Patrick Field – Page 11

The crrimes of Parris

It’s interesting and optimistic that a heavyweight national daily has chosen this subject for a campaign, particularly when four years ago the very same organ ran a notorious suggestion to kill people at random.

“A festive custom we could do worse than foster would be stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists.”

Matthew Parris, The Times, 27/12/07.

Perhaps Mr. Parris should send a copy of his humourous essay to Mary Bowers and her family to cheer them all up?

In his defence poor Parris had a deadline pending, it was holiday time, he had to write something. A community-service order, for incitement to murder plus two years prison – suspended – for being unfunny, might be a fair tarriff? Hateful as this kind of gormless idiocy may be, outbreaks are a symptom of progress. If the poor lambs didn’t feel threatened they’d pick some other target.

Just as it was a mistake to get too upset at the hate-criminal’s sorry little rant, let’s not feel cynical in not treating ‘Cities fit for Cycling’ as a brave new dawn. A strategy for long-term engagement in street politics is not getting too depressed or too triumphant. Take a long view. Round here at least, things are getting slowly better.

When you read the figures for those who endorse the campaign, remember, some only signed-up to leave a ‘SACK PARRIS NOW’ message.

Once upon a time buying newspapers was normal and riding a bike was odd. Not anymore.

A good start, can do better

‘Cities fit for cycling’ campaign some suggestions… 1. Trucks entering a city centre should be required by law to fit sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.

‘Cities fit for cycling’ campaign some suggestions…

1. Trucks entering a city centre should be required by law to fit sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.

Sensible stuff, but why only the city centre? Surely people in the ‘burbs or the country are just as worthy of protection? Onboard cameras can be deployed, ‘blind spots’ are unacceptable.

2. The 500 most dangerous road junctions must be identified, redesigned or fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors that allow lorry drivers to see cyclists on their near-side.

This is tricky, maybe the most dangerous junctions are the ones with fewest casualties because people don’t cycle – or walk – there? Make sure you don’t mistake a political issue – who is killing who? – for a technical one. Good design can help but danger comes from people not junctions.

3. A national audit of cycling to find out how many people cycle in Britain and how cyclists are killed or injured should be held to underpin effective cycle safety.

Good. Let’s also include pedestrians and why not motor-cyclists? Motorcycling is really dangerous.

4. Two per cent of the Highways Agency budget should be earmarked for next generation cycle routes, providing £100 million a year towards world-class cycling infrastructure. Each year cities should be graded on the quality of cycling provision.

Good but – again – safety is about how people behave, where the kerbs and bollards go is important because it signals to people what’s expected of them but it’s not the only factor in effecting cultural change.

5. The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.

Can’t comment on the training of cyclists (personal financial interest) but lets make it harder to qualify to drive, and give life bans for careless – potentially deadly – driving. Those disqualified will ride bikes and live longer.

6. 20mph should become the default speed limit ~~in residential areas where there are no cycle lanes.~~

You forgot pedestrians again.

7. Businesses should be invited to sponsor cycleways and cycling super-highways, mirroring the Barclays-backed bicycle hire scheme in London.

Not sure about this? Is it a general principle? Can we start with Vodaphone paying for the upkeep of the M25?

8. Every city, even those without an elected mayor, should appoint a cycling commissioner to push home reforms.

Let’s not piss about here, it’s a ‘Tsar’ or nothing.

The glaring omission in this draft programme is ‘presumed civil liability’ – where in any collision the pilot of the heavier, faster vehicle has to establish it was not their fault – and proper punishment for bad – potentially deadly – driving. Presumed liability is a cultural corner-stone of the cycle-friendly environments of Germany, the low countries and Scandinavia.

It’s not about being vindictive – in some ways those who slaughter are secondary victims of the current insane system – but cases like the Rob Jefferies killing are not exceptional and send out exactly the wrong message. It’s hard to get juries – who are likely stuffed with the motor-dependent – to convict but if we are to change the culture this is where to start.

Cyclists Live Longer

The Times’ ‘Cities fit for Cycling’ campaign, was launched last Thursday with the front page headline ‘Save Our Cyclists’. That’s good news. There is – for example – some moving testimony from Cynthia Barlow, in the clip on this page. She talks, not just about her daughter, who was killed while cycling, but about the generalised and usually unmentionable cost of motor-dependence. ‘Cities fit for Cycling’ is inspired by the sorry fate of Mary Bowers – who works for The Times – and suffered near-fatal injuries, when run-down by someone operating a truck. It’s interesting, and progressive, that motor-slaughter is now on the national agenda, but an awkward difficulty with naming the problem remains.

The Times’ ‘Cities fit for Cycling’ campaign, was launched last Thursday with the front page headline ‘Save Our Cyclists‘. That’s good news. There is – for example – some moving testimony from Cynthia Barlow, in the clip on this page. She talks, not just about her daughter, who was killed while cycling, but about the generalised and usually unmentionable cost of motor-dependence. ‘Cities fit for Cycling’ is inspired by the sorry fate of Mary Bowers – who works for The Times – and suffered near-fatal injuries, when run-down by someone operating a truck. It’s interesting, and progressive, that motor-slaughter is now on the national agenda, but an awkward difficulty with naming the problem remains.
Motor-traffic in general, the haulage business in particular, kills people. They kill people at a rate that would be a national scandal if any other source – bad food hygiene? enemy action? unmanned level-crossings? – were responsible. A more sensible headline could have been ‘Tame Our Trucks’. The story is of death and life-changing injury consequent on hyper-mobility of goods and people. Focusing only on the hazards of cycle-travel distracts from this.

How dangerous is it to ride a bike? Epidemiological statistics are slippery. Every day I see people riding down the road. They see a bus parked at the kerb. I guess their unconscious thought process is something like – ‘I can see that bus. Anyone behind can see me and that bus. Everybody knows what I’m going to do next’. Then they pull-out and overtake the bus, relying on others to take care of them. Such behaviour isn’t the monopoly of the stereotypically reckless or foolish, some people who act that way are middle-aged, probably in salaried employment and riding well-worn bikes of investment quality. Their strategy clearly works. These people will almost all live long, healthy lives and die – in due course – in their beds. But it wouldn’t cost them anything to glance over their shoulders when they see that bus.

In bald statistical terms riding a bike is a safe activity. A typical individual has to cover millions of kilometres before being involved in a serious crash. These figures include teenage boys and also those who’ve been riding their Claud Butlers round North London since 1981, without once looking over their shoulder. If you take the trouble to ride in a considered and conscious style you are – in Inner London at least – super safe. The difficulty is how do we campaign to make travelling by bike even less hazardous, even more pleasurable, without reinforcing the widespread misconception that it’s somehow lethal.

In the 1970’s and 80’s if you ever mentioned cycling for practical travel to a politician, a planner or a highway engineer it was a sure-fire, certainty that the first sentence of their reply would contain a word from this short menu…

safety
risk
danger

During those comparatively lean years – in a pathetic personal quest for balance and logic – I refused to discuss bicycle travel in the context of ‘road-safety’. The vow lapsed with the publication, in 1992, of Mayer Hillman’s game-changing work ‘Cycling: Towards Health and Safety’, which put the cycling-is-much-too-dangerous-to-encourage argument underground with a stake through its heart. Cycles might bring some risks but not nearly as many as sofas and fried potatoes. What’s really deadly is not cycling.

There’s a counter-position, that cycling might really be very dangerous, and the figures for death and serious injury are suppressed because people don’t do it. Establishing causality in the reflexive fluidity of human motivation can only be a theoretical approximation. Is cycling in England considered dangerous because people don’t do it? Do English people not cycle because they think it’s dangerous? Why does anyone ride a motor-cycle? That’s really dangerous.

The risks of travelling by bike in London are not massively greater than the risks of walking the same streets. They may even be less. They are certainly of the same order of magnitude. Why does The Times choose to focus only on dead pedallers and ignore those slaughtered while walking?

In Inner London – in certain demographics – cycle travel has become normal. Here in West Hackney it’s getting close to compulsory.

While the typical pedestrian victim of the metal plague is poor, a school-kid or a pensioner, those culled while riding bikes are much more likely to be young adults in high status employment. In evolutionary terms individuals of peak reproductive age are much more valuable, but let’s aspire to rise above such crude atavistic bias. And also to remind anyone drawn into this renewed debate, that – although very occasionally cyclists die while travelling – they’re not being killed by bikes.

Acceptable behaviour?

If you haven’t seen this, it’s worth a look. A low-resolution CCTV clip of Boris Johnson, plus entourage, on a reconnaissance trip, down ‘cycle-superhighway 2’, Wapping, May, 2009. A man in a tipper truck makes an unnecessary, pushy, overtaking manoeuvre, his tailgate swings open, hooks a parked car, which is dragged into another, with awesome destructive force. In the incident’s aftermath one of the Mayor’s aides was quoted:- “It was pretty awful. They were shaken up and Boris was shocked. But it makes the case even more for his super highways.”

Fry breakfast.
Pour coffee.
Take little white pills.
Play sound.

If you haven’t seen this it’s worth a look. A low-resolution CCTV clip of Boris Johnson, plus entourage, on a reconnaissance trip, down ‘cycle-superhighway 2’, Wapping, May, 2009.

A man in a tipper truck makes an unnecessary, pushy, overtaking manoeuvre, his tailgate swings open, hooks a parked car, which is dragged into another, with awesome destructive force.

In the incident’s aftermath one of the Mayor’s aides was quoted:- “It was pretty awful. They were shaken up and Boris was shocked. But it makes the case even more for his super highways.”

Really?

How much protection can a stripe of blue paint – or even a kerbed-off sidepath, or galvanised steel railings – offer when a car is dragged sideways at 30 kph? “This makes the case even more for proper regulation of the haulage business”, is a more sensible answer. The cowboy in the truck is lucky not to have killed a motor-cyclist, a pedestrian or the pilot or passenger of a saloon car, never mind some ambitious Old Etonian on a bike with no mudguards. Truck slaughter is not a bicycle problem, it’s a lorry problem.

Heavy trucks make up such a small proportion of city traffic that you can be very circumspect around them without inconvenience. If you find yourself behind one, don’t overtake unless you’re sure you can get passed and away before it starts moving or speeds up. Never pass on the left, only on the right. (Readers in territories where the clean side of your bikes and sidewalk sides of your highways are mixed-up, please reverse that last instruction.) Keep the driver in view in the truck’s mirrors. That way you can check whether she’s paying attention, arguing with her ex-husband on a hand-held cell-phone or unwrapping a Yorkie bar.

When a truck’s behind you it’s your responsibility to make sure the driver doesn’t try and pass without taking serious, conscious account of your presence. Owning the road is important.

A friend of mine, riding up the Essex Road in N1 last week, was pulled over for running a red light. I blame the parents. Given the choice of a thirty pound ticket or spending fifteen minutes pretending to be a truck driver, he didn’t hesitate – he works in the bike trade where thirty pounds is big money – and was surprised to hear that lots of people choose the fine. I suppose they’re inexperienced, imagine they’ve nothing to learn and have too many status issues to risk a little, finger-wagging humiliation?

It turns out the punishment was painless. The big rig was brand new, with extra mirrors focused downwards by the passenger door and above the windscreen. Once in the driving seat, one officer sat beside him and asked questions while a second, dressed in day-glo, rode up the left side in a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t style.

If you like shit-kickin’, truck-drivin’, ‘g’-droppin’ country music feel free to refresh the soundtrack.

Informing people how to be safe around heavy vehicles that are being – or are waiting to be – moved, is important but it’s not progressive if passing on the simple information distracts from the source of deadly danger. POV home-movies shot from bikes are ubiquitous, mail-order cycle-retailers sell miniature cameras as bike paraphernalia. I dare say there are neophyte riders – the ones who worry about GPS – who think they need one to ride to work?

If anyone and their auntie can produce dull mini-odysseys complete with wind noise and heavy breathing, how is it acceptable for state-of-the-art freightliners to give their operators ‘blind spots’? Expecting the driver of a heavy machine to move it through the randomness of city streets unable to see where they’re going is brutal exploitation that turns the freedom lovin’ followers of Dave Dudley and Hank Snow into secondary victims. If human society persists for another couple of centuries, people will reflect on our acceptance of deadly hazard in public space, in the same way we look back at the routine cruelties of industrial slavery.

If drivers end up with too many screens and mirrors to monitor, let them move slower, or carry a co-driver who can scan half of them, or transfer freight into less cumbersome vehicles for urban drops. Any of these solutions will make haulage more expensive, which will increase the cost of goods, but that won’t be a blanket rise. Local production will benefit at the expense of long-haul.

Remember the ‘foot and mouth’ epidemic of 2001, how it spread across the whole country and led to the slaughter of around 7 million beasts? There was an outbreak in 1967 that was ended by killing 442,000. One difference between the two was the cost of haulage. By 2001 sheep were scorching round the country like hyper-active photo-copier salesmen. Making the movement of goods more awkward will encourage the development of systems more resistant to the man-made disasters of industrialised monocultures. Rich people eat local food. Civilising the movement of goods will make it cheaper.

One more anthem to put you in the mood for a ride?

Kings Cross update

The second ‘bikes alive’ action at Kings Cross on Monday 23rd January was less lively thanthe first. There may have been as many bike riders but the politically-motivated pedestrian element were fewer, and transient football fans were missing completely. The first version featured plenty of low-rent still and movie photographers, the second, one or two heavier-duty paparazzi, I assume they were hoping for a ruck? The pro-photographers were very conspicuous in camouflage jackets, ‘Hi-Viz’ tabards would’ve been more discrete.

The second ‘bikes alive’ action at Kings Cross on Monday 23rd January was less lively than the first. There may have been as many bike riders but the politically-motivated pedestrian element were fewer, and transient football fans were missing completely. The first version featured plenty of low-rent still and movie photographers, the second, one or two heavier-duty paparazzi, I assume they were hoping for a ruck? The pro-photographers were very conspicuous in camouflage jackets, ‘Hi-Viz’ tabards would’ve been more discrete.

A group of one or two hundred riders rotated through the one-way system at a steady walking pace for around forty minutes. I’m pretty sure this kind of behaviour – though it may delay individuals for a few seconds – helps clear the evening rush hour. When one block of motors are held for a minute or two the road ahead is empty, allowing traffic on the adjacent network to flow. I like to ride in the evening and it’s nice to ease the pain of the victims of motor-dependence, but the event felt like a geographically constrained version of ‘Critical Mass’. The attendant Police were calm and unobstructive. They understand that causing trouble will only publicise the event.

Imagine you’re waiting to turn into a main road from a side street. If the traffic on the big road has a maximum speed of 20 kph you can turn into a much smaller gap than if it’s passing at 60 kph. The bars on this graph represent real space. Reducing the maximum speed of traffic increases the capacity of the network.

See how efficiently space is used in Tehran. Without the need for traffic signals, everyone moves slowly but never really stops. Pedestrians cross without haste, panic or delay. It may seem dangerously chaotic to someone used to regimented patterns but everyone has to be vigilant, considerate and empathetic.

To be safe and comfortable riding a bike on roads shared with other traffic you need to take space to create a buffer-zone around you. Sometimes people in vehicles with a potentially higher maximum speed get upset by this. It’s good to be popular – for pragmatic and humane reasons – but if you have to choose between being safe or popular, which one comes first?

Other people on the roads may imagine that you’re their enemy. You don’t have to stop and explain the relationship between the maximum speed of traffic on the network and the network’s capacity to all of them. It’s quite a subtle concept and some of them are not all that clever; but you don’t need to get involved in their delusion that you’re a problem.

Empathy for the devil

There’s something intrinsically comic about professional athletes who are clearly out of condition yet still manage to contribute. Just because he’s a vulgar hoon with very little sense of how to behave in public, doesn’t mean we can’t feel his pain. Up here in the North it’s Spring and the days – though cold – get longer as they pass, which must mean, down-under, nights are drawing in.

“Cricket is not a metaphor for life. Cricket is life.”

C.L.R James

Play optional sentimental soundtrack.
Stand-by with the hankies.

It’s easy to mock [WARNING: link to smut] fat cricketers. Who can forget the day some joker released a pig onto the field at Brisbane in honour of those two stout fellows I.T.Botham and E.E.Hemmings?

There’s something intrinsically comic about professional athletes who are clearly out of condition yet still manage to contribute.

Shane Warne’s in trouble again. Just because he’s a vulgar hoon with very little sense of how to behave in public, doesn’t mean we can’t feel his pain. Up here in the North it’s Spring and the days – though cold – get longer as they pass, which must mean, down-under, nights are drawing in.

With it’s various formats cricket offers the chance of multiple retirements without the indignity of embarrassing comebacks. 42 year old S.K.Warne’s ultimate, final swan-song supposedly came in April 2011 at the end of his fourth season in the Indian Premier League. Six months later he surprised the World by announcing one more tour of duty in the Big Bash tournament, that ends this Saturday, 28/01/2012.

‘I’m fitter than I have ever been. I had a few offers but the MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground] has been my backyard for 20 years,’ he said. ‘There were a few offers about playing a game here or there. And I thought if I’m going to do this, let’s do it properly.

‘I thought it was an opportunity where I could actually give something back to the game of cricket that has been so good to me.

‘I’m fitter than I’ve ever been and over the next sort of month or so I’m going to really get into the bowling and doing all those sorts of things with the Melbourne Stars.

‘It’s got nothing to do with money. If it had something to do with money and me coming out to play cricket, I’d still be playing in the IPL. This is something that I’m passionate about. It’s something new … and that’s what enticed me.’

Spin bowlers don’t need to run-up fast, they don’t need the pigeon-eyed vision of a batsman, they can balance their fading physical powers with craft, guile and wisdom; but finally even the Sheik of Tweak will have to admit that he can’t chase the fade forever.

Professional Cricket is the number one sport for post-retirement suicides. What could replace a life fully engaged, at the highest level of its preindustrial mystery?

Shameful episodes, involving reckless behaviour in motor vehicles by male sports stars are all too common, at least there’s been no suggestion that performance-inhibiting substances were implicated in Warne’s madness.

Melbourne’s Mayor Dolye’s reaction to Warniegate is shameful. Rather than pander to the idiot’s prejudices, Warne’s alleged threatening and destructive behavour ought to be investigated and, if proved, given exemplary punishment; but let’s understand the extremity of his pain, as he faces the final curtain on his glorious career. And be prepared to forgive him, like he was Ullrich or the poor little devil Pantani.

We’re in this together

Two independent witnesses say they saw Shane Warne run into a bike after an altercation with the rider at the junction of St Kilda and Toorak West in Melbourne, Oztralia. The consequence of this? The Mayor of Melbourne Robert Doyle announces an intention to crackdown on hoon cyclists. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in Melbourne? Sympathy to readers who do.The rider involved – who remains anonymous – sent his account of events, and pictures of the damage to his machine, to ‘Cycling Tips’. He describes how – in rush hour traffic – he overtook Warne who was encumbered by a grey Mercedes Coupé.

As the traffic was stationary I unclipped my right foot and squeezed through the small gap. The driver in the car on my right, the Mercedes – possibly concerned I might damage his car – yelled out to me. Once I was through the gap I moved back into the centre lane, stopped and looked back at the driver, who was still yelling, to hear what he was saying.

“What are you doing? You don’t own the road! Get out of the way” he yelled repeatedly. I shook my head and probably yelled something similarly inane back. Now even more agitated the driver continued to yell, “you don’t own the road”. I looked more closely and recognised him as Shane Warne, laughed and asked, “What are you doing?” and began to get ready to clip into my bike to continue the ride home.
But before I could the driver lurched his car forward forcing my bike wheel and almost my leg under the front of his car. Dumbfounded at how overtly aggressive the driver had been and aware that we were now holding up the traffic, I pulled my bike from under the car and attempted to continue riding. My wheel was jammed against the frame of my bike and the chain was tangled so I had to carry it to the footpath to fix it.

The part of this account that doesn’t ring true is…

“I shook my head and probably yelled something similarly inane back.”

In the circumstances wouldn’t we expect him to have remembered exactly what he said? The omission suggests that either he’s ashamed to admit to his contribution or – if he really can’t recall – that he was out of control when shouting at the chubby Spin King. This doesn’t excuse Warne’s – alleged – criminal behaviour.

In ‘Homage to Catalonia’ George Orwell wrote…

“I have no particular love for the idealised ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”

The cliché that people in cars and people on bikes are natural enemies is false, but where there’s conflict between individuals who have chosen different modes I’m initially inclined to side with any pedallist over a sofa-jockey; another habit is to try and avoid tiresome, and risky escalation of trivial disputes.

I live in a hard news area, the local paper frequently features stories of people shooting at each other, knifing each other, using baseball bats to settle minor arguments, setting each other on fire. Readers of the Hackney Gazette with a any sense of self-preservation endeavour to treat strangers politely. Round here dumping your bad feelings on others in a careless way may have dramatic consequence. This environment has been a great benefit to my traffic riding. It turns out that – in awkward social situations – practicing emotional continence really works.

In the moment, in the rush hour on St Kilda Road, it wasn’t really the bike rider holding up Warnie’s car, it was his fellow-travellers in four-wheeled motors. Motorists – victims of motor-dependence (MDVs) – tend to lash out at other people – parking attendants, bike-riders; they’re more likely to stoically accept their real problem, the person in the car in front doing exactly what they’re doing. ‘The World would be a better place with fewer people like me in it’ is an existentially problematic idea.

To be safe travelling on a bike you need to make sure other people are aware of your presence. You’re not in control of how they react to this. It would have been better if Warnie had looked at the rider and thought, “If I get a bike and do a few miles this Winter maybe I can play one more season?” instead of ranting about the ownership of the road. How much sweeter if the guy on the bike had expressed sympathy for Shane’s predicament? “Sorry mate I didn’t mean to upset you? Actually I do own the road, but we can share it. That is a nice car. Are you having a bad day?

When an MDV gets angry and aggressive they’re trying to export some of their disappointment at the way their life has turned out. If you reply in kind you’re giving them what they want, the chance to blame somebody else for their frustration. A repost that is calm, fearless, humane and generous, not only reduces the chance of risky escalation; you’re also giving them the opportunity to grow.

It may not be a coincidence that Warniegate happened while the Tour Down Under was taking place and – for the very first time – the reigning champion of the Tour de France is a simple son of The Lucky Country. Fear of – anger at – people on bikes are symptoms of progress. Being a threat is a step forward from the anachronistic status of vanishing tribe waiting to vanish.

How ever badly they behave, how ever much they try to drag us down toward their own unenviable state, the primary victims of motor-dependence are the losers stuck behind the steering wheel. Challenge bad behaviour where you can but be kind to those less fortunate than yourself. It feels good.

What not to wear?

One of the many pleasures of riding around is checking out the others. Some make it look pleasurable and easy, others look miserable? Learn from both. When someone says – ‘this is how to ride a bike.’ What they almost always mean is – ‘this is how I ride a bike and it works for me.’ They may have useful wisdom but it’s their wisdom. Whatever you do – or don’t – know about cycling, you are the expert on your own life.

One of the many pleasures of riding around is checking out the others. Some make it look pleasurable and easy, others look miserable? Learn from both.

When someone says – ‘this is how to ride a bike.’ What they almost always mean is – ‘this is how I ride a bike and it works for me.’ They may have useful wisdom but it’s their wisdom. Whatever you do – or don’t – know about cycling, you are the expert on your own life.

Beware of dogma, manifestos, dopey lists of ‘DO’s and ‘DON’T’s. They change every few years anyway. Riding a bike is much too young to have developed anything like a classical form. There are principles. There are no rules except this one and only.

You may ride in cycling shoes,

in street shoes,

in any shoes,

or in no shoes at all.

You may ride in any kind of clothes, or none,

in normal clothes with office shoes,

*could you vote for a man too dumb to use mudguards?*

in tan brogues and attire so very normal

it meets fancy dress coming in the other direction.

You may wear cycling shoes with smart clothes.

*could you marry someone who doesn’t have at least one bike with mudguards?*

You may wear cycling shoes with any kind of clothes BUT

if you’re going to dress for efficiency, footwear comes first. Never ride wearing clothes designed for cycling efficiency with anything other than shoes, made for pedalling, on your feet.

There are two reasons to wear cycling clothes. The first is to enable faster and/or lazier progress. Reinforcing your feet is the most important part of this. The second is because you want to resemble a cyclist. Anyone who cares will look first at the vital interface where biological power turns mechanical.

Consider evolution, only a theory but let’s run with it anyway. Once-upon-a-time your feet – articulate structures of multiple bones and joints – were flippers for swimming in the sea. Then they adapted for grasping branches and peeling fruit in the forest canopy. Finally they became delicate systems of balance, enabling bounding progress across the savannah.

On a bike you’re making brutal industrial power with the biggest muscles in your body, this is delivered repetitively, with no need of finesse, through the soft and subtle medium of your feet. Reinforcing your feet into rigid levers strengthens the weakest element of the system, which makes the whole transmission more effective.

Running shoes are designed to absorb energy. On a bike there’s no impact. Cycling shoes transmit energy. If you ride hard in shoes not designed for cycling you will soon destroy them. Cycling shoes save money.

Riding a sports bike with soft shoes on is equivalent to playing table-tennis in boxing gloves, it’s difficult and makes you look foolish.

Just say – ‘No’.

There are no other rules.

What do we want? update

Bikesalive have called a repeat of the action featured last week. It will be at Kings Cross, at 18:00, next Monday, January 23rd.

Last month Transport for London were waiting for the current trouble – over the assumptions underlying the way the streets they administer are laid-out – to blow-over. They’ve now cracked and propose to redesign their crass ‘cycle-super-highway’ modifications at Bow Flyover. They’re asking for our input.

Announcing a change to works completed less than a year ago can only be interpreted as an admission that their last attempt was badly wrong. Bow Flyover is at a critical location, on the boundary of Inner East London – where cycle-traffic is booming – and Outer London, where conditions for cycle-travel are at least as difficult as anywhere else in the whole country. The outcome of the conflicts this discontinuity produces will have national resonance. Proximity to the imminent festival of running and jumping only increases the significance.

Spin on this

Only two weeks old and OTR is already making waves in the Pacific, where convicted drugs-cheat Shane Warne has broken his prolonged silence on the all-important ‘who really does own the road?’ issue.

The portly leg-spinner made his impassioned contribution after an alleged incident in a motor-traffic jam in Melbourne, Oztralia.

Scandal-magnet Warne, one of the very few living persons to be honoured with a biographical stage musical without actually being dead, is a living-legend who once bowled the-ball-of-the-Century sometime in the last Century.

Other news…

England go one-nil down with 10 wicket defeat to rampant Pakistan.
Cricket is a mystery.

What do we want?

It’s Plough Monday, 18:30, Kings Cross, an irregular parade – maybe 150 people with bikes, 100 without – have obstinately stopped on the intersection of Pentonville Road and York Way. They’re chanting in unison, making motor-traffic, from all directions wait longer than usual, while the dumb semaphore of the traffic signals repeat amber, red, red’n’amber, green.

“What do we want?
Safer streets.

When do we want them?

NOW.”

I’m not here by accident – a volunteer – but ambivalent about the event, which might reinforce three erroneous, negative stereotypes…

people on bikes are outsiders
people on bikes are a nuisance
people on bikes are victims.

Creating motor-traffic jams in Central London is not much of an ambition, nor much of an achievement. They happen on their own.

I turned out anyway. There’s trouble brewing over the assumptions underlying the way London’s streets are laid-out and actions like this one – called by bikesalive, a group of whom I know nothing – keep the pressure on. I calculate that the success of this action is more important than quibbling over tactics or aims.

Arriving at 18:00, the appointed roll-out time, rather than join the crowd waiting on the footway outside Kings Cross Station and risk getting cold or kettled. I ride reconnaissance circuits around the area’s one-way streets. The antiquated 20th Century system – engineered to give the impression that heavy traffic is moving freely – makes it easier to ride round and round than actually go anywhere.

The theatre of the street rarely disappoints. The railway terminus is disgorging Leeds United supporters bound for a cup-tie with The Arsenal. Police reinforcements lurking in a side street may be for the angry activists or the optimistic visitors.

Outside the ‘Du a Ri’ Bar in the Caledonian Road a clump of raucous men with white, blue, yellow scarfs are swilling beer and singing “We’re Leeds an’ we’ll fook you oop. We’re Leeds an’ we’ll fook you oop.” Ironically – as it turns out – to the melody ‘One-nil to the Arsenal’; trying to be scary, delighting in their own idiocy. Displays of folk-culture, now that’s what streets are for.

Meanwhile pedestrians among the activist are warned by police that walking on the road will not be tolerated. Some peds with mobility impairments express reluctance to even cross the street.

They’re here because Transport for London is currently carrying out a programme of pedestrian crossing removal, under the Mayor’s commitment to ‘smoothing traffic flow’. The Mayor has also shortened some pedestrian crossing times across London, despite evidence that this compromises older people’s safety.

All the while heavy flows of riders stooge past. These days any Inner London, rush-hour, bicycle action needs a healthy turnout just to differentiate itself from normal traffic.

The flyer for the event demands…

“Major changes at busy, dangerous junctions are essential. There must be cycle lanes and cycle priority at places like Kings Cross,… Traffic lights must be re-phased to have longer gaps between conflicting green phases, so that slow-moving traffic such as bikes, and pedestrians, are well clear of the junction before the next vehicles get a green light.”

For all its radical rhetoric it reads like a programme to accommodate current conditions not a fresh start from humane principles.

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The first step to civilising the the Kings Cross streetscape – and something to build a popular campaign on – is getting rid of the one-way systems, returning local streets to their default setting. This benefits everyone. The roads will be easier to cross on foot, bus passengers will know where their stops are, cyclists can go direct without involuntary detours and unnecessary turning manoeuvres. It even helps local motor traffic.

Any modification of the layout that doesn’t begin by scrapping the one-way systems entrenches them and their only purpose, which is to give the impression that motor-traffic is moving faster than horses pulling carts.

What do we want? Considerate people. How do we get that? Design the streets for everyone not just the motorised minority.

As a chant? It needs work.

The action ended at 19:00 with shouts of “see you next week” which sounded a bit over-ambitious, a ‘war’ of attrition? Repetition is easily dealt with by power, novelty and imagination can be more effective. But you never know, fashion is mysterious, maybe 2,500 will mobilise next time?

Role-models of distinction, update.

Last week’s post featured street photography. If you imagine owntheroad is going to be some low-wattage addition to that genre please look away now. There’s no dignity in stalker behaviour.

That’s not to criticise brilliant specialists. The cycle chic craze is delightful, not least because it’s vindicated a million middle-aged men who wouldn’t know ‘chic’ if it gave them a full body wax. They can now call looking at dynamic pictures of well-groomed, long-legged young women…

… ‘research on urban planning’.

Just to prove that almost all the good ideas have been had already and originality is a Twentieth Century perversion, Claire Petersky sent me this.

It’s also been suggested that last weeks pictures were somehow set-up, even that it was me under the headscarf. If the pictures had been staged then I would have definitely demanded a more obviously horsey model.

Even the authenticity of the pigeon has been questioned: “If it was really Sloane Square how come it was eating a bun not a brioche?”