London this week has been very hot, 32 plus and humid. The air quality poor. The traffic is stationary. The tubes (subways) stink. The only way to travel is the bike.
You may have guessed by my gruntling in earlier columns that I ride a bike to work. A great bike. Well, a great little bike actually. It's a Brompton which is an elegant folding bike, so well designed that when it's folded all the dirty bits are on the inside and when on the road it rides like a full size bike. The joy is that it is British, made under the railway arches somewhere in Brentford. I spoke to the designer, Andrew Ritchie, some time ago telling him that I was highly delighted and asked why he didn't advertise. " No need to" he replied "we sell all we can make." I'm not surprised. He does use a clever little ploy which is that each new machine has a block of twenty information cards attached under the saddle. So the rider can hand one to an inquirer or the curious can take one for themselves when the bike is parked and the rider absent. Ingenious, eh!
I ride this little beauty daily along the very path where two wheels met eight last Thursday and eight wheels won. By that I mean that there was a collision between a cyclist and a rollerblader in Hyde Park in central London and the cyclist has subsequently died.
The cyclist was riding on a specified cycle path. The only East-West path for cyclists south of the Serpentine, the big lake in the middle of the park. There are no specified rollerblade areas in Hyde Park.
This accident has received heavy media coverage. It was the death that made it unusual and the supposed safety of the track. If a designated bike path in the middle of a park isn't safe where is? On the evening following the accident I was cycling on the same cycle path and witnessed the result of an accident between a delivery van and a female cyclist. Two accidents in as many days on a specified cycle path.
Hyde Park is pretty big. It sits in the middle of London, like Central Park in New York, and contains many miles of tarmac paths suitable for cyclists or rollerbladers for that matter. These are fiercely guarded by the octogenerian grey rinsers who claim a divine right to mince their Schnauzers, Westies and Dachshunds along these sacred paths in spite of many hectares of open grass available.
Open up East-West and North-South routes at specific times of the day. Say 7-9 am and 6-8pm when commuters, either bikers or bladers, can use these routes as a priority.
The congestion on the roads in London is now so bad that cycling is unhealthy. I've been riding to work for over fifteen years and in spite of the move to Green petrol and the so called monitoring of old and badly tuned diesel vehicles the polution is horrific. It's actually the London Taxis and the big Red Buses which are the worst offenders.
Big Steve Norris, our amiable minister in charge of transport in London, has recently changed his tune and is now in favour of "a network of Cycle paths". Unlike some other members of the government he isn't on one yet, a cycle I mean, although he is reputed to have had five mistresses. (Steady!)
But the fabled release from pollution and traffic is, to put it mildly, sporadic. The other evening I was on my way to collect Eric from the menders, one of his bushes was playing up, and I found myself on a cycle track just south of Camden Town.
It was a wide road and a busy road. But at the side was a designated bike lane. Great, you say, at last the humble turner of the pedal gets space. Red tarmac too like the Mall where all the Queen's horses play. Alas it was almost a mirage. Every hundred yards where the intersections occurred the cycle lane disappeared. Guess where the major traffic friction is? Is this the ultimate joke? Lull the pedalling perverts into a false sense of security and then mow 'em down at the junctions.
I survived but no thanks to whatever hair brained council had instigated that little death trap.
In fact it is like this all over. Small sections of bike lane giving the cyclist some solace from the traffic, abruptly ceasing to throw a spanner in the works.
The one at the bottom of Holland Park Avenue even has a dinky little built up pavement to protect the riders before throwing them headlong into three lanes of oncoming one way traffic. Squidgee!
When you are next in London try riding a bike down the Mall away from Buckingham Palace towards Trafalgar Square. As you pass under Admiralty Arch you will be halted by traffic (stop) lights. When they are "Green Go!" in the immortal words of the immortal motor race commentator Murray Walker, you are pitched into the traffic. At the same time that you have been released the fellows from your right(we drive on the left in the UK) start up. Two streams of traffic coming together flat out at right angles. If that ain't a recipe for strawberry jam I don't know what is.
London this week has been very hot, 32 plus and humid. The air quality poor. The traffic is stationary. The tubes (subways) stink. The only way to travel is the bike.
Come on Big Steve, in this the week when cyclists the world over marvel at the skill, courage and durability of Big Mig and les garcons in the Tour de France, spend the weekend with the paintbrush and change London into a pleasant place to live by painting a million miles of bike lane.
Banish the effluent and affluent hordes and give the capital back to the clean living silent riders.
Back to the London Mall