RosieBell

Brightness falls into the air

The most famous verse about plague is Thomas Nashe’s In Time of Pestilence. 

Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye;
I am sick, I must die –
Lord, have mercy on us!

Metaphorically, darkness has fallen in a time of anxiety. Literally, the air has never looked brighter and clearer. In a fine Spring the colours of flowers and young foliage are intense and the air is clean. In the highly polluted parts of the world eg Delhi they have seen blue skies; in China the smog has cleared from their mega-cities and they can see the stars.

It’s as if the world has been newly washed.

The pandemic’s impact on the environment has been staggering. Carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are heading for a record 5.5-5.7% annual drop. From mid-January to mid-February, China’s carbon emissions fell by around 25%. In Delhi, a city with often the worst air quality in the world, pollution caused by PM2.5s reduced by roughly 75% as traffic congestion dropped by 59%. A 70% reduction in toxic nitrogen oxides was reported in Paris, while satellite imagery showed nitrogen dioxide levels in Milan fell by about 40%. In the UK, road travel has decreased by as much as 73% and in London, toxic emissions at major roads and junctions fell by almost 50%.

In my city the air pollution has fallen by 50%.

You can see it; you can smell it. The car-farting that was part of the background of getting round the city suddenly becomes noticeable from one individual vehicle.

There is plenty of evidence that polluted air exacerbates the chance of dying of Covid-19.

researchers in the US are building a case that suggests air pollution has significantly worsened the Covid-19 outbreak and led to more deaths than if pollution-free skies were the norm. As well as predisposing the people who have lived with polluted air for decades, scientists have also suggested that air pollution particles may be acting as vehicles for viral transmission.

I like to imagine that citizens will demand clean air as being essential as clean water and clean disposal of sewage – that is, that an aberration will only be tolerated if it is temporary.

What else has changed is the use of urban space. A pretty, cherry-tree lined street near me which was once a challenge to cross now has joggers running down the centre white line. On other streets children play. On the arterial route where we have had a long, exhausting campaign to get a mile of cycle lane, there are now children cycling and the Council is considering emergency measures to build a far longer cycle lane instead of the convoluted compromise that we had battled for (see an account of this here). 

The shared walking and cycling paths have been crammed; people are therefore using the streets as they should be used. They are looking at the masses of tarmac that had been taken over by single-occupancy cars and wondering why they couldn’t walk or cycle safely. And so the demand has come for more space, instead of pedestrians and cyclists being jammed at the edges for the convenience of the motor vehicles.

The bike shops have been selling out, my bike repair guy was working until 11pm to fix the bikes that had been rusting in garages, and the docking stations for hire bikes have become empty.

To accommodate streets now busier with bikes, as well as facilitate social distancing, some places have installed temporary cycle lanes or closed streets to cars. Pop-up bike lanes have appeared in cities including Berlin, Budapest, Mexico City, New York, Dublin and Bogotá. Governments from New Zealand to Scotland have made funding available for temporary cycle lanes and walkways amid the pandemic. In Brussels, the entire city core will become a priority zone for cyclists and pedestrians from early May for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, temporary street closures to cars have taken place in Brighton, Bogotá, Cologne, Vancouver and Sydney as well as multiple US cities including Boston, Denver and Oakland. In England, restrictions have been lifted to enable and encourage councils to more quickly close streets to cars.

Large areas of London are to be made car free. The Council in my city has been closing off some streets for use on foot and cycle and are in the process of repurposing more. Emergency powers are being employed to take measures which used to grind through the laborious planning process. The UK government is pushing councils to produce pop up lanes and urging commuters to commute by cycle.

Active travel campaigners are dazed. The dream we have been chasing for decades suddenly materialises at the bidding of unlikely politicians - the wider pavements; filtered residential areas; cycle lanes on arterial routes; slow car speeds - anything that removes the domination of the car and making exercise as part of getting about instead of something done in gyms. If you want to see a crowd of slimmish, healthy people, go to a cycle demonstration. (Obesity is another condition that makes you more vulnerable to Covid-19.) This is our big break that has arrived after years of toil. But we may of course lose this opportunity as we return to some kind of normality and people hop back into their cars again, in fear of public transport.

Chris Boardman, the former Olympic champion and Greater Manchester’s first Cycling and Walking Commissioner, says that the 1950s level of traffic has made a nice environment, but that can only be continued by a change of transport policy.

we are at a crossroads and we could go either way, and I don’t know which way it is. For the first time we genuinely have a real choice, we could change our transport culture, the way we use our streets.

The pandemic has upended our society, as a war would, and after a war revolutions come. 1945 brought in a Labour government and the welfare state, which had been proposed for decades and demonstrated in other countries eg Michael Savage’s New Zealand of the late 30s. 

Of course we all hope for a future that resembles our desires. Socialists point to the rise in estimation of obviously useful jobs like nurses, cleaners, carers and bin collectors along with the general co-operation as proof of the desire for a better, more sharing society. A libertarian Facebook friend extols the local delivery of various goods like meat and vegetables instead of the supply chain, with a whiff of caveat emptor for hygiene control. A Conservative predicts the end of the expansion of universities and media and gender studies degrees. George Monbiot suggests changing to an eco-education.  And John Gray, ever the happy pessimist, looks forward to a time like Russia’s civil war with cannibalism on the table (so to speak).

I have modest visions. I have to say I would quite like to get back to my normality which includes my workplace village of office gossip, a coffee machine and two big screens instead of a poxy little laptop for working from home. With the addition – that commutes will be short; workplaces scattered; shopping more local; streets far more free of cars and every damned front garden space paved over for car storage dug up and used what it was intended for – flowers and vegetables.

A Stir in the Suburbs

A question – does pro-Palestinian activism make people barmy or are barmy people attracted to pro-Palestinian activism?

Here’s a case. I live on the western side of Edinburgh, in a suburb called Roseburn, and I follow the Friends of Roseburn Park Facebook page. A post caught my eye. It was advertising a "Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism" event in London.

That’s a change from bulb-planting and mural painting.

I guessed this was Pete Gregson – who Shiraz Socialist has covered here and Tendance Coatesy here. Expelled from the Labour Party, expelled from the GMB for anti-semitism, fired from the Council, a 24/7 activist.

Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism (LAZIR) was summed up here:- 

A new campaign group, “Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism”, or LAZIR, has been set up to support Jeremy Corbyn and campaign for the International Definition of Antisemitism to be dropped and for the Jewish Labour Movement to be thrown out of the Labour Party. The group’s logo is a laser beam smashing the logo of a Jewish Labour group.

The founder appears to be Pete Gregson, who was reportedly expelled by the GMB Union after he claimed that Israel was a “racist endeavour” that “exaggerates” the Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million Jews “for political ends.” According to a post on his Facebook page, Labour Against the Witch Hunt, are seeking to expel him from their group. If he is expelled, Mr Gregson has vowed to hold a launch event for LAZIR outside Labour Headquarters in London.

Interestingly, this is the second time that Labour Against the Witch Hunt has split, the first time being when Gerry Downing was expelled and founded Labour Against the Witch Hunt Within Labour Against the Witch Hunt, both of which met at opposite sides of the same pub at the same time. Mr Downing, who was himself expelled from the Labour Party due to his views on the Holocaust, now appears to be advising Mr Gregson on policy for LAZIR.

Other Friends of Roseburn Park thought the post on Facebook inappropriate and one commented:-

The Friends of Roseburn Park SCIO is a Charity who’s sole purposes are “The provision of recreational facilities, or the organisation of recreational activities, with the object of improving the conditions of life for the persons for whom the facilities or activities are primarily intended". Political statements of any kind have no place here and admin should immediately remove this post in my opinion.

The post was taken down. Gregson is a Friend of Roseburn Park and in fact does some useful work like finding grants for a new play park and a carved seat – as an ex-shop steward he does know how to pull the levers, as I have found with my own special focus of interest.

A word picture. On the western side of Edinburgh is Murrayfield, a leafy conservation area of handsome townhouses and villas, climbing up Corstorphine Hill, above the Water of Leith. On the flat floodplain below are Roseburn and Saughtonhall, not so grand nor so leafy, but pleasant enough. Roseburn is the shopping area. It’s prettily situated by the river, has an eighteenth century bridge and some attractive buildings, and would be totally delightful if not cut through by the A8, the main road from Edinburgh to Glasgow, so it thunders with traffic and wafts with fumes all along the section called Roseburn Terrace.

Visualisation of Roseburn Terrace with cycle route

On this arterial route, Edinburgh Council proposed a cycle way at the end of 2014. I was thrilled by this; many of the residents were not, and I began to attend the Murrayfield Community Council where I observed the Edinburgh high bourgeoisie acting like Celtic supporters after a trouncing by Rangers at the thought of (a) losing a parking place; (b) being swarmed by bicycles; (c) having money being wasted on an unused cycle route. The cycling and planning officers who have had to deal with constant baying and table thumping have remained amazingly civil and patient throughout.

There were years of consultations, opposition, further consultations and furious public meetings. Pete Gregson emerged as the chief organiser, whipping up the traders and getting the local media on the case (he is very good at raising the media) showing pictures of traders with folded rejecting arms and posters of Save our Community. Eventually the route did get through the Council’s Transport and Environment Committee and now there is only a Scottish Government hearing to come. Work should begin at the end of the year.

Gregson though has not been defeated. He produced leaflets of a post-apocalyptic Roseburn with boarded up shops, while he led his dwindling band of traders to call for compensation.

He then found a new front for attack. A local resident, a retiree from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, concluded that the cycle route will push the traffic further to the north side of Roseburn Terrace, and with the air movement, will raise the levels of NO2. Gregson duly produced leaflets of people in gas masks. The last two Murrayfield CC meetings have been filled with a sudden outrage that car pollution is responsible for asthma, dementia, and early deaths. (When I get time I’ll check through the Murrayfield CC minutes to see if the air quality on Roseburn Terrace has ever been an issue of any concern before a cycle route was mooted.)

As well as putting in a cycle route and more pedestrian crossings, the Council is also doing some place-making and general refurbishment. The information boards for a consultation were put on the historic bridge. The night before the officers held a drop-in event these boards were spray-painted quite carefully so the bridge itself was not hurt, and Gregson’s posters stuck over them. At the next Community Council meeting a Police Sergeant gave us a lecture on the selfishness and anti-democratic nature of such an act, and indeed vandalism and anti-social behaviour are usually exclaimed over at community council meetings. Gregson changed the subject to the theft of his bicycle.

Vandalised information boards on Old Colt Bridge

At this meeting, which was a few days ago (14 May) Gregson said he would be holding a demo about the cycle route causing a rise in pollution levels when the Transport and Environment Committee (TEC) met on the Thursday. Someone in the community council stressed very firmly that this was not officially from the Murrayfield CC, but through another one of his organisations, the Roseburn Vision Group.

So on the day of the TEC meeting at the City Chambers, there was a demo of 3 people –Gregson and 2 local traders, one in a gas mask, the other holding a poster saying Save Baby Finn.

Baby Finn? Well, Ruth Davidson, MSP for this constituency and the Scottish Conservative leader, has her HQ on the north side of Roseburn Terrace. She has a new baby called Finn. Gregson handed out the following press release:-

Edinburgh Council plans to asphyxiate Ruth Davidson’s Baby

Evidence has come to light to suggests Council mandarins seek to prevent the rise of the Conservatives in Scotland by suffocating them at source.

Their scheme requires increasing the levels of nitrogen dioxide at Ruth’s Edinburgh Constituency office on the south side of Roseburn Terrace to deadly levels. They know that Ruth, like most modern mums, will probably take her baby to work if she can. But pollution levels at Ruth’s office are already at their legal max of 40 ug/m3 for toxic nitrogen dioxide and are set to shoot up to around 60/ugm3 if Council plans to pollute Roseburn come to fruition.

I suppose this is supposed to be satirical. I can’t think of any other explanation except that it is the wildest conspiracy theorising.

Gregson was allowed his ten minutes at the TEC meeting. He made a rambling speech, referring to him being sacked by the Council, and repeated the accusation that the Council is trying to suffocate baby Conservatives. Cllr Lesley Macinnes, the Transport and Environment Convener, told him off, saying his press release was “utterly shameful” (applause from the Committee). Gregson shouted, “Let Baby Finn live.” The Committee adjourned and found the standing order which allowed them to tell Gregson to exit. Gregson tried to sit in the public benches, then left waving a gas mask. About 20 minutes later a security guard came in saying he had been listening outside. He was banned from the building. The police were called but were not needed.

As I said, Gregson is very good at getting media attention and this was splashed everywhere. Google it if you will under Pete Gregson Ruth Davidson. His being sacked from the Council (which is thought to be one reason for his unrelenting campaign against a cycle route) was noted, as was his being expelled from the GMB.

He did take exception to being called an anti-cycling campaigner and has now got the media outlets to change this to a “pro-cycling campaigner”. That is, at anti-cycle route demos he wears an ancient cycling helmet while standing on the pavement waving a placard or shouting through a megaphone, and he proposes the worst kind of convoluted back routes with the prefix of Speaking as a Cyclist.

I know these are the days of self-identity, but if you identify as something e.g. a Russian, if no Russian thinks you are Russian you are unlikely to be one. Spiked identifies as being on the left, no leftist agrees. Any Edinburgh cycling campaigner would see Gregson as a vexatious force against decent cycle provision, who is paying off his grudge against the Council by fanning anxiety among the traders and rage from the nimbies who cherish their parking places as their only children

You can see him on the webcast of the meeting at around 1:20.

Highly conservative Murrayfield coming under the influence of an ex-shop steward anti Zionist is certainly full of comedy.

And the question still remains – does anti-Zionist obsession turn people into loons, or are loons attracted to anti-Zionism?

I have a right because I have

 I’d been having thoughts about the “right” to own a car and a place to park it. Two things I’d observed:-

1. A friend who loves to do up classic cars– ahh if the only car owners were those who really did love automobiles.
2. Loki the Scottish rapper, winner of the Orwell prize for his book, Poverty Safari. He tweets sense normally and engages civilly with Unionists. This has made the madder Nats accuse of him of being a sell out with subsequent abuse, which he meets robustly.  However, when he started to complain about the lack of parking in his area, he stopped tweeting on the subject– he didn’t know he’d get such a furious response from the sustainable transport gang. He, who had seen his childhood poverty in a larger social context, could not see his car in the same way. 

I was slowly formulating, “Cars as luxuries for hobbyists or the rich would be like Lear jets or private helicopters. You may object about how they are obtained by unequal wealth but the damage they do is limited. It was when cars became necessities for mass transport that they turned into the barbarian hordes of city destroyers that they have become.”  Health, education, sewerage systems, electricity, postal delivery, even broadband, they should be distributed and available and affordable, when they are not free, to all.  Cars, and the infrastructure they require – no.

Yesterday I posted on Facebook a link to an article about the conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians in shared space.  I got this comment:-

SC:- - More cyclists wanting every stretch of tar to themselves.

Cyclists asking for the kind of safe, connected space that motorists and pedestrians take pretty much for granted get furious reactions. It is the Bounderby fury that workers petitioning for a half day off on Saturday and a work day of 12 instead of 14 hours are sybarites, calling insolently for a life of leisure. It is the anger of the unthinkingly privileged being challenged. 

The comment thread then followed the path familiar to cycling activists, with the mythical road tax being evoked.  SC’s last comment is:-

“Yes local taxes pay towards the roads but the car drivers tops it up massively with the extra tax imposed on them compared to a cyclist. And not every car in a city only transports one person. It's a human right to have a choice to drive cycle walk or run and should be bullied out of driving because of higher and higher taxes and insurance only drivers pay . As for space a car uses its the same as a cyclist because the highway code is give a cyclist the space of a car.”

He has been asked to consider the space taken by 10 cycles parking vs 10 cars, 10 cycles pulled up at the lights vs 10 cars and has not yet responded.  The “human right to have a choice to drive” phrase is a marvel, equating car ownership with the right not to be tortured or subject to arbitrary arrest. It is a wonderful demonstration of a privilege being perceived as a right – which is why debates between drivers vs sustainable transport types are so bitter and angry.  Drivers aren’t just put out that they may not have it all their way in the future – they view themselves as victims of a gross injustice, like women denied the franchise.  

This essay by Andre Gorz eloquently said it all back in 1973.

The worst thing about cars is that they are like castles or villas by the sea: luxury goods invented for the exclusive pleasure of a very rich minority, and which in conception and nature were never intended for the people. Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one.…

This is pretty much common knowledge in the case of the seaside villas. No politico has yet dared to claim that to democratize the right to vacation would mean a villa with private beach for every family. Everyone understands that if each of 13 or 14 million families were to use only 10 meters of the coast, it would take 140,000km of beach in order for all of them to have their share! To give everyone his or her share would be to cut up the beaches in such little strips—or to squeeze the villas so tightly together—that their use value would be nil and their advantage over a hotel complex would disappear. In short, democratization of access to the beaches point to only one solution—the collectivist one...

Now, why is it that what is perfectly obvious in the case of the beaches is not generally acknowledged to be the case for transportation? Like the beach house, doesn’t a car occupy scarce space? Doesn’t it deprive the others who use the roads (pedestrians, cyclists, streetcar and bus drivers)? Doesn’t it lose its use value when everyone uses his or her own? And yet there are plenty of politicians who insist that every family has the right to at least one car and that it’s up to the “government” to make it possible for everyone to park conveniently, drive easily in the city, and go on holiday at the same time as everyone else, going 70 mph on the roads to vacation spots.

Andre Gorz goes on to make a variety of points that are now commonplaces among sustainable transport campaigners:- 

• car ownership has turned cities into sprawls with increasing distances between shopping, work and schools, which reinforces the reliance on the car;
• mass ownership of cars jams up cities so that the car goes no faster than the bicycle at rush hours (observable any commuting day);
• that cities made hellish by cars have to be escaped from by cars;
• highways have been developed at the expense of public transport;
• oil magnates have seized much power in producing car dependency;
• there is a paradox in that while cars give a sense of independence their owners are far more dependent on third parties like garages and mechanics than with earlier means of transport, and the workings of car are a mystery to most. (That last point I think specious – you were dependent on wheelwrights and blacksmiths in horse-owning days, and in my youth every young bloke tinkered with an engine.) 

His solution is the green Utopian one of local neighbourhoods growing their own food that are so fully integrated and agreeable that no-one wants to leave them –a radical and unlikely reshaping of our cities, which have always had districts – whether tanning and copper beating in other times, or these days, finance and the “old town” i.e. the tourist area.  Variety and specialisation within a city are a city’s strength.  As so often, someone who can forcefully express a problem, may sound weak when expressing a solution.

But that’s a cavil – Gorz wrote this in 1973 when city centres were still getting knocked down for ring roads. His point is that you cannot talk about transport in isolation – that when considering transport you have to consider what kind of city people should inhabit, and how they should relate to each other.

And better a green Utopia than the Divine Right of the status quo.  

DISTINGUISH carefully between the two,
This thing is yours, the other thing is mine.
You have a shirt, a brimless hat, a shoe
And half a coat. I am the Lord benign
Of fifty hundred acres of fat land
To which I have a right. You understand?

I have a right because I have, because,
Because I have—because I have a right.
Now be quite calm and good, obey the laws,
Remember your low station, do not fight
Against the goad, because, you know, it pricks
Whenever the uncleanly demos kicks.

I do not envy you your hat, or shoe.
Why should you envy me my small estate?
It’s fearfully illogical in you
To fight with economic force and fate.
Moreover, I have got the upper hand,
And mean to keep it. Do you understand?

The Justice of the Peace
Hilaire Belloc: in “Sonnets and Verse.”

Not the Netherlands

When cycling activists suggest making a city friendlier to cyclists, we are told, "this is not the Netherlands." That's true in Edinburgh, and every other city.  I stopped at a ceramics shop in Sofia to buy one of their mugs. I asked the shop owner about cycling in Sofia.  I'd seen painted outlines of paths ending and dumping you into traffic.  "We would like it to be better, but we are told this is not the Netherlands." "But Sofia is almost flat," I said. (There's a small gentle hill in the centre.)  "But it's not the Netherlands."

 

The Cycling Pankhursts

Sylvia Pankhurst had a difficult relationship with her older sister Christabel. Christabel concentrated on campaigning for the vote for upper middle-class women and during World War I was handing out white feathers to non-combatant men. She ended up as an Adventist in the USA. Meanwhile the less glamorous Sylvia was a socialist as well as a feminist, opposed the First World War and in later years campaigned against Fascism and imperialism.

They were both members of the Clarion Cycle Club, “ a socialist cycling group associated with Robert Blatchford’s radical newspaper The Clarion. Unlike most other cycling organisations of the time, the CCC extended membership to women when it founded its first chapter in 1894. Early invites to club meets often noted that ladies were especially welcome, and generally a handful did attend.”

This anecdote from their cycling days indicates something of the friction between the handsome, physically stronger Christabel and her younger, sicklier sister. It seems appropriate that Christabel had a smart new machine, while Sylvia had a cobbled-together affair made out of gas piping.

“Those were the high days of Robert Blatchford’s Clarion, and the cycling clubs which helped to make its popularity. Christabel had already been demanding a bicycle at Southport in 1893, but the Doctor shrank from the thought of his young daughters riding among the traffic, and it was not until about 1906 that she had her way. I had no desire to ride; but from the habit of loyalty to her, I stood by her side when she made her demands. Our parents took it as matter of course that if Christabel rode I must go with her as a companion. We were now entered as members of the Clarion Cycling Club. Christabel and Mrs. Pankhurst scanned the catalogues of the principal cycle makers, and consulted the club to discover the best machine for speed. The first grade Rudge Whitworth was the final choice; it cost something over £30. I did not care what sort of bicycle I might get. Already, though our parents never discussed such matters in our presence, I had learnt from our aunts that they were not without financial worries. Therefore I was pleased when our teacher mentioned to Mrs. Pankhurst a cheap little machine, which a comrade had made at home out of gas piping. It was of curious design, low geared and rather too small for me; but it did not occur, either to Mrs Pankhurst or to me, that the machine was placing upon me a considerable handicap, when, in rather poor health, I attempted to keep pace with my elder and more athletic sister.

Thenceforward, every available day was spent in cycling. Though the journeys were often too long for me, and I would scarcely pedal the last miles, the Sundays with the club were pleasant. It was delightful to be out in the country, and the men were kind in helping push one up the steepest hills. It was when riding alone with Christabel that I endured a veritable torture. My crimson face and gasping breath were the wordless answer to her impatient ‘Come on!’ Afraid of being considered a nuisance, I would strain and strive till it seemed that my heart would burst. Finally she would disappear from me, climbing some hill, and arrive home somehow an hour before me. I remember being thrown over the handle-bars and rising up so shaken that I had to walk for some distance before I could remount, while she rode on, not noticing that I had ceased to follow. She delighted in hill climbing, and was proud to be able to mount the noted steeps which some of the men in the club essayed in vain. Dr. Pankhurst accepted, but obviously regretted this craze for cycling, which took us away from home every Sunday and seemed to be drawing us away from the public interests so dear to him.

 

One summer holiday we all had rooms in a farm-house at Pickmore, [sic] close to a camp held there by the Clarion Club. Crowds of young men and women, generally rather ostentatious in their love-making, in what was the Clarion way, came down there, and parties of “Cinderella” children were brought in relays for a week’s holiday. Robert Blatchford spent a few days there with his daughters, keeping exclusively to his chosen circle of friends, as he always did. About the same time the Clarion Clubs held their annual gathering in Chester. Christabel insisted that we should go, and I managed to accomplish the journey somehow. Mrs. Pankhurst joined us by train. Blatchford and his friends had booked the commercial room, the only comfortable room in the hotel, whereat there was much murmuring among the members. He came out to talk to Mrs. Pankhurst, and endeavoured to persuade her that Keir Hardie could not be “straight,” because his paper, the Labour Leader must be losing money every week. Christabel and I were both annoyed by this attack on our friend, and when Blatchford presently invited us into the commercial room, Christabel interposed: “Mother, do not go!” Blatchford’s attacks on Hardie because of Hardie’s work for peace and internationalism were a prominent and regrettable feature in the Socialist movement of those days.”

From Sheila Hanlon’s excellent blog on Women’s Cycling

Belated Christmas

I've been silent here for months what with one thing and another.  So here's a Christmas carol for my few remaining readers.

GOOD KING WENCESLAS
Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
Where the tarmac lay about
Potholed and uneven,
Brightly shone the glass around,
On the infrastructure,
When a cyclist hit the ground,
Suffering a pu- u- -uncture.

“Hither, page and stand by me,
Why’s that cyclist falling?
Yonder transport policy,
Looks like it’s appalling.”
“Sire that is without an end,
Trunk roads get full budget,
When it comes to cycling spend,
They will always fu- u – dge -it.

“Bring me plans and bring me powers
Bring me active travel
Thou and I will ride some hours,
In the mud and gravel.”
Page and monarch forth they rode,
Motorists were brisker,
In the weather nothing slowed.
Passed them by a whi – i -isker.

“Sire this path’s as slick as grease,
Leaf mush makes it slippery,
Undermined by roots from trees,
Hazardous and cripply.”
“Yes my page, this is insane,
Drainage badly fitted,
Bend your way through this chicane
Back to where it’s gri-i -ted.”

In his master’s tracks he rolled,
Tortuous and gated,
Nothing breaks the motors’ mould,
Lanes unsegregated.
Cyclists pray to all the saints,
One day they’ll deliver,
Routes instead of signs and paints,
This year next year ne -e -ver.

 

Civic Cycling

I had a few days in Ljubjana, a charming city, the capital of a hilly and wooded country the size of Wales.

We were staying in an apartment about 2 km from the centre in the university district. From the balcony I could watch a busy cycling crossing and outside the apartment the cycling traffic flowed – all ages, and in ordinary clothes. I barely saw a helmet.

 

I didn't get on a cycle myself but observed the cycling infrastructure of demarcated pavements in the city, and it was well-used. The historic centre is pedestrianised and was full of tourists on guided walks, the cyclists go about at a sedate pace and it all looked very civilised. There was also a bike hiring scheme, lines of recyclng bins and small electric mini-buses for public transport. A mural by the river showed a pageant of cyclists.

Ljubljana was building cycle provision in the 1960s. “37 percent walk, 12 percent ride a bicycle, 13 percent use public transportation, and 38 percent drive a car. There are 45 miles (73 kilometers) of cycle tracks and 83 miles (133 kilometers) of bicycle lanes.“

We went on a guided walk. The guide was a young, hip looking guy of about 30, and he took us to the Town Hall, where he extolled a former mayor of the city, Ivan Hribar, who was mayor between 1896 and 1910 and who oversaw the rebuilding and modernising of Ljubljana after it had suffered a destructive earthquake. The guide proudly pointed out the awards for the European Green City of 2016. When he took us to Congress Square as well as telling us about the history (it was named after the 1821 Congress of the Holy Alliance) he talked of how it had once been covered with cars, which seemed a bad misuse of a fine public space in the centre of the city.

This kind of thing evidently interested him more than the baroque architecture though he was also an enthusiast for Joze Plecnik, the local architect of an idiosyncratic style who designed a good deal of the modern city.

Knowing all too well how much push back you'll get from the motorised citizenry, I asked the landlord of our airbnb apartment about pedestrianisation and whether it had been met with much opposition. He, said no, people had been walking over these areas anyway. So they had evidently built around desire lines. Like the guide, he, a young guy in his mid 20s, was proud of his agreeable city.

It's a pleasure being in a city where citizens show green civic pride. Councillors who go to Copenhangen or Amsterdam fact-finding on cycle provision could try Ljubljana, which has good inexpensive food and drink as well.

Two sorts of pedalling

From The Singing Bourgeois

About the decline of the British ballad in the 1890s:-

There are other factors to consider, however, not the least of which concerns the improvements made in the comfort and safety of bicycles. The attraction bicycling held for young women in the 1890s created growing resentment in the music trades, culminating in a welter of anti-cycling propaganda in 1896. Here is an examle taken from the Musical Times of that year:

We may point out that a new and msot formidable enemy of the pianoforte has arisen of late in the bicycle. . .there are literally thousands of young ladies whose leisure hours, formerly passed in large part on the music-stool, are now spent in the saddle of the 'iron bird' … proof positive is afforded by advertisements which announce the sale of pianofortes by individuals at great sacrifice on the ground that their owners are 'going in for cycling'.

Attempts were made to dissuade women from cycling by appealing to their concern for health – 'the rapid passage through the air my be a positive source of danger' – or by appealing to their vanity – 'the bicycle hand … becomes flattened, bulges out at the sides, gets lumpy and out of shape, and the fingers become crooked.; The last bit of 'expert' advice issued from the United States where cycling was also turning women away from music during their leisure hours. It would be wrong, therefore, to see the bicycle as something only threatening the profits of the British music trade. The situation was obviously being exaggerated since there still remained an enormous demand for teachers of music (particularly piano teachers), the number of 'music masters' almost doubling between 1881 and 1911, according to census figures. These teachers were forced to compete in a 'payment by results' environment where the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music developed a system of graded examinations.. However, their pupils were now able to gain good passes on all of the exams by restricting their learning to a few pieces a year. In 1899 the British Medical Journal voiced their concern not against cycling but against too much piano practice, suggesting it was responsible for 'the chloroses [green sickness - a form of anaemia] and neuroses from which so many young girls suffer'...

I would have thought a young middle-class woman would have leisure for both bicycling and piano, since during bad weather she could play the piano. However, it may have been part of the general hostility towards girls cycling at the time.

I did the Royal Schools of Music grades during my youth and I think they were a menace because you only did concentrate on about three pieces.

Also The Singing Bourgeoisie: Songs of the Victorian and Drawing Room and Parlour is probably sound about the actual musical quality of drawing room songs but is otherwise a bit glib in which it derives songs from the economic sub-structure.  I bought it thinking it was a collection of songs.   

Pedal on Parliament IV

Pedal on Parliament, 25 April 2015 12:00 Middle Meadow Walk Edinburgh

This Saturday I'll be among the thousands pedalling from The Meadows down Edinburgh's Royal Mile to Holyrood for the fourth year of Pedal on Parliament (POP).  The motorised traffic will stop and for once we can enjoy Edinburgh's beautiful centre without the fumes, noise and fear that are the usual experience of cycling among the internally combusting.

This is Pedal on Parliament's fourth year.

Transport is a devolved power in Scotland. According to Sally Hinchcliffe, one of the organisers of POP:-

Since we started in 2012, Pedal on Parliament (PoP) has become a national force for cycling in Scotland. As soon as we saw the first-year turnout – the biggest demonstration ever outside the new Scottish Parliament building, apparently – we realised we were going to have to continue.

At the time, although the SNP government had made bold promises about having 10% of journeys made by bike by 2020, on closer examination its plans proved to be no more than the usual UK-style handwaving: training a few schoolchildren, encouraging people to get on their bikes (ignoring the fact that most of them would love to if it wasn’t for the traffic), and asking everyone to be nice to each other on the road.

Funding for the one measure proven to be effective at getting people cycling – building safe, direct and attractive cycle routes – was being cut. Instead, money was being poured into roads: a new Forth crossing, extending Glasgow’s motorway network, and dual carriageways between every city in Scotland.

Sally though does point out the accessibility of Scottish politicians, some who will be at POP including the Minister for Transport. Some of the MSPs are members of Spokes, Edinburgh's cycling pressure group.  The First Minister obviously thinks appearing on a bicycle does her no harm.

If the First Minister likes to be seen riding a bicycle, perhaps we can hold her pedals to the fire to do more for cycling in Scotland than photo opportunities.

Cycling activism moves slowly and incrementally and the news that a kerb will be dropped will cause you a frisson of achievement. However there is the bigger picture, and who better to talk about cycling than a Dutchman Henri de Ruiter:-

As I grew up in the Netherlands, cycling is so entirely normal for me that it still feels strange to advocate for it. As a teenager, I cycled to football training from one end of the city to the other end. It did not matter whether it was dark, light, raining, or sunny; we just cycled. The only thing my mother worried about was how dirty the laundry would be when I returned, not whether I would return at all. We cycled to school, to music lessons, to football training, to friends – just everywhere. No parents or their cars needed. Here in Aberdeen, I would never let my child cycle from one side of the city to the other. One small mistake could kill here.

So cycling is an enabler, especially for children. Though most cycling advocates stress the health and environmental benefits of cycling, for me cycling is about liveable, enabling cities – places where everybody wants to live and where children can play on the streets. Even in the US, arguably the car-loving country in the world, people want to keep cycle lanes once they are put in, because the vast majority agrees that their “neighbourhoods became more desirable to live in”. So why wouldn’t that be the case in Scotland?
..
70% of our world’s population will live in cities in 2050, and people will be increasingly geographically mobile. As a result, cities compete for talent and businesses in a global marketplace. If Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Scotland wants to thrive, it needs to be able to attract people; hence an attractive cityscape will be vital.
More densely populated cities are needed, because “Generation Y” is different (more singles / fewer kids / more focused on experiences) and has other demands, such as work close to home and smaller apartments. The Atlantic recently reported that car makers are worried about these “Millenials” because they don’t seem to care about owning a car. So why build an infrastructure based on current preferences without talkin’ ‘bout my generation?

Densely populated cities are also needed because suburban sprawl is becoming too expensive for an ageing population (more maintenance of roads/sewers/landlines ). However, in order to function properly, densely populated cities need a different transport hierarchy: pedestrians first, cyclists second, public transport third and the private car last.

So the new urban types, the harbingers of the two-wheeled future, are going to Pedal on Parliament. There are feeder rides and also a feeder walk. 

Bike Boom

I found Carlton Reid's Roads Were Not Built for Cars a valuable reference book and a good read. 

 He's now kickstarting the funding for a new book, Bike Boom.

 

Use of bicycles in America and Britain fell off a cliff in the 1950s and 1960s thanks to the rapid rise in car ownership. Urban planners and politicians predicted that cycling would soon wither to nothing, and they did their level best to bring about this extinction by catering only for motorists. And then something strange happened – bicycling bounced back, first in America and then in Britain. Today's global bicycling boom – even the one in the Netherlands – has its roots in the early 1970s.

And this is what I'd like to explore in Bike Boom, a book that will use history to shine a spotlight on the present, and demonstrate how bicycling in the future has the potential to grow even further, if the right measures are put in place by the politicians and planners of today and tomorrow. ..

Bike Boom will aim to dig down into historical sources to find out how the Netherlands built a world-class network of bicycle paths – and much of the rest of the world didn't. I'd also like to interview the bicycle advocates and planners of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (and those of today, too) to hear their stories, and learn from their successes and their mistakes.

 Ur-Sustrans built its first cycleway on the Bristol to Bath route from 1979 - 1986.  I remember the Innocent Railway stretch  Edinburgh when it was still covered with ballast and gave you punctures and the tunnel was blocked - that was the early eighties. It is now a black top path and the main North Cycle Network 1, and this was through my own cycling organisation, Spokes.  In the UK the progress has been local and patchy and has taken much patient volunteer effort. 

 

The Innocent Railway - National Cycle Network 1