Friday Reads – 30 November 2018

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45 comments

  1. I find the TfL piece on walking/cycling/improving access “Somewhat at odds” shall we say, with reality: – given the prospect of many artisanaal businesses being evicted from their railway-arch premises.

  2. It is not exactly surprising that those who live nearest to a high street, and therefore walk to it, visit that high street more often and therefore spend more at it over a year than those who live further away and therefore drive. The main driver is where people live, rather than the walking environment. Not for the first time, TfL is deliberately confusing correlation and causation in order to “spin” propaganda (however worthy the objective).

  3. @ML

    Indeed – it’s all common sense that should be obvious that TfL are highlighting. Even the claims that increasing the ability of people to walk/cycle to the High Street, and making it more pleasant to walk along it = more sales is pretty obvious. Or that space for 12 bikes to park (seems a bit high, but it’s what the report says – 1 car takes up the space of 12 parked bikes) would bring in more money than the same space being used for 1 car to park – there’s more supply of parking for people after all…

    …of course, that parking for 12 bikes only gives 5x the spend of parking for 1 car, rather than the 8 the difference in the number of people that brings to the High Street (based on average car occupancy in London), suggests that individual cyclists and walkers spend less than those using the car to the High Street. So perhaps there is the ‘spin’ and the reality is somewhat at odds with the hype?

    As for car-vs-walk, distance is only a factor. If driving, then there’s the hassle of parking – massive on High Streets where space is limited (including by time as well as number of spaces), and the option of going to a supermarket with a car park, or a shopping centre.

  4. @Si

    “that parking for 12 bikes only gives 5x the spend of parking for 1 car…………..suggests that individual cyclists and walkers spend less than those using the car to the High Street. ”

    I would have thought that was obvious. There’s only so much you can carry on a bike.
    If I’m going to my local supermarket for a few things, I’ll walk or cycle (or will drop in as I’m passing anyway). But if I’m buying a lot of things, or something too heavy to carry on foot or bike, I take the car.

    Does the calculation take into account that because the cyclists are limited in how much they can buy in one visit, although each cyclist may spend less money on each visit to the shop, they also spend less time there. Thus the 12 cycle spaces may get used by 24 people in the same time that one car uses the equivalent car space.

  5. Speak for yourself – I can carry 150kg of shopping on my cargo bike, which is more than I can ever imagine needing to buy!

    The biggest thing I’ve ever moved in one go is a dismantled wardrobe.

    (It was cheaper than a car, too – at least cheaper than a car that could carry a wardrobe.)

    There’s a virtuous cycle where more cycle facilities can encourage people to live in a 2-5 mile radius of interesting things, which makes cycling more practical.

  6. @Bob: Very few people have a cargo bike and you can’t get twelve of them in the space of a single car….

  7. Repeated surveys have shown that people who cycle or walk to the high street spend more per week or per month than those who drive. It’s because they visit the high street more often, even if an individual visit might shop less.

    The simplistic calculation that “that parking for 12 bikes only gives 5x the spend of parking for 1 car” fails to take account of how long each vehicle is parked for. A faster turnover ensures more vehicles get parked. This is why the former Mayor’s decision to extend short stay parking on red routes from 20 minutes to 40 minutes in the name of helping small businesses has actually had the opposite effect because capacity is actually halved.

    @Greg
    The reason why railway arches are forcing out small businesses has nothing to do with access but because Network Rail has sold off all the railway arches to property companies who are no looking at better ways of making a profit from them. Anecdotal stories, while they may be true, are rarely an effective counter to properly gathered data such as in the TfL report. You can argue about the way the data has been selected or collected, but anecdotes alone tell you little.

  8. The illuminating photos of coloured intersections actually tell you less about the use of colour and more about the benefits of better division of space at junctions between vehicles and others and about the benefits of spending money on decent landscaping.

  9. @Quinlet:

    Network Rail has sold off all the railway arches to property companies who are no looking at better ways of making a profit from them.

    “Better” or profits? As in “bigger” I would assume?

  10. @Quinlet
    “The simplistic calculation that “that parking for 12 bikes only gives 5x the spend of parking for 1 car” fails to take account of how long each vehicle is parked for.”

    Indeed, the per m^2 of it means that you aren’t dealing with turnover of people. Those 12 bike spaces might deal with 36 people / hour a car space deals with 3/hour (which seems to be what you are saying – car people stay longer). That just increases my point that replacing car parking with cycle parking = more people and more profit, but those people are spending significantly less money and time individually per trip than car people.

    Which, in turn, suggests that cyclists do a different sort of shopping to car users, focused on grab-and-go stuff like convenience stores and fast food.

    This is potentially problematic if you are a long-time/high-cost business (or both – eg hairdressers or sit-down restaurant) (and 40 minute parking spaces are as useless as 20 minute for them as it still isn’t long enough to use their business, while reducing capacity for other businesses as people aren’t rushing). At best, such businesses don’t see as much benefit as their grab-and-go neighbours.

    Fast turnrounds are also not necessarily a good thing if you look beyond the bottom line (of certain stores) – there’s more footfall, but less community, as the High Street becomes a vending machine rather than a social space. For planners/councils it shouldn’t all be about maximising private profit, but a balance between creating a environment for businesses (and not just certain ones) to thrive and people to live.

  11. I can’t believe that 12 bikes = 1 car. This figure seems to have been achieved by dividing the the footprint of one by the footprint of the other. However, this is a nonsense as the bikes would be so tightly packed that you could never get to the ones in the middle. I have compared the footprint of newly installed cycle racks in my local library with various average sized cars in the car park and a reasonable comparison for cars to bikes is about 5:1 . So on that basis the whole discussion about relevant usage is flawed. Or am I missing something?

  12. @Littlejohn Just do a Google Image search for bicycle parking car. The Cyclehoop is 4.1m long, which seems to correspond exactly to that assumed by reading a number plate at 5 car lengths (20.5m) eyesight tests.

  13. Littlejohn: Good points. The space required to park any vehicle (bike or car) should logically also include any space required to access the vehicle and for the vehicle to access the outside world. So the bald footprint is not appropriate in either case.

    The access-to-the-world criterion is also complicated by the fact that the same space can also be used for other purposes when the vehicle is not entering/leaving. Which explains why roadside parking may be more space-efficient than a dedicated car park. Cycle parking can sometimes be made more space-efficient by double-decking or sesqui-decking as is sometimes provided in station bike-parks.

    But I think you are right that a reasonable bike/car ratio for roadside parking would be about 5:1.

  14. BikeHanger say 12.
    The Bikehangar offers protection from theft and the elements for up to six bicycles. It is the first bike locker to be granted permission to be installed on the highway. Two can be installed in one car parking space, therefore creating 12 cycle parking spaces.

    https://www.cyclehoop.com/news/may-2013/cyclehoop-to-install-over-60-fully-managed-bikehangars-in-lambeth-hackney-lewisham-haringey-southwark-and-camden-with-more-local-authorities-to-follow/

  15. @SI
    “Which, in turn, suggests that cyclists do a different sort of shopping to car users, focused on grab-and-go stuff like convenience stores and fast food.

    This is potentially problematic if you are a long-time/high-cost business (or both – eg hairdressers or sit-down restaurant)”

    Wait, what? The reason why cyclists do more smaller purchases is because they cannot carry as much. That it would be problematic for businesses where the most you need to carry are leftovers seems incredibly silly to me.

    Now, you can argue that cyclists are on the average poorer so they’re less likely to go to a restaurant or a hairdresser, but that doesn’t seem to be the argument you’re making.

  16. “Now, you can argue that cyclists are on the average poorer”
    You can argue that, but the latest tfl survey suggests that’s wrong. High earning white men are the largest demographic these days.

  17. You wouldn’t want to cycle after a visit to a hairdresser – your helmet would mess up your new ‘do.

  18. @Island Dweller

    “High earning white men are the largest demographic these days.”

    Which is what the Go Cycle schemes and other initiatives are trying to change, by making cycling easier for the more naturally cautious. Having visited Holland, I noticed the much higher proportion of women and children cycling there – and how few of them seem to consider a helmet is necessary. This is probably connected to the type of bikes in evidence – generally staid sit-up-and-beg types with few if any gears, (and ridden at such moderate speeds that it would be impossible to be catapulted onto your head even if you came to a dead stop).

  19. Timbeau: An advantage of the Netherlands though is that it is pretty flat. I live half-way up HIghgate Hill so whichever direction I go it isn’t. I did try using a bicycle for a while many years ago but it was just too impractical. Parts of London can, certainly, make better use of cycling as an alternative to personal motorised vehicles, but they still take more space than buses.

  20. When I lived in the Netherlands in the 80s many of the sit-up-and-beg bikes also had no brakes (in the sense that we understand them) – you stopped by back-pedalling. This in itself discouraged high-speeds.

  21. @AlisonW. Most of the Netherlands is indeed flat. But the area east of Maastricht (up against the Belgian and German borders) is surprisingly hilly. There’s still a lot of ordinary folk on cycles. The most important issue is road design and car driver behaviour rather than topography.

  22. The thing that is said to distinguish us most from our Continental neighbours is our class structure. Any thoughts on the association of bicycles and the working class?

  23. I use a helmet almost always when cycling, even though my speed falls into the category described by timbeau. I am not concerned about cycling into anything and being “catapulted onto my head”; rather the accident I fear (not excessively) is the one my daughter had, of being doored and knocked onto the road. Her helmet meant that she had only mild concussion and no long-term effects.

  24. Topography almost disappears with electric assist. It’s a revelation the first time you try it.
    Lime are starting in the UK so helps with the theft issue.

  25. @ISLANDDWELLER 15.55. That was the area where I lived, sometimes called ‘the Dutch Alps’. What I noticed particularly when I moved there was that the whole cycle network seemed to have been planned, with entirely separate cycle lanes and different cycle traffic lights etc, from scratch rather than added on as an afterthought. Of course, universal cycling has been part of the Dutch culture for a lot longer than in many other countries. As an aside, I was once cut-up on a cycle lane by someone langlauf training. He was wearing what appeared to be cross country skis fitted with roller skate wheels and was moving very quickly.

  26. Roger. Class? I think things are more complex than that. My late dad (worked in a pit) would never dream of getting on a bike once he was able to afford a car. But for the generation younger than me it’s a very different attitude. Cycling can be high status. A high earning friend on mine spends more on bikes than he does on his car (and his car is a 2018 model).
    But as Dave Hill (formerly of the Guardian) constantly points out, the London cycling demographic is overwhelming white and male. There surely a couple of doctoral theses in there investigating why that is.

  27. One of the nice things about cycling is that it’s relatively egalitarian.

    If you can cycle a bike up Swains Lane, you’ll get a nod from other cyclists. The appreciation increases the /worse/ your bike is. Someone weaving their way up the hill on an old steel single speed will get more kudos than someone riding a £6k featherweight carbon superbike.

    There are certainly “Banker only” cycling clubs but those are much more rare than the kind filled with a wide range of people, who actively try and encourage diversity in the sport.

    That’s not saying that many club cyclists aren’t middle class, middle age, white men – but they do make an active effort to be inclusive. For example by offering women-only places on events like London-Wales-London, and actively soliciting applications from underrepresented groups.

    New groups like BikeStormz also show that The Kidz don’t need an invitation or permission from anyone to get out on bikes. Which is great.

  28. @Bob – out in the countryside, however, the cycling demographic is almost 100% MAMIL

  29. I think that has something to do with the local demographic! How many rural villages are populated by young black women?

  30. Interesting comments re cycling. Years ago I used to cycle everywhere. I cycle commuted to 55 Broadway long before LT / TfL had *any* interest in cycling. Finding somewhere to put a bike was a feat in and of itself back then as was gaining access to the one shower in 55 Broadway. For a while I parked my bike in the same garage as the chaffeur driven cars for the Directors! I think I was looked upon as being somewhat mad for cycling to work. And as for one of the Company Secretaries seeing me in my cycle shorts one day – well not sure she ever recovered! 😉

    While I agree that you aren’t going to bring home a flat back settee from IKEA on a normal bike I had no issue with dealing with regular shopping trips nor taking my laundry to the launderette (no washing machine in the digs). A great many trips were pretty feasible and the irony is that the infrastructure was *worse* then but it broadly worked and wasn’t oversubscribed. As cycling was a lower cost thing back then the risk of theft was somewhat lower than now. Despite very few cycle paths I commuted back and forth without incident for many months through Tottenham, Finsbury Park, Camden and into Westminster. That included the horror of the old Trafalgar Square.

    Sadly, I had a sum total of two crashes – one involved a pedestrian who walked into me on Trafalgar Sq north side (no serious injuries thankfully for either party, more shock and surprise) and the other was a hit and run near my home where I was the sole vehicle on a main road and a car just drove into my path – that put me in hospital for observation but thankfully no broken bones. I can’t remember if I was wearing a helmet or not. I do remember my brain feeling as if it was being shaken up and down.

    I claim no great skill as a cyclist apart from being much fitter then but I really don’t feel remotely encouraged to cycle now. I have segregated cycle paths at the top of my street but I think their design is shambolic. I can’t for the life of me work out how I would turn from the cycle path into the road I live in. The entire design is predicated on travelling in straight lines which is ludicrous. We still do not have effective cycle parking facilities outside shops that cater for the higher volumes of cycles being used these days. Given theft risk is MUCH higher now the disconnect between cycle lane provision and useless cycle parking is incredible.

    The Dutch have about 40 years head start on us. Their volte face in policy terms came in the 1970s. They have spent and continue to spend considerable sums to create the appropriate overall *package* of infrastructure that makes cycling the sensible choice. OK they have some advantages in being a relatively flat country but the other aspect is cultural. I suspect (I’ve no stats) that most Dutch motorists are also cyclists so they fully appreciate the benefit of the highway rules that afford cycles priority. I remember being astonished when I cycled in rural Netherlands that cars stopped to let me across at the bottom of roads that joined a main road to a motorway. I’d actually stopped to avoid being run down (UK culture there) and the motorists thought I was daft (probably). Takes a lot of retuning of your instinctive UK responses to fully benefit from the Dutch approach to cycle priority. All of that makes cycling faster, safer and more convenient. It’s no wonder a huge cross spectrum of Dutch society cycles – it is genuinely inclusive and is being taught to each generation that comes along. It’s not viewed as something “daft” or trendy or cliquey.

    We are a very, very long way from any of that in the UK as there is absolutely no government policy framework that cuts across transport, planning, health and finance agendas to create the right initiatives for cycling. Heck I doubt there is anyone even tasked with thinking about such a framework never mind creating it. It is all about ensuring people can drive absolutely everywhere. How many years has the fuel duty escalator being frozen for? 8 years? London has bucked that “drive everywhere” trend for a long while but I wonder how long it can do so now we are in an agenda of service cuts and a woeful budgetary situation at TfL. Having said that the traffic jams in Walthamstow are a sight to behold these days – jammed solid Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Took a bus I was on 25 mins to go barely 2 stops. It used to take 4 minutes (pre Mini Holland) – and, yes, I know I should have walked.

    Sorry if that’s a bit of a rambling set of comments but an awful lot has to be done to get cycling anywhere near being a viable and inclusive transport solution rather than an expensive lifestyle statement for a small section of society.

  31. @BOB – I didn’t think society was entirely composed of a binary choice of MAMIL versus young black women – at least not round here. My point remains from many hours of watching the traffic (waiting for buses, walking the streets, driving to and fro…), that cyclists in rural areas are almost exclusively male and exclusively middle aged despite the local and national demographic being otherwise. In fact, I would go further and say that cycling as a mode of transport in Surrey is almost entirely for leisure rather than for work or VFR, neither of which is likely to generate lycraclad people travelling in groups. Our local stations, for example, both of which have footfalls around the 450 mark and are well equipped with cycle racks, have < 20 bicycles left there each day. Cycling to school is virtually unknown.

  32. @Littlejohn 1/12 12:20

    I agree that 12 bikes = 1 car is pretty unbelievable, but that’s what the report gave as a figure for how much space things take up. And even if it’s 5:1 (I’d say 6 to 8 bikes per car), Quinlet’s argument was that cyclists spend less time parked, and thus we still have something like my initial figures of 8 times the number of visitors giving 5 times the amount of spending if you replace car spaces with cycle parking.

    @Comradfrana 1/12 10:32

    The data TfL were presenting, coupled with what others were saying in this thread, was that you get more cyclists and more spending, but that an average cyclist spends less time and money per trip (but making more trips) than an average car user.

    My comments weren’t about carrying capacity, it’s about the purpose of the visit. If Quinlet is right and cyclists spend less time each trip to the High Street, then that suggests that the extra money spent on the High Street generated from converting car parking to cycle parking is focused onto certain types of shops, and so other types – such as restaurants (where the sticking point is more the length of time) – don’t benefit.

    @Timbeau 2/12 12:36

    Indeed – and that just serves my point that while cyclists generate more money than car users, that it’s only in certain types of shops.

  33. There is a more widespread cycle policy above enhancing local high streets. New housing sets minimum cycling provision standards without vehicle parking. Boroughs are marking out dockless parking. There is a wait list of cycle parking permit applications (at £30pa). Waltham Forest have already installed 250 of those on street Bike Hangars (in resident’s car spaces that they otherwise permit at £50pa). Borough’s like Redbridge are proposing to become an entirely permit controlled parking zone.
    Internationally cities like London or Paris have a positive cycling image with their docking schemes popular with tourists.

    Challenges remain. Despite more than 1,000 residents using Urbo bikes in Redbridge, the company ceased its service from July after only 3 months. The challenges of ground operations and scaling up were greater than anticipated. Urbo will continue to operate in the UK but not in London for now. Urbo also stopped serving Enfield and Waltham Forest saying east London is “no longer suitable” to its business model.
    http://myurbo.com/

    Explanation of Holland in 6 minutes https://youtu.be/XuBdf9jYj7o

  34. There’s no reason whya cyclist can’t stay longer if they want to though – there are no time limits on cycle parking.

  35. Even in the Netherlands the first rule of cycling still applies: It’s always uphill and against the wind…

    It’s surprising how hilly a flat country can be!

  36. Cyclists obviously spend less time on a trip to, e.g., the grocer’s because of carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of a bicycle vs. a car for a haircut or a sit-down meal is obviously identical.

    With respect to packing, Hackney council’s regs call for 2m^2 for two bikes, which seems like a lot to me. I’m not sure what the nominal spacing of car parking spaces is.

  37. @ Aleks – I am well aware of the residents cycle parking hangars – I have two near my residence. They’re never full. Quite why two are needed when bikes are perfectly storable in houses and flats I know not. Given the never ending highway adjustments and things like cycle hangers I think someone has too much money to spend given other aspects of cycle priority work appear to have been scrapped / descoped from Mini Holland.

    Quite what cycle hire schemes being attractive to tourists has to do with anything I know not. Sure tourists use them – usually nearly killing themselves in the process from what I’ve observed in parts of Central London. The more pertinent test is whether cycle hire is of any value to London residents who ride in from their home area and then do their business in Zone 1. There can’t be much of that given how few boroughs outside Zone 1 are in the scheme. Therefore it’s a scheme for a proportion of tourists to play with and commuters to use from terminal stns to near their offices. And I won’t mention the subsidy per ride – something’s that not being tackled whereas the bus network is being hacked to bits to save money despite subsidy per trip being a fraction of that expended on cycle hire. It’s the economics of the mad house just to save political “face”. That’s on top of the economics of the mad house imposed on the Mayoralty by past and current central government decisions about TfL’s overall financing and support. It is rapidly turning into a lesson of how not to run and finance a transport system in a world city and there was me thinking New York City had captured that particular “lesson” for itself.

  38. @WW
    The reason why the Santander bike scheme has not extended much beyond zone 1 is simply money. The boroughs really want it extended but because, contrary to expectations, the scheme runs at a loss, TfL is loathe to expand too quickly.

  39. I’d accept that bikes should be stored in houses/flats if cars are subject to the same conditions.

    (A rule which seems to work for Japan.)

  40. Although its obviously not the whole story, I’d still guess that the main factor behind:

    – walker spend per trip less than cyclist spend per trip less than driver spend per trip (if I have got this right)

    – and walker annual spend more than cyclist annual spend more than driver annual spend

    is all about frequent trips to local small shopping centre vs fewer trips to more distant larger centre – which is the cause of the modal choice rather than the consequence of it.

    Correlation is not causation. Often causation works the opposite way round to the way the propagandist wants you to believe.

  41. @ML – a timely warning! On such occasions , it’s always wise to look at the very close relationship between sunspots and UK brick production… ( no, really)

  42. @SI 3 December 2018 at 10:02

    Oh, apologies, I think I now understand what you’re saying. The studies that I’ve seen that say that cyclists spend less per trip than car drivers but shop more often were specifically about shops, not services like restaurants and hairdressers, so that’s what I though was talked about.

    If it was about cyclists spending shorter intervals in general, then yes, what you’re saying would make sense, although I still think a breakdown would be necessary to know for sure if cyclists are using these kind of services less or not.

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