What does LCC think about Bikeability and cycle training?

An LCC staff person mentioned in a meeting this week that, in the view of the LCC, Bikeability “wasn’t working” because no more children were cycling to school, and that in turn was because the roads in London are too dangerous.

Is this the official LCC view?
Andrew Gilligan had expressed a similar view though may have come round to understand the value of teaching people to cycle (Even the Dutch do it)

Whether or not they ride to school:
· Bikeability is about giving children a life-skill

· Bikeability provides training in road riding, road behaviour and social interactions on the road between all road users.

· If you don’t teach children cycle skills when they are young, they won’t ever learn (adults don’t do training, especially men).

· If you don’t learn to ride a bike, and basic cycle safety and maintenance as a youngster, you won’t teach your own children to ride in their turn. This becomes the “lost generation” for which cycling is simply not an option. (Similar to swimming – where parents who can’t swim don’t encourage their children).

· If you wait to teach Bikeability until all the roads are “safe”, you will never have any new cyclists.

· It is an oversimplification to say that it’s “too dangerous”. Lots of roads are quite appropriate for cycling

· Learning the best route to cycle to school is part of cycle training .

· Frankly, even if you don’t cycle to school after Bikeability training, you will have learnt:

a) A lot about road behaviour

b) Recognise that roads are for us all not just cars

c) and you may become a more considerate car driver

This this this^

LCC does not speak for me when 'Space for Cycling' represents a request to be segregated from other traffic, just as when the rebadged 'sky'ride beckons people to cycle on 'traffic free roads'. Bet it'll be a nightmare for pedestrians to cross too, cos they'll stick a load of crowd control barriers everywhere.

I'd rather pay subs to CTC right now.

Yes CTC have managed to maintain a balance in the debate about segregation

This was covered, from another angle, back in February. I agree with Skydancer but what I wrote then is still largely my view:

Sometimes it seems we are like ghosts, we slip in and out of school unseen. Even the teachers out of whose classes we take children don't know what we do with them, what the children are learning or why it is of any value. There are teachers who try to punish children who have been naughty by keeping them out of CT lessons, as if it is an extension of play time.
Which is not surprising in schools where there are one or two bikes in the rack and all you hear in the staff room is how dangerous cycling is and how they would never cycle on the road. Though they did do cycling proficiency as school - does that still exist?
As mentioned above, there are schools with no 'cycling culture' (calling every bloody thing on earth a 'culture' etc). Four or five week courses are not going to change that. Having teachers cycle in to school, having bike clubs, involving parents, making cycle training an all year round activity will change that. I cannot see the current model making any further progress.
I also think we should not be so nervous about cycle sport - children who ride a bike as a sport are much more likely to ride a bike as transport too. We should be linking these activities together.
On a bad day I think that the off road part of a schools course is actually the bit that has done the most good - some children can now control their bikes better, can signal, look behind, understand how to make sure their bike is safe and have gained confidence and enjoyment from riding. What they are not going to do is ride on road, especially if they are the only person in their house with a bike. And always if they do not own a bike.
Again, that can only change in a school if the school wants it to, if there are teachers and parents who cycle in and if cycling activity is not limited to four or five week courses.
As regards schools should the question be how do we get more people to do cycle training? or should it be Would we be better off concentrating resources where they can make genuine, profound changes rather than spreading it more widely but actually changing nothing?

I believe that the courses we run in schools are worthwhile - though not if the aim is to get a lot more children cycling to school. No course which only involves the children can do that.
Schools courses include children who do not own bikes - without the course they might never get to learn how to ride one, or improve their control skills, or be enthused about the places you can go on a bike. It can make them want to get a bike. They may not cycle to school - though they may - but they will cycle.
One problem is we are teaching year 5 and 6, not out of choice but because secondary schools can't, or won't, fit us in. Teaching year 7 and 8 would have more impact on how many kids ride to school though still with all the caveats I have already mentioned. If your parents don't cycle and your teachers don't cycle you are a lot less likely to cycle. Bikeability courses cannot overcome that if they only reach the children.

Just keep it up trainers. Our day will come.
This thread needs Charlie to answer.

Will's comments are pretty spot on. 4 weeks working with young children is not enough to develop cycling mentality for them or within their school or family. Ideally we should also work with their parents too. There are fairly frequent comments from parents or teachers about "it's great you take them out on the road, it would be far too dangerous for them on their own", so often people are unaware of the point or intended outcome of the training.

Ongoing things such as cycle clubs or helping kids look at their own route to work would help foster a more positive overall attitude to cycling being a way to get to school.

Yes will is right. More whole school, whole community cycle promotion with skills training at the centre would increase the chance of young people riding. Which should be part of a raft of measures to make roads feel like low risk environments for walking and riding.

I am not clear about lcc's current position where their officer suggested that the (relatively low cost) measure called Bikeability wasn't working.

I can't imagine LCC have suddenly decided cycle training kids is a bad idea, unless things have changed drastically since I was there.

I'd agree that more could be done to encourage parents to cycle with their kids or encourage them to cycle alone when they're old enough, but I'm not sure that's Bikeability's job.

Oh. Which is what Will said. Never mind.

I can't imagine LCC have suddenly decided cycle training kids is a bad idea, unless things have changed drastically since I was there.
.

Things have changed since you were there tricitybendix

I think it's fair enough to question what the schools courses achieve and what they are for - I think most instructors want them to change, they see the current courses as the first step, an experiment almost. I suspect individual instructors, as they gain experience on the courses, improvise a great deal and aim to achieve things that are less specific than getting the children to ride to school. (And the LCC person that SkyDancer quotes would need to be able to explain why, if actual danger, rather than some parents' perception of danger, is the problem, in any given school some children do cycle there and others don't).

The lcc person's comment was based on the census data that show a 0.1% drop in kids cycling to school in greater London since the 2001 census (oft mentioned by Gilligan)
Bad stat use

I dunno, potentially unhelpful messaging around shared space at the forefront of a campaign which seems to be primarily about supporter acquisition rather than legislative change seems a long way from adopting an anti-child-cycle-training stance.

Not that I have any idea what I'm talking about. Pedestrian campaigning's where it's at these days.

Pedestrian campaigning's where it's at these days.

Too right!
Walking conditions are mainly dire.
Needs joint campaigning by all benign modes of transport regarding use of our spaces and making driving much less convenient

This tory lead country is going the opposite direction with more road building plans, denying peak car and the end of peak oil with recent massive oil discoveries in the USA.
#we'redoomed
#reallyfrackingdoomed

The reason less children are cycling to school is far more complicated than the failure of cycle training or not. Lcc need to understand the whole picture of travel of school and the factors affecting it. The distance travelled to school has increased nationally, this is probably due to lack of capacity, so parents do not get their first choice farcing thier children to travel longer distances. I suspect this fact alone means they are more likely to take them by car or by bus. There is no research on this topic that i am aware of.

related blog today on this topic:

http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/on-training/

Lots of points addresed via some sensible comments.

related blog today on this topic:

http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/on-training/

Lots of points addresed via some sensible comments.

There was quite a debate in the Emitterverse where some cycle trainers were accused of being dinosaurs in their view that infrastructure isn't important if we train everyone, rather than the actual view of many that training is one measure amongst many to get people riding.

The thing about training is that it does help people start cycling or ride better NOW in the prevailing conditions while we work on improving the environment (See recent Cambridge study)

I admit I used the word 'de-skilling' as a possible effect of segregation ie people not used to sharing the road with vehicles will perhaps lack skills (or lose skills) to ride on road when they need to. I don't belive that it is possible or even good for London to build a completely separate network. We definitly need to make riding easier though in many places.

This is an interesting point from the piece:

We should be adjusting the physical environment so that the kind of assertiveness and negotiation that forms much of the training undertaken in Britain should not even be necessary.
One thing many people lack generally is the confidence to be assertive and negotiate and communicate intentions, whether walking, riding or driving. Teaching people to cross the road on foot should include assertiveness and negotiation training since we could all do with improving these skills however we get around. Young people do learn these skills while cycle training and this is a good thing

Some of that same group of infrastructurists (possibly) are today comparing bikeability types with the BNP... came up as a retweet in my feed.

They're starting to get a bit mouthy methinks?

link to tweet please

.

pm me too please @rhb

It is strange why they are so extremely against trainers helping people skill up and gain confidence to ride bikes to the extent that they equate us with Nazis!
https://twitter.com/AlternativeDfT/status/387569771576705024

related blog today on this topic:

http://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/on-training/

Lots of points addresed via some sensible comments.

I found that a very good read and not a Daily Fail type comment in sight, how refeshing.

Still seems to me like the debate is focused on segregation or training and it just smacks of divide and rule which does neither side any favours. Surely having both seems the obvious best answer.