Reflections on England

The Morris Minor is a classic British car. Over a million were produced between 1948 and 1971 and they are still sometimes seen in use, including this example.

I just spent a week in England, visiting my family. It was great to be back. I had crumpets for breakfast, curry for lunch, and can report that English beer remains much tastier than Dutch beer. I enjoyed it very much, and even visiting it as a "foreigner" I found much to enjoy. It does help that my family live in one of the nicest corners of the country.

However, not everything is wonderful. I read in a newspaper while over there that the number of cars on Britain's roads have increased from just over 26 million in 2005 to more than 31 million in 2009, a rise of nearly 20% in just four years - a period only slightly longer than we've lived in the Netherlands. Considerable growth since the last time I looked at car ownership rates in Britain.

This growth was obvious on the roads themselves, and not only at school time, as in this photo, or rush hour. It didn't seem to matter what time of day or night it was, the roads had lots of cars on them. Often enough to cause a bit of a traffic jam, even at the most unlikely of times. For instance, we even found ourselves in a jam on the way to small a market town in the west country at 7 o'clock on a Sunday evening.

The UK's current transport secretary recently reminded us "that over 80% of all journeys are undertaken by car." He's absolutely right, and it will likely remain the case. It's the only means of transport which he, and the rest of the government, actually encourage in the UK at present. While it's not necessarily convenient due to the number of other motor vehicles on the roads, in very many cases it's the least bad option open to people.


I flew to Bristol and my mother came to meet me at the airport. As a pensioner, she is entitled to a free bus pass, so she left home in Burnham-on-Sea just after 2 pm to arrive over three hours later on the last bus to go to the airport from that direction. She covered 30 km in a fair bit over 3 hours, or an average of under 10 km/h.

I, on the other hand, left home in Assen somewhat after 3 pm, taking one of the regular trains (every 30 minutes) from Assen to Schiphol airport 200 km away in order to arrive a long time before the flight. I waited, got bored, bought a book, ate some food and eventually boarded the aeroplane and flew to Bristol Airport for 19:30. Just over four hours in all, and 800 km covered at an average of 200 km/h.

On the map: I started at A, my mother started at B and we met after comparable journey times at the white dot somewhat closer to B than to A.

In fact, transport remains a complete pain in England... unless you have a car. My original intention had been to make the entire journey between our home in Assen and my Mother's home in Burnham by public transport. However, while it's easy to cover the 200 km distance from Assen to Schiphol Airport (trains run every 30 minutes), it's not easy to cover the 30 km distance between Bristol Airport and Burnham on Sea. While my flight was to land at 19:30, the last bus running in the correct direction was the one my mother got off of at around 17:30, so I'd have had to find some other way of making the journey.

I checked out the other options and found nothing which wouldn't be expensive, take a long time and in at least one option would leave me waiting at a remote unmanned railway station at which I could easily miss the very last train of the evening. Not attractive at all as something to rely on, especially with the risk of delays. A taxi was an option, but it cost a good percentage of the price of a hire car for the week, so I arranged a hire car.

Having a hire car was interesting in itself. Naturally I picked the cheapest option available on the website, as they all do the same thing: roll along on four wheels at the speed of the same traffic jam, and the cheapest being the smallest it also is the most economical on offer.

However, the car was of interest to many people, who asked me the same question: "What hire car did you get ?" If it'd been "interesting" like the old Morris Minor at the top of this blog post perhaps I might have known what it was. There it is to the left, Small and blue. Not worth too large a photo. It worked well enough.

It seems to me that British people are on average rather more interested in cars than is good for them. In one sense this is understandable. On hearing that I normally drive rather infrequently, more than one person responded by saying that they "couldn't manage without a car". It's easy to see why people believe this, given the way the country's transport infrastructure is arranged. For many people it is genuinely difficult to imagine living without a car in the UK. Given the ubiquity of the car as the only way of getting about, it's perhaps also not surprising that the most popular TV programme in Britain is now the execrable Top Gear, the presenters of which, and presentation style of which, seem to have taken over many other BBC programmes.

I did a small amount of cycling myself, around Burnham on Sea where I lived with my family as a teenager. I used my father's old bike, and rode as I always did in the UK: "vehicularly" (as the American's put it). i.e. big and bold and taking the lane when I needed to. It's not particularly pleasant, and conditions which require such behaviour from cyclists lead to cycling only ever being a minority pursuit, as could be seen by the small amount of cycling in the area, and its domination by a young adult demographic. However, this is the only way to survive in such conditions. Few people see this as something they want their loved ones to do. It's part of the reason why 70% of the British population never ride a bicycle at all.

Burnham is still a nice little seaside town, but as it's in Britain it's also still a nice seaside town which is dedicated to cars. There's plenty of car parking, and while the area at the sea front is wide and could be quite pleasant to cycle along it is still out of bounds for cyclists. This photo shows the spot where on an out of season day in the 1980s, with almost no-one around, a teenager version of myself was assaulted by an angry local Conservative councillor who pushed me off my bike to uphold his personal idea of what "the law" ought to be.

The neighbouring towns of Bridgwater and Weston-super-Mare are just 9 and 11 miles away (14 and 17 km) from Burnham. These are easy distances by bicycle in the Netherlands. Distances which many school children cycle to school and back again every day. However, not so in the UK. By bike, these neighbouring towns remain unreachable to any but the brave, as getting to them requires riding on narrow A-roads with 60 mph (100 km/h) speed limits and heavy traffic. Almost no-one ever makes such a journey of such a distance by bicycle. My mother, my sister and her teenage children have never done this. It's not safe by any definition.

Conditions for cyclists have not improved. Cycle paths remain almost non-existent, or very compromised in the few places where they do exist. Where on road cycle lanes exist, they remain narrow strips at the edge of the road which lead cyclists to ride through potholes while positioning themselves too far to the left around awkward "traffic calming" obstacles. Unsurprisingly, cyclists remain a very rare sight. Some youths cycle, and apart from that I saw a handful of utility cyclists (mostly riding the ubiquitous "mountain bikes") on the move during my week in England and three or four quite "serious" types on racing cycles.

On returning home I found out that the government in the UK has (as I mentioned in passing was likely a few weeks back) now decided to definitely scrap funding of Cycling England, the organisation in charge of promotion of cycling in the country, saving enough to build just 5 metres of motorway. The UK government instead seems to want to promote electric cars, the buyers of which are having their purchases subsidized. As ever, Britain is ignoring lessons from the Netherlands, even ones which you might think would fit in with the demands of Britain's pro-motoring policies, such as that encouraging cycling improves conditions for drivers.

And then there is the CCTV. There is masses of it, everywhere, on the streets, in shopping centres, in shops, all "for your safety" of course. Some of it even claims to make the town "brighter safer." Mind you, apparently the French are providing pretty good competition on installing CCTV these days.

Yes, there is even CCTV in the pub. But let's finish on a more positive note:

Brown, warm, completely non fizzy. The best beer in the world.

Veggie curry pub lunch.

Onion Bhajis and Mango Chutney.

I know it is counter to the reputation that many people think it deserves, but Britain is actually quite a good place to eat and drink.

Update
A week or so later, it got worse. Read another post reflecting on the demise of "Cycling England."

Thanks to freewheeler for the tip about the Independent article. He also has more on the demolition of Cycling England. In case you're wondering, the ominous grey buildings in the middle of the blog post are Hinkley Point nuclear power station, which is visible from the sea front at Burnham. Electric cars are the future, apparently, so expect more of these.

Utrecht's pedestrianized shopping centre

It is not only cyclists, but also pedestrians who have benefited from the work which has been done in the Netherlands. The world's first deliberately car free street was the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam which opened in 1953.

This video from Mark Wagenbuur shows the way that the shopping streets in the centre of Utrecht have been transformed.

Mark says: The Utrecht pedestrian zone is a large area of car free streets in the historic city center. First in 1965 and from November 1968 on a larger scale, the narrow streets were closed to car traffic on the busiest shopping days. This experiment made the streets car free on Wednesdays and Saturdays which were -and still are- important market days. There was a lot of opposition from shop owners but the city went through with the plans for a permanent car ban. From 1971 the streets were permanently car free and they were redesigned. Side walks were removed and the streets were transformed to streets for pedestrians only. All opposition has since vanished. The area has been car free for 40 years now. The area is livable and a commercial success. It is one of the most attractive inner city shopping areas of the country. Best reached by public transport and bicycle. Deliveries to shops take place in the early hours of the day.

When private car ownership increased dramatically from the 1950s in the Netherlands, it was soon clear that the historic city centers could not handle that much traffic. Streets could not be widened without demolishing many historic buildings. It took about 20 years before the public and the cities knew that it could not go on like this. From the early 1970s many cities in the Netherlands created car free zones in the city centers. From that same time the use of the bicycle was on the increase again too.

On these streets, cycling is banned between 6:00 and 18:00. However, there are perfectly good, virtually car free, routes for cyclists which avoid these streets. Some can be seen in the other posts about Utrecht. Pedestrianization in the Netherlands works with cyclists, not against them.

Utrecht is not unique in having done this. In fact, virtually all towns in the Netherlands have made similar transformations.

Now that was fun... again.

In October last year, when my new Mango was two days old, I raced it in Groningen. This Sunday was the time for the same race again, a few days earlier in October than last year.

I think there's some significance in that the lighter velomobiles did particularly well. In the timed lap, for instance, Ymte Sijbrandij and Hans Wessels took first and second place by both riding Ymte's 25 kg custom made light Quest. Harry was in third place in his (standard) Mango Sport (26 kg), Stefan van Duijvenboden was fourth in his old 20" rear wheel Quest (the internals are like a Mango with an intermediate drive, and these older Quests weighed around 32 kg), and Peter Haan was fifth in his 29 kg Mango Sport RE. In the overall rating, Harry Lieben came third in his Mango Sport. That's the highest result in the race for a standard machine that anyone can buy right now.

Of course, these are all also very strong riders.

A few of my photos can be seen below, including one of the car that someone had inconsiderately left parked part on the track for us to swerve around... (I rarely have complaints, but this was really not a clever thing to do)

Full results can be found here, the official writeup is here and Peter also made a blog post, a video and took photos.

Read my review of the Sinner Mango Velomobile.

Mobility man - cycle superhighway

This is one of a series of promotional films about transport produced by the Nijmegen / Arnhem region.

The action largely takes place on the snelbinder cycling bridge in Nijmegen.

The man at the start is asking about a "fietssnelweg" between Nijmegen and Arnhem. The two cities are roughly 18 km / 11 miles apart. The presenter goes on to explain that when distances are greater than around 15 km, this can be offputting to a lot of cyclists, so the conditions need to be made better for cycling, so that the route is more attractive for cycling, and that's the way to get more people to cycle. They also need to encourage bicycles more suitable for longer distances.

This fietssnelweg is still in development. It is expected to be complete in 2012. There is a website for it and currently a competition is being held where people can contribute their ideas for how the route can be made better.

At the end you see a glimpse of what is claimed to be the fastest cycle courier service in the world - a velomobile used daily to take packets between Nijmegen and Arnhem. However, it appears that the local government actually wants to promote electric vehicles.

A change in direction

A few times in my life I've worked on things which were a bit futuristic. In the 1980s I'd tell people about how useful email was and they'd mostly look at me a bit odd.

The world's first smartphone. EO440.

In 1993 I worked on a device which really wasn't so different to the iPad you can buy today: A flat portable computer which communicated using (analogue) cell phone technology, could send emails and faxes, and was operated with a stylus on the screen.

Rather more recently, I've worked for 18 months on the Sinner Mango velomobile. Truly a vehicle from the future.

I'm very proud to have been associated with both of these products.

Sinner Mango velomoble

I started at Sinner in order to help with increasing production in order to reduce the long waiting list for a Mango. My colleagues and I have worked hard over the last year to make Mangos better than ever before. A few larger changes, but many small details which are not necessarily visible to the customer, result in the current production being better finished both inside and out, lighter and faster. I suggested the Mango Sport and the Red Edition as products, and these successfully increased demand for Mangos. However... not quite enough to support or warrant an extra employee.

Yesterday was the last day of my contract with Sinner at the Ligfietsgarage in Groningen. Mango production is continuing, of course, and I'll probably still be involved from time to time, but not as a regular employee.

So to summarise: I have no complaints. I had wonderful colleagues for 18 months, building Mangos for customers, and Sinner is a very good company run by hard working, honest people. Never before have I so much enjoyed working for minimum wage. The Mango is a wonderful velomobile. As a product, it's better now than ever, and as the waiting list will probably now start to slowly get longer again this is perhaps the best time ever to order one - and I'm not paid a cent to say that.

For me it's now time for a slight change of direction. I'll be able to put a bit more time into making baskets, the production of which slowed dramatically over the last 18 months, and we'll plan a wider range of cycling holiday destinations for next year's customers.

In addition, we're starting a new venture. A web shop selling bicycle parts. It will be a bit different in content from many cycling web shops. We're not looking to stock "everything" but only cycling products which we believe in. These are products which have a good reputation for a reason. Many are commonly used in the Netherlands though less common elsewhere. They all work very well. Most of them we've used ourselves, and some others are products which friends use and recommend. Good useful stuff, and no money wasting things which don't work

For instance, you won't find us offering to sell you the Mighty Amsterdam Lock in our web shop, but you will find the excellent AXA Defender Lock.

This coming Sunday I'll be racing my Mango in Groningen again. I'm very much looking forward to it.

The bike apple - new cycle parking at Alphen aan den Rijn station

From the Fietsberaad:

Wednesday 18th August was the opening date for the "Fietsappel" ("Bike Apple"), an unwatched cycle park in the area of the railway station in Alphen aan den Rijn. Travellers and visiters can park their bike for free in this multi storey building of steel in the shape of an Apple. 970 bikes fit within the bike racks in the "apple."


The ‘Fietsappel’ was designed by Wytze Patijn of Kuiper Compagnons. The concept is as an artwork of an apple. The floor is a spiral shaped as an apple. The steel artwork has a width of 27.5 metres and a height of 15.5 metres, the sloped floor goes around the "core" which is a steel column. The outside skin is transparent and gives the impression of space. It was a deliberate choice to make the cycle park feel as open as possible to give a good feeling of social safety.

At the station there are two other parking facilities for cyclists. Under the stationarea is "De Verbinding", which combines a bike tunnel under the railway line with an underground watched cycle park of 1280 parking spaces and next to it there are now two unwatched cycle parks. The "Kerk en Zanen" with 600 places and the new Fietsappel with 970 spaces.
This brings the total number of cycle parking spaces at Alphen aan den Rijn station to 2850. The town has a population of around 72000 people, so there are places for around one in 25 residents to park a bike at the railway station.

This is not exceptional, but actually quite normal. It is a similar proportion to other railway stations in the Netherlands - and somewhat different from the situation in London, other places in the UK, and indeed the rest of the world.

The Netherlands doesn't just have one or two "cycling cities." It's the whole country. There's quite a collection here of railway station cycle parking stories on this blog.

Wherever you park your bike, make sure that you use a secure bicycle lock so that it's still there when you return to it. Most Dutch people use a permanently mounted wheel lock such as the AXA Defender or AXA Victory. Because these locks are permanently fitted to the bicycle it is impossible leave home without them, ensuring that you always can lock your bike.

How cyclepaths make rain more pleasant

A couple of days ago I made a video as I rode home. It was horrible weather. Really a lot of rain. Part way home from work, I realised that it was a good opportunity to show the advantages of cycle paths when the weather is bad so started a camera on the back of my Mango.

Being away from motor vehicles in bad weather has a number of advantages. For a start, you have no concerns about "not being seen" by drivers whose vision is obscured by rain, spray or mist. You also remain drier because you are not hit by spray or splashed water from puddles. And you also don't ride over spilled diesel or broken glass from cars.


Grotere kaart weergeven

Journeys like this are a world away from the sort of thing that would happen quite regularly to me when I rode on the roads in the UK. If only I'd had a video camera on my bike back then I could easily have had a collection of videos to compare with this chap (or the many others documenting how cycling is in the UK).

What's more, such cycling provision brings huge benefits in speed as well. In the just short of 14 km distance covered in the video, which shows part of my 30 km each way commute, I average 36.5 km/h despite headwind and rain. The journey would not only have been less pleasant, but it would have taken longer on the road due to there being more traffic lights, traffic calming, and more things to give way to.

This video carries on from about the point that the video in my previous post stopped.