The Great Big No Bike Route Left Behind Bike Blog Roundup

The Olympics may be all about the winners and losers, but as the Scottish transport minister announces that Glasgow was the lucky winner of its Community Links PLUS design competition, Pedal on Parliament wonders what life would be like if education was funded the same way - while some parts of Scotland don't have a chance of benefiting from a scheme that requires a basic level of competence from their local authorities. With Nicola Sturgeon looking to boost the Scottish economy in the wake of Brexit, both Spokes and Go Bike have some ideas ... meanwhile south of the border, frustrating and inconsistent and at times dangerous as it is, the Leeds-Bradford 'superhighway' shows that ambitious cycling schemes don't have to just be the preserve of London, although it might help if there were minimum design standards across the country

Politics as usual

To be honest, after the last couple of months, we're not entirely sure what 'politics as usual' might consist of but certainly the minister responsible for cycling has a fairly familiar set of issues to tackle - while the Welsh Minister for Active Travel is encouraging everyone to help shape their communities - time for Welsh cyclists (or wannabe cyclists) to make their voices heard. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, one reporter cycles from the Republican to the Democratic conventions to take the political temperature in America - just don't call it the Tour de Trump as that has already been done - while the Indian government turns its attention to the bicycle, which has long been the mainstay of its poorer citizens

Putting people at the heart of it

If we want to get more people riding then tackling the systemic issues - and putting them at the heart of the process will be key - one Danish Consulting firm is taking a literally child's eye perspective to designing solutions around schools. Meanwhile in the city of Dover in Delaware, the "twelve-year-old granddaughter" is the new design guide reference for an east-west cycle route. Designing cycling infrastructure doesn't get much more inclusive than when cyclists take matters into their own hands with a few magic traffic cones - Pinatas optional - or writing their own signs to warn about train tracks. More conventionally, you can keep on plugging away at the consultations, frustrating as it may be, remembering that transport authorites aren't all monolithic organisations, for good or for ill.

Designing for safety

There's nothing like the Olympics to bring out the helmetsplainers - while the US's National Transportation Safety Board - more used to investigating aviation and train crashes - finally takes a look at cycling fatalities but picks a pretty atypical one. Perhaps it would be more pertinent to consider what makes a Copenhagen junction safe for bikes (or perhaps look into how the Stamford Hill junction in London has magically got safer all on its own thus freeing TfL of the need to improve it, or the mystery of Wiltshire's disappearing pothole). As San Francisco's mayor issues a safe streets directive for the city, in New York, the family of a cyclist killed on the road plead for a protected bike lane although the latest one in the city is still missing its protection and Portland's latest parking-protected lane would be better without the potholes but is still a step forward. At least Highbury Corner looks to be getting some safe space for cycling, while cyclists in Philadelphia consider what it would take to bring protected bike lanes to their city. Meanwhile in the Netherlands, a fancy new bike and pedestrian underpass isn't immne to a spot of bollarditis while Christchurch tries to work out how it could fit bikes into the Lyttleton Road Tunnel (they seemed to fit just fine when they took the cars away ...)

Let's move to ...

It's that time of year when you go on holiday and wonder why you don't live in, say, Spain which has not only sunshine but fairly extensive and routine provision for cyclists especially in new build areas - while Barcelona plans to extend its cycling network with further investment. Or the Netherlands, where the countryside is all canals, castles, and ubiquitous cycling infrastructure just as a matter of course. Or even Tokyo, where the suburbs have some hidden gems if you know where to look - and with government delegations visiting Delft to look at how cycling is done there - may be getting better. Even Boston, while not brilliant could be a great cycling city if it put its mind to it

The reason why

As Edinburgh's East-West route comes to the crunch, there are so many reasons to invest in such schemes - whether it's because drivers and cyclists alike prefer them, or because increasing numbers cycling and reducing risk, which in turn might mean lower weights - rising to a massive average 10 kilo loss among Danish mayors who ditched their cars for a month, although we may no longer be able to rely on the air pollution argument in time. Eventually, apparently, cities mature to the point where space can be taken from cars without (too much) controversy and some retailers start to get the point - perhaps helped by this kind of analysis. However, that hasn't happened yet in Dublin where retailers have formed a single-issue group to oppose plans for the College Green Plaza leaving bikes squeezed in with buses or in San Francisco - while other businesses have learned how to make bikes work for them, whether it's cutting costs, or just really good marketing.

Space for people

How we arrange our towns and cities has wider implications than just cycling - although if people can't afford to live near their jobs then cycle commuting (and almost everything else) is going to take a back seat - while out-of-scale plans like Newcastle's Blue House Junction contradict the city's own local plan (much better to concentrate on human-scale interventions likea pocket park. Projects like Portland's Ankeny Plaza don't have to cost a lot to transform an area and could be a side effect of a wider scheme to sort out urban drainage issues. Similarly, cycle routes through parks, being considers in Croydon and Derby are one way to create a low cost, low-stress network. On a much larger scale, Manhattan gets ready to try out shared space on an extensive scale by closing 60 blocks of streets to all but local traffic, albeit only for a day, while Oslo is making moves to phase out parking (and ultimately cars) and replace it with cycling infrastructure. As Streetfilms tours Copenhagen's car-free bridges, Providence seems to prefer building bridges to nowhere, while Portland's policy of prioritising pedestrian and cycle access during building works is bearing fruit (albeit with a few nudges to remind contractors that it's a thing). And while Calgary doesn't quite know how to promote itself yet, cycling and walking may be the best way to appreciate some of its attractions - while a town in Alaska promotes its food culture with an edible rail trail.

Measuring and managing

As Toronto's mayor pledges to rigourously examine the city's latest bike lane, when it comes to counting congestion, definitions matter as what is counted and who counts as being affected can change policy decisions - a shame then that Fort Collins' metrics include no measures for walking and cycling at all. Rachel Aldred considers what bike congestion might look like - while if anyone knows it's likely to be Amsterdam's 'Bicycle Mayor, Anna Luten. In the UK, popular routes are having to be re-worked to improve bicycle/pedestrian interactions, while in New York, tolling could reduce traffic and make more space for cycling and walking on Brooklyn Bridge - while filtering traffic in Bloomsbury to create a 'cell' might help reduce congestion due to rat-running traffic. And even in winter, Auckland's latest bike count data shows that if you build it ...

Bike share in numbers

As well as providing easy access to bikes, bike share schemes also provide some interesting data on bike journeys - whether turned into mesmerising visualisations of bike journeys or filling in the gaps in the data that bike counters might miss. Not only that, but they do it with virtually no subsidy at all at least in the US - while Dublin's bike share needs to expand advertising sites in order to expand the scheme itself. In California, carbon taxes might help boost bike hire equity schemes which in turn could makebike share users more representative of cyclists (or citizens) generally. 

e-Bikes are the other great democratiser of cycling these days - Dutch bike sales may be slipping somewhat bt a quarter of all sales are for e-bikes now in the Netherlands - to the point where the Dutch have even come up with a helmet standard (at least for the speedier kind). Some might disdain the electrical assist but their benefit lies in their wider appeal - as one keen cyclist find when her mum becomes a convert ...

The law is an ...

As the Cyclist's Defence Fund launches a private prosecution of the motorist who killed Mick Mason, cyclists may find the civil courts have a better grasp of the balance of responsibilities between cyclists and drivers. Unfortunately, although his eyes are somewhat opened to cyclists' vulnerabilities, taking 'Mr Loophole' out on a bike ultimately only shows that you can put an a*** on a bike and he'll still be a bit of an a***. Meanwhile New South Wales's punitive cycling laws seem more based on opinion than evidence - while hostile roads and ill-thought out laws leave riders with no alternative to paths that are effectively wheel traps.

And if you're at all fond of trees - don't lock your bike to it, although you might be safer leaving it in Cockermouth where it seems the locals keep a close eye on all parked bikes.

Plus ca change

Finally - there was one unexpected upside to World War one, by which time the bike had already proved its worth as a weapon of war: the drop in motor traffic led to the return of the 'push bike' - but even then it was clear that if we didn't look to Europe and its fancy separated cycle tracks, then the renaissance would be short lived. Hopefully this time, it won't take another hundred years ...