Over the past few weeks, we’ve stepped up our ongoing battle against ‘car dooring’. Opening or closing a car door negligently contributed to the deaths of five cyclists between 2011 and 2015.
We’ve been calling for an official public awareness campaign telling all road users about the importance of avoiding the ‘door zone’, and explaining the ‘Dutch Reach’, a simple technique that makes it more likely that someone getting out of a vehicle looks over their shoulder first.
We’d also like to see a new offence of 'causing death or serious injury through opening a car door'. The current offence carries a maximum £1,000 fine, regardless of the severity of any injury.
Cycling UK was delighted with the Scottish Government’s decision to double the annual level of funding for active travel (cycling and walking) by £40m, bringing the total to £80m (equating to around £13.50 a head). This is the sort of commitment we’d like to see elsewhere in the UK.
Speaking at a Space for Cycling rally outside the Labour Party conference in Brighton, Andy McDonald MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, announced that a Labour government is committed to spending £10 per head on cycling and walking a year. This sum echoes the amount recommended in the Get Britain Cycling report, produced by the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group.
Our country is blighted by illegal air pollution, crippling congestion and a public health crisis. Cycling and walking can holistically address all these issues in an efficient, cost-effective way.”
Andy McDonald MP, Shadow Transport Secretary
If you haven’t done so already, there’s still just about time to add your name to the thousands of people who’ve signed our online letter to the Welsh Government calling for more of the countryside to be opened up to cyclists.
Our campaign is going from strength to strength, and you don’t need to live in Wales to take part. If we can get access rights extended in Wales, we can then look at extending this elsewhere too.
Many people with all sorts of different interests enjoy the Welsh outdoors and benefit from it, so we’re pleased to announce the establishment of Outdoor Access Wales, a multi-faceted alliance whose members are: The British Horse Society, British Mountaineering Council, Cambrian Caving Council, Cycling UK, Disabled Ramblers, OpenMTB, Open Spaces Society, Ramblers Cymru and Waters of Wales. The alliance will be working mainly to respond to the Welsh Government’s plans to make the countryside more accessible to the public.
Outdoor Access Wales believes the benefits of improved access for all will increase the enjoyment of recreational activities, improve the health of a nation, strengthen rural economies and lead to sustainable management of the natural environment for future generations."
Outdoor Access Wales
The Government has announced a review of cycling safety in two phases, the first being to “… look at whether a new offence equivalent to causing death by careless or dangerous driving should be introduced for cyclists". The second will consider "wider improvements for cycling road safety issues.”
The first phase appears to be a rapid reaction to the conviction and sentencing of cyclist Charlie Alliston for “wanton and furious driving”, following a fatal collision with pedestrian Kim Briggs in London last year. As we’ve repeatedly made clear, Cycling UK does not condone illegal or irresponsible cycling, and condemns Alliston’s decision to ride a fixed wheel bike without brakes.
But, what Cycling UK wants is something we've been waiting to see for years: a complete review of the way in which the justice system deals with mistakes, carelessness, recklessness and deliberately dangerous behaviour by all road users. We're dismayed, therefore, that nothing meaningful has emerged from the full review of motoring offences and penalties promised in May 2014 by the then Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling MP, despite at least 22 reminders from parliamentarians and Cycling UK. In December 2016, a limited review was launched but this has still not been published.
Transport for London (TfL) and the Mayor are making progress on their mission to rid the capital’s roads of lorries that give drivers only a limited view of pedestrians and cyclists.
TfL has now released an interim rating system to categorise HGVs from zero star (lowest) to five star (highest), denoting the driver’s level of direct vision. Only ‘three-star’+ lorries, or those which have comprehensive safety systems, will be to able operate in London from 2024.
Cycling UK looks forward to working with TfL in our collective aim to reduce road danger, and we encourage other cities to share the Mayor's vision to make our roads safer for all users."
Duncan Dollimore, Campaigns and Advocacy Manager, Cycling UK
The Devon & Cornwall and Dorset Police Alliance roads policing team has launched Operation Close Pass in Exeter.
They spent one morning recently pulling over drivers who overtook a plain clothes cycling colleague too closely on a busy stretch of Cowley Bridge Road (A377). Using a mat supplied by Cycling UK, they explained correct overtaking to five drivers, and three were given penalties for using handheld mobile phones at the wheel.
We have now sent a free #TooCloseForComfort mat to most forces in the UK.
Andy Street, the first Metro Mayor of the West Midlands, is planning to seek funding for cycling to the tune of £10 per head annually to build a network of strategic high quality cycle routes across the region.
This is a massive leap from the current estimated 20p. Included in his new 10-year strategy 'Movement for Growth', the commitment follows sustained campaigning from Cycling UK, Bike West Midlands Network, Birmingham’s cycling campaign group Push Bikes and others.
A glance at the foreword of Movement for Growth demonstrates the intent of the strategy: beyond HS2, cycling is the only form of transport that gets an explicit mention. The announcement is all the more astounding when compared to the draft strategy, which went out for consultation prior to Mr Street’s election. At that time, the strategy did not have a chapter on cycling – let alone a funding commitment.”
Tom Guha, Cycling UK
Transport for London is consulting on the Mayor’s draft transport strategy, which sets out plans to “transform streets, improve public transport and create opportunities for new homes and jobs, to ensure London is a fairer, greener, healthier and more prosperous city.” The health benefits of active travel, walking and cycling, the opportunity to reduce car use, borough traffic and emissions are all part of the strategy’s focus.
It’s reassuring to hear that the minister responsible for cycling is upholding cyclists’ right to decide whether to ride on the carriageway or a path alongside.
In answer to a rather terse parliamentary question on “what steps the Government is taking to promote the use of cycle paths”, cycling minister Jesse Norman replied:
"As with all local cycling infrastructure, local authorities are best placed to promote cycle paths in their area, which offer cyclists an alternative to cycling in the carriageway.
"However, the decision to use a path will depend on the individual cyclist. While they can be attractive to some cyclists, particularly less confident cyclists, cycle paths may not always be convenient for experienced cyclists."
In answer to another question on what steps he is taking to increase the use of electric bicycles as an alternative to commuting by car, Jesse Norman replied:
“The Government recognises electrically assisted pedal cycles as an effective alternative to commuting by car, and will continue to promote them as part of our ambition to double cycling by 2025.”
Again, this is a reassuring answer, although we think there are many things the Government could be doing, but isn’t, e.g. by supporting the uptake of e-bikes and e-cargo bikes by extending the grant system that already supports the purchase of electric and hybrid cars, motorbikes, mopeds and vans (you can help the Campaign for Better transport call for this).
Waltham Forest will be one of the first boroughs in London to pilot dockless bike hire.
From this October, 250 bikes supplied by Urbo will be available for 50p an hour, all fitted with technology that can pinpoint them at all times and make it easy to move them if they're badly parked. More machines and parking zones will be added as demand increases and, if all goes well, they’ll become a permanent feature of the borough in autumn 2018.
Birmingham City Council is inviting residents in selected postcode areas to apply for a free adult bike, and will be launching a Bike Bank for children later this year. The council asks recipients to use the bike frequently (weekly) and keep them posted on the bike’s impact on them, their families, and their travel habits.
Cycling UK has responded to the Welsh Government’s consultation on taxi and private hire vehicle licensing, which could bring pedicabs into its scope.
Emphasising our support for pedicabs as a healthy and sustainable form of semi-public transport in urban areas, we’ve said we welcome regulation that would help safe and responsible services to flourish without being undermined by irresponsible operators.
We believe, though, that regulation must be proportionate, i.e. not expect pedicabs to operate as taxis (as happens outside of London).
We’ve therefore suggested that the Welsh Government consults us and the London Pedicab Operators Association when they draw up the rules.
Cycling UK is amongst 17 environmental groups jointly calling on the Government (England) to re-think its second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2). Co-ordinated by the Campaign for Better Transport, the coalition has released a report outlining why the funding should be prioritised for a ‘green retrofit’ of the strategic road network ahead of new road capacity, and for the RIS2 to be assessed against the UK carbon budget.
The report was shared with DfT, Cabinet Office, HM Treasury, Highways England, ORR and Transport Focus.
An iconic bridge for people wishing to cross a major junction in Peterborough by foot or cycle is potentially facing demolition.
At a Peterborough City Council scrutiny committee meeting, a contract was awarded to Skanska to widen the A47 and replace the Rhubarb Bridge with a series of at-level crossings.
Local campaigners have accused the council of not looking at all options for replacing the bridge, saying that at-level crossings would be dangerous for the many people, including hundreds of schoolchildren, who use it every day. They also suggest that estimated costs associated with renewing the bridge are considerably over-inflated.
Following a successful petition by the local Peterborough Cycle Forum, the future of the bridge is to be discussed in the council chamber again on 11 October.
A survey from the Cycle to Work Alliance of 7,000 individuals and 250 employers who have taken up the Government-supported, salary sacrifice ‘Cycle to Work’ scheme suggests that:
A poll of 1,000 people in each of the cities of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Stockholm, Barcelona and Lisbon, reveals that, on average: 63% still own their own car, and a further 4% lease a company car.
Rome has the highest level of car ownership at 86%, and Stockholm the lowest at 51%
To coincide with the start of term earlier this month, the Public Health Agency in Northern Ireland urged parents to walk or cycle more often for the school run instead of driving.
“Make this a family experience, it won’t feel like exercise at all and you and your children will get to spend that special time together, as well as becoming more active.
Colette Brolly, PHA
Poisoned Playgrounds, a new public awareness campaign from ClientEarth, is highlighting how children across the UK are playing in playgrounds that are within 150m of an illegally polluted road. They’re encouraging people to email their MPs about it.
This is the DfT’s annual analysis of the transport questions asked in the 2016 social attitudes survey, GB. They report that:
The results of a questionnaire-based study of 882 adolescents aged 12-16 at school in Flanders.
Participants were asked to look at manipulated photographs of one semi-urban street and choose which of two situations they’d prefer if they wanted to cycle a friend’s house. Having analysed the responses, the authors found that young people’s preference is “… predominantly determined by separation of cycle path, followed by shorter cycling distance and co-participation in cycling. Higher preferences were observed for a separation between the cycle path and motorized traffic by means of a hedge versus a curb, versus a marked line. Similar findings were observed for intention to cycle. Furthermore, evenness of the cycle path and general maintenance of the street were also of considerable importance among adolescents, but to a lesser extent.”
The authors conclude that their results “… justify investment by local governments in well-separated cycling infrastructure, which seemed to be more important than cycling distance and the social environment.”
Published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Paper analysing data on road deaths in England, which have fallen sharply since 2007. The researchers specifically looked to see whether differences in fatality rates by age, gender and mode persist, and the associations of deprivation with these. Reports that:
“There were a total of 7242 road travel deaths in England between 2007 and 2012, of which 586 were cyclists, 3133 pedestrians and 3523 drivers. Males accounted for most deaths overall (72%), including 84% of cycling deaths, 65% of pedestrian deaths and 76% of driving deaths.”
From their analysis, the authors conclude:
“Although cyclists face higher fatality rates than drivers and similar fatality rates to pedestrians overall (lower rates for cyclists per kilometre but higher rates per hour), our findings show that public perception of the dangers of cycling are exaggerated and that the absolute fatality rate is very low. For young men, road travel fatality rates per hour are substantially greater when driving than cycling, and are similar (non-significantly higher) per kilometre. The differences in fatality rates between cycling and walking are particularly small, and depend on the denominator used. Although travel fatality rates were higher for persons in the most deprived areas, this was not the case for cycling for adults. The net benefits of active travel outweigh the risks, but policies should strive to reduce the toll of road deaths and injuries further, particularly for children.”
Published in the Journal of Transport & Health
Paper presenting the results of a study to evaluate cyclists’ visibility to motorists, and comparing the difference between motorists who cycle, and those who don’t.
In a car-driving simulator, 12 cyclist-motorists and 13 non-cyclist-motorists were asked to detect cyclists and pedestrians in an urban setting. The cyclists appeared “in critical situations derived from previous accounts given by injured cyclists and from cyclists’ observations in real-life situations.”
The results showed that cyclist-motorists had fewer collisions with cyclists and detected cyclists at a greater distance in all situations, irrespective of cyclist visibility.
This strongly supports one of the claims made in Cycling UK's Safety in Numbers campaign, namely that the strong correlation between high cycle use and low cycling injury rates may be because drivers become more cycle-aware if they also cycle regularly themselves.
Published in Accident Analysis & Prevention
The results of a year-long randomised controlled trial in Denmark leading the authors to claim that a high visibility cycling jacket reduces the risk of ‘personal injury accident’ (PIA) because their test group suffered 47% fewer incidents than the control group (i.e. people not supplied with a yellow jacket, but wearing their ‘regular bicycle garments’ instead).
The study, however, was ‘non-blind’, which the authors themselves admit is a weakness and may have resulted in ‘response bias’. In other words, all their 6,793 volunteers knew what the study was about, and whether they were in the test or control group. When they analysed the results, the authors noticed, for instance, that the un-jacketed control group had reported more single PIAs (i.e. incidents involving no one but the cyclist) than the test group. Given that hi-viz is unlikely to make much difference in single PIAs, this was a peculiar finding and suggested over-reporting from people not wearing the jacket. The authors did correct for this, reducing their 47% lower risk assertion to 38%.
Also worth noting perhaps, is that the study was funded by a pro-hi-viz organisation; relied entirely on self-reporting; glosses over the fact that the recruits wearing hi-viz seem to have suffered more serious injuries; assesses the risk by month, not by mileage, trip or stage (a better measure of exposure); and we don’t really know what ‘regular bicycle garments’ mean.
Whether participants underreported, over-reported or were biassed or not, the study nevertheless points to how low-risk cycling is (at least in Denmark). In 76,015 ‘person months’ worth of PIAs collected by nearly 7,000 cyclists, only 126 multiparty and 176 single party incidents were filed. That’s 0.0017multiparty PIAs a month.
Published in Safety Science
This is a case study motivated by the need to improve traffic modelling now that bus lanes in some places are seeing record volumes of cyclists.
The authors describe a model demonstrating that cycles can cause significant delays to buses in shared lanes, at high cycling volumes. They also say that these delays “… are likely to become substantially larger if London’s cycling demographic becomes more diverse, because cyclist speeds will decline. Hence bus journey time benefits may derive from separating cycles from buses, where cycle flows are high.”
A position paper from the ECF (European Cyclists’ Federation) on the EU’s initiative to improve the regulatory framework for road infrastructure safety management. It outlines a number of measures to help cyclists get around – e.g. safe, comfortable and direct routes and road crossings, and making sure that all (re)construction projects maximise the opportunities to improve their safety.
Briefing paper setting out the legislation and guidance on speed limits and how highways authorities can vary them in their areas. It also explains policy towards 20 mph, motorway and rural speed limits and how speed limits are enforced. Ends with a summary of the policies of successive governments.
A code of practice developed in collaboration with London’s boroughs outlining the requirements and recommendations that TfL expects dockless bike share operators to follow.
It supports such schemes as a way to make cycling more accessible, and as a complement to London’s public transport network, but states that schemes “… must work for everyone without impacting, or causing a danger to, other road users.”
A summary of long-term trends in bicycle theft, using the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW – which asks members of the public about their experiences of crime over the last 12 months) and police recorded crime data. It finds that:
Bikeplus conference for those involved in planning and delivering public bike share schemes, including representatives from: local authority planning and transport teams, Local Enterprise Partnerships, private sector investors and developers, technology suppliers, operators, and transport consultancies. Supported by Transport for Greater Manchester, which is in the process of trialling bike share solutions. Our Policy Director, Roger Geffen, is speaking on the second day.
One-day conference offering keynotes and thought leadership from internationally renowned experts in the fields of Healthy Streets. An essential mix of workshops and seminars will cover issues of street design, air quality, civilised streets and active travel.
Cycling UK’s third members’ conference showcasing our own members and volunteers’ achievements and celebrating and learning from other grassroots projects across the UK.
The annual meeting place for the Sustainable Transport and Intelligent Mobility sector, showcasing practical applications of Intelligent Mobility for Sustainable Towns & Cities, with delegates from across public and private sectors, academia, central and regional government, government agencies, research institutions, charities and lobby groups, think-tanks, Institutions and third-sector organisations.
Full programme and ticketing will be available from 27 September.
The aim is for participants to leave with the knowledge and skills to influence policy, campaigns and practice which will result in a modal shift to cycling.
Event discussing practical steps to tackle air pollution, the future role of road transport and how car-makers are looking to tackle emissions, and the latest innovations.
Headlines: No more 'car dooring' says Cycling UK; Scotland doubles funding for active travel; Shadow Transport Secretary pledges £10 per head a year on cycling and walking; consultation deadline for Trails for Wales - act now
Other stories: Government to review cycling offences and safety - but what about the wider picture? London releases interim 'direct vision' rating for HGVs; #TooCloseForComfort hits Exeter; W Mids Mayor commits £10 per head for cycling; London's draft transport strategy out for consultation; Waltham Forest to pilot dockless bike hire; Welsh consultation on taxi licensing could impact on pedicabs; seventeen environmental groups call for Road Investment Strategy re-think; Cycle to Work scheme does the job; Car ownership in European cities revealed; active school run = special time, says public health agency; ClientEarth spotlights polluted playgrounds.
Act now: Help open up the Welsh countryside for cycling; Object to plans to remove set of signals over the busy A27; Send in your nominations for the National Air Quality awards.
New publications: British social attitudes survey 2016; Which physical and social environmental factors are most important for adolescents' cycling for transport? (academic paper); Comparative fatality risk for different travel modes by age, sex, and deprivation (academic paper); Mechanisms underlying cognitive conspicuity in the detection of cyclists by car drivers (academic paper); The effect of a yellow bicycle jacket on cyclist accidents (academic paper); Cyclists in shared bus lanes - could there be unrecogised impacts on bus journey times? (academic paper); ECF position on the EU regulatory framework for road infrastructure safety; Speed limits in England (House of Commons Library); Dockless bike share code of practice for operators in London (TfL); Overview of bicycle theft: England & Wales (ONS).
Diary dates: UK Bike Share Conference, Manchester (27 & 28 September); Healthy Streets, Waltham Forest (28 September); Cycling UK's Big Bike Celebration, Birmingham (7 October); Smarter Travel LIVE! Milton Keynes (19 & 20 October); Shifting gear - a radical change for cycling, Cyclenation/Cycling UK Campaigns Conference 2017, hosted by Cyclox, Oxford (10 & 11 November 2017).
