#72. AS BIG A PRIORITY AS LOCAL PERMEABILITY. ‘Permeability’ in cycling is a technical term meaning the number of connections that can be made on a bicycle between streets, parks, canals and other cycleways. Think of it as being like holes in a sieve. If there are only a few holes then it takes longer for the water to get through. Likewise, the fewer connections there are, the longer it takes for cyclists to get through the capital.

Things which reduce permeability for cyclists are traffic systems like dual carriageways and gyratories (where the volume and distribution of motor vehicles makes it much more risky to be on two wheels) or physical blockages like railways lines.

Permeability is undoubtedly important at a local level, but London needs a global (so-called ‘strategic’) network as well. This is because it’s much harder to cycle from one borough to another than it is to cycle within your own borough, and this is what is preventing London from being a cycling city, as opposed to a series of cycling localities.

Smaller towns don’t face this problem, so increasing their permeability correlates strongly with increasing cycling. But things are different in a metropolis like London, where people’s social, leisure and work activities are typically spread across a relatively large area. Until people can routinely and spontaneously cycle from one part of the capital to another, its predominant modes of transportation will reflect the ease with which this can be done by other means.

Of course, more and more people are discovering that cycling is worth the extra investment in preparation and navigation. But the fact is, if you want to encourage people to make positive lifestyle and environmental changes then you have to make it easy for them. A London Cycle Map would make it so much easier to cycle throughout the capital.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

About a year ago Alan Kinsey, a professional artist living in France and a life-long cyclist, decided to combine the two passions - painting and cycling - to produce paintings with a cycling theme.

With this in mind he started a modest blog, Bikes and Paint, to chat about his rides and bikes, but also to showcase his work.

Alan loves all aspects of cycling and is enthusiastic about any kind of bike, from the latest carbon framed racers to the lowliest shopping bike. As you can see from the work shown on his blog, he likes to depict the speed and excitement of massed sprints but also neglected, rusty machines. As he says "...there's something sad and poetic about a bike, or any machine come to that, which has outlived it's usefulness and has been abandoned by it's owner in a shed or a corner of a garden"

Alan can produce rider portraits, bike portraits or racing scenes on commission and anyone interested in contacting him can do so through the contact page of his site www.alankinsey.com.

All the best to Alan with his excellent work!

#73. GREY ROUTES. In an ideal world, all of London’s major landmarks would be directly adjacent to a Tube Station, so that people could access the capital’s treasures as conveniently as possible. (We certainly wouldn’t want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, anyway).

In the real world, London’s major landmarks are usually waymarked from the exits of the nearest Tube station. That way, you just have to hop off the train and follow signs to get to a particular landmark.

In an even more ideal world, all of London’s major landmarks would also be adjacent to a fully networked cycle route, so that people could access each landmark conveniently by bicycle. In the real world, we have to make do with networked cycle routes which pass as close to London’s landmarks as possible.

Parker’s London Cycle Map incorporates most of the routes of the London Cycle Network. These routes don’t glide directly past every landmark in the capital, but they certainly do a very good job of connecting all of the capital’s regions. One possible solution to making sure that people have no trouble finding major landmarks while riding on the London Cycle Network would be to sign its routes with subsidiary ‘grey’ routes leading directly to major landmarks and terminating there. These grey routes could, of course, be marked on the London Cycle Map itself.

So, when cycling on R1 you might expect to find a grey route which leads to Oxford Street. From N3 you might find a grey route leading to the Serpentine Gallery. From C8, you might follow one to the Monument. No problem! Critics needn’t insist that the London Cycle Network should swoop past every landmark in the capital. Grey routes which deadend at those landmarks would be more than sufficient for providing easy cycle access.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#74: INCREASING SPONTANEITY IN CYCLING. Some critics have suggested that, because cycle-commuters ride the same journey every day, they don’t need a London Cycle Map to show them where to go. What this criticism forgets is that it is people who currently don’t commute by bike who would find a London Cycle Map most helpful, not to mention encouraging. It’d be a lot easier for non-cyclists to muster the conviction to follow a few coloured signs than to plan and negotiate a complex, snaking route without assistance through London’s streets.

In any case, everyone – regular cyclists as well as potential cyclists – would benefit from the added spontaneity a London Cycle Map would bring to cycling. After all, cyclists in London will often (indeed, very regularly) want to undertake cycle journeys other than the daily ride to work. For instance (to pluck just a few examples from countless others): to attend meetings elsewhere, to go to an away football ground (fans and players alike), to meet friends for a meal somewhere unfamiliar after work.

Indeed, it is surely due to the inconvenience of cycling on these kinds of occasions that so many Londoners don’t consider the bicycle to be a realistic transport option for them on a daily basis. A London Cycle Map would help by making travelling by bike so much more convenient, dramatically reducing the amount of planning needed, thus enhancing spontaneity.

With a London Cycle Map, a spontaneous cycle journey would become as simple an undertaking as a spontaneous Tube journey.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#75: COSTS COVERED ENTIRELY BY SPONSORSHIP. The cost of waymarking the capital’s streets with the signs and road markings corresponding to Simon Parker’s London Cycle Map design has been estimated at just £50,000 per borough (by Brian Deegan, the development manager of the London Cycle Network). That’s just £1.6 million for the whole capital.

This is a tiny fraction of the price that Barclays Bank are alleged to have paid to sponsor the excellent Cycle Hire Scheme. So even if Brian Deegan’s estimate is way too low, clearly there is every chance that the total expenditure for implementing a London Cycle Map could be covered entirely by sponsorship. As far as the taxpayer is concerned, a city-wide network of easy-follow, direct and safe cycle routes would cost a grand total of... nothing!!!

What’s not to like? (Seriously – I’d be interested to know).

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#76: IT'S AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE, BUT NOT SIMPLER. Albert Einstein once remarked that ‘everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’. This valuable maxim is exemplified by Simon Parker’s London Cycle Map, which has succeeded in depicting the London Cycle Network in a way that is as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Because London’s cycle routes form an extremely complex network, any map that represents the majority of them can’t be any simpler than those routes are in reality. That’s why Parker’s map looks so squiggly, and why people complain, superficially, that it is too complex. Any decent London Cycle Map has to be complex enough to accommodate all the routes of the London Cycle Network.

Yet Parker’s map is not just a faithful representation but an exquisite simplification of those routes. In representing them as a series of parallel coloured lines, his design shows how you could get from anywhere to anywhere in the capital by following a few straight coloured routes which are waymarked by road paint and signs all along on the streets of the London Cycle Network.

Let’s erect the signs and paint the roads, and make cycling in London as simple as possible.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#77: IT'S A LEAN SOLUTION. Lean is a process management philosophy that helps organisations to flourish by avoiding wastage. Cycling in London clearly involves a lot of wastage when it comes to route planning. To navigate on the London Cycle Network you’ve got to remember hundreds of turn-rights and turn-lefts, or print them out in a long list, or consult an A to Z or a smart phone periodically. All these methods are inefficient to some degree.

The London Cycle Map would change this. A key Lean principle is expressed in the old wives maxim ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. By creating colour-coded signs and markings on the capital’s cycles routes now, at a small short-term cost, there would be an enormous long-term benefit in route planning efficiency. Cyclists could get from anywhere to anywhere in London by following no more than a few clearly marked routes.

Another important feature of Lean is its commitment to solving ‘bottleneck’ problems – small problems whose solutions make a dramatic impact. Despite thirty years of investment, the London Cycle Network is still being held back by its own bottleneck problem: poor mapping and wayfinding. Solving this problem through a London Cycle Map and corresponding signage would have a huge impact, enabling millions more cyclists to access the safer streets of the London Cycle Network.

Let’s Lean cycling in London!

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#78: COMMONSESE OVER BUREAUCRACY. If we all woke up tomorrow to find the Tube map had been abolished and replaced with 14 separate maps, each covering one small section of London and showing the Underground lines in detailed relation to all the other train lines in the area, we’d think the planners had gone completely mad overnight.

When life for the majority of Londoners involves traversing the city on a daily basis, to get to work, to see friends, and to occupy a home that’s at least vaguely affordable, we need something more than a mapping system which only enables us to plan part of every Tube journey.

Anyone can see that having a single, easy-to-use, stylised visual aid is a million times more useful to users of the Tube than carrying a bunch of complex, confusing and cumbersome local documents. It’s commonsense!

The equivalent for cycling would be a London Cycle Map: one single, unified, stylised visual representation of the network of safe cycle routes that already covers the city in a vast web. If only planners would recognise the simplicity of Simon Parker’s London Cycle Map design, the capital could be transformed – not overnight, but in the space of just a few months.

All that’s required to revolutionise travel in London is the cooperation of the boroughs in creating a city-wide system of signage and markings on the roads, for an initial sum of £50,000 per borough - roughly equivalent to a single senior civil servant’s annual salary.

When it comes to cycling we need less bureaucracy from our bureaucrats and more of that comprehensive vision and organisation which is found in their job descriptions, best intentions and finest administrative accomplishments. And a little commonsense.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#79: HELPING THE UNEMPLOYED. When Norman Tebitt famously advised unemployed people to get “on yer bike”, he wasn’t being entirely flippant. There are loads of reasons why cycling is great for people looking for a job. It’s the fastest and most flexible way of getting around the city, which is just what you need when you’re going from place to place and building to building, doing interviews or just putting yourself out there. Cycling also boosts your confidence, making you look and feel energised, and (like all forms of exercise) will increase your serotonin levels, helping you exude positivity. And, of course, when you’ve got no income, free travel is a vital asset.

The London Cycle Map would be great news for job hunters: when you’re trying to get your career on track, the last thing you should be worrying about is plotting enormously complicated cycle routes or getting lost as you go. With a properly signed network of easy-to-follow colour-coded routes spanning the entire capital, all the opportunities in this great city would be within easy reach of those who need them most.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#80: CLEANER AIR ON THE BACKSTREETS. Even if all the main roads in London were flanked by segregated cycle lanes (which is never going to happen), there would still be plenty of reasons for cyclists to prefer the quieter routes represented on the London Cycle Map.

For one, you can’t separate cyclists from the thick black fumes spewing out of the buses and lorries that chug along London’s major highways: the only way to avoid the worst pollution is to choose less busy streets.

On the tree-lined suburban roads of the London Cycle Network the air quality is noticeably better, which maximises the health benefits of city cycling. By making these routes easier to find and follow, the London Cycle Map would make cleaner air easier to come by.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#81: SILENCE. I’m writing this from the Yorkshire Dales, where the thing that strikes me most is the wonderful silence. Silence is more than just the absence of sound – it’s a whole experience in itself, one that’s strangely more intense than noise is.

Silence in cities is almost impossible to find. But a London Cycle Map could change that. With proper signage and road markings all along the routes of the London Cycle Network, the biggest impression would be not the thousands of cyclists gliding past but the silence trailing in their wake.

Soon, like gentle ripples, that silence would spread through the capital as more and more Londoners, on more and more streets, swap their noisy cars for bikes.

And in those advancing spaces, where silence dwells, who knows what inspiration Londoners will find.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#82: MORE USEFUL THAN A SATNAV. Many cyclists have a SatNav (often by way of a smart phone app) which helps them navigate by aurally and visually directing them through the city as they ride. This can obviously be very useful (as long as you can afford the cost of the device and an internet connection, your device is charged, and it’s not raining). Yet this method of navigation has serious shortcomings that a London Cycle Map doesn’t.

The easiest way to appreciate the importance of proper signage on cycle routes is to consider what it would be like catching the Tube with a SatNav, rather than a Tube map and appropriate signage. In tunnels which all look alike, you'd be scurrying round corners and up escalators whenever your SatNav told you to. You couldn’t ask a fellow Londoner if you missed your turning, got confused, or got misdirected into the proverbial field of cows; everyone else would know only what their instructions were telling them. And you’d have to be constantly vigilant – just in case there were further instructions. You’d be so disoriented you’d probably end up designing a Tube map.

Of course, you’d still need to be vigilant on a Tube-style network of cycle routes, looking out for signs (and road markings) showing you where to go. But the vigilance would be so much more natural. You’d already be looking at the road ahead, so it wouldn’t be difficult to glance at the signs as you went: no more so than it is on a motorway, or finding the right screen in a cinema.

Granted, we already have signs on every corner showing the name of each street in London. In effect, the London Cycle map allocates ‘names’ (specifically, colours and codes) to groups of roads, making it far easier to follow cycle routes. Just as it would be silly to tear down all those road name signs, it is silly that we currently have a cycle network which is largely without route signage.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#83. IT'S BEAUTIFUL. Your eyes would be drawn to Simon Parker’s London Cycle Map even if you didn't know that it represents an ingenious way to organise London’s bewildering spaghetti of cycle routes. The tantalising combinations of colours; the intriguing sets of parallel lines dissecting the space so comprehensively; the balancing of order and chaos amid the myriad angles. The overall impression is beguiling, delicate, and rigorous – all the hallmarks of beauty are there. How lovely it would be to consult such a design every time you make a cycle journey in London!

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

#84: INCREASING SOCIAL CAPITAL. ‘Social capital’ is a shorthand phrase for all the friendly, kindly and useful social engagements which occur within a group of people. When we get involved in local activities such as sports clubs, choirs, community projects or political meetings – or when we just visit friends to say hello – we are raising the levels of social capital in our area.

Economists think of social capital as a resource, equivalent to possessions or money (we can have a little or a lot of social capital in our lives). But that’s not the whole story. Social capital isn’t only valuable to us because it makes our lives more efficient or profitable; it also reduces crime and mental illness, and makes communities healthier and more egalitarian. Above all, social capital gives us a feeling of belonging and makes us happy.

Currently, travelling across London is an activity that’s low in social capital. In cars, drivers are separated from each other and the rest of the community by windscreens; in trains, people are jammed together awkwardly like stowaways in the back of a truck; on buses, the rocking of the deck and the noise of the engine shuts out friendly interactions.

On bikes, social capital is easier to come by. Cyclists smile at each other and wave to pedestrians, or chat at the lights. Bikes hardly ever cause harm to other road users, and since cyclists are steeped in the necessity of sharing road space, they tend to develop a more humble and tolerant mindset. Local areas with lots of cyclists are nicer places to live in and visit.

In helping to inspire millions more Londoners to cycle, a London Cycle Map would turn travelling through the capital into an experience that’s rich in social capital. With a properly signed and mapped London Cycle Network, we could all enjoy a friendlier, more community-spirited city.

www.petition.co.uk/london-cycle-map-campaign

A reminder that 'London's True Colours', the film for the London Cycle Map Campaign, is now available for viewing on facebook. If you want to help the campaign and you like the film, please do share it with your friends. Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10100175056557420