How to cycle through a pandemic
Encouraging more people to cycle won’t just solve our transport issues, reducing pollution and carbon emissions, it will bind us together, and yield massive health benefits, says Alan Anderson
Few of us had any idea what to expect when we descended into lockdown a year ago. We knew so little about COVID, nothing about potential vaccines, and had only dim, fearful ideas of what the disease might mean for our work, our schools, and our home towns.
Certainly none of us could have predicted the profound effect that the pandemic would have on our cycling habits: but one year on, change can be seen everywhere, positive change that, if we let it, promises to improve all of our lives in years to come. Buses and trains emptied when we realised how easily the virus could spread through them, and thousands of us dug an old bike out of the shed or garage and rode it for the first time in years. 2020’s fine spring made an enticing prospect of those essential journeys, and with roads suddenly emptied of cars we all had a glimpse of how pleasant cycling could be, if only there was less traffic. Many of us opted to take our daily exercise by bike, too, and rural lanes entertained thousands of furloughed or homeworking people who seized on the ride as their escape from domestic captivity.
In an unusually prescient move
– a rare example of Westminster exercising good judgement in those feverish, panicky days – bike shops were designated essential retail, and allowed to stay open: they rapidly emptied as their stock was snapped up. Second-hand channels and workshops also reported strong sales, with community bike organisations like Glasgow’s Bike For Good shifting hundreds of refurbished machines.
Pippa Thomas, one of their Health & Wellbeing co-ordinators, told me that on the outreach side, the organisation also saw a “significant rise in demand from the asylum-seeking and refugee community”. By reducing the cost of
Nextbike membership, Bike For Good were able to open up the horizons of a host of people who were suffering from transport poverty. Meanwhile, another Bike For Good team, Active Travel, made good use of its fleet of training bicycles that had been forced off the road by lockdown restrictions, loaning them out to key workers who would otherwise have been forced to use public transport; and, using cargo e-bikes, they also started delivering parcels for local food banks and medicine drops for pharmacists. Meanwhile, local councils seized the opportunity to introduce new bike lanes and accelerate existing programmes. City planners have known for decades that cyclefriendly cities are not only healthier and more pleasant, but much more prosperous. In Copenhagen, which has remodelled itself Amsterdamstyle in recent years, they reckon that every kilometre cycled benefits wider society by 58 pence while every km driven by car costs 65p. They also know that direct, unhindered cycle paths between a city’s focal points are essential.
Significant cycle routes to have opened in the pandemic year include Glasgow’s South City Way, linking Queen’s Park to the City Centre, and the closure to motor traffic of Kelvin Way. Weighed against that is the fact that many suburbs and new towns were conceived with the car in mind, and don’t lend themselves well to ‘active transport’ like walking and riding.
Another area that has boomed in popularity is mountain biking in the countryside. Thomas, a keen MBXER herself, reports that trail centres are busier than ever before with riders enjoying a fresh-air blast along carfree trails.
All well and good, but what lasting impact will all this have? There are many reasons why keeping people on their bikes – and encouraging more of us to get on them – should be one of the nation’s top priorities. It won’t just solve our transport issues, reducing pollution and carbon emissions, it will bind us together, and yield massive health benefits. Too many neighbourhoods are blighted by the social isolation that transport poverty causes: creating safe, direct routes between them and our city centres opens employment opportunities, and makes our cities better places to live in a host of other ways. Facing Western Europe’s worst lifeexpectancy figures, Scotland needs the health benefits of a regularlycycling population more than most. A huge 2017 study by the
University of Glasgow compared the health of cycle commuters to the general population, finding that their mortality rates were lower for cancer by 40 per cent, heart disease by 42 per cent and everything else to boot by 41 per cent. Because these spectacular figures take into account the tiny number of cyclists who die in accidents, they rebut claims that the risks of cycling outweigh the health benefits.
Regular cycling also reduces the risk of developing type two diabetes, which currently affects the quality of life of one in every 25 Scots, and lowers the risk of stroke. These numbers become even more urgent when we consider the relationship between underlying poor health and the impact of COVID infection: a fitter population will be at less risk if, as seems likely, new variants return. Regular exercise also boosts production of immunoglobulins, which play a critical role in fighting off infection by recognising and binding themselves to foreign invaders.
But quality of life is as important as its length; we know that those over50s who cycle (or e-bike) regularly have better cognitive function and mental health, and we also know that exercise can cut your chances of developing dementia by 28 per cent, Parkinson’s by 18 per cent, and Alzheimer’s by a whopping 45 per cent.
Facing Western Europe’s worst life-expectancy figures, Scotland needs the benefits of a regularlycycling population
One of the factors holding people back is Scotland’s hilly geography. The same climbs and descents that make for fantastic trail riding do, undeniably, make the daily commute less inviting, but the recent explosion in popularity of e-bikes, with sales doubling year-on-year, shows how a little motorised assistance helps older and less athletic riders take the plunge. Paradoxically, e-bike riders get more exercise than conventional bike riders, because they end up riding their machines so much more. To reduce the cost of getting on your bike, in an era of continued high demand and limited supply, you could consider building your own up, or restoring that old, rusted-up junker that’s lurking at the back of the shed. Bike-making is easier than you’d think, and it’s definitely more satisfying to ride around on a bike that you’ve made yourself: learning a few basic skills of maintenance and repair will save you plenty of cash, too.
If the events of the last year have taught us anything, it’s that predicting the future is a fool’s game. That said, it’s tempting to look ahead and see a time when more of us ride to work, to school, and the shops; and we all enjoy the benefits, as a result. If, in the worst-case scenario, we do ever have to face another pandemic, we will at least be better prepared for it: fitter, healthier, wealthier and, who knows, maybe a little wiser, too.