Rural path campaigner toolkit launched

Rural communities in the UK have resorted to delivering their own traffic-free paths as funding and political will have failed to materialise - and my new toolkit, launched earlier this year, hopes to empower more of them to create greenways in their areas.

When I wrote my book I met amazing people delivering traffic-free paths against the odds, taking on decades of attritional landowner negotiations and administrative challenges - which got me thinking: how can more people recreate their successes, while sidestepping some of the pitfalls?

Traffic-free inter-urban paths are hugely popular local resources, giving communities low-cost, sustainable transport options as well as benefiting health, rural economies and the environment. With fuel prices remaining high, and growing cost of living and health crises, there has never been a greater need for alternatives to car dependency for short trips - particularly in rural and peri-urban areas.

The problem of how to deliver routes in the countryside was laid bare by an FOI issued as part of this project. It revealed that, of 73 local authorities responsible for delivering greenways, land access is holding up delivery for 23 of them - totalling 117 miles of routes. That’s the ones who are trying: most aren’t.

Meanwhile, community groups are struggling to push for more than 300 miles of paths across the UK, across at least 50 areas (you know I’ve done a spreadsheet - please let me know if there are missing ones I should add), many of them held up for years, some decades.

The common issue is land access. While compulsory purchase of land is common in roadbuilding, for cycling and walking routes just two per cent of local authorities attempted to use this legal power, and another one per cent is considering it. Path Creation Orders and Bridleway Orders - where landowners retain ownership of the land - are a further option, if voluntary negotiations fail but local authorities rarely use them.

One local authority officer explained the difficulties even the most committed councils currently face.

They said: “To convert a typical railway path takes a great deal of effort: a resistant landowner can hold things up for years and it can be better to consider an alternative route. We can’t spend time on more than one difficult route at once. It takes all our effort to progress it an imperial inch per year.”

This means communities are key in identifying creative solutions, building support and driving projects forward. In the toolkit, case studies and audio interviews bring some amazing success stories to life and help others follow in their footsteps. It is long, but it’s designed to be used in sections, as campaigners reach the relevant section of their project.

Following publication of the toolkit, the UK’s most experienced community path builder, National Cycle Network founder, 80-year-old John Grimshaw, is offering to help groups understand how to design paths, by leading technical visits to some of the many greenways he has designed and continues to work on. He’s also working on an instructional video for people to follow. Watch this space.

Case studies include:

The Sheppey Light Rail Greenway group on Kent’s Isle of Sheppey, cleared brambles from a disused railway path after a hoped-for traffic-free route, allegedly promised by successive council administrations for 40 years, failed to materialise. With no alternative to driving on the island, the path enjoys strong community support. A new council officer helped revitalise the project, while bramble clearing volunteer events built momentum and support. Construction support and funding came from local businesses and the government, with the backing of local landowners.

In Curry Rivel, in Somerset, village residents planned and built a short 200m path alongside a busy main road. Wanting a safe active route to the nearest town of Langport, they won climate emergency funding from Somerset Council, topped up by a local landowner. Having secured some free stone from nearby flood defence work as a path base, and after successful negotiations with a landowner, they are on the way to extending the route, beside a field, towards the nearest town.

In rural Dumfries and Galloway, in Scotland, the Kier Penpont and Tynron Development Trust (KPTDT) identified a 4km traffic-free path linking villages as the top local priority for residents. The resourceful group raised money from a pot pourri of sources, including local wind farm and renewable energy funds, regional and local authority and levelling up funding, the Walk, Wheel Cycle Trust, and more. The path is almost complete, and users include commuters, mobility scooter users, healthy ageing groups and more.

Navigating the toolkit

The written section of the toolkit is broken down into steps, from an initial idea to path building, taking users through working with landowners and councils, understanding relevant policies, identifying potential funding and managing volunteers. The audio section has five interviews, linked at the end of this post, and I’m finishing editing a sixth.

For me, working on this project for the past year has been one of the great privileges of my career so far. In both the book, and in this toolkit, I have been constantly inspired by the efforts of small groups of people, sometimes over decades, absolutely committed to achieve something positive for their communities - not least for children.

However, the case studies in the toolkit underline how ludicrously hard it is to build traffic-free routes in this country. While our road and rail networks are delivered by national bodies on multi-year funding cycles, retired engineers, veterinarians and civil servants are left to cobble together the land access, funding and political will needed to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling routes. This leaves communities effectively stranded on transport islands, which it is only possible to enter or leave by car. With fuel price shocks driving up the cost of motoring, this situation is far from sustainable.

Seemingly everything, from the planning process to a lack of funding for rural active transport, is stacked against communities wanting a greenway - but they refuse to give up. I hope the words of those who have succeeded can inspire, inform and initiate more of these routes nationally - and bring delivery time down to years, not decades. I also hope they shine a light on the benefits of these paths to local communities. Some of those words are incredibly moving, such as from groups in Somerset and rural Scotland where local mobility scooter users can finally access nature unaided for the first time - or children can cycle to school.

With government funding largely focused on urban areas, rural communities can feel left behind. These traffic-free paths are arguably most valuable where people have the fewest transport choices, however - boosting local economies, health and accessible routes into nature. Funding for rural paths exists, it just takes a bit more creativity in accessing.

One campaigner told me: “I try to explain what I do to family in Germany and they just don’t understand the idea of volunteers delivering cycling infrastructure - to them it’s like volunteers doing police work, or running the railways”.

It’s been a lot of work producing this toolkit, and I’ve enjoyed talking to some incredibly inspiring people about their campaigns, as well as having the privilege of off-the-record chats with folks behind path delivery in the UK. Here are some of the people I’ve spoken to.

Supportive quotes for the toolkit:

Matt Winfield, Walk Wheel Cycle Trust, said: “As a charity we believe in the power of community. Hearing from a wide variety of people and understanding their knowledge, experience and expertise helps to create inclusive and accessible spaces. Because we know that changing how we travel improves our physical health, our mental wellbeing and the world around us.

“This guide from Laura provides practical support to help groups and organisations make it easier for everyone to walk, wheel or cycle to where they want to go. When communities are centred in decisions directly affecting them, everyone benefits.”

Dick Vincent, National Towpath Advisor, Canal & River Trust, says: “We’re delighted to see the Rural Path Toolkit published and thank Laura for all her hard work. As a charity, Canal & River Trust is reliant on working side by side with local partners to secure funding for improvements, so the support this guide offers will be invaluable. It’s with backing from those that really love and care for special places, like towpaths, that they receive the funding that they richly need … so this guide will give that a real shot in the arm.”

Sophie Gordon, Campaigns Manager at Cycling UK, says “Traffic-free paths can transform communities. They are a place where young children can wobble around safely as they learn to cycle, where families with buggies and mobility scooters can all get outside together, and where commutes become stress-free.

“I speak to so many people through our Cycle Advocacy Network who would love to have a new community path where they live, but they have no idea where to start. It all seems too complicated. Compiling experiences and advice from groups who have managed to create a new path into one toolkit is such a valuable thing, which I know campaigners will find really useful. It proves that a few determined people can get together and change things.”

Jerome Mayhew, Shadow Transport Minister, said: “Local paths link people to their environment, strengthen communities and bring people together. This toolkit helps local people to organise and maximise the chances of success. I hope it helps people across the country to open up exciting new routes.”

More on John Grimshaw’s study visits:

One element that cannot be replicated on a page is the expertise gained from half a century of constructing paths. John Grimshaw and Caroline Levett helped found the National Cycle Network 40 years ago this year, and are still delivering paths with local communities today, as the charitable organisation Greenways & Cycleroutes.

John and Caroline both featured in Laura’s book, and groups contact them on an almost fortnightly basis asking for their help. John, now aged 80, is offering path campaigners the chance to join him on technical site visits to talk through design elements, features like drainage and gradients, and to be inspired and empowered. This work is still ongoing with community groups today, and while construction isn’t happening all the time, there are also paths that have already been completed, which people can visit.

The expertise shared in this toolkit is available thanks to community groups and charitable organisations, local and national government employees and many more.

This work was funded by a grant from the Foundation for Integrated Transport.

Did I mention I wrote a book?

This year I wrote a book! Published by Bloomsbury, Potholes and Pavements - a bumpy ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network, is the culmination of a decade of work covering cycling, and sustainable transport. Part travelogue, part history of the National Cycle Network’s founding mothers and fathers, part love poem to cycling, it seeks to provide a ‘state of the nation’ story of cycling in Britain today. In it I meet some high-profile cyclists, and those working at the grassroots level, to try and grow cycling. It took about 18 months to write and research, and I’m immensely proud of it - and grateful to the excellent team at Bloomsbury who helped make it what it is. It’s been read by anyone from the vaguely curious to the Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Haigh.

As part of the promotion process I’ve been lucky enough to travel around the country speaking about it in person, as well as appearing on Jeremy Vine’s radio show, and numerous podcasts both in the world of cycling and outside of it. I’ve created a dedicated web page here on my website, with more information and details of book events I’ve been doing.

Road Collision Reporting Guidelines work continues

In 2021, working with the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy, I launched a consultation on guidelines to inform better use of language in the media around road collisions, the toll they take on human life and how we can better understand them in public life. In autumn 2021 I launched the UK’s first Road Collision Reporting Guidelines.

Included in the ten clauses were those that recommended using the word collision instead of accident, and including the presence of a driver in collision reports, and not just their vehicle. Research shows subtle changes to news report wording can impact how readers, viewers or listeners understand not only the incident itself but the wider issues at play, and any solutions.

Since then, I’m delighted to note, a handful of news outlets and professional bodies have adopted the Guidelines but I recognise a lot still needs to change. Some publishers and broadcasters defend the use of potentially unhelpful language as ‘common usage’, i.e. the person in the street would understand what you’re saying. People are familiar with ‘accident’, goes the argument - why change it? With the driver/car clause, meanwhile, there were understandable if unfounded, concerns that mentioning a driver in a collision amounts to attributing blame when this is, in reality, not the case. It’s also not something that comes up when describing the actions of a cyclist, interestingly.

In early 2023 I won funding from the Foundation for Integrated Transport’s Alastair Hanton Memorial Fund, to continue and disseminate the Guidelines, not least ‘upstream’ of news reports. This means working with police and other emergency services on their press releases, many of which are copied verbatim by busy reporters in underfunded newsrooms.

This work has been ongoing for a number of months, with some success - and while I blogged about it on my Road Collisions Reporting Guidelines site, and on RoadPeace’s site as a guest blog, I was remiss in not updating my personal website, which I have neglected somewhat.

I am in the process of working with various stakeholders, and have reported on growing calls for National Highways to stop using ‘accident’ on its road signage, which came about as part of these discussions. I also presented to PACTs’ ‘tackling speed’ conference in November. I spoke about the need to improve professional language, if we are to change ‘common usage’ to something that better reflects the cause and impact of the five deaths and more than 20 life-changing injuries that take place on the UK’s road every day.

This is important work and I’m enjoying collaborating with those both inside and outside of journalism, from road safety campaigners to those working on the front line of road collisions in our ‘blue light’ services. I hope to have some positive updates soon, so watch this space. In the meantime, do get in touch with any questions, via my contact page.

Announcing the launch of Project Pedestrian: Exploring Footway Fatalities

This year I’m embarking on a year-long journalistic project, Project Pedestrian, in which I’ll investigate road safety through the lens of pedestrian deaths on pavements in 2020. The project is the brainchild of me, inspired by Gary Younge’s (Guardian Editor at large) year-long project on knife deaths in youngsters, Beyond the Blade. I’ll be supported by the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy (see previous blog post) and in particular, Dr Rachel Aldred, reader in transport at the University - who will conduct much of the data analysis.

I’ve built my second ever website for the project - on which I’ll keep all the news, features, analysis, etc., updated.

Through the year I will produce pen portraits of each of the projected 40 pedestrian pavement deaths in the UK in 2020, talk to consenting families and experts and conduct a detailed follow-up of at least one death. Rachel and the ATA will undertake data analysis of pavement deaths from the last 15 years, from which we will identify trends and try to find out why people die on footways and verges and what the potential solutions are.

The project will look at who is affected by danger on pavements, the impacts, the vehicles and the drivers involved, and how justice is done.

We hope with this project to start a conversation, and look at ways to tackle road danger as a society.

This website will collate cases, along with news, features and analysis of pedestrian fatalities on footways and verges in England.

Although it’s a sad topic I’m looking forward to looking at a subject in-depth for a year, to investigating some of the issues we as a society face around road danger, and what some of the solutions are.

I’ll use the hashtag #projejctpedestrian - do keep in touch and tweet me your thoughts

Active Travel Academy and the inaugural Active Travel Media Awards

I’ve been working for the past couple of months with the University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy, a cycling and walking think tank, as it were, bringing together academics and specialists from inside and outside the university to help solve some of the challenges we face around car dominance.

My role is to use my journalistic knowledge and expertise to forward the ATA’s aims.

I had the idea to run a Media Awards for journalists writing about the issues car dependency brings about, as well as issues affecting cycling and walking, and micromobility.

If I had the idea, Dr Rachel Aldred drove it forward, organising the website, the venue for the event, the panel, and many of the logistics. Long story short, we held a call for submissions, shortlisted those submissions, and with our panel, picked the winners - which wasn’t an easy task.

We held the event on 25 November 2019. I acted as host, introducing the ATA, the awards, and talking about our aims and why we shortlisted and picked the winners. We handed out medals made from recycled bike chains and inner tubes. It was a huge success, not least given the limited time and resources we had to run it - and we can’t wait to hold a bigger and better event next year.

I wrote a blog about it for the ATA website, so you can read (and watch the video) of our inaugural event here.

In other news there will be some exciting news about the journalistic part of my role, coming soon. Watch this space!

Is the HS2 cycleway a Kafkaesque impossibility?

Map of the national cycleway associated with HS2

The government today announced £23m for cycling projects, some of which I understood would go to the HS2 Cycleway – although Sustrans seems to have, understandably, earmarked its share of the money for priority links across the existing network.

Either way, my conversations with stakeholders in Buckinghamshire have raised questions over whether, even with Government funding, the HS2 Cycleway could ever happen. The Government-owned company has been accused of failing to agree to add bridges and tunnels, or change bridge alignments, even with landowner and planning permissions, and minimal cost - and preventing children from ever cycling to school. HS2 Ltd says it doesn’t recognise any of these claims.

HS2 Ltd made a ‘legally-binding commitment’ to ‘cycle proof’ the rail line, i.e. consider cycle crossings along its length, which it then seemed to back down on. The point is while the cycleway can be built in the future, bridges and tunnels need to be built with the railway track, as costs to retrofit are high – and the window is fast closing.

HS2 Ltd building more road than rail - and very little cycling

A spokesperson for Buckinghamshire County Council told me although local residents and councillors want the cycleway, which forms a backbone across the county, “[HS2 Ltd] have definitely made it difficult for us”.

“From [HS2’s] perspective they have been very clear ‘we are building a railway and we don’t care about cycling’, their interest is getting the railway built, as smoothly and quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.

In reality HS2 Ltd is actually building more miles of road than rail. My FOI revealed the Cycleway could reap up to five times greater returns than the rail line itself - making cycling possibly the most valuable part of the project.

John Grimshaw, Sustrans co-founder, identified issues with the 12 crossing points in Buckinghamshire, extending south to Stoke Mandeville, and north, via to Doddershall and Claydon House, a National Trust property. Three of those, he says, are crucial to the Cycleway’s future.

Courtesy of John Grimshaw

“Kids will never be able to cycle to school again”

One of the links, a tunnel near Quainton, which Grimshaw says were in original HS2 plans, were later dropped.

“Right now kids are cycling to school, and they will never be able to do that again, ever,” Grimshaw said. “The problem for school children etc., is that all the new roads they are building … are built to a high fast standard which encourage more traffic.”

Grimshaw said: “They are replacing like with like, i.e. roads with roads. They are replacing public footpaths even if they are not used.”

“What they aren’t doing is creating a new world for local people, for all these settlements that they are blasting past, they are doing absolutely nothing.”

There are potentially scores of crossing points up and down the country like this. As things stand there is a real risk communities will be permanently locked into car dependence by simple inaction.

Three crucial links - image courtesy of John Grimshaw

Then there is the issue of funding. Government says it’s up to local authorities to fund the cycleway from various pots. However, the Bucks spokesperson says actual opportunities are limited: one pot has a £1m limit, and councils can’t reapply within 6 months (and are apparently unlikely to get a second go); another is for business development projects like business parks, and Local Cycling and Walking Investment Plans (LCWIPs) have no funding attached to them.

Grimshaw said: “We said we will find the money, but [HS2 Ltd] won’t even tell us how much is needed, so we can’t even do that.”

The Bucks spokesperson said while some easier links, such as realigning bridge ramps to link with cycle routes, are likely to happen, new underpasses or structures “haven’t got a chance - or at least less of a chance.”

“All the [HS2] plans say no cycleway at the moment. However, they are talking with us and that’s our opportunity,” they said.

Another planned ramp to a new bridge could be realigned to cut a quarter of a mile zig-zag off the Waddesdon Greenway, after the existing bridge is destroyed by the rail line, but Grimshaw says HS2 Ltd won’t make those changes.

70,000 users expected on ‘pathfinder’ route in first year

The Waddesdon Greenway is an HS2 cycleway ‘pathfinder project’ in Bucks, opened in September 2018, with a whopping 70,000 cycling and walking trips predicted in its first year – up from virtually no cycling trips on a busy A-road.

John Grimshaw, the Sustrans co-founder who fundraised and organised construction of the Greenway, with the agreement of Lord Rothschild, who owns Waddesdon Manor, says plans to extend the route are in jeopardy since HS2 Ltd froze planning permission for an underpass 18 months ago. The alternative will be a busy, likely fast road.

Grimshaw said: “At early meetings with Richard Adams (HS2 Ltd) at Canary Wharf, he said that provided we obtained planning consent and land-owners agreements then HS2 would be able to consider revisions along these lines. Greenways and Cycleroutes [Grimshaw’s company] along with Buckinghamshire County Council have played their part but there has been no reciprocal support.”

“HS2 Ltd would have blocked the Waddesdon Greenway if they could.”

“They have definitely made it difficult for us”

From the Bucks experience, even with (notional) government support, local council support, demand from residents, planning and landowner permission, and even funds, the HS2 Cycleway seems a Kafkaesque impossibility.

“In the back middle of last year there were lots of strange things going on,” the spokesperson said. “This [issue] got bumped up to the chief executive of HS2, they all agreed that we should work on it. Once we have been meeting about it and talking, there’s an acceptance on HS2’s part, if Bucks County Council can put everything in place, land agreements, etc., then they might consider it. Then we come back a month later, we are still in the same place, none of the actions have been done, and we are back to the start again.”

“It’s deeply frustrating, and it makes broader planning more difficult. The HS2 national cycle route forms a backbone through Bucks, and all our local cycling plans are routed around that, the idea being once you’re in a town you can get around with the local cycle route, which links up to the NCN.

“Without this all of that is up in the air.”

The Department for Transport keeps telling me: “We would encourage local authorities interested in progressing cycle routes to incorporate them into Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure plans and explore funding opportunities with their Local Enterprise Partnerships.”

The reality for cycling seems very different.

An HS2 spokesperson said: “We do not recognise these claims. We are developing the detailed designs for HS2, and have made clear that if proposed cycleways fall within our land limits and do not incur any additional cost to the taxpayer, we would try to incorporate them wherever possible.  We have met with Buckinghamshire County Council on this matter and continue to work with them and other relevant local stakeholders to develop these plans, as well as discussing the necessary planning consents and permissions.”

Bucks County Council tell me the above is not their official line, and asked me to include the following.

Buckinghamshire County Council Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Transportation Mark Shaw said: “Our official position remains that we strongly support the recommendations of the HS2 National Cycleway Feasibility Report, which plays a central role in our emerging walking and cycling strategies.

“We have a constructive relationship with HS2 Ltd on this issue and are continuing to work with them to ensure that, wherever possible, necessary accommodations are made to emerging HS2 designs to avoid the need for costly and disruptive retro-fitting at a later date. Where it is identified and agreed that these accommodations are feasible, the County Council and its partners are seeking to secure the funding and consents required for these cycleway elements to come forward as part of the construction of the HS2 line.”

World Book Day - cycling books written by women in 2018 (or therabouts)

In the absence of ‘cycling books by women’ in most ‘books about cycling’ lists, inspired by excellent female cycling author, speaker, inspirational adventurer and general hero, Emily Chappell,

Pause for breath…

Here’s a quick list of books written in and around 2018 alone, by women, on cycling, that I pitched to a few outlets in the hopes of making a Christmas gift ideas list (that was sadly declined).

Bikes and Bloomers, by Kat Jungnickel Published Mar/Apr 2018. - women inventors who pushed back against Georgian/Victorian societal constraints, and risked life and limb, to ride bikes. I read and loved it, and spoke at the book launch. She wrote this on it: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2018/apr/16/the-ingenious-cyclewear-victorian-women-invented-to-navigate-social-mores; you can buy it here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/bikes-and-bloomers-victorian-women-inventors-and-their-extraordinary-cycle-wear/kat-jungnickel/9781906897758

Queens of Pain, by Isabel Best - published Oct 18 - Inspiring stories of tough women racers from racing's history - many women in this book were forgotten until now but they were just as gutsy as their better-known male counterparts, even if less well paid (plus ca change). Women who pushed boundaries and expectations and proved themselves champions. I bought a copy at the Rapha book launch https://www.rapha.cc/gb/en/stories/queens-of-pain-legends-and-rebels-of-cycling

Bicycle/Race by Adonia Lugo - published October 9, 2018 - about cycling and race, which is important as cycling is still very white (https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/7833).

Jools Walker's Back in the Frame will be out this year, soon. Jools is a big champion of better representation of women of colour in cycling. One to look out for: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Back-Frame-Jools-Walker/dp/0751570788. 

How to build a bike by Jenni Gwiazdowski - published Oct 17 but brilliant, and unusual, as a bike building book by an awesome woman. https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/8870

The Road Book 2018 - on the 2018 women's racing season. You can be what you can see, as Emma Pooley put it, at the launch of the Women's tour this year, when they announced equal prize money https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/velofocus/the-road-book-2018-womens-cycling-coffee-table-boo

And of course, by the woman who inspired publication of this blog, What Goes Around is Emily Chappell’s wonderful account of her years as a London cycle courier, which you can buy here: https://guardianbookshop.com/catalog/product/view/id/363009/s/what-goes-around/?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article

London Bicycle Film Festival panel write up. How can we get more people cycling?

Photo courtesy of Alex White (@AlexAlexjwhite)

The eternal question.

I chaired a panel of excellent speakers on Saturday at the London Bicycle Film Festival, under the title ‘Are we born or made cyclists’.

With me were Dr Rachel Aldred (Westminster University, Near Miss Project), Erik Tetteroo (APPM), Cllr Clyde Loakes (Waltham Forest Council), Fran Graham (LCC), Louise Gold (Sustrans London), and Caspar Hughes (Rollapalluza, Stop Killing Cyclists, etc).

Almost everyone introduced themselves by saying how they’d got into cycling and/or advocacy, why they are passionate about it, as well as the issues in their areas, and how they relate to the question. I think it’s good to remember we all do this because we love it.

We then discussed how to improve diversity in cycling, and the answer was largely ‘safe infrastructure that normalises cycling, by making it feel safe and comfortable’, as well as specific events and spaces to empower women and people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups to cycle.

Louise Gold asked everyone to close their eyes and think of a cyclist. Of course a man in Lycra popped into everyone’s thoughts, unbidden. Louise said if we want more people cycling, we need to stop talking about ‘cyclists’. To get more people on bikes, who don’t already cycle, behaviour change needs to be core to every cycling project, she said. Louise managed the award-winning Marks Gate Community Street Design project, of which community engagement was a key part.

Erik Tetteroo showed us clips from two films, Why We Cycle, and Turkish Delight. He said in the Netherlands people who cycle one day drive the next, which means there’s less ‘us and them’ than in the UK.

Rachel Aldred reminded us the happiest commuters are those who cycle. She mentioned a favourite ginger cat she sees on her daily commute, which I’m sure many of us can relate to (the fact of the cat, not necessarily the cat itself). She said cycling needs to be seen not as an individualistic pursuit, that you need special skills and determination to do, but one that’s treated as mass transport, for everyone.

Future of bike shops

One audience member asked about the future of bike shops, given the rise of online retailing. Clyde Loakes said new bike shops have opened up in Waltham Forest since the Mini Holland infrastructure went in, because more people cycling means more demand. He made the case that people like him, who don’t want to, or don’t have time to fix their own bikes will always need shops to carry out repairs, give advice, etc. I believe ebikes are one potential saviour of the bike industry as they cater to non-cyclists, as car replacements. Fran Graham said local bike shops can do more to be more inclusive.

Pedal to the metal?

Another asked about the glacial pace of change in cycling investment and growth, which really got (already passionate) people livened up. Caspar spoke of the urgency of action, given the recent IPCC report, that says we’ve 12 years to avoid climate change catastrophe and the fact transport is a huge contribution to carbon emissions, and said, in the absence of government action cycling campaigners can learn from the Extinction Rebellion, in terms of peaceful direct action. He cited Bank junction protests as an example of effective pressure bringing about change on the roads.

Clyde Loakes said we need to be less afraid of taking away driving licenses from people who endanger, injure and kill on our roads. He spoke of the importance of taking communities along with you on journeys to reduce car traffic, and to talk about active travel and street space, not just cycling - he and his colleagues learned that the hard way.

Overreaction and mapping

He also revealed someone threatened to go on hunger strike over parking loss on Lea Bridge Road, where the council is building a cycle superhighway. He contrasted it with the silence that greets councils losing millions from their social care budgets. Parking is uniquely bonkers - people feel the parking space outside their home is their property. He believes cycling and walking improvements will be led by councils, not central government, and urged people to talk to their councillors.

We had a question about mapping - how to find good routes in London. There’s no good answer to that yet, but TfL is making its mapping data available at some point soon, according to Rachel Aldred.

I may have missed some bits - chairing means you can’t take lots of notes - but hopefully this is a decent enough overview. I came away, if anything, with a renewed sense of urgency around action to tackle transport’s contribution to climate change.

NCN review - we wouldn’t run our roads like this, why our national cycle network?

Chances are we all know a bit of the National Cycle Network – half of us live within a mile of it. It might be a great leisure route like the Camel Trail, or the Taff Trail, or it might be a hodge-podge assortment of pavement cycle paths that throw you out on a busy road and into a field with no real indication of whether this is where you’re supposed to be.

It can be divisive. Every time I mention the NCN, and Sustrans, the charity that manages it, lively debate ensues. From barriers so tight you have to remove your panniers to get through (begging the question what disabled users would do) to muddy paths that become impassable in winter, grumbling about them seems in some quarters a national sport.

In an ideal world, the NCN would be a coherent, consistent network a sensible 12-year-old could use. It would be a mix of on-road protected cycle tracks, quiet residential roads, and well-surfaced off-road paths, ideally taking the most direct route between settlements, with the added bonus of hearing birdsong, in the absence of cars.

A new Sustrans report outlines just how far the NCN has strayed from that vision. It reveals 42% of the network is ‘poor’ – think off-road routes that cross main roads, or with poor signage or surfacing – and 4% is very poor: on roads that were probably lightly-trafficked 20 years ago when the NCN was begun, but are now full of lorries and speeding cars. There’s almost one barrier for each of its 16,575 miles – a whopping three per mile on average on the off-road sections (often to stop scrambler bikes).

Rightly Sustrans CEO, Xavier Brice, admitted to me that some bits of it are ‘crap’.

Some people would – and do – blame Sustrans, but I think that’s missing the point. Would we hand our road network to a charity, give it stop-start funding for 20 years, and no power over local road authorities to deliver to a safe, coherent and decent standard, and then blame it for a patchy, circuitous network?

I’d question why, if we don’t manage our road network that way, we do so for our national cycle network?

Sustrans has set out a vision for bringing the network up to scratch by 2040, a task that will cost £2.8bn but, it says, will reap economic and wider benefits of £7.6bn by then. Sustans wants to double the traffic-free sections to 10,000 miles, and take routes off fast roads. They may threaten to de-designate the worst bits, and some would argue they should use that stick.

It has earmarked 50 ‘activation’ projects to deliver by 2023, from a protected bike track on an A-road in Mirfield (NCN 66), to re-routing the NCN away from a three-lane wide roundabout near Stirling where an A and B road meet. It also wants to re-route the NCN 76 from a bleak, wind-blown B-road on the North Wales coast, which the NCN crosses six times within a mile, to a traffic-free coastal path. It wants speed restrictions on some roads.

The major sticking point is it still needs to find most of the money to deliver this vision.

Another one is many councils will baulk at making space on roads for cycle routes, when the inevitable complaints start – and because Sustrans is merely the NCN’s custodian, there’s very little they can do about it.

It doesn’t need to be like this. A recent report on the HS2 cycleway (one of its authors is Sustrans’ co-founder, John Grimshaw, the other, the excellent Phil Jones, of PJA), set out not only design standards for such a strategic cycle network, but a mechanism to deliver it. It recommended a national body oversee the work and its funding, set design standards and, if a council couldn’t complete a piece of the network, the secretary of state can take control of the route by designating it a ‘trunk road’, to build it and hand it back to the council, completed. Not that I hold out much hope for ‘car guy’ Grayling, our current Transport Secretary, to do so.

I’d argue, though, in the face of an impending inactivity, air pollution and climate change crisis – not to mention declining high streets up and down the country, choked by motor traffic - it’s urgent and of national strategic importance that we build and fund a proper network that gives us the option to cycle and walk more.

Public speaking coming up

I've been asked to do some more speaking so if you haven't heard my voice for a while here's your chance(s). The first ever Street Talk podcast (of Street Talks , usually held in London, and run by Sustrans) will be an interview with Jon Orcutt, formerly of New York City's transportation department, which will be coming to the internet in the next few days. He's the guy who oversaw introduction of Citibikes and introduced New York's Vision Zero plan, making it the first US city to aim for a target of no traffic deaths or serious injuries. Keep a look out on my Twitters or this website, under public speaking, where I'll be sharing that podcast with joyous abandon. 

Tomorrow, yes tomorrow, I'm at Look Mum, no Hands, talking about Kat Jungnickel's new book, Bikes & Bloomers, with the excellent Emily Chappell,  Kat Jungnickel herself, and Bruce Bennett (Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Lancaster University). You can book your tickets here.

And later in the year it looks like I'll be doing some kind of Paxman panel chairing/corralling job at a large national cycling conference...more details TBC. In the meantime, know I shall take no nonsense from anyone. Not even you.