Cycling in the time of Corona

15 people queuing outside Bike Shack in Leyton this morning. There's usually a few, but this is the first time I've seen it double figures.

Man on creaky £100 hybrid wearing aero helmet with visor spotted.

Maybe the future will bring full face visors and snorkel attachments with filtration systems.

Congestion charge starts again on Monday, could be interesting how this effects cycling levels. It also getting ramped up thanks to Tory scum bailout for tfl (I have no issues with c charge just the other enforced changes and that cunt Bailey)

Well ...

Large areas of London are to be closed to cars and vans to allow people to walk and cycle safely as the coronavirus lockdown is eased, Sadiq Khan has announced.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/may/15/large-areas-of-london-to-be-made-car-free-as-lockdown-eased

Article doesn't make it clear (to me) if this is a long term plan or a temporary initiative to get people riding/walking to work in the short term. Would be phenomenal to think this could be the future in London.

Hearing Shapps encourage people to cycle, walk or drive to work made me want to puke

It's temporary but lots of temporary things can hang around for a long time (eg VAT allegedly).

There are some more details at https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/streetspace-for-london including a map with Streetspace cycle routes in purple at http://content.tfl.gov.uk/emerging-streetspace-for-london-plan-for-cycle-routes.pdf (eg Finchley Road)

I think it's just another instance of 'it's coronavirus, let's use it as an excuse to do what we had been wanting to do, anyway, and see for how long we can get away with it'. This is another:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/firms-given-1bn-of-state-contracts-without-tender-in-covid-19-crisis

Obviously, I'm all for a reduction in motor traffic, and if there are no major political problems, e.g. the Government forcing the Mayor to end those measures again, then I'm sure the intention is to make them permanent. Where Khan has really bought into 'green' agendas is over air quality, but the danger is that he may have bought the (fallacious) argument that by 'closing' the centre to cars you have to allow for more orbital motor traffic (which is something that has negated green gains in most European cities where those have been made, i.e. the centre has been pedestrianised, filtered, etc., but ring roads and other orbital motorways have been built), hence grandfathering Johnson's Silvertown Tunnel.

I still think that there will be a relatively quick return to 'normal', especially once there is a vaccine, but also, simply, once the infection rate is no longer seen as too problematic, and that a lot of the 'let's do it under cover of the virus' measures will probably be reversed, although it's quite possible that the above privatisation will stick. All too early to tell, really.

I fear people will rat run around it(unfortunately) and I don’t feel it goes far enough. by enforced changes I meant the fare rises etc that have been forced on us, I’ve no problem with vast swathes of town going car free.

So....
...the new normal (as I’m constantly told / talked at will be a much kinder and tolerant society) is just the old normal.
Thanks drivers.
Took about 48 hours.
Well done you.

I also concluded this morning that it took 7 weeks for all of the UK to lose the little driving skills they had before.

Yeah. That would be about right.

So. Many. Cyclists out. Really cheering.
Took Bob The Bitza / Odd Bob out on a first run. Triple gearing indexing is totally f**ked-up lol as I’m shit at sorting that but I think the freewheel has issues also :/

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Could be informative

https://twitter.com/allpartycycling/status/1262316705566658560?s=19

Have the cabbies branded it "an absolute disgrace" yet?

I haven't heard anything, but I expect they've been too busy with going south of the river (oh, yes):

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/single-post/2019/02/27/LTDA-sell-iconic-Taxi-House-for-%C2%A32125m-to-move-to-new-state-of-the-art-facilities

Also in Epic Fail, Salford's finest pop up cycle lane

https://twitter.com/AdsCondron/status/1263181187616591872?s=19

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cycling infra in MCR is fucking bobbins

drivers are MARGINALLY nicer than LDN though, which was a surprise

round my ends, and certainly up towards bury and radcliffe, riding a bike (especially with a sprog on a top-tube seat) gets you stares as if you were sauntering down the road with your knob out

That article doesn't paint the LTDA in a great light, which is surprising as it seems to be pretty much a website for cabbies - more people coming in for help with among other things "...PCNs and road traffic offences"...!! It then suggests that that pesky requirement to try and provide some affordable housing in London (HA!) is getting in the way of making a vast profit, before going on to be part of the very problem of London property values.

Anyway maybe all that will be done via Zoom (other videoconferencing software is available) from now on, who knows.

You can tell that life is returning to normal here; lots more cars on the roads, lots more marginal passes by people who think they're in a hurry and it's worth risking someone elses life. That said, the rat runs to Belgium and France are largely empty as people still aren't coming in from those countries. It's been nice to ride some of those roads again (have avoided them on weekdays for years as they're pretty dangerous usually)

Well, of course you'd expect cabbies to be charged with road traffic offences--they're on the streets constantly, there are tens of thousands of them, there are lots and lots of extra complications that have been introduced to the streets in recent decades, and there is a lot of enforcement via CCTV. None of that means that cabbies are more likely to commit RTOs than any other driver; I'd guess they're less likely to than most other classes of drivers. (I don't share the widespread view (on cycling forums) that cabbies are bad drivers. I think they're generally pretty good. There are systemic problems, e.g. their U-turns, which are very hazardous manoeuvres for cyclists, but on the whole I think they're not as bad as is often suggested.) It's obviously a good function for a membership association to provide help with such things.

As for property, that's quite another thing. London is simply bonkers in that respect, of course. Obviously, the article is from last year, when there was not yet a hoped-for slight cooling of property prices in London, so in that respect they probably got very lucky. The city desperately needs normalisation, but in a totally mismanaged economy like ours, where property is one of the few investment areas left, a long-established organisation like the LTDA can climb up a few rungs on its own version of the property ladder. I doubt they're the worst exponent of this, but a higher asking price for the land will probably make the council's task in getting any percentage of 'affordable housing', itself a laughable fudge of what's really needed, let alone 30%, which of course is often not reached. One does slightly hear the voice of the developers in trying to use this argument to depress the sale price, perhaps to then try to provide significantly fewer 'affordable' units than they claimed to the LTDA they would have to.

cycling infra in MCR is fucking bobbins

I'd buy a t-shirt with that on.

Bloody 'ell, that looks actively dangerous!

Where does the fail lie, Andy Burnham always comes across as very sensible but I don't actually know what his record in office as Mayor is like.

lol

Fixed, by moving them just outside the line.

https://road.cc/content/news/cycling-live-blog-may-21-2020-273663#live-blog-item-15645

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/may/23/two-wheels-good-bike-sales-soar-as-uk-takes-to-cycling

As usual, hopeful stories are being told based on the bike trade's economic performance. This is something I like, too, but I'm still wary as to whether it will last. Pretty much the same stories were told the last time public transport was compromised, which was after the 7/7 bombings and things went back to 'normal' soon. People stormed the bike shops on the day to get home and continued to cycle while public transport was unavailable, then quickly returned to using public transport when restrictions were lifted. Obviously, the pandemic is different, but what the two things have in common is that the underlying reason for cycling is negative. Some people will already have wanted, positively, to try out cycling and think that now is their opportunity, but most, I think, will be doing it only while they can't do what they would rather do. What basically happens is that there's a brief growth surge, and some new people will certainly stick with it, but that surge doesn't/can't last and flattens off. In a time when cycling was generally declining it's probably a shot in the arm, but we'll have to see what the long-term effect of it is going to be. As of now, I am still sceptical, and hope I'm wrong.