FALLING NUMBERS
Why are the numbers of people cycling on UK roads falling? And what can be done to arrest the decline?
Why are cyclist numbers in the UK falling, and how can we stop the decline?
It’s blindingly obvious that nobody ever takes up cycling to dodge potholes while being ‘close passed’ by speeding drivers. However, according to recent research, that appears to be what many cyclists experience on Britain’s roads.
In a recent survey of 15,000 of its members, British Cycling learned a whopping 87 per cent were close passed by drivers at least once a week and 66 per cent were worried about their general safety when riding on Britain’s roads. What’s more, 70 per cent believe conditions haven’t improved in the last five years.
Against that backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that Sport England found 275,000 fewer people were cycling on our roads for sport in the last year alone – with road cycling in decline across the board – for leisure, sport and travel.
It feels oxymoronic that an activity associated with so many physical and mental health benefits is perceived as so
dangerous. Cycling’s also a flagbearer for tackling congestion, cutting air pollution and improving workplace productivity – but if cycling on Britain’s roads means regularly feeling at threat, not many people will find getting on a bike a tempting prospect, however good it might look to them on paper.
British Cycling’s policy manager, Nick Chamberlin, is certainly concerned. “We saw a massive spike in people trying cycling in the build-up to the 2012 London Olympics,” he says. “A lot of those people came from other sports, like football. What we are now seeing is a big churn. Primarily, they have just had enough of the conditions on our roads.”
And it’s not just those new to cycling, either. “Even the most hardcore are leaving the sport,” says Chamberlin. “They are fed up of the experience they have had over the last five years.”
Chamberlin calls this trend “depressing and very worrying”, not least because part of British Cycling’s job is to get more people on bikes.
“It makes for difficult conversations with our main funder, Sport England, who want us to get more people fit and active,” he says.
Although British Cycling is doing its bit through programmes to bring in new cyclists, whether via training, traffic-free cycling events or its programme of women-only Breeze rides, the major problem comes when riders hit the roads. As Chamberlin puts it: “How can we get those who haven’t been out on the roads for years [to cycle] if we can’t learn from the core riders, and use that to properly tackle the issues?” Anger management Many riders are all too aware of driver aggression and, anecdotally, some feel it’s getting worse, not better. “I think it feels more hostile out there at the moment,” London Cycling Campaign’s Simon Munk says. Although he stresses it’s anecdotal, he has theories. “We are seeing a growing situation in London where traffic speeds have gone down and as a result congestion appears to have gone up. Drivers who are facing more barriers to getting where they want to go seem to be behaving more aggressively.”
Munk also wonders if routing apps like Waze, which encourage drivers to take short cuts through circuitous residential streets, are adding to frustrations. Above all, he believes a “massive erosion” in road policing is to blame. “If drivers feel they can get away with bad behaviour, they will,” he says. “That enforcement element is one of the most important in terms of driver behaviour.”
“SportEngland found275,000 fewerpeoplewere cyclingonour roadsforsportin the last year” “Roadcyclingis in decline across theboardfor leisure, sport andtravel” “Telling drivers toslowdown doesn’twork;we havetodesign andenforceit”
“At the end of the day, telling drivers to be nice, well, we know that doesn’t work. We know telling drivers to slow down doesn’t work; we have to design it, we have to enforce it.”
Then there is the physical infrastructure. He says: “The answer has to be, as ever, a network of safe cycle routes. Where there’s infrastructure being built, cycle rates are going up. Where you are far from any safe cycling routes, rates are going down.” Munk points to European countries where a cycle network extends across rural areas, linking villages and towns, as well as throughout cities. These routes separate cyclists from traffic, or are successful in slowing traffic, in a comprehensive way.
In the UK Martin Williamson, who lives in south west London, cycles his children around in a cargo bike. He also commutes and races bikes in and around London and Surrey. While separate cycle paths feel safe for him and his family, he says, “open roads are stressful for any cyclist, particularly when riding with others.
“Cyclists are not welcome riding two abreast anywhere that I cycle,” Williamson reports. “Riding side-by-side, talking to a friend, means looking constantly behind you, being beeped at every ride and regularly being shouted at [to ride in single file]. Unless I leave very early on a Sunday morning, within half an hour of setting out I always regret trying to ride with a friend.”
Even alone, he says, it’s problematic. “Drivers communicate with their cars via close passes, tail-gating, sharp pulling in after passing, accelerating away hard after passing. If you ride regularly on the road you know that you are unwelcome.”
He says although most rides are stressfree, “I never relax and I am always aware that motorists do not want me there.” Road to nowhere Chamberlin says that this experience is fairly typical. He echoes what Munk says and what many believe.
“We have a total lack of either visible or effective policing of our roads and vulnerable road users are caught up in that, more than most road users.”
He says although British Cycling’s membership is growing, the same message is coming through from regional boards, where some cycling clubs are losing members. Some of those are turning to indoor trainers instead, a trend he calls “worrying”.
“After years and years of road riding, they want peace and quiet on their bikes,” he says. That, and the move towards gravel riding, he says is “partly fuelled by this desire to get away from cars and traffic. It’s the experience people have and it’s totally understandable”.
Not everyone will have experienced driver aggression on Britain’s roads, and the president of the AA, Edmund King, is among those who hasn’t, though he does admit there is a problem with driver attitudes and awareness. He says: “The fact that 65 per cent of drivers are ‘surprised when a cyclist appears from nowhere’ – which obviously they don’t – shows that they need to be more aware of their surroundings when driving at all times.”
Ultimately, education can only go so far. As Martin Williamson experienced, some people don’t seem to like cyclists being on the roads and for those drivers, education isn’t enough to change behaviour. In the West Midlands, police officers Mark Hodson and Steve Hudson are regularly lauded for their close-pass operation, where drivers overtaking a plain clothed police officer cycling are offered roadside education or, in the most severe cases, prosecuted. The Force-wide operation has helped reduce cycling collisions by 20 per cent since it launched in September 2016 – and it seems to have helped improve driver behaviour dramatically.
At the time, a new clean-air charge for drivers had been announced in Birmingham and Hodson and Hudson saw “the perfect storm” coming. More people would inevitably ditch cars for cycles, and after a spate of cycling deaths in London they worried that, without action, Birmingham could face the same fate.
“We needed to change the culture around that,” said Hodson, who says the point of the work was “to create an environment where more people can choose active travel.”
Three years down the line, Hodson showed a Channel 5 camera crew around Birmingham as part of a programme titled WarOntheRoads. When asked to take them to somewhere people didn’t like cyclists, they could hardly believe what they found.
“We took them to an industrial area, to a truckers’ cafe,” said Hodson. “The kind of place you’d think they’d like to play the old
cyclist bingo. We found they couldn’t find anyone saying anything bad about cyclists. That’s because we spent five years changing perceptions so we don’t get those attitudes.”
Hodson believes that’s why attitudes differ so dramatically between Birmingham and London. He also recognises publicity is a key part of what makes them effective. Anyone watching WarOntheRoads, no matter where they live, will see at least one driver losing their license - and they should take note.
“You’ll never get everybody to like cyclists,” says Hodson. “It’s losing money that changes behaviour, it’s a personal effect on someone that changes behaviour. That’s what the psychologists we work with told us. Making every cyclist on the road a threat to their driving license - that’s what changes behaviour.”
Other police forces around the UK are taking on their own versions of the operation, largely led by public pressure on police. At time of writing 25 of the 42 police forces in the country have carried out close-passing operations, including the Met, Greater Manchester and Avon and Somerset.
“It comes down to people phoning in, saying, ‘I want this, I pay my taxes,’” adds Hodson.
But it has to be done properly. That means the on-road close-pass work; a ‘robust’ online third-party reporting system where people can submit video footage; and the media (and social media) attention the operation gets. It’ll all create the “credible threat of prosecution” in a driver’s mind.
“Where you see police forces doing it halfheartedly it just doesn’t change behaviour,” says Hodson.
Cycling UK has crowdfunded money to provide police forces with materials so that they can carry out their own closepass initiatives, but the charity would be the first to point out that policing is not the only solution to the problem. Ultimately, people cycling and sharing the road with large trucks and fast-moving cars is never going to be a safe or attractive prospect for most people.
As Cycling UK’s Sam Jones points out, “For us at Cycling UK, funding – or the lack of it – is a major issue. It’s about creating segregated space, it’s about making those places where people can get into cycling.”
The government has an aim to enable 800m extra cycling trips by 2025 but has admitted it will miss its target by a third. The Department for Transport has asked local authorities to draw up strategic cycle
network plans, known as ‘local cycling and walking infrastructure plans’, or LCWIPs. However, there’s no funding to help cash-strapped councils do that, let alone build the cycle networks. As Sam Jones puts it: “These plans are at best lines and scribblings on a map, and at worst are just ignored.”
Former cycling minister Jesse Norman pushed cycling up the agenda in Westminster and, before he was shuffled over to the Treasury, he became a lot more bullish in calling for greater funding, saying although there was progress in government, it “falls short of the full mind change I’d like to see”.
Some, however, are feeling hopeful that, now that Norman is in the Treasury, there is a much better chance cycling will get the money it so desperately needs. And that money needs to fund physical spaces for cycling. Without that, cycling won’t become something anyone can do, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity and, in many cases, disability – for some disabled people cycling is much easier than walking.
Jones says: “People who are riding bikes now are doing so in spite of the conditions. To achieve the government’s ambition of making cycling and walking the natural choice for short journeys we need greater diversity.”
That could mean (in addition to cycle routes) programmes supporting people to start or restart cycling – the ‘soft measures’ like community cycle groups, events to help fix people’s bikes and give them the confidence to use them, like Cycling UK’s annual Big Bike Revival.
It’s an issue that urgently needs addressing. And, failing all else, there’s always the potential for embarrassment on a world stage to motivate us. As Nick Chamberlin points out, the Road World Championships are coming to Yorkshire this year – and that means not only a greater global profile but the tourism that inevitably comes with it. Since the Tour de France Grand Départ visited Yorkshire there has been a real challenge on the county’s roads, Chamberlin says.
“When you have tourists coming to Yorkshire to ride bikes and they have a bad experience, we have had local authorities taking action,” action that includes public engagement programmes talking to people about the dangers and effects of close passing. Top down management Many cyclists around the country are looking forward to a forthcoming spending review, and the new cycling minister Michael Ellis, to see if anything will change any time soon.
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “We are proud that England has some of the safest roads in the world but we are always looking at ways to make them safer as well as to encourage more people to take up cycling. Our ambitious Cycling and Walking Safety action plan will help to do this, including through a review of parts of the Highway Code, to help keep cyclists safe.
“We’re investing around £2 billion in cycling and walking over the course of this Parliament, and have tripled cycling and walking investment per head since 2010.
“This will create safe routes connecting communities across England, and allow people to enjoy the benefits of cycling.”
“AtCycling UK,funding– or its lack of – is the issue. It’s about creating segregated space; it’s aboutmaking those places wherepeople can get into cycling.” SamJones Cycling UK