Babble in the cycle bubble?

Adam Bradbury

10 June 2011

Do you worry about being a freak? You go round doing one thing, thinking everyone's doing it. Then someone points out that only 0.01% of people in the UK would ever eat Marmite and peanut butter together on chocolate digestives. (What's wrong with you people?)

A few days ago I read that a big academic study found only 2% of journeys in the UK are made by bike (and it's been that way for years). The equivalent for the Netherlands is more than 25%.

It rocked my world, punctured my inner inner tube.

Because bikes have been my number one form of transport for a long time. From a rusty fell-off-a-lorry job at university to my first mountain bike (which got stolen) to a nice hybrid I bought with the help of Friends of the Earth's enlightened bike loan scheme. I've also carried my kids to school on a Nihola tricycle (for me the Rolls Royce of the species). And, when all the kids were at the same school, we even did the school run on a rickshaw for a couple of years. (Some youngsters in the neighbourhood gave me the impression this wasn't entirely normal.)

In the country

Of course it's one thing to bike if you live in the city cycle bubble - the countryside brings different challenges. Matthew Sparkes, one of the "bloggers on biking" in the nerdily compelling Cyclebabble has more experience of this than I do. But having tried a few miles of country lanes at the weekend I can report that they can be a bit scary - distances are greater, traffic seems faster and less used to cyclists, stoats and weasels run amok, that sort of thing. So let's leave the countryside out of this for the moment.

In the city

But in the city I have my reasons for preferring to pedal. Four of them in fact:

• Cost 
  Doh. Did you know bikes are exempt from road tax and the congestion charge? And I've yet to hear of a bike getting either a speeding ticket or parking fine (though chortle at this video of a New Yorker being ticketed for riding outside a bike lane). I sold my rickshaw for the same money I'd paid for it three years earlier. Let me know when you hear of a car holding its value like that.
• Convenience
  I've found that within about 8-10 miles the bike is as quick if not quicker than the alternatives - bye bye traffic jams, queues at turnstiles, unintegrated transport links. And you get exactly where you want to go, within the nearest lamppost or railing.
• Health
  I'm 103 years old but my friends don't think I act my age.
• Environment
  Surprise, surprise, working at Friends of the Earth I do give a monkey's about the planet, and more specifically the effect on air quality and safety of the neighbourhoods we go through to get to school.

So I was intrigued to come across a film about some young women from Darlington in the UK and Bremen in Germany going against type and trying out cycling. They found more or less the same things as I do to be cheerful about: going by bike can be liberating, stylish and cheap. (Their story is told in Beauty and the Bike - see an extended trailer here).

They also came to more or less the same conclusion as the big academic study - that what stops many more people from cycling in Britain is our inadequate infrastructure: more dedicated cycle paths would get more of us pedaling.

Cycle routes or not - I'm planning to take my cycle bubble through 500 miles of rural England and Scotland next year with Friends of the Earth's Big Green Bike Ride. Why not come and breathe the air with us?

Adam Bradbury, Publishing & New Media Team