cycling


AWWTM: The out-of-sight commuters that don’t matter to TfL

The sky lightening, I head for a bridge with a scene that would suit a subtle sunrise photograph, as Big Ben rang for four fifteen.  Bored policemen loiter beside their van, parked in the Westminster Bridge bike lane.  Tired taxi drivers inch across advance stop lines and cautiously through red […]


AWWTM: Ceci n’est pas une piste de bicyclette

Sorry, I failed to post much because I’ve been on the road.  And sometimes the Sustrans paths. This is a forestry track, NCN 68, Kielder Forest, Northumberland. I hesitate to criticise Sustrans because I know that they are good people, with an excellent idea — the National Cycle Network — […]


AWWTM: State intervention

In reviewing the Radio 4 documentary Bristol: Cycling City (I didn’t hear it and was too slow on the iPlayer), the Guardian‘s radio critic Elisabeth Mahoney once again revealed the bizarrely muddled thinking of a nation so thoroughly addicted to its car culture.  The Cycling City project, in which a […]


AWWTM: Fast, direct, uninterrupted and comprehensive

Boris Johnson thinks that he can solve all of the barriers to cycling just by splashing some paint on one or two roads.  As anybody who does not cycle could tell him, what is needed if we are to achieve mass cycling is infrastructure that is complete, conspicuously safe, enjoyable […]


AWWTM: Utter tripe in the outer boroughs

It was Transport Question Time at City Hall this week: the 25 London Assembly members’ monthly-ish check up on the chair and the commissioner of Transport for London — Boris Johnson and Peter Hendy respectively.  If you’re as big a loser as me, you’ll want to watch it here.  Alternatively, […]


AWWTM: Crap cycling and walking in car sick Glasgow

On Sunday I took a look at Glasgow, a town I have previously only passed through without stopping.  Here’s my commentary: a mix of cameraphone and proper camera photos; some of the commentary comes from the live tweets that accompanied the cameraphone pictures. Continue reading at At War With The […]


AWWTM: Are we winning?

I’ve just been scrolling through Google Reader clearing a couple of months worth of posts with videos that got saved-for-later when using a mobile connection.  Peter at Pedestrian Liberation asks whether we are winning, citing London Bridge as evidence that maybe we are. Continue reading at At War With The […]


AWWTM: Car-free holidays: bicycle over Rannoch Moor

It’s January and all the magazines are overflowing with supplements trying to sell you Mediterranean cruises and horrible beach holidays 4,000 miles away.  AWWTM will therefore overflow with easy-to-organise alternative holidays, giving far greater satisfaction at a fraction of the price.  They involve no sweltering traffic jams, no crowded beaches, […]


AWWTM: Cycle superhighways: are they a joke?

That’s the most common question asked by people who responded to the GLA survey of London cyclists.  Looking into the raw data I find out just how little the cycle superhighways have achieved, and the one thing that London cyclists say over and over again makes them such a joke: […]


AWWTM: London: still not impressed with superhighways

Way back at the start of October we mentioned that the London Authority’s transport committee were seeking your views on the hire bikes and the two trial cycle superhighways.  The results are in, and we must have had a massive influence because the results seem to match what we were […]


AWWTM: Unskilled and unaware of it

Most road “accidents” may be accidental in the sense that they are unintended.  But few, if any, can be considered accidental in the sense that nobody was to blame.  In road accidents, somebody did something wrong, and it’s almost always a driver doing some wrong.  It’s bad driving that causes […]


AWWTM: If a truck is full of bikes, should it be in the bike lane?

Despite being fully up to date with the latest city driving rules, the Serco/Barclays hire bike relocaters are worrying the Evening Standard today: Cyclist David Ellis, who was knocked over by a trailer used to transport the Mayor’s hire bikes between docking stations, today branded the vehicles “ludicrous”. Continue reading […]


AWWTM: When I see a medical statistician on a bicycle…

Epidemiologists at a London medical research institute have looked at the police records of fatal accidents involving cyclists on London’s roads between the late nineties and mid noughties, and notes some interesting trends in where they occur and who is involved in them.  At At War With The Motorist I […]


AWWTM: Surrogates and segregation

The bicycle blogosphere has been buzzing about bike paths lately.  It’s an old argument in the UK, where nine out of ten bike paths are so badly designed that bicycle users conclude that they would always be better off on the road.  Many have taken to actively campaigning against them, […]