Cycle Lifestyle

Simon Parker has created an updated road map showing the underlying network of cycle routes and other roads that are represented on his London Cycle Map. If you want to see the exact roads (and parks) that are incorporated into Parker’s London Cycle Map, click on the ‘satellite’ icon at the bottom of the menu on the left of the road map.

The road map of the LCM routes is a very useful resource – both currently and potentially.

Currently, it can be used by technically-minded people – planners, campaigners, politicians, or informed laypeople – who want to find out more about the exact measures Parker is proposing (although please note that there are discrepencies between the road map and the various versions of Parker's London Cycle Map: his route choices have evolved over time). 

Parker’s London Cycle Map seeks to make the best use of the capital’s existing cycle infrastructure (including Cycle Superhighways, London Cycle Network routes, National Cycle Network routes, and many more) whilst also informing decisions about future cycling investment. There are numerous places on Parker’s proposed network where investment is essential – including various new route sections and new bridges. On the road map, Parker has helpfully divided new route proposals into two categories – easy and difficult. ‘Easy’ means there will be scant physical or political obstruction; ‘difficult’ means such obstruction will, most likely, be more significant.

Nobody should be put off by Parker’s development proposals. A major question in cycle campaigning is how best to spend available funds. The centrepiece of Parker’s project is his conviction (which I explain here) that new cycling investment in London will tend to be most impactful when it contributes to a network of signed and mapped cycle routes. 

Potentially, Parker’s road map (or something similar to it) could also help cyclists plan journeys. At present, the network is incomplete; so Parker’s road map should not be used as a route planner. However, on the back of sensible decisions being made about the development of Parker’s network, road markings and signs should be positioned on the streets corresponding to his London Cycle Map. The signs and markings would enable cyclists to follow the routes on Parker’s network; in turn, this would enable people to cycle from anywhere to anywhere in the capital by following (in most cases) just a few trails of colour. Obviously, this would be a huge improvement on the present situation, wherein a journey across the capital requires cyclists to remember hundreds of turn rights and turn lefts.   

Perhaps you’re looking at Parker’s road map and thinking: it looks very complicated! You’d be right! The point is, London’s cycling infrastructure is extremely complicated – a vast, tangled spaghetti of routes. Parker’s road map is, in fact, an ingenious simplification of the current network (pending the addition of a few new routes), carving it up into long straight coloured routes that dissect the capital in every direction; he calls this the 'Compass Colours system'. (Incidentally, the ‘white’ layer on Parker's road map displays cycle routes that are officially recognised but do not fit readily into the Compass Colours system).

In turn, the London Cycle Map proposes a way to simplify Parker's road map. The LCM would be cycling's equivalent of the London Underground Map. When you catch the Tube, you need to know how to get onto the network to begin your journey, and how to get from the network to your final destination; but, while on the network, the signs guide you along. The same would apply to using Parker’s London Cycle Map. Cyclists would only need to consult his road map to establish how to reach the network at the start of a journey and how to reach a chosen destintion from the network. While on the network, signs would guide cyclists along. What a wonderfully efficient and user-friendly way this would be to organise the capital's unwieldy tangle of cycle routes!

In fact, often cyclists wouldn’t need to consult Parker's road map at all. Typically, they’d already know how to get onto the network, because they’d be starting from home. And venues might supply directions explaining how to get from the network to the venue, just as they typically supply directions explaining how to get to the venue from the nearest Tube station.

However, it should be repeated that, due to the current incompleteness of the network, Parker’s road map is not designed to be used as a journey planner at this stage.

Simon Parker’s road map points the way forward for cycle campaigning and cycle development in London. We already have an extensive network of cycle routes in the capital, so why not make these routes easier to find and follow? Why not spend the available cycling development funds on completing and improving the current network? Why not create a single London Cycle Map and network of signed, coloured routes, potentially enabling Londoners to cycle from anywhere to anywhere in the capital, without hassle or hindrance?

That’s what the London Cycle Map Campaign is calling for. Please support us by telling your friends about our campaign, and by signing our petition. 

You pay the wages (through your taxes) of millions of public sector bureaucrats in Britain.

I mention this, because most British people seem to be a strangely indifferent towards the fact that public sector bureaucrats are supposed to provide a service to taxpayers. As for the bureaucrats themselves, they seem to be not only indifferent to providing service but resourcefully opposed to doing so. 

Last week, I rode my bicycle into a signpost which had been helpfully positioned in the middle of a segregated cycle path in Cambridge, where I now live. The cycle path goes against the flow of traffic. As a consequence, in the evening the oncoming car headlights dazzle cyclists along this stretch. It was evening when I crashed, and it was raining. I simply didn’t see the signpost until – BANG.

Luckily, my shoulder took the impact and not my face. I’m still limping from landing on my knee.

The signpost was positioned far from any lampposts which would have provided illumination, and was itself unlit. It had been installed quite recently I believe, to warn drivers of the cameras that have recently been installed in a bus lane along the same stretch of road. You’ve gotta love the council.

The next day, I tried to contact the council’s highways department to inform them that their latest money-making scheme was dangerous to cyclists. The only mechanism for supplying feedback was an online form accompanied by a dropdown menu of topics for complaints (‘Potholes’, ‘Broken Signs’, etc). There was no category for ‘Profiteering Road Signs Erected in Stupid Places’, so I opted for ‘Broken Signs’. You never know – my shoulder took quite a whack, so hopefully the reverse was true also.

To my dismay, the poxy little online box in which I was supposed to write my complaint was even more severe than Twitter in its demand for brevity, so I gave up trying to explain my accident in the form of a haiku, and attempted to phone the Council instead. By now, my head was filling up with prose.

After much reverberating around in automated phone space, I got through to someone who informed me that I should try emailing the council about the problem. I asked my interlocutor what his name was. He said ‘Matt’. I replied, ‘full name’. Believe it or not, I wasn’t trying to be friends with him. He said ‘Matt... [something or other]’. I can’t remember already. The ravages of time.

Anyhow, I sent a message to the impersonal ‘highways’ email address that Matt had given me. My message carefully explained that the signpost which I crashed into was dangerous. And then something amazing happened. I received a prompt reply!

Alas, my delight lasted a matter of seconds. The reply was an automated message from the friendly-sounding email address ‘Do-not-reply@cambridgeshire.gov.uk’.

The not-to-be-replied-to-reply (is there a double standard there?) informed me that I could ‘track the status of this fault at any time’ on the council’s ‘Fault Tracking Page’. Is that better than talking to a human (whose wages I pay) about the signpost I had crashed into? Only one way to find out. I clicked the link, and found a page telling me that the ‘status’ of my fault was ‘Reported’ (Does a fault have a ‘status’? An interesting philosophical question).

Well, at least I hadn’t completely wasted my time – I was the proud author of a Report. This gave me such an inner glow, I was almost willing to overlook the fact that I hadn’t reported a ‘Fault’, as such, rather a poor decision with dangerous practical consequences. Still – who cares what words mean?

In any case, the Fault Tracking Page reassuringly informed me that ‘Within 10 days we aim to decide whether further action is necessary’. An aim! An aim to make a decision! This was real action being taken based on my complaint. I was ecstatic. I was so ecstatic, I turned a blind eye to the fact that the ‘Description of Fault’ as recorded by the council consisted of a truncated block of text lifted from my initial email. The text had been cut off mid word, as though I was a contestant in a sort of bureaucratic game show.  

Ah, the curse of the poxy little online box again, only this time the poxy little online box had come to me.

Well, the 10 days have now elapsed. Did the council succeed in their aim to make a decision? I don’t know. I haven’t been contacted. Rather enigmatically, the Fault Tracking Page also informs me that ‘Where no further action is considered necessary, the person reporting the fault will be informed and the report will be closed’. So, can I conclude from the fact that I wasn’t informed that the report hasn’t been closed? Can I conclude that further action is considered necessary? Can I conclude that considering further action necessary is the same as taking further action? I simply don’t know.

Indeed, I don’t know what it means to ‘close’ a report. Does it mean ignoring the fact that there is an invisible signpost in the middle of a cycle lane? And I don’t know what ‘further action’ means. Does it mean further to the aim of deciding? Or further to sending me an automated email? Who knows.

Matt the council employee didn’t want me to know his full name because Britain’s public sector bureaucrats are pathologically unable to take responsibility for anything. They take our money, then they hide behind automated systems.

Credit where credit is due, these automated systems are quite brilliant at protecting public sector workers from the consequences of their actions. Our money, in other words, is spent on ingenious ways of making that sure our money is never spent accountably and wisely.

That, dear readers, is the invisible signpost that democracy is about to whack slapbang into.

When I was a little kid in London one of my very favourite activities was hitching a ride on the back of my Dad’s bicycle in a child’s seat. I can still remember the feeling now, a sense of exhilaration and security all rolled into one, as my Dad swept through streets and parks, and the wind swept through my hair. They were more innocent times, when people’s lives seemed somehow to be more practical yet more fun.

But in Cambridge where I live today, it seems that those days are returning. I’ve noticed more and more local parents ferrying their younger kids around by bike. Particularly popular are those bicycle trailers that attach to the rear of an adult bike. They look like mini lunar modules, fully covered over, with transparent plastic windows, so the little ones can be snug inside but curious about the world outside.

Of course, on the continent the bicycle school run is nothing new. In many European cities, in the mornings and afternoons on schooldays you’ll see cargo bikes weaving past in their thousands, with thousands of tiny smiling faces in tow. But what is different is a new sound emanating from those legions of bicycles. It is the faint sound of whirring – the sound of an electric motor.

Europeans, it seems, are increasingly taking the logical step of equipping their cargo bikes with an electric motor, to help carry the load. Electric bikes in general are one of the continent’s biggest growth industries, due to the incredible potential of the latest ebike technology. With a battery-powered motor providing extra oomph as you pedal, the bicycle (already a miraculous machine) becomes a veritable super-bicycle. Naturally, the power of this new technology is attracting even greater numbers of parents to the cargo bike school run.

I spoke to Eddie Kehoe – Founding Director of the Electric Transport Shop – to discover more about the burgeoning popularity of electric cargo bikes, especially here in the UK. Eddie has two children – two girls, 2 and 7 years of age – whom he (or his wife) carries to school on a cargo bike, so he knows what he is talking about. For him, it is all about convenience and fun. ‘Cambridge has so many wonderful quiet routes, I can beat the traffic’, he explains, ‘so I can get the kids from door to door so much faster, which means we can leave home later. The whole experience is much less stressful than driving to school, finding a parking space, etc. In fact, it is fun!’ I ask him if his kids enjoy the ride, too. ‘They love it!’ he says, adding, wryly, ‘and that helps me get them out of the door in the morning!’ 

Cargo bikes have many other positives, some less obvious than others. Clearly, you can save a lot of money by biking the kids to school, while deriving all the familiar health, fitness and psychological benefits of cycling, including greater happiness and productivity. But Eddie tells me, interestingly, that he is also pleased that he is giving his daughters some experience of the road; ‘I feel they are too young to cycle along a busy roadside, yet they’re getting a sense of how it’s done’.

And schools, too, seem to be benefitting from bicycling parents. Bikes improve road safety outside the school gates, by reducing gridlock at the start and end of the school day, so schools are going out of their way to encourage cycling. Eddie tells me that some of the parents who cycle their kids to school on the way to work choose to detach their trailers and leave them at the school, then continue on to work, then pick up the trailers and kids on the way home.

Cargo bikes, it seems, are increasingly being woven into people’s lifestyles in Cambridge; you only have to look around to see the evidence. ‘I call it Camstersdam’, exclaims Eddie, making reference to the city of Amsterdam, where the cycling school run is world-renowned. 

But – I ask Eddie – realistically, aren’t many people likely to be put off by concerns about getting too sweaty or too tired on a bike, especially with one or more kids in tow? ‘That’s where ebikes come in’, Eddie responds, nodding. ‘Not everyone has the fitness levels necessary to be able to bike the kids to school on a conventional bicycle, day in day out – for example, recent mums, or, in general, parents who are just downright exhausted by raising kids’. So, what difference does the electric motor make? ‘A massive difference. You’re in control of how much effort you put in. You can toggle the assistance level, allowing the motor to do most of the work, or you can put more effort in yourself. It’s up to you’.  

There are various options when it comes to electric cargo bikes. The Electric Transport Shop can install a battery and motor onto a cargo bike that is already owned by a customer. ‘“Dutch bikes” are a popular option for upgrading’, says Eddie. Another excellent option is the Smarta bike which is available directly from the Electric Transport Shop. This award-winning ebike is extremely robust and reliable (I know this because I personally own one) and perfect for attaching a trailer to. ‘We offer a £999 Smarta bike-plus-trailer deal, along with a free service within 300 miles of usage of the bike’, explains Eddie. Going forward, he informs me, an ebike service is recommended for most users just once a year, and 83% of customers get over 5 years of usage out of their first battery. And here’s the best bit: the electricity is likely to cost less than £5 per 1,000 miles.

‘You can also use an electric cargo bike to transport your dog and your shopping’, continues Eddie, who is clearly passionate about these wonderful machines. He invites people to come to the Electric Transport Shop – which has stores in London, York, Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge – to find out more. You could pick the kids up from school afterwards.

For more information about electric bikes and electric cargo bikes, see www.electricbikesales.co.uk

How can Cambridge's worsening congestion problem be solved? A decade ago, two friends who met at university in the city reckoned they knew the answer, and set about making it happen. Ten years on, it seems that more and more local residents are agreeing with them.

I spoke to Eddie Kehoe about the business he started with co-founder Jamie McAlley out of a garden shed in Cambridge. Today located on Newmarket Road next to the Elizabeth Way roundabout, the Electric Transport Shop is doing a roaring trade selling ‘electric bicycles’, with newer branches thriving in four other British cities. What is the secret of this company's pioneering success?

'More and more people are catching on to the many benefits of electric bikes', says Eddie. 'If I told you about a motorised vehicle that requires no insurance, beats the traffic, does 1000 miles for £4.50 – or even further if you pedal too – and makes you fitter and happier, you'd want one, wouldn't you?'

I could hardly disagree; I've been a huge fan of e-bikes ever since I bought mine a few years ago. Basically, e-bikes are conventional bikes supplemented by a battery-powered motor. Depending on the model, the motor can be engaged by pedalling, or by a throttle (as on a motorbike); either way, the extra oomph comes in handy when climbing hills or accelerating.

The great thing about e-bikes', Eddie continues, 'is that, when you find the right e-bike for you, you get all the benefits of conventional cycling but you’re more in control of the downsides, such as getting sweaty or tired'. So does this mean that you get less exercise on an e-bike? Not exactly, Eddie explains. 'Studies show that people tend to use their e-bikes more than conventional bike owners use theirs – so, overall, e-bike owners tend to get more exercise'.

It also seems that e-bikes are increasing the popularity of cycling. Perhaps people feel more confident because the motor helps them nip more quickly away from traffic, or avoid what Eddie calls 'low-speed wobble'. Whatever the reason, studies show that e-bikes tend to widen the appeal of cycling. For people of limited mobility – including disabled people or ME sufferers – owning an electric bicycle (or tricycle) can be particularly life-changing. Eddie recalls one customer, a gentlemen who weighed 30 stone, who managed to shed 5 stone in a year after buying an e-bike. Remarkably, he now rides his e-bike around velodromes as a pace-setter in races!

'People realise how amazing these machines are within moments of trying them out', says Eddie. I can vouch for that, I tell him. My first go on an e-bike was almost as exhilarating as my first ever cycle ride as a kid; both times I dismounted with a smile a mile wide. 'Ah', says Eddie, now smiling too. 'We call it the “electric grin” in the industry'. He invites people to come to the Electric Transport Shop in Cambridge to complete the '100 metre challenge': 'If you don't smile within the first 100 metres of your test-ride on an e-bike, you get a prize!'

What does the future hold for the Electric Transport Shop? ‘New stores are planned in more British cities’, explains Eddie, adding that the industry in general is growing rapidly, with manufacturing giants such as Bosch, Yamaha, Panasonic and Shimano now competing for a share of this exciting market. But Eddie is particularly passionate about the e-bike's potential for transforming Cambridge, where he lives with his family. ‘Everyone is fed up of the noise, pollution and stress caused by the city’s congestion. It’s encouraging to see that public transport infrastructure improvements are being discussed. But e-bikes are a simple, affordable and increasingly popular solution – they are a continuation of Cambridge’s long and proud tradition of cycling, after all’.

The figures certainly stack up. Most e-bike batteries last between 20 and 40 miles on a full charge. So, pretty much any journey within the city could be undertaken on an e-bike. Likewise, residents of surrounding villages could easily get in and out of town on e-bikes. Slightly further afield, commuters could recharge their batteries while at work – a full charge usually takes three or four hours, and the batteries are easily detachable.

The e-bikes themselves vary in price – from £699 to several times more, with various monthly payment options available, including an interest free option over 24 months. Current prices are attractive, but, in any case, for many people, the cost is redeemed by money saved. The average Briton spends around £90 on petrol each month. So, some e-bikes pay for themselves within a year – and then bring many more years of savings. The savings are even more impressive for the various businesses that Eddie has supplied with a ‘pool’ of e-bikes for the use of employees who need to travel around Cambridge in the course of their jobs.

As for the cost of the various possible new transport initiatives proposed for Cambridge, including several new train stations, a new Park and Ride scheme to the east of the city, and a guided busway route south of Madingley Road, figures of hundreds of millions of pounds are being talked about, not to mention the possible environmental costs that can be associated with large-scale developments. Let’s put this in perspective: the local authority could buy every Cambridge resident an e-bike for much less than the probable total cost of all the new schemes.

But why wait? Perhaps the best thing about e-bikes is that they are a great way for individuals to solve their own transport problems, to gain greater freedom and convenience, and save money, while also making a positive contribution to the local area. We don’t have to wait for the authorities to take steps to reduce congestion; we can make a difference too. That’s a fitting ethos, I think, for a company founded ten years ago by two entrepreneurs who are changing Cambridge for the better, one grin at a time.

Find out more about electric bicycles and tricycles at www.electricbikesales.co.uk, or pop into the Electric Transport Shop located at 118-120 Newmarket Road, Cambridge. See the website for details of other UK stores.