The War on Britain's Roads (BBC Documentary / tabloid tv)

Of course. Environment and behaviour are reciprocal, though - they both affect each other e.g. a town creates some good cycle infrastructure > more people cycle > a higher percentage of the population becomes aware of the needs of cyclists > everyone drives better around cyclists in general > more people cycle > town creates more infrastructure > a higher percentage... and so on.

At the moment, our government is making a very meagre attempt at changing behaviour and without providing any proper infrastructure. If you look at the Netherlands or some towns in northern Germany, 30 years ago cycling was nowhere near as popular as it is today - their governments made some incredibly good infrastructure and let the behaviour change itself.

Perhaps it doesn't matter exactly where you start this loop, but it seems that changing environment (although expensive) is much quicker/more effective than simply suggesting people change their behaviour and hoping that the environment will eventually change itself.

This is, of course, pulled almost entirely out of my arse.

I certainly agree that environment and behaviour are reciprocal and infrastructure is definitely important, but the argument that 'they built lots of cycle-specific facilities, cycling increased, rinse, repeat' is somewhat flawed. Quite often, it's infrastructure that lay persons wouldn't necessarily identify as beneficial which has the greatest impact.

Curiously enough, the time when the modal share of cycling increased in the Netherlands (i.e., cycling took a higher overall share of all trips as opposed to just more trips being made by bike when all other modes (cars etc.) also increased) was the 1970s, when almost no new cycle-specific infrastructure was being built there. What was built wasn't particularly successful and limited to a few pilots:

http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:cc6d7d3b-6ebf-4ef7-a57c-2d4834bafe9d/Report%20Dutch%20cases.pdf

Instead, there was the oil crisis and a massive change in social consciousness about the cost of motor traffic in human lives and quality of life. This effect seems to have lasted roughly until the end of the 70s, when the oil crisis was averted and business as usual was back on the agenda.

After that, cycling continued to increase, but only in line with an increase in all traffic and the vastly increasing need to travel. Motoring has increased accordingly. The percentage of trips made by bike, out of all trips, is still roughly the same--it has remained almost static at around 25% of all trips. That is an achievement in itself, but it's not clear what the cause is. There are certainly plenty of good policies in NL, but the only real success story that stands out in the last 30 years is transport integration.

The main reasons why the Netherlands have always had a high modal share of cycling (may have been as much as 60% before WWII) were the low degree of industrialisation (very much changed today), relative poverty in the hinterland away from the prosperous coastal towns, and the development pattern of evenly-spaced small, compact towns with very intact localised infrastructure (i.e., you could do most of your daily business within the reach of one easy bike ride) along long-standing anti-sprawl policies.

(NB sprawl American-style looks like this:

)

Check out European sprawl distribution here:

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/urban-expansion-in-europe-1990-2000/map-1-urban-sprawl_europe.eps/image_original

This map shines the spotlight on recent expansion of sprawl, but it is possible to see how uneven development has been in the UK compared to the NL. The UK's big cities are far larger than Dutch cities, and more unevenly distributed. The UK urbanised much earlier in the course of the industrial revolution and developed extensive public transport systems much earlier, which led to cycling being sidelined almost before it was invented.

Unfortunately, the Netherlands have recently begun to develop sprawl. This is likely to have a negative effect on cycling. As motorised mobility has increased there, so trip distances have also increased, with worrying consequences. For instance, the Netherlands have a recent problem with a huge increase in serious injuries to cyclists (when they have been going down in most other Western European countries). To put this in context, the crash rate in the Netherlands is of course still much lower than over here, but the tendency is in the wrong direction. This exploratory paper is in Dutch, but there's an English abstract:

http://www.swov.nl/rapport/R-2012-09.pdf

They don't know yet what exactly has been causing this; among meta-factors, there may be issues with collection of medical data, data reporting issues, and medical advances. Some of the direct factors they examine is people buying lots of electric bikes and riding faster (i.e., riding road bikes as opposed to the stereotypical Dutch 'sit up and beg' bikes), thereby putting themselves and others at greater risk on cycle-specific paths.

This could be related to increasing trip distances, as research typically shows that people don't modify the time they spend travelling; it's remained relatively constant despite greater and greater distances being covered on average. People change mode instead (e.g., use a car instead of a bike) or go faster. It's therefore reasonable to assume that people are probably riding faster than they used to.

None of this means that better infrastructure isn't worth it. There's plenty that can be done, but there are many aspects to it, and a lot of them aren't cycling-specific. Also, often even where there is a cycle-specific facility, the key advantage may not be because of its cycling-specificness, but because it does something else that's valuable, but which may not be immediately apparent.

The best example we have is that in Shoreditch we campaigned to have the Shoreditch Triangle one-way system returned to two-way operation ten years ago (the tenth anniversary is actually this coming Saturday). Despite there being nothing cycling-specific in it, that caused a massive upsurge in cycling in Hackney, as people were suddenly able to leave Hackney without having to go round the houses by turning left down Shoreditch High Street's four-lane one-way racetrack and then up Great Eastern Street. They became able to follow the natural high street by continuing from Hackney Road along Old Street. This may well have been the birth of the Hipster Spice Route.

In Pitfield Street, we have a segregated contraflow cycle track. This is an example where the fact that it's cycling-specific actually masks the greatest advantage it gives, which is that it prevents car parking on that side of the street. If there was car parking, it would mean that contraflow cycling would not be permitted, as the street would be too narrow. We still want something bigger to be done there, which is for the right turn from Great Eastern Street to Pitfield Street to be removed so that PS stops being a local rat-run and becomes a relatively quiet local high street with two-way traffic again. If and when that happens, the track will have outlived its usefulness. In the meantime, the track (much as it's badly built) is very useful in safeguarding permeability for cyclists along there.

Obviously, Shoreditch traffic is far from perfect, but the increased permeability (maximum route choice, minimum diversion for cyclists) has definitely made an impact. Permeability has also been a key policy in many Dutch towns, e.g. Central and Inner Amsterdam, where there is little space for constructing cycle-specific facilities (for the most part, their cycle lanes look pretty similar to ours, if still generally wider etc.). You won't find many one-way streets in Amsterdam that don't have some kind of cycle contraflow arrangement.

There is a further step to permeability, and that is filtered permeability. This refers to measures to 'filter out' through motor traffic (motor traffic is almost never the problem; the problem tends to be the effects of people driving through areas on their way to somewhere else). Again, many Dutch towns, e.g. Groningen, have done this in their centres, and Groningen is known for having the highest modal share of cycling at around 35% despite not having as much cycle-specific infrastructure as other Dutch towns. German towns where this has been done include Münster or Freiburg. Again, most people only see the cycle-specific things and not the wider traffic management context which has a far greater impact. (NB this only applies to the town centres; on the perimeter, motor traffic has usually been vastly increased, by ring roads, bypasses, or motorway boxes; in most Europeam countries, actual modal shift is an illusion.)

All the evidence indicates that cycling increases when traffic management is improved in these 'invisible' ways and when there's a general cultural shift towards cycling. Obviously, you don't want to create sprawl where activity centres are badly distributed and people feel trapped into using cars all the time.

(None of this was pulled out of any bodily cavities where it doesn't belong.)