The Times Cities Fit for Cycling Campaign has gone from strength to strength since it was launched in February of this year. Highlights include a parliamentary debate and Mayoral hustings – helping to push the issue of cycle safety up the political agenda. All the main political parties have pledged their support for the campaign, but there is plenty of hard work to come – turning fine words from politicians into meaningful action to achieve the aims of the eight point Cycle Safe Manifesto.

The Times want to hear your thoughts on what they should do next, tapping into the passion, knowledge and aspiration that helps make discussions at Street Talks so lively. What are the priority issues to be addressed and opportunities to be seized? Should national, London wide and borough policy be rewritten, and if so how? Boris Johnson has pledged his support for the campaign, as England’s most powerful local politician how should he be held to account and his track record assessed?

We hope you can join us and Ben Whitelaw from The Times for June’s Street Talk to help answer these and other questions, this will be your opportunity to help shape the next stages of the Cities Fit for Cycling Campaign. Please note that for this month only Street Talks will be held at Look Mum No Hands.

7pm on Monday 11th June at Look Mum No Hands, 49 Old Street, EC1V 9HX

Judith Green, Reader in Sociology of Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: Identity and the city – what your choice of transport says about you

Upstairs at The Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PN at 7pm (bar open 6pm) on 1st May.

Full details here.

11th June 2012

Ben Whitelaw, The Times: Maintaining the pressure – what’s next for The Times Cycle Safe campaign

7pm on Monday 11th June at Look Mum No Hands, 49 Old Street, EC1V 9HX

3rd July 2012

John Dales, Director – Urban Movement, Urban Initiatives: Machiavellian street design – the art of the possible & the avoidance of self-destruction

Upstairs at The Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PN at 7pm (bar open 6pm) on 3rd July.

Following cancellation of some accounts and the promise of a flash-mob protest outside his offices tonight, the boss of Addison Lee has issued a pseudo-apology while re-stating his prejudices  - which discriminate against cyclists and other road users outside motor vehicles in general and Addison Lee vehicles in particular.

For us he is digging himself in deeper. This saga is not just about a publicity seeker angling for notoriety and some extra business (he has form, as indicated by the excellent David Mitchell in yesterday’s Observer). It actually reveals a lot about the way in which we are supposed to think about transport and safety on the road.

This is not just one more extremist. His views are simply versions of the dominant ‘road safety’ ideology which bedevils a civilised approach to transport and real safety on the road. His tendency to get hold of the wrong end of the stick not just once, but on a range of issues is typical of the inversion of the reality that passes for ‘road safety’.

The most obvious example of this corrupt ideology is that Mr Griffin (see Saturday’s Times) has actually signed up to The Times cyclists’ safety campaign. Yes, he is actually on the side of cyclists!

But ‘road safety’ has so often been against the safety and well-being of cyclists and others: after all, if cyclists get out of the way of motor traffic, they won’t get hurt or killed. If people are too scared to cycle or walk (or their parents to let them), then they won’t get killed – something which traditional ‘road safety’ sees as progress. Griffin is just part of that tradition, and the following expresses it:

“My foreword in Addison Lee’s magazine Add Lib, has caused quite a storm amongst the Twitter community, and I’m glad it has. In the article, I argue for compulsory training and insurance for London’s bicycle owners and I still stand by my contention.

“About one cyclist is killed on London’s roads every month and countless others horribly injured. If the article causes a debate around cycle safety, and perhaps saves some lives, bring it on.

“Cycling is a deadly serious issue and lives are at stake. There have been huge campaigns recently to encourage cycling, but not so much in terms of improving safety and awareness for cyclists. “I’m glad that the issue is being debated. If anyone has more ideas for improving safety for cyclists, I would be delighted to hear them. In the meantime, I will continue calling for compulsory training and compulsory insurance for bicycle users.”

So let’s take this opportunity to puncture some of the myths:

TRAINING (or perhaps we should say ‘TRAINING’, as plainly what Addison Lee drivers are all too often up to indicates that any training they may have received has been for a form of behaviour which is not advocated by the Highway Code).

This is the classic example of getting hold of the wrong end of the stick – twice over. Firstly, if anyone needs regulation to control behaviour which is genuinely anti-social because it threatens other people’s lives, it should be the motorist. After all, by any objective measure (the third party insurances of motorists as compared to members of the cycling organisations, for example), it is motorists, not cyclists, who need control and regulation.

The other stick wrongly handled is that of ‘training’ in the first place: generally it is not about control or regulation anyway, it is about breeding confidence. The RDRF has strongly supported National Standards cycle training as a way to do this and generate more cycling, with major safety benefits accruing from the greater awareness by motorists of increased numbers of cyclists. Much of this cycling will of course be precisely the assertive cycling (taking the primary position, etc.) which seems to upset so many motorists, Addison Lee drivers among them.

It is about empowerment and enablement. It is not something to be forced on actual or potential cyclists; it isn’t what Mr Griffin would probably like to see anyway (it teaches rights as well as responsibilities), and it is ludicrous to see cyclists, rather than motorists, as the problem to be controlled.

INSURANCE There is a  good case for motorists carrying third party insurance – but there have to be proper chances of errant motorists actually being found liable and with proper pay outs for the damage they cause to people’s lives: we would argue that neither happens at the moment.  We need black boxes on vehicles to establish cause of collisions and proper reparations. Also, we certainly have a significant proportion of London’s motorists who don’t pay third party insurance, which Mr Griffin does not seem to be chasing up.

But full insurance against responsibilities is just that – a way of protecting motorists from their responsibilities. At the very least no more than 80 – 90% of the cost of injury to human beings (we are not so concerned with damage to property) should be recoverable through insurance. Third party insurance should be seen as at least in part another example of motorists getting away with it.

WHAT – OR WHO – IS ‘DANGEROUS’? Throughout, Griffin assumes that because some road users are not inside crashworthy vehicles there is something wrong with them – not the road users who are dangerous to them and everybody else on the road. We won’t go into how the increasing crashworthiness of vehicles has made motorists even more of a potential menace to others: suffice it to say that we need to see the principle problem as  those who can endanger others the most. This seems to be completely outside Griffin’s world view.

‘Road safety’ ideology protecting the (careless) motorist has always patronisingly muttered about ‘protecting the vulnerable road user’ (that’s human beings outside cars) – what do you think may actually be endangering them?

In case anybody wants to point out that cyclists and pedestrians can – surprise, surprise – actually break the Highway Code, well:

1.     We would argue that it is generally less dangerous to others than motorist law breaking, and therefore less of a priority, and:

2.     Motorist law and rule breaking is generally accommodated – or even colluded and connived with – by the creation of crashworthy vehicles (crumple zones, seat belts, airbags, roll bars etc.) and a highway environment (anti-skid, crash barriers, felling roadside trees etc.). Maybe try doing that for cyclists if equality is what you’re after?

TAXATION We need to demolish the myth of motorists being ‘overtaxed’, although it is not there in Griffin’s latest outpourings.

LAW ENFORCEMENT We will certainly need to raise again – London cyclists have long complained about this – the lack of law enforcement by motorists in general and private hire cars in particular. This episode should be seen as an opportunity to do so. The failure to discuss this has been a major problem in The Times campaign so far, as we have pointed out. If it is not to fail it needs to be addressed.

One thought does stick in the mind from the original Addison Lee ‘Editorial’: what cyclists would have to do to join ‘our gang’, including being ‘trained’. If it is a question of being in a gang which can hurt and kill with minimal (if any) punishment, there might be quite a few cyclists who would welcome such ‘training’…

For more information on this topic please visit Harry’s website.

Presentations from all previous Street Talks are available here.

Some Londoners have a large choice of how they move around the city – others rather less. How much choice you have, and what you choose, depends in part on transport availability and accessibility, and your resources; but also on the cultural associations that become attached to different modes of transport. Social identities (gendered, aged, ethnic and other) as well as practical considerations influence whether we see ourselves as ‘the kind of person’ who cycles, or catches the bus, or drives.

Understanding perceptions of transport modes is essential if we want to change the ways people move around the city. Cyclists in London are disproportionately ‘affluent white men’: why is an accessible form of transport (in theory) so narrowly appealing in practice? Bus travel, in contrast, was once the mode of last resort for those with no other options. However, policies to provide bus travel for free for two key age groups (under 18s and older citizens) have arguably made bus travel a valued, rather than stigmatised way to travel, for these groups. Social identities are bound up in transport choices, but these are clearly not fixed – they can change as a result of both the deliberate outcomes and unintended consequences of policy.

We hope you can join us and Judith Green from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for May’s Street Talk to explore some of the changing cultural perceptions of transport modes in London, in particular cycling and bus travel. What makes a particular form of transport more or less appealing to particular kinds of people?

Upstairs at The Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PN at 7pm (bar open 6pm) on 1st May.

Judith Green is a medical sociologist, with degrees in anthropology and medical sociology. She is part of the Transport and Health Group at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her current research includes studies of inequalities in road injury, transport policies, and the sociology of active transport modes. The On the Buses project is evaluating the impact of free bus travel for young people on public health. Judith edits Critical Public Health, an international peer-reviewed journal which publishes a broad range of critical research and commentary on and for public health, and recently co-edited a collection of articles from the journal, Critical Perspectives in Public Health.

Judith’s talk will draw on research by the Transport and Health group at LSHTM, including research funded by Transport for London, NHS Camden and NIHR Public Health Research Programme (project number 09/3001/13). The views and opinions expressed in the talk are those of the presenter, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health, other funders or colleagues.

• Jenny Jones, Green Party
• Caroline Pidgeon, representing Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrats
• Val Shawcross, representing Ken Livingstone, Labour
• Richard Tracey, representing Boris Johnson, Conservative

Opening statements

Question 1: A great city for walking, plus supplementary questions on:

• Smoothing traffic flow
• Wheelchair users
• Traffic engineer attitudes and training
• Car free days

Question 2: 20mph speed limits on Mayoral controlled streets, plus supplmentary questions on:

• Enforcement of speed limits
• 20mph on residential streets

Question 3: The war on the motorist

Question 4: Public transport in outer London, plus supplementary questions on:

• Long term planning and investment
• Accessibility

Question 5: Cyclist safety

Questions 6: Air pollution, plus supplementary question on accessibility

Closing statements

Transport Question Time was organised by Living Streets, in partnership with Movement for Liveable London and Campaign for Better Transport.

Upstairs at The Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PN at 7pm (bar open 6pm) on 1st May.

More details coming soon.

Cycling is on the up. It’s fashionable now (at least in London’s trendier postcodes). All the main candidates for London Mayor say promoting cycling will be a priority if they are elected. The Times has run a major national cycle safety campaign culminating in a parliamentary debate and a frequently antagonistic press has (albeit grudgingly at times) acknowledged the good sense of pro-cycling public policy. So all is rosy then? Not quite. The modal share for cycling in London remains pitifully low, and the capital continues to be a generally hostile place for cyclists, especially the young or inexperienced. Meanwhile climate change, air pollution, inactive lifestyles and too-often dismal urban design pose major challenges to Londoners.

It’s all so much different in places such as The Netherlands. That’s why making London more liveable by making our streets as safe and inviting for cycling as Holland is the benchmark that the London Cycling Campaign is setting this year’s mayoral candidates, though our Love London, Go Dutch campaign. In this talk LCC CEO Ashok Sinha and LCC technical expert Richard Lewis will explain how this can be done, and why the finale of the campaign, the Big Ride on 28^th April, is so important.

Upstairs at The Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, WC1X 8PN at 7pm (bar open 6pm) on 3rd April.

Ashok Sinha is the Chief Executive of the London Cycling Campaign, having previously been the Director of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition. He has a PhD in renewable energy and spent a number of years pursuing research into climate change science before moving into policy work with Forum for the Future. He has also served as Director of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, during which time he helped found and govern Make Poverty History. His voluntary activities include having been Vice Chair of both Amnesty International UK, and the London Cycling Campaign, and serving on the Advisory Board of Capacity Global.

Richard Lewis is a long-time campaigner for sustainable transport, cycling and better cities for people. He works as a principal policy planner for LB Newham and previsouly achieved signing of a Road Danger Reduction Charter at Haringey and Brent Councils, translated into enduring policies and new approaches to street design. His Brent policies influenced LB Lambeth to take up RDR and to go further than Brent by appointing a dedicated RDR officer. He has written a Local Implementation Plan, annual transport funding bids and transport/urban design policies; completed progressive danger-reduction related public realm design guides for Hackney and Newham; and obtained seed funding to establish with the local community a streets for people scheme in Kilburn, which was eventually completed using £1.2m of TfL funding. Richard takes inspiration from a recent visit to Copenhagen which transformed his views regarding cycling infrastructure, bringing him closer to LCC’s Go Dutch campaign.

Presentations from all previous Street Talks are available here.

Please register here if you’d like to attend.

Living Streets have done a fantastic job arranging this event, if you’re planning to attend – or just want to support the great work they do campaigning to improve London’s streets and public spaces – then please consider making a donation.