. Now it's worth trying taking the lane in an entirely different sense...