The truth about Cambridge

Cyclists disappearing into the mist in a park in
Cambridge

Cambridge in the UK is sometimes held up as an example for other cities to follow.

The city generally claims a cycling rate of about 25%. However, this is a rate for commuters only, including students, and not the proportion of all journeys which are made by bike. Estimates of the percentage of journeys by bike for all purposes are harder to find, and often hover around 18-20%. In a rather glowing article in the Guardian earlier this year it was claimed that "one in five" journeys are by bike.

This is not bad at all for Britain. In fact, Cambridge's modal share for cyclists is almost certainly the highest in the English speaking world. That's one of the reasons why we moved to the city in 1991.

We lived in Cambridge for 16 years and we wouldn't have stayed so long if it were not a pleasant place to live. However, the conditions for cycling are really only so-so. The reasons for Cambridge's relatively high cycling rate are unusual, specific to the city, and not easy to copy elsewhere.

What's happened since we left ?
We visited Cambridge briefly in October to visit some friends. After becoming used to the rapid progress and dramatic changes to cycling infrastructure in Assen in four years, it was interesting to see that essentially nothing much had changed for Cambridge cyclists in four years. Speed limits remain high, cycle-lanes remain narrow, cyclists are still expected to share lanes with buses and few residential roads are designed to limit rat-running.

Cambridge cyclists still find themselves riding on rough surfaces in narrow cycle lanes on busy through roads to the left of obstructions in the middle of the road in places where the speed limit drops from 40 mph to 30 mph (64 km/h to 48 km/h). It's not much fun if a bus or truck passes as you come to pinch points like this:

Huntingdon Road, Cambridge. Narrow cycle-lanes past unpleasant and dangerous central islands. View Larger Map

We also went along the much celebrated Gilbert Road. This looked less like somewhere which had recently received attention and more like somewhere which still desperately needed work. It still relies on narrow on-road cycle-lanes to separate cyclists from motor vehicles.

Since we returned to the Netherlands, there has been another story in the local paper about the utter chaos caused by people driving their children to school and parking in the very road where we used to live. It's a long way from what the school run looks like in Assen.

Cambridge still feels like a city where quite a lot of people cycle despite the conditions, and not one where the entire population is invited to cycle because of the conditions.

Just behind the "cyclists dismount"
sign at the entrance to this school in
Cambridge you find Sheffield stands
have been repurposed to stop
pedestrians from walking where cars
are being driven. This is surely not what
what the Dutch company which made
the stands intended them to be used for.

Students cycle a lot in Cambridge
Cambridge is an atypical city, with unusual demographics. Cycling is largely split along demographic lines.

While Cambridge's population is around 130000, the two universities cater for about 43000 students, making up a substantial proportion of the total population.

Students are a particularly easy demographic to attract to cycling. They're young adults, well educated, more confident than average and have to be fairly careful with money. Cambridge is not alone in having a higher proportion of trips by bike because it is a university city. In fact, the top cycling cities in most countries are university cities. This includes Groningen in the Netherlands, Copenhagen in Denmark, Davis and Portland in the USA as well as Cambridge in the UK.

It is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by bike due to the large student population to other similar cities which don't have a large student population.

However, Cambridge goes further than most and almost forces students to cycle. Few people from outside the city, and not all within it, realise that "Undergraduate students are not normally allowed to keep a car", or as it is put elsewhere, "it is a Regulation of the University, agreed with the City Council, that students are not allowed to keep a car or motorcycle in Cambridge". There are exceptions, for instance for physically disabled students, but most students don't drive in the city.

Enough students are banned from keeping a car in Cambridge that if just half of them made all their journeys by bike, no-one else would need to cycle at all to achieve the headline cycling modal share of the city.

Who else cycles in Cambridge ?
Cycling in Cambridge also benefits from the fact that many students remain in the city after graduating in order to work for one of the high-tech companies in the area. Also, many people move to the city to work for these companies after graduating at other institutions.

The city is home to a higher than usual proportion of graduates and many people have noted that those who form the cycling habit at University tend to continue to cycle afterwards, especially at the start of their careers when they're still young and don't yet have responsibility for children. Cambridge is a very young city due to the recent graduates as well as the students.

Cambridge Cycling Campaign committee members are also predominantly from the "University and high-tech" end of local society¹. Many members of the campaign are the same². Cyclists in Cambridge are predominantly people who identify themselves as "cyclists", or at least are a member of the university and high-tech demographic that cycles. They've taken the unusual step of doing something which the majority of the British population now never does: riding a bike.

This is great, but with such a source of commuting cyclists, it's surprising that it is still only a quarter of journeys to work that are made by bike.

Just as it is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by bike due to the large student population to other similar cities without a large student population, so it is not possible to copy the extra proportion of trips by ex-students who kept the habit of cycling.

Note that I am not saying that everyone who cycles in Cambridge is either a student or works in a high-tech company as of course there are some cyclists who fit into neither of those groups. However very many of those who cycle in Cambridge are part of one of those two groups.

A social divide
There has long been a divide between "town" and "gown" in Cambridge. This is perhaps less severe than it once was, but it is still real. Even now it still occasionally breaks out into violence.

People from families which have long been in the city and who are connected with neither the university nor the high-tech businesses and who you might classify as "working class" don't cycle at a particularly higher rate than they would in any other British town. Amongst the "town" people, car usage is very much higher and riding a bike can be seen as a reflection of being poor.

That people linked with the university and high tech industries are more likely than average to cycle does not have much influence on the "town" people as they don't identify with that other group. Rather, cycling has become one of the ways that the two groups, of "local people" and "students" can be identified. As I cycled in the city, drivers shouting abuse (something which happened all to often) would often refer to me as a "student" or as "poor". They were not interested in that I never studied in Cambridge and only moved there in my mid 20s to take quite well paid jobs for computer companies. To them, I was definitely "gown". I made this clear to them in part by cycling.

It's not just cycling. The two sides of the town / gown divide have different priorities in other ways too. For instance, take the shops in Cambridge. The city has high retail rents. As a result, shops which sell low cost goods are relatively few and far between. Campaigns have been run by against new supermarkets opening in "gentrified" areas, even though many of the locally born people who live in the same area value the possibility of cheaper food and other bargains which the new shops may bring rather higher than having boutique stores which sell organic produce for higher prices.

The results of a social divide
The divide affects attitudes of both sides. It is part of the cause of a relatively high level of intolerance experienced by cyclists in the city even though cyclists are not such a small minority as they might be in other parts of the UK.

When cyclists experience trouble from drivers in Cambridge, the result tends to be quite similar to other parts of the country. They are unlikely to get much sympathy from the police or the public. I once had an experience of a Cambridge taxi driver driving into me deliberately as I rode along a counter-flow cycle-lane (very near where something similar happened to this cyclist). This driver also turned his vehicle around, chased me up the street, got out of his taxi and assaulted me. When I went to the police, the very first words spoken by the officer who interviewed me were "cyclists cause a lot of problems in Cambridge". The local newspaper in Cambridge quite often reports conflicts, with van drivers, runners, bus-drivers and youths all finding a reason to dislike cyclists.

It's a huge contrast with the Netherlands where cycling is something that the whole of society finds to be normal and there is no social divide between cyclist and non-cyclist. The response is very different should anything untoward happen to a cyclist.

The Cambridge Cycling Campaign was formed when shopping streets in the centre of the city, essential as part of many direct and relatively safe routes across the city, were closed to cyclists. This was a popular change amongst non-cyclists, and was possible to implement only because the public at large didn't cycle, didn't understand cycling and didn't support cycling as a means of transport. These streets have only partly been restored as cycling routes, and some of the one-way restrictions on them, which make sense only when driving, still apply to bikes. They are occasionally enforced with much publicity.

These restrictions in the centre make cycling routes in Cambridge less direct and force cyclists sometimes to have to use busy and dangerous roads.

The local newspaper in Cambridge often includes the same kind of articles and letters from outraged non-cyclists (red lights, one way streets, pavement cycling) which you see in other areas in Britain. These letters, and the attitudes which go with them, are unknown in the Netherlands. The conditions which cause cyclists to ignore red lights, ride the wrong way down one-way streets and ride on the pavement are to a large extent eliminated in the Netherlands by infrastructure designed to benefit cyclists, so they are not an enforcement issue. The occurrence of these problems are symptoms of a greater planning and design problem.

What about the infrastructure ?
I'm not the only person to have noted that cycling happens in Cambridge not because of the infrastructure but despite it.

There are a few high points. The paths through the parks, though narrow, shared with pedestrians and often crowded, are relatively pleasant to ride through. Recently a good new path opened which heads North from the Northern edge of the City to some villages. Also there is a nice cycle path about 600 m long which heads to the University buildings on the West (it was chosen for the cover of the Cambridge Cycling Campaign's 2016 document).

However, the better examples of infrastructure are not joined up. You can't make any journey only using these few good paths away from motorists. This is quite typical for the UK. Cyclists spend much of their time on roads which are "shared" with large numbers of cars. Also, the bans on cycling in shopping streets in the centre which originally were the catalyst for the formation of the local cycling campaign group in 1993 have only been partly repealed, leaving a useful link from the centre to the east unavailable to cyclists.

Cyclists go left, pedestrians go right.
Carlton Way in Cambridge

Much of the separate provision that exists, is woefully inadequate, such as the short length along Carlton Way where a narrow path is shared with pedestrians for bidirectional travel. It's only a couple of hundred metres long but in this short length presents an array of problems to cyclists including a rough surface, having to give way twice, bollards, and an exciting point where pedestrians and cyclists have to cross each other's paths on a sharp corner before after another 90 degree bend cyclists are ejected into a side-road.

Kings Hedges estate in Cambridge.
It's far from perfect, with bumpy
narrow paths and bad sight lines.
However, these paths do provide a
traffic-free route to a primary school,
swimming pool, and a few shops.

In the 1970s, a reasonable effort was made in the UK to create housing developments designed around people rather than around cars. The Kings Hedges estate in Cambridge is an example of this. However, these early starts have not been maintained nor developed. They also have not been linked up with other newer developments.

There was also an attempt to build good cycling provision in the East of the city. However, this also doesn't really link up with anything in a useful way.

Newer developments are far worse in design. No longer are there significant green spaces, no longer is there an attempt to provide a network of motor traffic free paths.

"The Quills" - a new housing estate which offers this view of
the world. The result of trying to limit car ownership by
limiting car parking is to make car parking more of a problem.

I blogged before about "The Quills", a small new estate dominated by cars, and designed with no good route to cycle to the centre of the city without riding with those cars.

Also I wrote in the past about another new development, the multiply named Arbury Camp / Arbury Park / Orchard Park. The plans for this place were alarming enough, but the reality was worse. It caused many problems for cyclists before it had even been built, even if you were merely trying to pass nearby.

Outside the city
A few cycle-paths stretch outside the city of Cambridge, but they don't provide anything near to a comprehensive network of efficient routes. The local newspaper recently reported that another cyclist had been injured riding along the A14, a road with a 70 mph ( 113 km/h ) speed limit which might well have been classified as a motorway in other countries:

The A14. A motorway in all but name with a 70 mph speed limit and no hard shoulder. This runs across the Northern edge of the city and provides the most direct route to some nearby villages. Some people actually do cycle here, but we've known for a long time that it's not safe. View Larger Map

Britain does not provide convenient and safe routes paralleling "motorways" like this, and cycling on an A-road like this is legal in the UK. You might wonder why anyone would choose to use such roads. The answer is simple. Doing so avoids a long detour along busy narrow country lanes with 60 mph ( 96 km/h ) speed limits and blind corners.

Children from villages at a distance from school which would be routinely cycled in the Netherlands cannot routinely cycle to school in Cambridge.

Conclusion
The cause of the higher than average cycling rate in Cambridge is not something that can be replicated in other British cities. Where could you convince a third of the population to agree to be banned from owning a car ?

On the other hand, what makes cycling attractive in Dutch cities, including here in Assen, could be replicated in British cities if only the will existed to ask for it. What has been done is very simple. Long term planning is key - the same policies have been followed for many years. They've followed the principles of sustainable safety and have created conditions which:

• Keep cyclists away from cars absolutely as much as possible.
• Make all residential streets no-go areas for through traffic (preserving segregation of modes without cyclepaths).
• Provide bikes with more direct routes than cars.
• Remove cars from minor rural roads.
• Produce a high degree of subjective and social safety everywhere.

This is what is needed to make infrastructure a draw for cycling rather than a hindrance.

We had three different houses in and around Cambridge, and it's notable that in none of them were any of our neighbours particularly enthusiastic cyclists. In fact, most of our neighbours never rode a bike in the entire time we lived in those houses. This is in sharp contrast with where we live now in Assen. All of our current neighbours cycle for at least some of their journeys. Due to cycling having been made the preserve of the many instead of a hobby activity for a few, there are few "non-cyclists" and no anti-cycling sentiment.

Assen is in most respects is quite normal by Dutch standards. Car parking here is the cheapest in the country, and no attempt has been made to limit the ownership of cars. New build homes here have adequate car parking as well as compulsory cycle parking. There is also no university in this city to boost cycling numbers. These things could be seen as disadvantages where encouraging cycling are concerned, but the cycling rate here is more than double that of Cambridge. More importantly, the people who cycle here come from the whole spectrum of society and are not taken predominantly from a particular demographic.

Cambridge	Assen

A video from Cambridge which has become popular on youtube:


Many people who view this think little more than to note that there are quite a few cyclists. Let's look deeper into it. The most dense cycle usage in Cambridge is in a few streets in the centre like this one, on routes used by many students. The conditions for cycling in this location are neither especially pleasant nor especially safe. The bulk of the cyclists that you see in the video are students. They ride for the reasons that students everywhere ride, but there are more of them in Cambridge in large part because they are not allowed to keep a car.

What can be done ?
Several unfortunate things have happened recently. The local government scrapped the much needed post of cycling officer and also while Cambridge was briefly in receipt of extra funds as a Cycling City, this initiative has also been scrapped. Investment in cycling in Cambridge has never been adequate.

It's important not to lose focus and not to be complacent. Cambridge's leading position in the UK, and in the English speaking world, is the result of unusual and fortunate circumstance, not of cyclists being particularly well provided for. With investment in decent cycling infrastructure, the city has the potential to do much better. For this reason, I was recently surprised to see a proposal to rename the main campaign group in the city with a more passive tone. Your work is not finished yet.

People elsewhere who look to Cambridge are looking in the wrong direction. The things that make cycling popular in Cambridge are not easily duplicated elsewhere. Instead of looking to one town which is exceptional for reasons that cannot be duplicated you would be better off looking to the Netherlands where a far higher cycling rate has been achieved even in towns with none of these special circumstances. The difference is the infrastructure above all else.

August 2013 update

A recently published research project by Anna Goodman into socio-economic patterns and their relevance to commuting in the UK supports my argument above.

The chart on the right. Anna's research confirms that there is a correlation between cycling in Cambridge and affluence - precisely the point that I make above re "town vs. gown".

Note that Oxford and Hackney have similar demographic bubbles in which cycling is correlated with the lifestyle of a self selected and relatively prosperous section of the population.

A personal note about Hackney
I used to visit Hackney quite often just over twenty years ago. I met my (then) future wife, Judy, in Hackney as she lived there for a time. Hackney was then a very different place demographically to how it is now. We have to recognize the effect of social change on peoples' chosen modes of transport.

Hackney has been through a period of gentrification. The population is now more similar to Cambridge and Oxford than it used to be and that's the primary reason why cycling has grown in that area. The infrastructure is still dreadful and Hackney still achieves nothing like its potential for cycling.

Read other posts about Cambridge.

January 2015 update
Since I wrote this piece, people from Cambridge have often claimed that great changes have been made since we left the UK. Their claims have not as yet stood up to much scrutiny. I made a very short work trip to Cambridge for work this month, arriving by coach and leaving by train. As a result Most of my view of the city on this visit was through a coach or taxi window. I saw a good part of my old commuting route from a village south of Cambridge, and two different routes to the Science Park. Nothing much had changed. Cycling remains difficult in Cambridge. In response to the conditions, many of those people who do cycle dress like canaries. I took some photos while waiting for buses and trains:

This cyclist decided he'd had enough of the road at this point.

Pleasant conditions for cycling by the station ?

Road vs. pavement.

A very narrow cycle-lane leading into to a bus stop. Those who can turn left here, mounting the kerb and riding through a park.

Making short connections by riding on the pavement is an understandable reaction to the conditions.

I was only here for a few minutes. Quite a lot of people prefer the pavement here.

I took the photo at the top in 1998 as I cycled to work in Cambridge in the fog. Jesus Green is one of the nicer bits of Cambridge for cycling, but those shared use paths were always too narrow and too bumpy, and access to them is not what it could be.

The University of Cambridge continues to be charged with elitism. They have problems with admitting people from less advantaged backgrounds, even though they've supposedly been trying for years. This is noticed even by newspapers which show the same elitism.

¹ This is not in any way a criticism of the campaign committee. These are wonderful people giving freely of their time to try to encourage cycling. Cambridge Cycling Campaign is very well organised and the people in it try to do a good job. I was once a member of the committee myself. However, like everyone else their ideas are inevitably shaped by their position in society.
² Cycle campaigners around the world often point out that cyclists are on average better educated than non-cyclists or that they have on average higher incomes. This is all very well, but it also reinforces the difference between "town" and "gown".


A history of exaggeration
Readers from elsewhere may be amused to hear that back in the 1990s, the local council in Cambridge produced literature which said that Cambridge was second only to Amsterdam. This was of course a smokescreen. Portland now makes the same claim. It's still a smokescreen. Indeed, Portland is boasting even more. They only have about 5% of commutes by bike which isn't close even to Cambridge, let alone average Dutch cities. We have to always be wary of nonsense like this. There is a lot of exaggeration about and it's not helpful.

Los Angeles has a plan, but is it enough ?

Los Angeles has experienced some significant growth in cycling in recent years. 13000 people in the city now commute by bike. The growth is something that Los Angeles is proud of, and quite rightly so.

However, this is a large city. 3.8 million people live in the city itself and almost 15 million people live in the urban area. That's very nearly the same population as the whole country of the Netherlands, but Angelenos live with much higher density¹ so there is much less to be done.

Are the numbers actually impressive or not ?
Despite the density, very few people cycle in LA. 13000 commuters may sound like a large number, it's not. This is a huge city with a huge number of potential cyclists. If it were an average Dutch city, over 3 million journeys would be made each day by people who lived in Los Angeles itself, and 12 million journeys each day by residents of the urban area of Los Angeles. There would be a million journeys per hour by bike through the working week. When cycling is truly successful as a mode of transport, it is something done by everyone, all the time. Even though cycling has grown in Los Angeles, the result is a cycling modal share of around 0.3% of journeys. This is orders of magnitude lower than average in the Netherlands.

So what's happening about it ?
When looking up another story which mentioned Los Angeles a few days ago, I came across the city's bicycle plan (also here). This is quite an interesting document in many ways.

The plan describes a proposal for "an ambitious 1,684 mile bikeway system". This number is clearly important as it appears in particularly large print in the document. Apparently this will "build off the existing 334 miles that have been installed over the past thirty plus years". Does that indicate that the rate of cycle path building over the last thirty years has been 10 miles per year ? Well, actually, no it doesn't. I first thought that a "bikeway" was a cycle path separate from the road, but actually it's not. A "bikeway" can be almost anything. Most of the "bikeway system" actually refers to on-road treatments of one kind or another. Of the existing 334 miles, only 49 miles are "Green Paths" segregated from the road. Of the proposed new 1350 miles of "bikeway", only a further 90 miles of "Green Paths" are proposed.

The surprising photo chosen by the authors of the bicycling plan to
represent "Green paths" in L.A. Narrow and enclosed, with a bad
surface, weeds and concrete surroundings, "enhanced" with barbed
wire. I hope it doesn't all look like this.²

And what do these off road "Green paths" look like ? I've not seen them myself, but to the left is the example chosen by the authors of the plan to illustrate them. Presumably this was chosen because it's a good example, however to my eyes it is very much an example of doing the wrong thing. If conditions even on the "Green paths" of L.A. resemble this photo, then I think we can see why it is that so few people cycle there².

The photo shows an example of design with no regard at all for social safety. It's not a very inviting place to be in the daytime, and very many people would avoid this in the dark. It looks like a mugger's alley and will not attract the average person to cycle.

The plan's discussion about the "bikeways" includes a bit of history. While only 334 miles exist now, the 1977 plan actually promised 600 miles, and the 1996 plan promised 742 miles. Previous plans were not even half implemented: 408 out of 742 miles of the "bikeway network" that should exist by now simply does not exist. While it is true that the new plan "exceeds its predecessors substantially in its commitment to bikeways", can we have any confidence that this plan will be followed any more closely than the previous ones were ?

Sadly, the time-scales allocated make this almost inevitable. On page 107 the plan says that the extra 1350 miles of "bikeway", and 90 miles of separate "green paths", are to be built over the next 35 years. Yes, 35 years. Now that's a long term plan ! If it all goes to plan, and this network actually gets built, then Los Angeles will in 35 years time be able to claim to have built an average of 2.5 miles per year of extra "green path", or perhaps 39 miles per year of on-road paint and other tweaks. This really is not impressive at all. This policy document leaves all the decisions for future office holders, who may or may not go through with the plan. History tells us that they likely won't build more than half of what is planned. Luckily for those who made this lack-lustre plan, setting such a long term target means that most people involved now will be retired before anyone asks them to answer for what they've done, or perhaps more likely, what they've not done.

It's been known in Los Angeles since the 1950s
that building more roads didn't solve the problem
of increased traffic.

The Netherlands, which remember only has a population slightly larger than the urban area of Los Angeles, now has 35000 km of high quality completely separate cycle path. In addition there is an unknown length of lesser quality touristic separated paths, 5000 km of on road cycle lane and many thousands of kilometres of roads which have been prioritized for bikes. Infrastructure here is being built at a rate many times higher than that in Los Angeles, and what is being built is to a much higher standard. Los Angeles can only continue to fall behind if it makes plans like this.

Bicycle parking
Under the title of "Equity: parking", the authors say that "Safe, visible and accessible bicycle parking is essential to encourage greater levels of bicycling activity." In this, I think they're right. There must be enough parking spaces. So what has the city done ? Currently there are "over 3600" cycle parking spaces, and "bicycle parking must be provided at a ratio of two percent of the number of auto parking spaces" at some kinds of developments. Is 2% an aspirational target ? And can 3600 spaces on street shared between four million people who live in the city be seen to be anything better than scraping the surface of what is required ? 3600 doesn't even come close to supporting a 2% modal share, let alone true mass cycling.

By way of contrast, and bear in mind that this is for a very similar population to Los Angeles, there are literally millions of cycle parking spaces in the Netherlands. Over 300000 cycle parking spaces for bikes have been provided at railway stations alone, and this figure grows by 25000 per year. To keep up current growth rates in cycling, Groningen, a city with one twentieth of the population of LA is currently adding 500 spaces each year to just one of its cycle-parks. Residential properties in the Netherlands must provide an area for secure bike parking which is 6.5% of the floor area of the home. i.e. Enough space for the family's bikes to be stored in safety.

And what else does the LA document say ? Well, they make a point of dividing cyclists into three categories - Advanced / Experienced, Basic / less confident, Children with or without their parents. There is a suggestion that parallel facilities will be built for these different types of cyclists.

This is a fundamental error. To build down for inexperienced cyclists is a waste of time. Good cycling infrastructure suits all types of cyclists. Infrastructure which isn't good enough for the experienced to use for efficient journeys without problems definitely is not good enough for the inexperienced to use either. This is doubly ridiculous when there clearly isn't enough of a budget to build one good network, let alone three.

A call for action
Angelenos ! You're being fed a line !

There are a lot of expensive consultants' words in that document, but this is not how real progress is made. The Dutch also had a bicycle master plan back in 1990 but they set high targets and since that time, they followed policies which resulted in real change. That is the reason why a population just slightly larger than that of the L.A. urban area now make an extraordinary proportion of their journeys by bike, whatever their age. The same could perhaps be achieved in L.A., but the current plan isn't even scratching the surface of what is required to make it a reality.

People elsewhere ! Don't expect too much just because a lot of words appear in a plan. You need to make sure that any plans written up actually make sense. Be wary when the same consultants are involved as helped with other lacklustre plans. Make sure to keep to the very highest standards.

¹: 2570 people per square km in Los Angeles vs. 402 per square km in the Netherlands. Nowhere in the Netherlands compares with the high population densities of large US cities.

²: While reviewing this article I was sent this link to a discussion about one of green paths in Los Angeles. A couple of quotes: "The consensus is that this path might be one of the nicest in town, however, check the comments below, because some cyclists think it goes through some pretty bad neighborhoods, while others don’t. But, if you can feel safe (e.g. with a group), it’s a nice, pretty, breezy ride...", "It is generally a nice ride during the day, though I would recommend avoiding it after dark (no lights and bad neighborhoods are potential problems). I occasionally come across “less than upstanding looking citizens” on the way", "It certainly isn’t all that bad. Of couse, you wouldn’t want to ride it at night, but that’s because the path isn’t lit, and there’s no barrier between the path and the canal....", "some punks have been breaking glass bottles along the route lately, and it doesn’t appear that the city does much to maintain the path". Another path description says "Sadly, like so many of the bike trails described here, large sections of this path are incredibly run-down, virtually junkyards.", and another is "not very highly recommended, unless you’re into gangs and graffitti". Not everyone agrees, of course. Some people are always more sensitive than others. However, there is clearly a problem with social safety on these paths.

I know there are problems with money in L.A. but it's a false economy to ignore cycling because of this. Cycling infrastructure is cheaper to build than not to build.

The truth about New York, and other unlikely places to look for inspiration...

For some time, I've wondered why it is that British politicians and commentators look so very often across the Atlantic to the United States for inspiration, when they could more profitably take a much shorter journey across the North Sea to the Netherlands or other European nations to find better solutions for their problems. This is particularly true when it comes to cycling.

A great example of this appeared recently in the "bike blog" of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, with the rather hyperbolic headline of "How one New York bike lane could affect the future of cycling worldwide".

Cyclists in the USA, and at this time particularly in New York face many problems. I'd of course like to see them resolved. But my question in this post is about why it is that a British newspaper would make such a remark. Is New York really so significant in cycling terms ?

The last figures I saw for the cycling rate of the city suggest that just 0.6% of commutes in the city are by bike (and that this small number is enough to put it in sixth place amongst larger American cities). Only around one-fifth of all journeys made are for commuting purposes. However, commuting figures are often quoted for cycling because commuters are by definition adults of working age - a relatively easy group to attract to cycling. By concerning ourselves only with commuters we don't have to concern ourselves with the more tricky demographic groups - including children, parents accompanying children and older people. Commuting figures are usually the highest figures for utility cycling that you can quote, and it makes it easier to claim a larger modal share than is real when the entire population and all reasons for journeys are discussed.

In this case let's be generous and assume for the sake of simplicity that 0.6% of all journeys by everyone are by bike in New York. The city has a population of around 8.4 million, and it's normal for people to make an average of around 2.5 journeys per day. Therefore, about 21 million journeys will be made per day in New York. Taking our generous estimate of cycle usage, we can assume that there are around 125000 journeys made per day by bike in the city. If this blog was into baffling with large numbers, I'd perhaps stop there and report the huge number of cyclists. However, that's not really very helpful.

Even compared with London, where The Guardian is based, this isn't actually impressive at all. London's population is a little smaller than New York's, but Londoners reportedly use bikes for roughly 500000 journeys per day (only a small minority of these journeys, around 13000, are made on bikes which are part of the much hyped, incredibly expensive bike share scheme).

In comparison with cities in the Netherlands, the number of trips made by bike in New York is roughly equal to a city with a population of around 150000 people and a merely average cycling rate. Higher cycling rate cities do better, of course. Assen, where we now live, is a tiny place with just 65000 people. However, they make over 70000 cycle journeys each day, which is a remarkably high proportion of our generous estimate for New York. The world's highest cycling rate is in Groningen, where a population of 190000 makes over 300000 journeys per day. Easily more than double the numbers made by New Yorkers.

Other American cities are similar. Even the much lauded Portland has only a 4.7% commuting rate. That's around 1/6th the cycling modal share of an average Dutch city. No place in the Netherlands has such a low modal share as Portland, yet Portland is also frequently an inspiration to some people in the UK.

Cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands is built to cope with far higher levels of usage and by a far wider demographic than many outside observers realise.

But this blog post isn't really about New York or Portland or even about infrastructure. Rather, I'm interested in the British media's obsession with everything from America, and their apparently unquestioning belief of any hype or "cheerleading" which they hear. If you consistently look in the wrong direction, then you consistently end up with the wrong answers. That is, unfortunately, precisely what keeps happening in the UK, where it appears that many people stand with their backs to Europe and gaze longingly across the North Atlantic for inspiration for ways to solve any given problem.

That The Guardian should write about cycling in New York in the article that I linked to is not at all unusual. The Guardian actually writes an awful lot about cycling in New York. In fact, search the newspaper for "New York cycling" and you get 10000 hits. Search for "Copenhagen cycling" (another place known for hype) and you get 2100 hits, "Portland cycling" gets 150 hits (all these numbers were correct at the time of writing this post. Google's indexes and the Guardian's content both change, but when checked a couple of years later the numbers were still similar)

And does the Guardian also write about Groningen, the place which has the highest cycling rate in the world ? Well, search for "Groningen cycling" and you find a mere 29 hits, more than one of which are due to the comments I used to make beneath "bike blog" articles before seeing how utterly pointless it was to bother with them.

There's surely something wrong with this picture. There's a saying about Journalism: "if your mother says she loves you, check it out.". Why is The Guardian, a "quality newspaper" not checking-out the stories that they tell about cycling ? Why are they not more skeptical of their sources, and ensuring sensible coverage of cycling ? The journalism on their "bike blog" often seems to consist of little more than reproducing press releases from whoever shouts loudest about their cycling "successes".

The Netherlands has a smaller population than the Metropolitan area of New York City (16 million vs 22 million) but there are vastly more cycle journeys here. A million cycle journeys per hour, in fact, during much of every week. It may not be easy to see what this compares with, but there's one simple comparison which is startling: The tiny population of this country make more journeys by bike than the whole of the USA, Britain and Australia put together.

When looking for examples of successful policy to copy, does it not make most sense to look where policies genuinely have been successful instead of looking to where proudly claimed successes are actually rather small and only visible relative to even smaller numbers of cyclists previously ?

When Americans visit Dutch cities, there is a reason why they are amazed and inspired. If journalists from the Guardian were to make the same journey, they'd see the same things. I have suggested this to them before, and indeed I also sent invitations to journalists with this and other newspapers in the UK over some years with trying to promote the idea of a Study Tour to them. I'm still waiting for a response.

Some numbers:

Yes, there are just 24000 bike commuters in the whole of New York City. Within the US, Portland leads for overall cycling rate. However, even here the figures are remarkably small in comparison with any Dutch city - including even those which consider themselves to have low rates of cycling. It's great that progress is being made in the USA, but it's very slow progress and other nations would be better off looking to the Netherlands for real examples of what really does work to promote cycling.

In the last week we've made four different posts which refer to the USA in one way or another. To make it easy to see all "USA" posts, you can select those posts by label.

Please don't get any silly idea that I dislike New York, New Yorkers, or Americans in general. How could I ? New York's and New Yorker's influence on western culture has been huge. I grew up listening to Talking Heads and Suzanne Vega, and watching films by Woody Allen. However, just as it would make no sense at all to ask the Dutch about running a successful mission to the moon, it makes no sense to ask Americans how to make cycling a normal part of everyone's lives. That goes double when you see that enlightened Americans are actually looking to the Netherlands. Once upon a time, America was the leading cycling nation, but at the moment cycling in the USA faces many problems. I'd like to see them resolved.

Do you want to see how different it could be ? Book a study tour and see how Dutch infrastructure has lead to the highest cycling modal share in the world.

The truth about Copenhagen

This is a long post, but also a factual one. Please do read the comments. I think it notable that Copenhagen residents would appear to be in agreement with me, including the Head of the city's Bicycle Programme, Andreas Røhl

The Copenhagen conference is upon us, and what's happening ? Well, CO2 emissions from delegates travelling to the conference are huge for a start, so let's hope they achieve something.

No doubt we've also got any number of articles about "the world's cycling capital" to look forward to.

So what's the problem with this ?

Danish cyclists are increasingly scared to cycle. A recent press release from the city revealed that the number of people who feel safe cycling on the city's streets has fallen from 47% to 40%. An officer from the city's cycling programme is quoted as saying 'More parents don't want their children to ride.'

You can see why there is this concern over safety in almost any photo of cyclists in the city. The majority of cycle paths have no real separation from the street. To cycle in Copenhagen is to cycle in close proximity to motor vehicles. This leads inevitably to a lower level of subjective safety.

The paths are also very narrow. Many are just two or 2.2 metres wide. This is much narrower than the 2.5 m + 1.5 m separation from the road which is normal in the Netherlands for single direction paths. A recent report from the Fietsberaad reported that there is "no promotion" and "almost no important technical or infrastructural innovation."

The cyclists of Copenhagen include relatively few children. Helmets are much more common than here in the Netherlands (they reflect the feeling of safety of those who choose to wear them). There are lots of motor vehicles.

When the Copenhagenize blog includes a piece on cycling to school, you don't see videos of Danish children. Rather, the blog has used the video I shot of Dutch children here in Assen. That's great, but where are the Danish children ? This is important. I can see the next generation of Dutch cyclists already riding their bikes, but not where the next generation of Danish cyclists will come from.

Danish children cycle to school less than ever. Lots of people do use cargo bikes to transport their children within cities, but children are relatively infrequently seen on their own bikes. To be fair, Copenhagen is trying to do something about this, and Mikael is right to point out the absurd direction in which cycle promotion has been heading in Denmark. But the cycling rate in the country as a whole has dropped 30% since 1990. (Sadly, it continues to drop).

So how much cycling is there in Copenhagen ?

The diagram above comes from page ten of "Cycle Policy 2002-2012", an document produced by the City of Copenhagen, showing the modal shares for the city. The text says "The (bicycle) share of the total number of all purpose trips is slightly less than one fifth, but the share of home-workplace traffic is as high as one third." Note how the figure for commuters is substantially higher than that for all trips. This is very often the case because when you concentrate on commuters you conveniently get to ignore the problems faced by pensioners, disabled people, parents cycling with their children and children cycling on their own. Working age adults are less sensitive to a low level of subjective safety.

These figures come from ten years ago. Why am I looking at such old figures ? Well, as it turns out, newer figures from a reliable source are not that easy to find. More recent "Bicycle Accounts" omit the "all trips" figures and only talk about the more impressive figures for commuting. According to the "Bicycle Account" for 2008, the commuting figure has risen to 37%. If we scale the "all journeys" figures by the same proportion you can expect that around 22% of all journeys in Copenhagen are now by bicycle - and around twice that number are by car. John Pucher independently reports that "A 2005 travel survey found that 20% of all trips in Copenhagen were by bike." (page 26 of this document).

Do I have something against the Danes ?

I am sure that some people will ask my motivation for posting this. Do I have something against the Danes ? Of course not. Denmark has the second highest cycling rate in Europe. That is something to be proud of, and to build on. I want to see them reach their target for 40% of commuters by bike. I'd like to see them set targets for wider demographics than just commuters, too.

Denmark needs to try harder than they are at present, for the sake of their own cyclists quite apart from for the rest of us.

Copenhagen looks impressive compared with countries where few people cycle, but the cycling rate is not that high in comparison with many cities in the Netherlands. Several Dutch cities now have more cycle journeys than car journeys. However, while Copenhageners also like their bikes, they still drive a lot more than they cycle.

I think it's quite simple. The infrastructure has let them down. Cycling in Copenhagen isn't as stress free as it needs to be. Not quite so pleasant as it needs to be. There is inadequate subjective safety.

Dutch cities with less than a 30% share are considered to be doing quite badly and work to make improvements. At 27% of all journeys, and 35% of all journeys under 7.5 km, the cycling modal share for this entire country is higher than that of Copenhagen.

Copenhagen's targets

Back in 2002, the City of Copenhagen set some targets:

• The proportion of people cycling to workplaces in Copenhagen shall increase from 34% to 40%.
  
• Cyclist risk of serious injury or death shall decrease by 50%.
• The proportion of Copenhagen cyclists who feel safe cycling in town shall increase from 57% to 80%.
• Cyclist travelling speed on trips of over 5 km shall increase by 10%.
• Cyclist comfort shall be improved so that cycle track surfaces deemed unsatisfactory shall not exceed 5%.

These are all worthwhile aims, but how successful has Copenhagen been in achieving them ? That recent press release that I referred to earlier gives a few answers:

• The 40% commuting target has not yet been met. Rather, the city still says that "more than a third of residents pedal their way to work."
• The fears associated with cycling in Copenhagen have risen. The proportion who feel safe has dropped from 57% to 53%.
  
• Actual death and injury rates have definitely dropped, which is very good news.
  
• The other two issues, of speed and comfort have not been reported on, so I can only assume there isn't much progress to report on these.
  

So, why the lack of progress ? It comes down to quality of infrastructure and levels of subjective safety. As shown before, cycling in Copenhagen means cycling in close proximity to cars. Road junctions generally don't separate cyclists from motorists as they do here. The 2008 bicycle account reports that "58% (of Copenhagen cyclists) feel unsafe because of cars." Cycling simply doesn't feel safe enough with Copenhagen's infrastructure and that is why growth has stalled where it has and why the demographics are as they are.

How is the infrastructure different ?

Some of the language from the Cycle Policy document explains the difference. For example, "Normally cycle tracks are wider than two meters across." Two metres is actually rather narrow by Dutch standards which require 2.5 metre minimum widths. Also, there is no mention of any separation from the road. We have a 1.5 m separation standard here, while on many of the Danish cycle tracks, there is simply a kerb which will drop you onto the road. This makes the usable width of the cycle tracks narrower than their actual width.

Copenhagen (urban population 1.8 M) has around 350 km of cycle tracks. This are in large part not separated from the road by more than a kerb. Also, at junctions bicycles and cars are mostly mixed in together without separate traffic light timings (even with their newer designs). There are more details and lots of photos of different types of Copenhagen cycle tracks on page 23 and onwards in this document.

By contrast, even tiny Assen (population 65000) has over 100 km of separated cycle paths (double that if you count both sides of the road - I'm not sure how Copenhagen counts), which are mostly quite well separated from the road, and road junctions mostly keep cars and bikes separate (as seen here, here, here).

Copenhagen is also growing a network of "green cycle paths" away from the road, and now has more than 25 km of these. From the videos and photos I've seen, these look very good. They quite closely resemble some of the better cycle paths we have in Assen and Groningen. I've recently featured some typical local cycle routes here and here. The reaction of an American visitor to the streets of Groningen can be seen here.

So, why write this now ?

Copenhagen's marketing as "the world's cycling capital" has been very successful so far. Nice branding too. However, real growth in cycling comes not from marketing and branding, nor from taking photos of pretty girls on bikes, but from investment in infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the effects of the hype now go beyond the residents of just that one city. London, for instance, seems to think that merely painting its cycle paths "copenhagen blue" will lead to success. It won't. To get a really high rate of cycling you need the proper infrastructure. There is one country in the world which has it.

So what's to be done ?

These are figures for all journeys, not just commuters

Groningenize ! What is needed everywhere is to build better infrastructure and make cycling more attractive. Copenhagen itself could do with a good dose of "Groningenization" in order to improve both its cycling rate and the demographics of its cyclists. Groningen itself needs to continue to improve its infrastructure in order to continue to increase its cycling rate.

And the rest of the world would be best off watching the best example. To "Copenhagenize" is to copy what is second best. "Groningenize", "Netherlandsize", even "Amsterdamize".

Conclusion

Copenhagen has achieved a lot. It has the highest cycling rate in Europe outside of the Netherlands. There is quite a lot of catching up to do to get to the point that many Dutch cities have reached, but they're still doing really well by world standards. Let's keep it in perspective, cheer on their success so far. However, it's also important to realise why their success has been limited, and try to understand why Dutch cities have achieved so much more.

Other countries wanting to achieve a significant modal share for bicycles really do have to look beyond Copenhagen. Groningen leads the world.

And us ?

And what about Assen where we live ? Well, the cycling rate here is 41% of all journeys. Not as high as Groningen, but not far off double the figure for Copenhagen. It's a very high figure for a city which doesn't have a student population to boost the cycling demographics. This city only started to refer to itself as a "fietsstad" or "cycling city" after the all journeys figure reached 40%, and then did so just with a small piece in Dutch on the city's website. That's called modesty.

We weren't born here, but came here for a reason. The cycling environment is first class (not only in the city but also in the countryside) and it's a wonderful place to live.


There are several other posts about Copenhagen. Copenhagen has continued to make claims which are not supported by evidence. For instance, a widely reproduced press release which claimed a huge number of cyclists on "the busiest cycle street in the world" did not stand up to scrutiny.

2013 update
You read it here first in 2009, now it's confirmed by the Danish press (English translation). Cycling has stagnated in Copenhagen at about 35% of commuters, well short of both the 40% target which I wrote about above and the 50% target which the city then set. As I suggested in 2009, Copenhagen has at last started to look to Groningen for advice.

The Danish article discusses several of the things that we recommend and which feature on our study tours: Simultaneous green junctions, the much larger railway station cycle parking facilities in the Netherlands, and it is topped by a photo of the Gerrit Krol triple bridge which saves cyclists an enormous amount of time.

It's also been confirmed this year that two stage junctions used widely in Denmark are an unsafe design of junction which has led to many deaths.

These problems could have been avoided or minimised by Copenhagen and Denmark as a whole following a path of building better infrastructure which invited people to cycle rather than relying heavily on marketing, both within the country and to an outside audience.

We can help cities in Denmark or any other nation by demonstrating best practice.

2014 update
Five years after publishing this blog post, calling for Denmark to attempt to stop trying merely to use hype to sell cycling and instead "Netherlandsize" itself so that the country can genuinely grow the popularity of riding bicycles, there is at last official recognition within the Danish government that cycling has been in decline for twenty years in their country. This is a very good thing. It is only after recognition of a problem that the beginnings of a solution can be found.

2014 update - part 2
Unfortunately, this new found sense didn't last. A few weeks after I wrote the last paragraph, Copenhagen once again started claiming implausible numbers of cyclists on one route as a success.

For the sake of your own population, it's time that international city marketing and promotion of prestige projects took second place to building a useful network of infrastructure.

Independent EU statistics for cycling
in Copenhagen for 2010 and 2012.
Cycling dropped from 31% to 26%
Car usage rose from 29% to 33%.

Independent research shows that cycling continues to decline in Copenhagen.

2015 update
Sadly, the cycling embassy of Denmark reports that funding for cycling has been severely cut. Official figures from the city also show that cycling in Copenhagen declined between 2010 and 2012.

This post was inspired by a post on a similar subject on the Amsterdamize blog, and not quite believable figures quoted on the Copenhagenize blog. The Groningen chart comes from page 23 of this presentation by Cor van der Klaauw. Since this blog post was written, the claims on the Copenhagenize blog have been slightly modified.