My Obituary

Too Soon?  Damn right it is.

Now I have no intention of shuffling off any time soon, but my head is swimming with so many thoughts of danger and death.

Firstly, I don't want to be seen as making light of any of the tragic deaths as of late, it just late night ramblings.

Secondly, I don't want to be "Cyclist, 34, from London" try being a bit more imaginative than just adding me to a list of stats and being a reason to crow about your issues  - not that there'd be any other choice of description in the fast paced world of news coverage

Thirdly, I didn't run a red light or undertake a moving truck, I had lights and more than likely some sort of high vis, I am a confident and very experienced cyclist, but also scared enough not to take on a moving (or stationary vehicle) one on one.

Tomorrow morning I'll be cycling to work, this is my 4th week in a temporary job, one that is (hopefully) the first step on a long and influential career in shaping towns and cityscapes for the better.  The last 3 weeks I've been communing: train, tube, train which takes about and hour and a quarter door to door if all my connections are smooth and not too many people get in my way walking from platform to platform.  I think in my first real experience of London public transport commuting I've gotten pretty good at knowing the right door to get on to deliver me to the appropriate exit point to avoid crowds as much as possible, but there's still always others slowing my stride from one mode to another.

The commuting was fun and exciting for the first week or so, buoyed along by my elation at finally being employed.  But the only reason I was on public transport was because a few weeks ago some numbnuts pulled out in front of me on Brixton Road, I T-boned the car, leapt onto the bonnet and swore along the lines of "Look where the fuck you're going, DICKHEAD"  He just hadn't seen me, on a clear day on a clear road and I was doing no speed at all.  Which in itself probably helped me avoid injury, but I was so pumped with adrenalin my cursory bike check failed to notice the huge crack in the steel frame top tube and I scampered off without exchanging details, who's the dickhead now?

So now I have collected my refurbished bike (at unfortunately high expense to myself) and am looking forward to getting back in the saddle.  My fitness has ebbed significantly I'm felling sluggish, like a wet sponge, and I'm pretty sure public transport is making me sick, or maybe that's the change in weather.

The climate since I was last cycling has changed.  Not just with the changing clocks and northerly winds, but the amount of deaths and danger regarding cyclists in London, and the wider UK is quite frankly overwhelming.  I admit I'm over exposed, though the outputs from the P2P research have slowed significantly with other priorities taking hold in my conciousness, I'm still very tuned into the blog-o-twittersphere.  There are so many opinions and accounts and suggestions, I am still at a loss as to what needs to be done.

Whatever the politics, or infrastructure arguments, or vehicular cycling arguments, or obey the rules arguments or enhanced training arguments, it still stands that after almost 3 decades of regular riding, solo cycling all over the world, riding in groups across America or Tibet, I'm being kept awake by the fear of falling under a truck.  And when I say 'falling under', i mean being crushed needlessly.  I'm an individualist, people need to take more responsibility for themselves, but I'm also of the opinion that the fabric of London, and many other places need to be more human scale...

Even a car that runs on angels’ sighs & never crashes, would still encourage urban sprawl, bad land use (esp parking) & make its owner fat
— RTPI (@RTPIPlanners) November 15, 2013

My instant reaction to the outcries in the last week has been a bit non-plussed, as with all the other major issues that worry me in the world (beyond my own pursuit of a fulfilling career and settled home life) I feel slightly overwhelmed by my ineffectualness in being able to make a change.  Sign petitions, make recommendations, demonstrate, legislate, don't procrastinate!

Though my fear now is a late night worst case scenario, the reality is that my route will not be fun, trawling through greater London traffic, battling with busses and potholes.  Sucking up all kinds of fumes, urgh.  We really do need to collectively do something about it, which is another reason for me to go to work, learn the machinations of the planning world and make that difference, my biggest problem with all that, is that ASAP is not AS enough!

http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save-our-cyclists
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/57067
http://cphpost.dk/national/proposals-released-protect-cyclists-right-hand-turns

Oh and if by some stupidly freeaky and truly tragic turn of events I do cark it, Sorry.  Please can the statue be somewhere nice and prominent and representing me doing a one handed wheelie cowboy style (how sad that I never learnt to wheelie).
If you're doing anything in my name, do it better that I would yeah,
Ladies, I'm so sorry we didn't have more time together ;)
Gents, it's been a pleasure.
And I think this and this should be the start of the playlist,
Goodnight x

Report to MP's

When not whistling through the countryside or cities of a strange land the adventures seem less immediate, and less worthy of commentary.

But a couple of weeks ago we released the first research output of the ride.  It was circulated to MP's for the opening of parliament and the debate to 'Get Britain Cycling'.

Take a look at it here:

P2P report to MP's : Learning from America.
http://www.portlandtoportland.org/media/downloads/p2pbrochure.pdf

There is, as always, plenty of other stuff to talk about in relation to this.  Other endless commentary and analysis of policy, action, inaction.  Infrastructure, money promises.  There are also more comprehensive reports to compile in the coming weeks, but my focus has to change into more long term adventures for now.

But whilst doing that there will be plenty of time to re-visit the P2P stuff here, the research, friendships, pictures, movies and memories.  And there is plenty more to do to get Britain cycling.  But right now I'm at a desk ploughing a furrow in my brow.

Ride London 2013

Or Prudential Ride London 2013.  And More specifically the Prudential Ride London Freecycle 2013.  Not too much to say about it myself.  I saw a notification for it whilst in the states, then some paraphernalia came through the post and I went along.  Started early to try and take part in the world record attempt which went awry it seems, though there wasn't a clear understanding of where the record was actually being measured, and there were some very young kids along not as able to keep the distances between bikes constant.



Anyway, I went and got some breakfast and returned to get a load of pictures of London streets full of cyclists.






I wanted to try and get some with parliament in the background.  And handily there was a 'smile for the camera' sign just by where I intended to go, so got a few nice pictures of quite a cross section of people having fun on their bikes.









I didn't end up venturing into any of the festival zones.  But had nice memories cycling down the Mall of the last time 3 weeks ago when P2P made our triumphant return.




There was a load of racing stuff, and if I'd known the full itinerary I may well have entered the 100 mile ride, taking advantage of my current fitness levels.  But that was it for me.  There are of course other insights into the significance of the freeride.  I saw it just as a novelty day out, and something to make a focus for some pictures.  I still have bike fever and don't seem to be able to escape the whole subject.  But really I'm just someone who rides around a lot, closed roads or not.  I very much come into the 'strong and fearless' category of cyclist.  Sometimes I wonder about my being too much into it to really be able to assess what the priorities should be to get more people cycling, I mean this weekend I must have covered around 100 miles pootling around town just going about my days.

My commemorative picture from the day, how nice

Apparently one of the stated aims is to increase day to day cycling.  Well it may have sparked more desire in some interested but concerned people.  But it's still not likely to change the mind of many of the people leaving comments along the lines of 'bloody arrogant cyclists fucking up my day by having the roads - WHICH ARE MEANT FOR CARS INNIT - closed' blah blah blah.  So I'll take the fact  that it was a nice day with the opportunity to ride round these iconic landmarks in a great atmosphere with very little fear.

London Cycling Summit

Wednesday had been in my diary for some time.  An event put together by Peter and the NLA was timely in a number of ways, a year after the Olympics and all the cycling hoo-haa around that.  And it precedes the events of the Prudential Ride London this coming weekend.

Obviously my premier interest was the presentation of our preliminary findings from the P2P ride.  At an earlier stage it had been hoped to have a first publication available by now.  But with over 10,000 words of commentary from the internal Survey Monkey, many pages of notes form the various meetings, hours of footage of interviews and goodness knows how many gigabytes of pictures, disseminating it all has become more than a two week turnaround job.

But enough of my woes, it's all coming together, and events like yesterday help remind me that it's going to be a nice piece of work to have been involved in.  The summit was sold out and seemed to be quite a variety of delegates, being hosted by the NLA it had some lots of property people, there were a few enthusiastic cycling advocates, and quite a lot of representation from the local and London government representatives.

Andrew Gilligan was the keynote speaker, he essentially talked through the mayors vision for cycling.  Headline stuff I picked out of it was stuff like of the £913m budget every penny is protected.  Hoping not to create expectations beyond what is in the vision, everything will not be perfect, as there are well know constraints of space etc.  Things need to be done adequately or not at all.  And the job of persuading councils of the need for work to be done on their roads as 95% of London's roads are owned by the boroughs rather than TfL.  All in all he came across as very focussed and keen, but also pragmatic, so that's a good thing, huh?



Also the cycling commissioner spoke about the "All consuming Emphasis on safety" which I think is a very interesting point.  It's hard to brush off deaths on bikes, but then... people die all the time, keeping running any agenda with the "if it bleeds it leads" mantra isn't really terribly helpful, it means people react in a very basic way, creates more fear than understanding and therefore can end up being counter productive for the whole cycling advocacy movement, or indeed any movement.



Andrew Gilligan was followed by Ben Plowden of TfL.  He spoke about the delivery of the vision and again was quite pragmatic but positive.  Sarah did a grand job introducing the Portland to Portland ride and the challenges of the day to day stuff and mixingthat with the business of research too which Peter expanded upon.



Peter's talk I was reasonably well versed with, what with having been on the ride and all, but always good to have these little reminders, and being so deep in my own point of view of the stuff we saw one of the big advantages of our ride was all the different points of view from other professionals with such depth of knowledge in place making.  There is also an interview with Peter on the London Cycling Campaign website that covers a lot of the themes of our findings.



There was a Q&A session on borough strategies represented by Hackney, Camden and Ealing.  They all sounded very positive about cycling issues where a large part of the issue the TfL have is persuading the boroughs to buy into the cycling vision,and hopefully exceed it, but it sounded like they were all trying to sell something (isn't everyone) or competing with each other, but good to see that there is representation.



Place making is a theme that came up in relation to cycling all through the summit, and indeed through our ride.  Nick Searl of Argent explained the role it takes in King's Cross, and the fact that a single development can't change the city, but there is much more demand from tenants now for the standard of facilities for cycling to be way in excess of what would have been required in the last 5 or 10 years, so the market is leading the need to make cycling more accessible.  Also of course the role that incorporating cycling and placemaking, or looking more holistically at how a place is designed as well as how people get around and interact with the different areas.  But then what do we know about placemaking or anything else?

Joylon Brewis of P2P friends Grimshaw Architects Talk started with stating all the benefits of cycling, I was about to make a note about don't we all know this already, is there any need to state these in our report as they are so widely available and largely uncontested now (you know, health, fitness, liveability etc etc) but then he pointed out that you do need to point out the benefits to all because it costs to pay for the improvements, the pay back may not always be tangible, but there is money to be made somewhere, and that is how things get done.

The ideas that stuck in my head the most about this talk was the idea of making sure cycling was seen, and branded as another part of the transportation network.  So using roundels, making sure there is consistency in signage across the network, but then the idea of having a cycling network is what needs to be ingrained into the system.  A lot of it can be done relatively cheaply, and some of it can be made to pay for itself.  Though of course there is always the question of getting cyclists to pay for anything (like parking) as the mindset is that it's all free when you ride, so need to see where the value is.

I had been interested in the views of the advocacy groups, represented by German Dector-Vega of Sustrans whose presentation was entertaining, but I felt really preaching to the converted.  Then Tom Bogdanowicz who was presenting on the role of advocacy grups I felt came across as what one of the differences with advocacy in London being more adversarial than that which we found in the states.  People like Jonathan Maus of bikeportland, and the guys from the ATA or Bike Pittsburgh seemed to have moved into a kind of more collaborative or ingrained way of working with the cities.  Maybe this was just my point of view at the time, or the way that they presented themselves, and I suppose it goes with the fact that cycling in London is more combative, so maybe the sides line up more aggressively off court.  In the 3 weeks or so that I've been back in London and riding round the city, as well as out to Brighton or Hampshire I've been in more close shaves, aggressive driving or negligent driving incidnts than in the whole 2 and a half months in the states, in fact I probably had as many incidents yesterday alone on a ride out to visit friends in Basingstoke, 3 cars overtake to immediatly turn left across me, and about 3 instances of passing way too close, way too fast.

One question that i recall now from the Q&A was why can't we do what NY did and literally turn stuff around overnight, kind of gurilla bike lanes just by adding planters and paint.  Which would be interesting, but it is harder here, what with the limitations on space and the know on effects for the rest of the road network, but also the amount of different stakeholders in who owns the road space.

An interesting day, a few more notes to feed into the output from the research, and was good to have a little P2P reunion after, though felt at a bit of a loss at the end of dinner, thoughtlessly saying 'see you in the morning' recalling our days on the road.

Meanwhile in London

A triumphant and joyus return.  Covered by Peter very nicely on the Architects Newspaper Blog.  Also coverage in World Architecture News.



Everyone has the usual questions: What was it like? Was it difficult? What was the best bit? Is it good to be back?  I just point everyone in the direction of this blog and ask them to come back to me once they've read it.  Then I'll answer any extra questions.



The work continues, apart form re-adjustment to being back home, which ain't so difficult in glorious summer sunshine.  But loosing the adrenalin of being constantly on the move is a shame.  The 'glory' of arrival has faded already, it's already old news, but the ongoing research project is at the forefront of my mind.  We have amassed a huge amount of information and footage, pictures and advice.  It took a good day just to type up all my notes from the various meetings, and do a little brainstorming over the recurrent themes.  None of which haven't been covered elsewhere: politics, funding, culture and so on.  But we certainly have an attractive way of presenting new findings to add to the growing argument for more cyclalised cities.




As a further reminder of the need to bring this subject up the agenda I joined the Space 4 Cyclists protest ride yesterday afternoon following a research team meeting with Peter & Bob.  I try to steer clear of the politics of protest rides and so on too much.  And when there has been a death, people become very emotional.  The city needs to be made safer for cyclists, and everyone attaches their own meanings and interpretations to the events surrounding the protest and what brought it about.  These events are important, most of all in the diversity of people attending, there are a real cross section of people who want these streets to be safer, and there is little appetite for hearing all the objections or reasons why it cant happen (money, space, political will) when you are stopped at wreaths for a man who was just trying to get across town on a hot summers day.




Our timeline for research is that there is a London Cycling Summit on the 31st July where Peter will be presenting initial findings and progress.  Then the intention is to have a CABE style guide with case studies and a sort of 'best practice' and lessons from the road guide which will be easily digestible and attractive.  Along with a more in depth series of recommendations and lessons to be ready for the 2nd September when there is a parliamentary debate on the Get Britain Cycling report.

So on with the work.  I'll keep you posted, as well as re-visiting parts of the trip that seem noteworthy.