Newcastle cycling campaign survey

The point I make is that people who don't cycle (even if they make the comments with the best of intentions) simply don't understand the issues of what makes for good or bad cycling conditions so are unlikely to come up with sensible suggestions. 

Well they would say that wouldn't they.

You forget the social context under which these surveys are taking place. Everyone (OK 91%) knows deep down that cars are a big problem for us - whether that is global warming, killing children, making our cities unlivable, congestion and so on. Even though they drive everywhere themselves they recognise the problems other people in cars cause. So, when approached by a surveyor who is obviously conducting a survey into the reasons for unsusatainable travel patterns they are hardly going admit (even to themselves) the real reasons for their own antisocial habits.

When asked why they don't cycle, there is an implicit accusation in the question that they ought to cycle, thus an imperative to come up with a respectable rationalisation - and safety is the obvious choice. I suspect the real reason is more often because of our powerful desire to conform to social norms (in the same way that teenagers conform rigidly to their peer group dress code) and cycling just isn't seen as normal enough.

Now for the solution (assuming they were even prompted for their views on traffic reduction, speed control, road space reallocation etc). If you ask a motorist how best to improve conditions for cyclists they are hardly going to suggest measures that will directly inconvenience themselves. I suspect the survey would get a very different answer if they asked the question:

"Would you cycle more if half the ring road was taken out to make space for a high quality cycle route, with extra phases at all the traffic lights."

There is a big difference between vaguely wanting cyclists out of the way and still wanting it when the full consequences of actually making it useable are spelt out. (this is much the same as residents wanting through traffic banned from their road - while still demanding access from both ends for themselves).

If you really want to study the effect of policy measures then you need to study actual behaviour as a result of those interventions rather than the answers to hypothetical surveys. And here there was a real opportunity missed. I don't know all the towns studied, but I am familiar with Lancaster, and as a result of being a cycle demonstration town it does have some reasonable quality segregated infrastructure that serves some useful destinations - for example the Universty which is a major employer. Now, if rather than asking why people didnt't cycle you took their post code and noted the jouneys they made you could measure the difference for those people that had a segregated route available - though you would have to allow for the fact that students in general have less access to cars so are more likely to cycle.

Even better would be if one of the study towns was Milton Keynes. There are direct cycle paths everywhere and no cyclist needs to tackle a busy road anywhere - yet this was recently found to be the most car dependent place in the UK.

I frequently carry out informal anecdotal research among my work collegues. Now we do have the odd Clarkson fanatic, but few would describe themselves as "car adherents". Even so the coffee time discussions among this bunch of "potential cyclists" often turns to the iniqueties suffered by the poor down-trodden motorist. Whether it is the desparate need for a new billion pound bridge across the Mersey, or the need for a new ring road to suplement the recently constructed ring road, or extra capacity on the local roads to cope with the traffic should a truck blow over on the Thelwall viaduct - or even the absurdity  of reallocating one lane of a dual carriageway to make a cycle lane

http://g.co/maps/74yfg

a rare case of moderately succesful cycle campaigning on my part.

Now whenever someone is held up in congestion - or complains about the high cost of petrol I try to persuade them to take up cycling. "Yes, driving is awful" I agree, "so why volutarily subject yourself to it" At this point I get the inevitable - "but its too dangerous I would do if there was a cycle path" so I whip out my cycle map and show them a mostly traffic free route from where they live to work (Warrington/Runcorn are new towns so there are quite a lot of cycle paths). It never works the next day they are still in their car - just the next time I try to persuade them they have a different reason why cycling is completely impracticle.