Trickle or treat: the Waterlink Way

The Waterlink Way, ambling six or so miles south from Greenwich to South Norwood, is one of south London's pleasantest leisure rides. For most of its length it runs through traffic-free parks alongside the Ravensbourne, a watercourse that can't decide if it wants to be a stream, a river, or clump of reeds. Yesterday was sunny and I had a couple of free years in my diary, so I cycled along it.


It also looks very promising for odd things to see en route. In Deptford you go past this van made of tinfoil emblazoned with the legend I ACCUSE THE OIL COMPANIES OF. Failing to plan ahead, perhaps?


A bit later, on Marsala Road, are the biggest painted on-road cycle symbols I've seen in London. Usually I complain that such symbols are too small and can be missed by drivers. This one must be visible from the International Space Station.


And finally, what was this Motorway Maintenance vehicle doing on a bridleway in South Norwood Park? The M25's miles away, mate...

It's an easy, family-friendly trip of an hour or so. In theory you can follow the fishtail-shaped Sustrans signs all the way to Gatwick airport. In practice you'll probably get bored in the steppes of South Norwood park, which is surprisingly austere, and even more surprisingly crossed by a tram at the southern end.

For your trip back to central London there are lots of train stations and a bewildering web of lines that never quite go to the terminus you expect. I accuse the train operating companies of.

Lancet figures it out: less cars, more bikes, more eating out

The Lancet medical journal has just published a series of reports on climate change. One of them deals with the health benefits of reducing vehicle use, and a few newspapers (such as the Telegraph) have tried today to summarise their findings.

Don't believe figures you read in papers by pressurised journos speed-reading the report. They're rubbish at stats. Never get a journalist to work out the restaurant bill unless it's on their expenses. Because this report is crammed full of them, as well as tables, footnotes and caveats. It wisely gives no simple headline numbers. Wading through it is like trying to cycle up Kennington Road at rush hour with all those roadworks.

But the bottom line, unsurprisingly, is that many lives would be saved, and many more years of health enjoyed, if more people walked and cycled and fewer went by car, thanks to reductions in everything from respiratory problems to depression.

However, figures help focus the mind. And their best-case assumption, as far as I can make out, reckons on 500 premature deaths per year in London being avoided, and 7300 extra years of health per year per million population (in other words, I'm assuming, two and a half extra days of good health per person per year; I'll take it as a long weekend in July, thanks).

But don't trust my arithmetic. Read it for yourself, if you have little on at work today. (I once did a degree in maths, so I'm rubbish at numbers. I can only remember my x times table now. Never get a mathematician to work out the restaurant bill, unless the local currency happens to be pi.)

Anyway, their best-case assumes cycling increases eightfold to match that in Copenhagen, Delft, Freiburg etc. Um, right. That's a big if. Though as they point out, it's from a low start: 55% of London car journeys are under 8km, so there's plenty of scope for increasing bike trips. (They also imply that in this scenario, cycling and walking accidents might increase by up to 40%, though the rate of accidents would reduce.)

All of this, though, needs "prioritisation for people who walk and cycle, and restriction of car travel to ensure active travel is the safest and most convenient, pleasant, and quickest way to reach destinations. The reallocation of space to provide a high-quality streetscape that is designed to meet the needs of pedestrians and cyclists is of particular importance."

Oh no! If that happens we'll have nothing to blog about. And I'll end up spending more time trying to work out restaurant bills.

Taxing problems

Two lung cancer sufferers are waiting for life-saving radiotherapy. One is a smoker and one a non-smoker. Which gets priority for treatment?

The right answer, of course, is 'neither: free health care is universal and non-prioritised (apologies to US readers), though if I was the doctor I'd be tempted to put the non-smoker first'. But what if the smoker claimed priority because the non-smoker 'doesn't pay hospital tax'?

Nonsense, you'd say: there's no such thing as 'hospital tax'. Oh yes there is, the smoker insists: all that tax I pay on cigarettes pays for the NHS, so the non-smoker has less claim to the treatment than me.

A smoker who claimed this would be held up for public ridicule and contempt. Yet it's exactly the same argument as the certain type of motorist who whinges that 'cyclists don't pay road tax so they should leave the roads to us'.

'Cyclists don't pay road tax' is an urban myth of astounding proportions. More widespread even than the notion that 1970s kids' TV programme Captain Pugwash had characters with very rude names (it didn't); that JFK mistakenly said 'I'm a jam doughnut' in Berlin (he didn't); or that Jeremy Clarkson once wrote something witty.

Now a site called ipayroadtax.com offers to sell you various bits of kit branded with a pretend logo saying that cyclists actually DO pay road tax, because most of us have cars. That's their logo on the right.

It was a wheeze that grew thanks to Twitter by the admirable cycling advocate and journo Carlton Reid (see his fine biking sites bikeforall.net and quickrelease.tv, and his Twitter feed).

Now, anything that might counter certain motorists' tedious and flatly untrue opinions about road funding and raise a bit of awareness is a good thing. If this promotes sensible media debate, and helps destroy this particular urban myth, then great.

But it's a wheeze I can't entirely participate in. I don't have a car, hardly earn enough to pay income tax, and get my T-shirts from East St market for a quid each branded 'Tomy Hifliger' and 'Docle & Gabanna'.

And in any case I'm not entirely clear what it's saying. That it's taxpayers who have the right to use the roads (which are paid for out of general taxation, and council tax, of course)? So not non-taxpayers, then? As a Southwark council-tax payer, do I have more right to use Southwark roads than Lambeth ones?

Maybe there's another answer - to charge cyclists a 'road tax' proportional to the wear and tear they produce compared to cars? The standard figure is that damage to roads is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight. So a rough figure suggests that a car, which weighs about ten times as much as a cyclist (say 1000kg versus 100kg) should pay 10x10x10x10, or 10,000 times as much in 'road tax'. So if a car pays £100 a year, the cyclist pays 1p. I'd happily pay my next 50 years' 'road tax' now if it would shut up those certain motorists.

But we're getting dangerously close to the Smoker's Defence.

I think instead I'll make a T-shirt that says TAXATION IS IRRELEVANT, I'VE AS MUCH RIGHT TO THE ROAD AS YOU. IN FACT MORE, BECAUSE I HAVE RIGHT OF WAY WHEREAS MOTORISTS USE IT UNDER LICENCE.

No, that'd be too big a T-shirt. Maybe, instead, one that says CAPTAIN PUGWASH IS INNOCENT. Or JFK WAS RIGHT. Hmm. A bit oblique, I'll grant you. Ah, got it: how about 'SOD OFF'?.

Making light of pavement-cycling police blunders

This last week, the City Police have been clamping down on people cycling at night without lights. Offenders are fined £30. But, if they turn up to a safety demo at St Paul's on Thursday 26 with lights on their bike, they'll have the fine rescinded.

This is all fair enough and I don't have a problem with it. (Though I think there are better uses of police time; and the press release's statement that '28 cyclists were injured in collisions' in the dark, without evidence any of them were caused by lack of visibility, looks suspiciously like victim-blaming.)

I'm not quite so sure about trying to arrest people for cycling on cycle paths, though. That's what happened to a Southwark Cyclists member on Monday night shortly after he followed the sign pictured here and turned right.


He was stopped by the police for 'cycling on the pavement' - despite the fact that this 10m section of pavement is signed and marked as a cycle route (right). The markings are faded, sure, but not invisible.

(And cycling across the pedestrian crossing is perfectly legal, as it isn't a toucan crossing. [See update in comments below])

It's by Meadow Row, and is part of the Elephant and Castle by-pass - the same route which, unmodified except for a tin of blue paint, will be part of the forthcoming South Wimbledon-to-Bank Cycle Superhighway. It doesn't bode well...


Presumably the officer simply didn't see the pavement markings in the dark. Perhaps they were dazzled by the rider's lights. Honestly, some of these cyclists, swanning around floodlit with LEDs strobing everywhere like a Pink Floyd laser show. It's about time the police clamped down on them.

Bikes on planes? Yeah, and bags might fly

Until a few years ago, you could take your bikes on planes. Now you can't. And nobody told me.

Because now it seems the rules have changed. You used to be able to check in your bike like normal baggage, having first done some cubist rearrangement: twisting the handlebars flat, removing the pedals, and deflating the tyres lest they explode mid-air (an improbability smiled at by physicists).

Then you simply took it off the carousel at the other end, reconstituted it, and pushed it to the nearest bike shop to get your squashed derailleur mended. I did this several times in the days before flying became like telling racist jokes.

Yes, yes, we know all about the CO2 footprint stuff. But don't worry, I have a few flights carbon-offset already: I've been breathing very shallowly for a few years.

Anyway, we needed to get a bike between London and Hamburg recently. Rail proved surprisingly difficult (more of this tomorrow) and we considered the plane. But now all the airlines seem to require a 'recognised bike box' to transport your machine.

Which is effectively a ban. Because, if you're going on a bike tour, how do you get the bike box to the airport?

A cursory Google search provides plenty of pages telling you how to disassemble your bike and box it up safely once you're at the airport. But that's the easy bit. None of them tell you how to get it there.

Over the weekend I picked up a bike box for free through Freecycle (thanks, Catherine). Getting it back two miles to the house wasn't easy - the picture shows the least worst solution. I had to push the bike all the way. You couldn't get that lot plus panniers to Heathrow or Stansted. And even if you pack up your bike at home, and lug the box-with-bike-plus-luggage all the way to the airport, what do you do then with the box at the other end?

We suggested that airlines hire out bike boxes, but none of them were interested.

Well, don't worry about the environment. The box proved too small for my bike anyway. I think I'll turn it into a planting tub.

[Update added Thu 26 Nov 2009: The CTC website has useful info for flying with a bike, and if you're a CTC member, you can buy a polythene bike bag light enough to pack up in your pannier for under £7 that most airlines should accept. The CTC even provide a special document for you to print out to convince airlines that the bag meets approved specs.]

Sward of truth: Safety lessons for lawnmowers

Lawnmowers injure 6,500 people every year in Britain, according to an article today on the BBC website. So what can the lawnmowing community learn from cyclists? Here's the Real Cycling guide to safe mowing.

• Get message out that mowing is dangerous. Promote use of helmet, reflective gear, pollen mask etc
• Lobby councils to provide marked, separated mowing lanes in public parks
• Avoid wearing cleats unless proficient
• Give clear hand signals to other lawn users, especially grandchildren playing football
• Set up London Lawnmowing Campaign to raise awareness and improve standard of grass surfaces
• Beware of mower-couriers, who often take more risks
• Stay united - resist factional splits into scythe users, push-mowers, ride-ons, tourers etc
• Write blog with amusing daily reports of mowing experiences

And was Jerusalem builded here? Yes, but without bike parking

The Jerusalem Tavern, right in central London, is a splendid place for a pint. If you're looking for an authentic, woody, cosy, 18th-century pub that hasn't changed since it was built... well, this isn't it. But it's the closest you'll get. (All London's pubs were refurbished in the late 1800s and no old interiors survive, but this one is a genuine imitation, in a former coffee shop built in 1720.)

It serves very nice cask ale and it's usually packed and full of atmosphere. In fact, it's one of only a handful of central London pubs with the maximum five-pint rating on fancyapint.com (there are 17 in London overall).

And bike is the best way to go there, of course. But if you're looking for somewhere to park it, the closest you'll get is a couple of hundred yards away down the side passage, by St John's Gate. Because the Tavern's street offers parking for at least a dozen cars and a dozen motorbikes, but no cycle racks. There are plenty of railings, but all are adorned with notices banning bikes. (The fancyapint picture shows an unlocked bike outside. It wasn't there on our visit. Lesson.)


Still, you have two other options. One is to stand outside with your bike, as most people were on this mild November night, some even in T shirts who didn't come from Newcastle, and some not even smoking.

The other is to go by folding bike and take it inside with you, like this chap. Not sure about the ethics of taking up a seat in such a small pub though.

Anyway, we had a very pleasant evening planning ambitious bike trips. After a pint or two of St Peter's, Lisbon to Istanbul seems no problem. Probably more chance with our other bright idea: a cycle tour of all the fancyapint five-pint-rated London pubs. I think I'll do it on a Brompton though.