Empty promises of the Mall on Sunday

Given all the (positive) fuss about Skyride last month (which I bang on about in the forthcoming December issue of Cycling Plus magazine, including 13 jokes and some obscure references to A-level maths) I was surprised that more people didn't point out that you can cycle traffic-free in central London every week.

Each Sunday, the Mall and Constitution Hill, running off from Buckingham Palace, are closed to motor vehicles, meaning you can swan up and down on a bike unassailed by traffic.

Make your own Skyride! Invite friends to come along and pretend to be marshals and tell you to stop doing whatever you're doing and ignore them! Have a picnic in St James's Park without 65,000 people all queueing for the toilet in front of you! Etc.

Ale and hearty in Hamburg

More news in from our Hamburg office. At last week's car-free jamboree, detailed in previous post today, there were bottles of beer on offer.

'Radler' is an alternative word to 'Radfahrer' ('cyclist') and this particular brand was the prize awarded by the German equivalent of the CTC to anyone who answered a few questions on the German Highway Code correctly.


We think this is an excellent initiative, and has the advantage of being self-regulating: come back too many times trying to score another free beer and you'll be unable to remember the answers.

(Thanks to Ulf of the Allgemeine Deutsche Fahrrad-Club for the pics.)

Bike-bus warms up Hamburgers on car-free day

Our Hamburg correspondent was at the city's second Autofreier Sonntag (Car-free Sunday) last weekend, and drew our attention to this curious bike-bus, powered by the passengers. (Thanks to Klaus de Buhr for the pics - there are more from the day on his Flickr site.)

Our correspondent writes: Around a kilometre of main streets in the centre of town were closed to motor traffic for 24 hours, with a strip left specially for this quirky Fahrradbus. The same strip also permitted cyclists and skaters to pass alongside the action and choose where or if to stop (instead of being forced into the mass and to become pedestrians as seems usually to be the case).


The Fahrradbus drivers have bus driving licences - they usually drive the city's powered buses. They were clearly having a lot of fun.

The bus takes a maximum of 20 people, and needs at least six to power the bus. One model had a row of seats at the back for pure passengers. The driver doesn't pedal, but steers and operates the brake. It can get up to about 25mph. (Here's another design, on YouTube.)

The Autofreier Sonntag began at noon and contined into the evening. There were two live music stages but during the day the biggest draw seemed to be the breakdancing demonstration. This was followed by the chance to try out a Segway on a slalom course. There was also a 'beach' with deckchairs overlooking the Alster lake, a chance to try out bicycles with electric motors and electric cars.

The city was also showing off the new style bus due to be introduced soon - it has a trailer.

But the best bit about the day was and an idea I'd like to see adopted in London... all of the city's public transport was free for the day... the buses, the underground, the regional trains within the greater hamburg area, the 'S-Bahn' (alternative to the undreground), the ferries...

Car-free Oxford St? Not my cup of tea

London was delightful for cycling round this weekend: lovely weather that made you regret forgetting your sunblock, and streets half-deserted by the Bank Holiday stampede out of town.

And the western half of Oxford St was closed to all traffic last Saturday (right). But we hope they don't do it this way again. Because it was a thoroughly unenjoyable experience.

It was never conceived or described as anything but a commercial operation. It wasn't to make Oxford St more pleasant, only more lucrative. Anti-car? No! Don't worry! Westminster laid on two thousand free parking spaces to encourage drivers into central London before their shuffle across to assemble large bags from Selfridges, Jaeger and Dorothy Perkins.

There was no humanising of the road space. No pavement cafes, play area for kids, places to sit, temporary tubs or lawn. Just stalls selling tat, endless tedious promo booths for Night at the Museum 2, a few street bands and some horribly loud piped music. Peevish stewards with loud-hailers bawled in vain against the din trying to herd around the bored families.

Oxford St normally is a bit of a challenge to cycle down. It's one long scrum down with lines of impatient buses on a narrow street pockmarked with chicanes. But that's far preferable to this grim experience.


The street band were gamely plugging through Human League covers on stilts. It summed up the dated, 1980s feel of the Oxford St pedestrianisation day nicely. Don't, don't you want me? Actually, no, thanks. I'll find a much better place either with or without you.

And that much better place was Hanover Square Gardens, one block south of Oxford St. It was pleasant, sunny and quiet.

Too quiet maybe: a cafe or bar stall here would have done a roaring trade. As it was, the caff at the taxi-driver's stand was shut.

Shame, as we could have had the six-sugar cup of tea evidently favoured by cabbies (right). No wonder some of them are so hyper behind the wheel.

The race to get car-free Sundays

Every Sunday from 7am-2pm, Bogota's 'ciclovia' scheme shuts 110km of roads to cars, freeing them up for skaters, pedestrians and cyclists. There's little chance at the moment of persuading London to do anything similar - the nearest is the annual London Freewheel, which will probably take place this year on Sunday 20 September. Southwark Cyclists are considering if it's worth lobbying for a regular local version of such car-free Sundays in some part of the borough; we'll let you know of any progress.

Anyway, some roads were shut in the centre today because of the London Marathon. So thanks to all those people in banana costumes, traffic levels dropped to that of a bank holiday. That made cycling round south London in the sun today sheer delight.


Part of that delight was stopping on Commercial Road in Peckham to admire (from the street) this BMX race meeting. It featured everyone from four-year-olds to 50-year-olds, and several likely 2012 medallists. (Interestingly, in several races girls and boys were racing together.) Not quite the quite incredible tricks of Edinburgh BMX acrobat and YouTube sensation Danny Macaskill, but impressive nevertheless.

All this BMX stuff is great and anything that persuades kids on to their bikes is good, but traffic-free Sundays would be better for encouraging sociability, mobility and fun. And you wouldn't have to rattle a tin around your friends, or wear a banana costume.