Beauty and the Bike - what happened next

Last year I blogged about the Beauty and the Bike movie. Now there is a summary film from the project giving a little information about what has happened since the film was released.

From the Beauty and the Bike blog: "The excitement of the film premiere is over. Back we go to “normal” life in Darlington. We’ve managed to keep the beautiful dutch bikes – in fact we’re going to buy 40 more this year and expand the bike hire scheme. But how many girls will keep on cycling? We know that cycling is still “uncool” for many UK teenagers – perhaps because it feels so unsafe on our meagre infrastructure? Here, one of the girls from Beauty and the Bike, Lauren Pyrah, comes behind the camera to ask what is happening to the Darlington girls now. Kate, one of the original group, is joined by Francesca to shout the praises of everyday cycling. But Ashley has stopped. Why? And will politicians listen?"

The film and its accompanying book (which explains from the point of view of Beatrix Wupperman about the difference between her youth in bike friendly Bremen in Germany and the experiences of teenagers in bike hostile Darlingon in the UK) are essential reading and viewing for campaigners, especially in English speaking countries, all of which share much the same problems as the UK.

Between them, they offer an exceptional insight into why it is that teenagers in the UK predominantly don't cycle. Teenagers who don't cycle mostly turn into adults who don't cycle. And of course while girls and women in Britain are even less likely to cycle than boys and men, the same issues also prevent males in Britain from cycling to any significant degree.

The book and video are both available from the Beauty and the Bike website. These are exceptional pieces of work and I really can't recommend them highly enough.

As they say on the website: "It's the infrastructure, stupid."

I'm in the film for a few seconds and so is one of my daughters.

Apeldoorn's moped free cycle tunnel

In a story which sounds implausible, but is actually true, The Fietsberaad reports on a cycle only tunnel in Apeldoorn which detects the sound of mopeds, photographs their number plates and automatically fines the riders. For cyclists, this is much much better than any sort of anti-moped gate.

"This is an approximately 90 metre-long underpass connecting Apeldoorn-Noord and Apeldoorn-Zuid. There are sunken squares on either end of the underpass. The underpass is an integral part of the station environment. The reason for barring mopeds is local authorities’ fear that the large differences in speed may cause dangerous traffic situations. In addition, the resounding mopeds sometimes scare other traffic participants stiff. Moreover, this is an attempt to reduce nuisance for residents on the approach routes. There are plenty of alternatives, anyway. Mopeds may also use the underpasses meant for cars. This is the first time this type of system is employed."

The system is intended to increase social and subjective safety of cyclists.

In general, small mopeds, known as bromfietsen, are allowed to use rural cycle paths but not urban ones. This is actually beneficial to cyclists as it requires that rural cycle paths are designed to accommodate the 45 km/h legal speed of bromfietsen.

Access to paths where they are not allowed is generally not enforced by any kind of infrastructure such as gates. This enforcement using a camera is quite novel.

I wrote before about how, around here at least, I don't find these bromfietsen to be any problem at all. They are not as common here as in some Dutch cities, and they're generally ridden very carefully.

A video showing the tunnel. This was on "blik op de weg" - a TV programme about errant road users. Note how people are pushing their mopeds through the tunnel to avoid being caught:

The state of walking and cycling in the USA

"Over one-third of the U.S. population is under age 16 (cannot legally drive) or over age 65. Streets designed just to move cars are leaving behind the most vulnerable road users, often making them prisoners in their homes or completely reliant on others to drive them around. Less than half of states and major U.S. cities have adopted complete streets policies that require that roadways be designed and built with all users in mind." - So says the Alliance for Biking and Walking 2010 Benchmarking Report.

Cycling rates correlate well with rates of investment in cycling, not only within the USA, but also internationally. The success of the Netherlands has come due to investing in the needed facilities - and the facilities really are needed:

"States with the lowest levels of biking and walking have, on average, the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In contrast states with the highest levels of biking and walking have, on average, the lowest rates of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In addition, where rates of biking and walking are greater, more of the adult population is likely to achieve the 150 minutes of weekly moderate-intensity aerobic activity recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to CDC, physical activity can reduce your risk of dying early from the leading causes of death, like heart disease and some cancers."

2015 update
Progress is only possible with continued funding. Sadly, the Cycling Embassy of Denmark reports that funding for cycling in Denmark has been cut. There is no country on earth which can expect cycling to grow organically without support and that includes Denmark and the Netherlands.

The graph shows comparative figures for several cities giving an indication of how funding of cycling is linked to the resulting modal share. Amsterdam spends $39 per person per year and has a 35% modal share, Copenhagen spends $13 and achieves a 20% modal share, Berlin spends $6 for a 10% modal share, Portland spends #3.50 for a 4% modal share, the USA as a whole spends $1.50 for a 1% modal share (cycling and walking combined). Thanks to The Fietsberaad for the pointer to this report

A nice Sunday bike ride

Today was the Sinnerclub ride in Groningen (more photos here). Peter and I decided to go and join in, at least for a bit. The ride started in a village called Eenum, which was a 58 km ride from Assen. When we got there we found about 15 people (I didn't count heads) just about to leave for their own 60 km ride.

We only stayed with the group for a short distance as we'd decided to ride past the Sinner HQ in Garsthuizen and visit Jan and Harma de Vries who run the company.


Jan Eggens made a video of the ride, which without us continued up to the North coast of the Netherlands.

It was a great ride. Through lots of tiny villages, many with huge churches, past lots of windmills, over lots of bridges.
This is the "Peertil" bridge. Jan warned us not to take this route as the bridges were not entirely velomobile compatible, but we mis-read the map and ended up here anyway. Most bridges on cycle paths are no trouble at all, but this one is an historical monument, originally built in 1754, and still resembling the original design. It pre-dates velomobiles. The name is a corruption of "Horse Bridge" - and it was originally built to allow horses over the canal while boats went underneath. We used it to test our parking brakes.

Anyway, I took other photos, but none particularly worth seeing. The ride was great fun, by the time we were home we'd covered just over 130 km in a total of 5 hours riding, not all of it very quickly - such obstacles as these bridges took some getting around, as did heading back to Assen into a 30 km/h headwind.

Overall, a very pleasant way of rounding up the national recumbent weekend.
Read my review of the Sinner Mango Velomobile.

Compulsory Flags ?

I mentioned a few days ago that this weekend is the national recumbent bike weekend in the Netherlands.

Contemporaneous with this, there's a slightly worrying story from Australia. Apparently there is a proposal to make all recumbent cyclists in the country have a flag on their bikes in order to "increase regulation and legal compliance of human powered vehicles." As the linked article notes, "this proposal appears to be based based on spurious and anecdotal experiential demand."

Australia is already one of the very few places where cycling helmets are compulsory, and this is another step along the same lines. The message would seem to be that "cycling is dangerous". It's a mystery to me why Australians, who to much of the world seem to have rather a "rugged" reputation should seemingly be scared of bicycles and leading the world in such scaremongering. However, Australia's cycling rate is one of the very lowest in the world, so if the intention is to marginalize cycling then I guess it's working.

Bicycles are in themselves extremely safe. It is automobiles which kill as many people as wars, not bikes. Recumbent bikes may actually be rather safer, in that falls are often from a lower height, and if you fall, you usually land on your backside. In the case of a velomobile like my Mango, you're completely surrounded by a shell which protects in the case of a crash.

I'm not aware of any real evidence that recumbents are less visible than other bikes. Indeed, my experience on first riding one on the roads in the UK was that more drivers noticed me, and these would give me more space on the road. Sometimes dramatically more space. I certainly don't believe that my 2.5 m long bright yellow Mango would be more visible if only for a 15 cm long flag, and my brief experimentation with a flag on a two wheel recumbent (in the photo above) lead to a conclusion that from behind, the flag was the least visible part of the bike.

I don't believe that there is actually any reliable evidence one way or the other about relative safety of recumbent vs. other bicycles, so punitive laws against a particular group of cyclists are difficult to justify.

It's issues like this that require cyclists to behave as a whole. It does no good for different "tribes" to develop. It's no good for racers to disregard the interests of mums with kids on bikes, or for "slow cyclists" to distance themselves from sport cyclists. Indeed, it doesn't even help for cyclists to distance themselves from drivers. If we're to see a dramatic increase in cycling around the world, people who drive now are future cyclists. These kinds of issues affect everyone. "Them and us" helps none of us.

The photo is of my old Pashley PDQ on the top of Shap Fell, part way along the one tour when I did use a flag. It was less visible than the basket. Of course, if you prefer to ride with a flag, that's your own personal choice. Good luck to you.

Yellow school buses for Britain again ?

I covered two year ago how the Yellow School Bus Committee in the UK wanted to introduce US style school buses. This organisation was established and sponsored by a bus company, and it was quite obvious that they would benefit from the proposal more than children riding in the buses.

Now the CBI (Conferederation of British Industry) is at it. They "want to see more use of US-style yellow school buses to cut school-run congestion." Apparently "the average length of journey to school for 11-16 year-olds rose from 2.8 miles in 2000 to 3.4 miles in 2006... It is estimated that 12% of school pupils would use such a service, which would eliminate 130 million car journeys a year (saving 55,000 tonnes of CO2). This would cut rush hour car traffic by 2.6%."

That's right, this again has nothing at all to do with making children's lives better, but they'd like to see children kept out of the way of important people in cars. Here in the Netherlands, children quite routinely make much longer journeys by bike to get to school. They can do so because of the infrastructure.

Where are the calls for similar infrastructure in the UK, reducing dependence on motor vehicles by increasing the directness of journeys and the subjective safety for cyclists, and giving children a greater degree of freedom ?

If the CBI really is concerned about the cost to business due to congestion then why don't they really, seriously, try to encourage more cycling ? If cycling in Britain reached Dutch levels not only would it save British businesses 2.5 billion pounds per year, but it would also do a lot more for the environment than the CBI's motor vehicle oriented "low-carbon transport roadmap," in which the only mentions of changes to infrastructure are in terms of charging stations for electric cars. Yes, it seems they really do believe that the problems caused by cars can only be solved by more cars.

Freewheeler covered this story from a different angle.

See our selection of products for cycling with children and other blog posts about school travel, Dutch children and the UNICEF child well-being index.

Three upcoming events

We've three excellent events coming up in the next month.

First, on the 27th and 28th of March (i.e. my Birthday weekend !) there are the Dutch National Recumbent days.

Second, on the 31st of March is a really huge event. Heel Nederland Fietst is a three year round of cycle promotion which has just started. On the 31st there is an attempt at a world record for the largest number of people ever to have taken part in a simultaneous bike ride. The idea on this day is to get the entire population, or as much of it as possible, to ride a bike for at least half an hour between mid-day and one in the afternoon on Wednesday 31st March.

Thirdly the Northern Recumbent try out day is here in Assen on the 11th of April. It's just over a kilometre from home, so I'll be there.

Cycling promotion never ends. While there is a lot of cycling already here in the Netherlands, there's still not enough.