I checked the date. As per title…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4PMjZrUtl4[/video]

The change of mindset that would be required across so many people is so incredibly vast… it’s just unimaginable unfortunately. Shame as I’d love my kids to grow up in a town like that.

Just looked at the map, bonkers that it’s only about a 100 miles away from Margate. May as well be on another planet it’s so different!

My answer. It already exists and no-one uses it.

I grew up in Cramlington*, cycle heaven, cycle paths everywhere. No-one cycles. Why? because no-one works in the town they live, so they have a car, so they use a car. It just easier. The car is just there.

*Cramlington is a town North of Newcastle built on the same principle as Stevenage (the cycle town). Tons of cycle paths cross the town with underpass so you don’t have to stop for roads. Its mint, its the reason I grew up thinking cycling was normal and perfectly acceptable as a transport, I used it daily to get around the town when growing up, to visit friends etc. But kids are not allowed out on their own these days so its largely abandoned or full of chavs smoking.

It is, indeed, a shame that we are slow/reluctant to move towards towns like this. Admittedly, some towns just don’t have the space, but others are more suited to it.
For example, Crawley (where I live) has a lot of people who work at Gatwick, or the nearby industrial estate, and there a reasonable network of cycle paths circling the town. Unfortunately, there are very few people riding along these paths on what would be a fairly short journey to work. There are undoubtedly, other factors at play, but I can’t help thinking that we can do so much better.

Personally, I work 30 miles away, so commute by bike very rarely, but would love to work within 10 miles or so, allowing me to do it more often.

yep, Stevenage is the same unfortunately stato. Cycle paths everywhere, generally used for most things other than cycling.

Cyclists paradise? Aka the Lake District.

Milton Keynes has a full, fully segregated, signed and reasonably well-kept network. Which is barely used…

We are already going through a cycling revolution here in the UK – it’s just rather one-sided, being mainly a sport revolution for men, rather than a transport option for the masses. Given the progress made in the last 5 years though, there’s hope for more…

I grew up in Cramlington*, cycle heaven, cycle paths everywhere. No-one cycles. Why? because no-one works in the town they live, so they have a car, so they use a car. It just easier. The car is just there.

As someone who doesn’t know the place well, but drives through it, I would’ve thought the opposite. Very much a drivers town, Surrounded by major road networks like the A1 and A19. Have never actually noticed any cycle paths and it looks like cycling hell. That might not be the case, but it is my perception, which is perhaps part of the problem?

Looks awful. Why would you confuse sport and transport?

As someone who doesn’t know the place well, but drives through it, I would’ve thought the opposite. Very much a drivers town, Surrounded by major road networks like the A1 and A19. Have never actually noticed any cycle paths and it looks like cycling hell. That might not be the case, but it is my perception, which is perhaps part of the problem?

That is part of the problem, the big road through the middle. But even in the ‘districts’ (as a New-Town it was built up in phases) where roads are smaller and cycle paths go past your door, people still drive to the shops. It is right next to the A19 and close to the A1, which is good for commuting longer distances.

Cycling is really pleasant, as you say you cant tell from the car as they are not stuck next to the dual carriage way, running through parks and past the schools.

map

Another few pics here from karlonsea, a once contributor of this forum (maybe still, not seen his name for a while?).

The comment on the bottom of his blog post from Carlton Reid hit the mark though, his comment…

As you say, in Houten, car trips are actively discouraged by the road design. If we ever got loads of great protected bike lanes in the UK, would we ever get a policy of car discouragement? What signs are there that Government is anywhere near to wanting to invest in cycling and disinvest in mass motoring?

Cycling facilities alone are just not enough in the UK, they will have to actively block driving as an option, and I cant see any government surviving long if they try that.

I didn’t realise Cramlington was a New-Town. Though I was actually going to say it has that feel. And they are weird places that don’t really have a community as such. No central hub. Just a network of roads (and cycle lanes) to nowhere places.

But like you say, the encouragement of motor vehicle use is a big factor. And I think there are many, many factors to be considered in order to get people on bikes for transport, which go well beyond a few traffic free lanes. And a long, long way to go before people begin to see cycling as a viable means of transport outside of London (where in many cases it is probably quicker – and a hell of a lot cheaper – than driving).

My parents live in Cramlington, I found the amount of cycle lanes like in the above photo confusing but makes sense now if that was the intention to start with. Newcastle as a whole is pretty good with wide pavements/cycle paths and all the old wagon ways turned into gravel routes, pretty straight obviously but still good

It is also city planning. If every shop in an retail park or industrial has there own massive car park rather than. Communal central one everything becomes more spread out and more advantageous to drive and harder for public transportation to service. Then there is the promotion of small market towns as committing towns where 90% of people drive to work because it is miles away and there is no train sstation

Looks awful. Why would you confuse sport and transport?

I think there’s something to be said for this argument, though would express it as ‘leisure time activity’ rather than ‘sport’

I feel quite strongly that cycling needs to attract people primarily as an enjoyable leisure time activity

advertisers don’t sell new cars on the basis of ‘it’s a really practical and utilitarian way to get to the shops or go to work’ – they sell freedom, fun and enjoyment, nor has anyone ever felt the need to join the ramblers association because they walk to work every day.

Millions and millions of pounds have been spent on ‘transport’ cycling facilities that sit unused, yet look at your nearest disused railway line at the weekend and you can hardly move for the variety of people from MTB’ers, to kids, families and retired couples on bikes. We need to invest in more of these high quality recreational facilities to encourage healthy, active lifestyles rather than painting white lines on pavements in town centres.

It is also city planning. If every shop in an retail park or industrial has there own massive car park rather than Communal. central one everything becomes more spread out and more advantageous to drive and harder for public transportation to service.

My example again. Cramlington has a huge central shopping centre which has all the small shops you would expect, and Asda, Sainsburys, a Cinema, a Sports centre with pool, lots a banks/building societys, Argos, Gala Bingo, McDonalds, even an Aldi only 1/2 mile away. Basically you name it its there. All linked to every part of the town by lovely cycle paths. No-one cycles. Also, each district has a small shopping area with Nisa or similar, hair dressers, chippy etc. No-one cycles to those either, even those living only 1 mile away drive.

People are just lazy.

Millions and millions of pounds have been spent on ‘transport’ cycling facilities that sit unused, yet look at your nearest disused railway line at the weekend and you can hardly move for the variety of people from MTB’ers, to kids, families and retired couples on bikes. We need to invest in more of these high quality recreational facilities to encourage healthy, active lifestyles rather than painting white lines on pavements in town centres.

So the solution to reducing people driving, is to get them to drive to somewhere? I get that would help improve health, but its not going to change peoples approach to using cars for transport (which is kind of what the OP of the post was looking for).

No, of course not – you build recreational routes close to and linked with where people live, with routes that allow them to enjoy the trip there – who would have ever thought otherwise?

It’s a real chicken-and-egg issue eh?

Do you create the cycle paths in order to encourage the more timid into utility cycling, or just try to get more people cycling so there’s a demand for the paths to be built?

Personally I think improving driver awareness of cyclists and encouraging employers (and railway companies) to create secure bike storage facilities are the easiest “wins”.

People I work with don’t see cycling as a viable option for several reasons:

Wont cycle to work as they live too far away ( which in their eyes can be a mile away)
Roads are too dangerous, busy, unlit. (partly true)
Will get sweaty, dirty riding to work. (we have a shower)
Cant cycle to the shops as they cant carry the shopping home. (true)
Nowhere to secure a bike. (true)
Shops have massive car parks, why cycle. (partly true)
Wont let their kids out as they think peados will get them.

Sadly I cant see any/much of that changing, so its no wonder existing facilities are underused.

Admittedly, some towns just don’t have the space, but others are more suited to it.

Every town in the UK has enough space to do it. They might just need to get rid of a few roads and car parks to free up space for bicycles. It’s generally estimated that 25-50% of land area in most towns and cities is given over to infrastructure for cars, that’s a lot of space which could be reclaimed.

It’s definitely possible that it could happen here, but it will take a lot of time, a political will that is currently lacking, and a fair bit of money. We’re a long way behind the Netherlands, they’ve been doing it seriously since the 1960s, and we are in a much worse position than they were at the time, because we’ve spent the last 50 years and billions of pounds reshaping every part of our country and our lifestyles around the car. In Holland they realised that was a mistake very early on, before they’d got so far down the path. So realistically, if we start making serious investments now, then maybe in 30/40 years we might be getting there. It requires a generational change really.

Millionss may have been spent on cycle paths but most are poor quality or “not joined up”. I think this effects people’s attitude as they have tried the facilities, found them crap And now are put off and or assume the facilities are crap.

I chose to work today along a old railway line. It avoids 8 miles of dual carriageway. Nice and traffic free, good for lessure cycling, pottering with kids etc but rubbish for. Commuting. Muddy rough. Reduce s my speed by 8 kph and a lot more effort. Not what you want when you just want a easy route to work.

People I work with don’t see cycling as a viable option for several reasons:

Wont cycle to work as they live too far away ( which in their eyes can be a mile away)
Roads are too dangerous, busy, unlit. (partly true)
Will get sweaty, dirty riding to work. (we have a shower)
Cant cycle to the shops as they cant carry the shopping home. (true)
Nowhere to secure a bike. (true)
Shops have massive car parks, why cycle. (partly true)
Wont let their kids out as they think peados will get them.

Sadly I cant see any/much of that changing, so its no wonder existing facilities are underused.

Yep. I’m lucky we have a couple of decent showers where I now work. My last employer refused to even consider it, despite it costing about 50p more than the disabled facilities they put everywhere for all the disabled employees we didn’t have.
I still rode to work a couple of times… and smelled bad by the end of the day 😀 Baby wipe showers are only so good.

The worst part of the cycle path infrastructure is that they’re so … disjointed/patchy even when they’re not in terrible physical condition. They randomly end, or go onto the footpath for 6 feet before having to cross a busy road, onto the other (shared) footpath… for about 100 yards then back onto the original side of the road by the roadside. It’s stupid.
They’re generally riddled with poor surfaces and drain grates. And I very very rarely use them. The last one I tried to use was in York, alongside a little stream, which had flooded after the Ouse last burst its banks… so was covered in a nice thick coating of mud, which clogged up around my mudguards / brake calipers / frame and in the end I had to go and find a jetwash to get my wheels spinning again.

There’s no secure bike parking anywhere near me that I’ve seen. They should scrap HS2 and put in a proper inter city/town cycle network that’s separate from the roads.

Will get sweaty, dirty riding to work. (we have a shower)
Cant cycle to the shops as they cant carry the shopping home. (true)
Nowhere to secure a bike. (true)
Shops have massive car parks, why cycle. (partly true)

A guy at my work cycles once a fortnight from 2-3 miles away, always comments its quicker and more enjoyable despite cycling slow enough not to get sweaty. He still drives the other 9 days.

I cycle everywhere (don’t have a driving licence, im 33), there are always places to lock a bike, all supermarkets have them now. I carry home a weeks shopping for 2 people on my bike in front and rear panniers. If I just had rear id go twice a week, I see people in cars carrying less.

Just excuses. The real barrier is people just cant be arsed. No shame in it really, but they should just admit it.

The real barrier is people just cant be arsed.

That’s the nub of it I think. Laziness disguised as worries/excuses about something else.

Just excuses. The real barrier is people just cant be arsed. No shame in it really, but they should just admit it.

^ I think there’s some truth in that 🙂

every* barrier/problem is possible to work around, most of them relatively trivial and once you’ve got your method and routine sorted it’s even easier.

There are ways to make it more difficult for yourself and put yourself in a position where you come to rely on having a car, but very few will put their hands up and admit it was a choice.

We’ve got the point where it’s become expected that you have a car, the default** option, and I don’t think that’s a good situation for society, and I don’t just hold that opinion because I cycle.

* yes every, otherwise how would people who can’t drive ever cope in life?

** this is what bothers me, it is now seen as the default option, even when it is actually the least appropriate.
There’ll always be situations where a car is the appropriate mode of travel, but it’s a much smaller % of the current journeys where a car gets used.

We have, in many Western countries (esp US and UK), allowed a car-dependency culture to develop and dominate our lives and landscapes. As Morpheus puts it: “You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so injured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”
Places like Holland and Denmark resisted the ‘addiction’ back in the 60’s and 70’s. I fear that we’ll never get this particular genie back in the bottle.
We’re all doomed…

99.9% of people wouldn’t use a bike even if there was a great cycle network because people are lazy bastards and hopping in acer to nip to the shops for some milk is simply a lot easier than pulling a bike out the garage, putting on a helmet and some shoes, hunting for your lock and then riding there whilst avoiding potholes and loonies in cars. I speak from experience as I’m like that.

Just excuses.

Laziness disguised as worries/excuses

eg: a perfect example being…

99.9% of people wouldn’t use a bike even if there was a great cycle network because people are lazy bastards and hopping in acer to nip to the shops for some milk is simply a lot easier than pulling a bike out the garage, putting on a helmet and some shoes, hunting for your lock and then riding there whilst avoiding potholes and loonies in cars

– if you use a bike as transport it’s locked outside or just as accessible as you car
– helmet? to pop to the shops? the dutch don’t bother, and I bet you wouldn’t if as you say “if there was a great cycle network”
– presumably you will need to put shoes on regardless?
– if you use a bike as transport then your lock lives on it
– and the bit about avoiding potholes and cars, well that bit is negated by your qualifier at the beginning of “even if there was a great cycle network”, so presumably in your scenario there is a nice non-potholed, car free route? or have you mixed two scenarios up, one where there is a great cycle network, but at the same time there isn’t? make your mind up…. 😉

I grew up near Milton Keynes and cycled all over Buckinghamshire for many years, I’m well aware of the ‘redways’ in MK but rarely saw anyone using them.

I’m also aware of bike paths in Cramlington from 5 years living in Newcastle, we rode all over the N-East on our mountain bikes being poor students with no cars.

Car dependency is engrained in our culture – do others remember growing up and friends ditching their bicycle to get their first car, a part of “growing up” with adults owning / driving cars and kids on bicycles?

its probably going to take a massive increase in fuel pricing / congestion charging / environmental concerns something to get people out of cars and onto HPVs.

even then just a shift from combustion engine to electric vehicle?

There is not a single easy to trace reason for cycling not being more popular, or better catered for in the UK. It’s one of those multifaceted, sociopolitical, cultural issues, innit…

You could simply argue that the infrastructure we have now is just a reflection of the current national identity, the predominant values, culture and what the majority want (or think they want), hence the British public still being mostly tubby, excuse making, Clarksonites want roads and carparks…

I’m very much of the opinion that our current “motor-centric” culture, the mass ownership and glorification of cars will become less relevant over the next few decades…

You don’t Change the infrastructure, you change the culture, which takes a generation or two… And the rest follows.

But the wheels of change are already in motion: Are “Generation Rent” really going to prioritise owning a German saloon over housing?

We love to complain about the cost of everything, health, education, unemployment, sooner or later the whole nation paying so a few self important arses can swan up and down the motorway rather than have a video conference will come under scrutiny…

Instant Geographical mobility will have less value once we get over our current (frankly odd) working habits and stop inefficiently congregating in offices local to motorway junctions just “because it’s a hub”…

Plus car’s are all going to be self driving in a decade or two, so the last fun thing about driving, stamping on the throttle and demonstrating your ability to be a wreckless dick, will vanish, making the idea of owning a car seem a bit pointless, when you can just as easily call for a Johnny Cab, or better yet ride a bicycle…

The car’s days are numbered, once it’s gone cycling, walking and being polite to strangers can be normalised again, and we’ll be left with vast amounts of surplus urban space where we can build cycling superhighways and community arts centres galore*…

(* utopian visions of our great nations future may vary)

You don’t Change the infrastructure, you change the culture, which takes a generation or two… And the rest follows.

That is not what I read about the NL. It was a polical decision due to a the of the 70s oil crisis.There was initially quite a lot of resistance. ut there was a political big push. I’m denyign the importance of culture butsometimes it need a (big) nudge.

That is not what I read about the NL. It was a polical decision due to a the of the 70s oil crisis.There was initially quite a lot of resistance. ut there was a political big push. I’m denyign the importance of culture butsometimes it need a (big) nudge.

Well that’s sort of making my point for me, cheers.

Different cultures and you can identify a point ~40 years ago where they significantly diverged, we got more motorways and British Leyland, they got pleasant urban environments and well designed infrastructure…
Nothing happens overnight.

Our breaking point is coming, just look at the country our lifestyles, levels of consumption, levels of debt, the general lack of happiness, poor social cohesion. we are living in a bit of an unsustainable mess.

Being so enamoured with cars is just a symptom.

Give it another 50 years and the UK will either be another NL style paradise or Hell on Earth… But it won’t be the same as it is today.

To cycle anywhere without a decent cycling infrastructure means you have to be reasonably confident with cycling on the road and mixing it with traffic. I’m happy to do that, be it to do my weekly shop or to bike into uni (I’ll admit in part this is due to necessity as I don’t have access to a car, but I make it work), as I am sure the majority of people on this forum would be. The issue is making it a sufficiently comfortable experience for people who aren’t as confident on a bike, through building a decent infrastructure. Sadly I can’t see that happening soon, it’s just too easy for people to get in their cars and use them instead. There isn’t enough pressure to change things.

Our breaking point is coming, just look at the country our lifestyles, levels of consumption, levels of debt, the general lack of happiness, poor social cohesion. we are living in a bit of an unsustainable mess.

We’re definitely at an inflection point in the West. For me, self-driving cars, potential financial collapse of the NHS, falling living standards, and increasing attention paid to mental health are all drivers away from current car-obsession.

Whether we see a calm, peaceful transition or something challenging is a different matter. The ranty prejudice meted out to people on bikes suggests not everyone in the UK is up for even slow, evolutionary change! They’ll get used to it eventually, I’m sure, but we’re a rather conservative country when all’s said and done

I’ve had a good example of why cycling to work in the UK sucks. It was worse on the return journey than going to work when it was frozen. 8 miles of rough muddy old railway line. Even as a keen cyclist it is just too much hassle for a utility journey. Only alternative is nsl dual carriageway.

Well that’s sort of making my point for me, cheers

I am not though. My point is the public were not up for it. It was a flip of the coin, could have landed the other side and the government not pushed it. Largley good luck the right people where in power at the right time. It’s all about timing

Ok if you insist, you are completely at odds with me… 😉

We probably all saw this during last year’s TdF coverage, but Chris Boardman gives us an additional argument to factor in:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zq28fU2AuMU[/video]