By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
And as in New York, the increase in cyclists in London is exposing some uncomfortable divisions, stereotypes, and backlash.
If there is a transportation sea change happening here – and it looks like there might be – it is not going to come without some angst. Bike riders, drivers, and pedestrians are all going to have to adjust both their attitudes and their behavior.
It is a certain that some – a fair number – of cyclist must change their attitudes (and I am saying that being a cyclist). Traffic rules also apply to them and crossing a red traffic light is an offence.
Motorists also have to change attitudes for way too many think that, just because they have to have MOT, insurance, road tax, etc., they have bought the sole and exclusive right to the roads. Bad news: they have not. The roads were here before and car and will still be here after the car.
When we look at places such as the Netherlands where they have even long-distance highways solely for cyclist then, I think, we see the proper attitude and it would also appear as if Dutch drivers have little problems with cyclist. I should think because their other car is a bicycle and at times they are cyclists themselves.
According to the blog “Cyclists in the City” (that's “The City,” as in London's version of Wall Street), the latest figures from Transport for London (TfL) show a huge boom in the number of two-wheeled commuters. This runs counter to the constant hectoring of people like high-profile journalist Jeremy Clarkson, who has made sport of ridiculing people who don't burn fossil fuels to get where they're going, and who recently referred to cycling in The Sunday Times of London – behind a paywall – and Clarkson would best behind a wall proper – as “a frontline propaganda weapon in the war on capitalism.”
But an article from the same edition of the Times (excerpted on the Cyclists in the City blog) paints a picture that explains why anti-cycling polemicists like Clarkson are feeling uncomfortable:
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Cyclists have for the first time outnumbered motorists on some of the country's busiest commuter routes during the rush hour.
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On Cheapside, a street in the City of London, cycles make up more than 50 percent of the commuter traffic, according to official data, and account for up to 42 percent of traffic on Southwark Bridge across the Thames. In one Bristol suburb more than one in four people cycle to work. ...
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The surge in the number of people switching to two wheels is likely to be even greater than the new figures suggest.
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Most of the data was compiled before July 2010, when 5,500 rental bikes were introduced and the first two "cycle-superhighways" -- distinctive blue cycle lanes -- were opened by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.
Those cyclists are not, however, a front line against capitalism, whatever Jeremy Clarkson may say and claim. In fact, if anything, those cyclists are busy hurrying to jobs in the City of London and Canary Wharf. So, thus, far from being the warriors against banking that J Clarkson thinks they are, a sizeable chunk of London's cyclists actually are bankers.
There is a risk, outside of cycling circles, that we forget what a tabloid view some of our movers and shakers who run London actually have about cycling. To the great majority of them, cyclists don't count because they are a bunch of bearded yoghurt-knitting harpies who don't deserve to be taken seriously. The fact is that I am neither bearded not anything else on that list and neither are many of those cyclists.
It has to be said, however, that some cyclists, and especially here the Lycra brigade with their environmental fruit bowls on head, quite often present a real bad picture of the cyclist and cycle commuter.
Traffic laws apply equally to cyclists as they do to motorists and no cyclists should ever (be seen to) cross a road junction on red or any other set of traffic lights but, alas, they far too often do. I have experienced it often enough when crossing a pedestrian crossing, for instance. Here, regardless whether there are traffic lights or not, the pedestrian has priority. Many cyclists, however, don't think so and race straight across, whether light controlled crossing or not.
Can we, therefore, be surprised that we have a bad image and get a bad press?
In New York, as in London, the image of the cyclist is at a turning point. Advocates are rightly calling for better infrastructure to accommodate and encourage more cycling. But non-cyclists are often skeptical and fearful of what this means for them.
I have had more than one tough discussion in recent weeks with people who know I ride a bike and write about green issues including biking.
These talks usually start out with something along the lines of “I'm sorry, I know you bike, but these people on bikes are crazy/scare me with the way they act in traffic/are so arrogant/make me feel unsafe when I am walking in the city/etc.”
And as much as I wish that they were wrong, and that I and we all could just simply dismiss what they are saying, I have seen everything they describe and everything they hate. I have almost been hit by a cyclist going the wrong way when I was on foot and more than once crossing a pedestrian crossing, and in the majority of cases traffic light controlled ones.
Every single day when I am out and about I watch countless people on bicycles endanger pedestrians, other cyclists, and themselves by riding against the traffic, by going trough red lights at pedestrian crossings, across junctions, etc. They act like absolute jerks and behave as if they are above the laws.
In addition to that I get the “cyclists should not be allowed on the roads as they pay no road tax, no insurance, etc.” Motorists think that they own the rights of the road simply because they pay road tax and MOT and all that.
Many motorists are scared as to the amount of cyclists on the roads as, at times, it makes their journeys slower, maybe, and also they are envious, I think, for there are times, and those times are very frequent, when cycling is, in fact, faster than driving.
Also, I think, many a motorist at the present moment, with the cost of petroleum fuels going up and up and up is coming to the realization that he may soon no longer afford to drive his beloved car or truck. Thus they get a little mad on that account too when cyclists, who don't have to pay a road tax, don't have to have MOT inspections and such, and no license and insurance, grow in numbers.
On the other hand, they have the option of switching and then they too would have to pay no tax and MOT and insurance and would not pay through the nose for fuel. They have the choice.
Let's hear it for the bicycle...
© 2011
