Our good friends at Article Magazine recently conducted a vigorous and highly-controlled series of calculations and computations, arriving at the conclusion that the coolest cities in the world are the flattest, Berlin and Amsterdam coming top. Why? Because there are few things that ooze effortless sophistication than the single-speed road bicycle.
Anyone who’s been to either of these cities will know this to be true. My absence from this very blog can be explained by a recent trip to the German capital, along with sister city Munich, and I have arrived back in London longing for a metropolis churning along atop the thin, elegant wheels of a road bicycle. Of course, there is an abundance of great things about our own cities, and another abundance of reasons why Berlin and Munich are such amazing cities apart from their love affair with the bicycle; but returning from these places reveals Britain’s woeful relationship with cycling, and begs the question how this can change.
There are certain features of European life that lend themselves to cycling; dryer and warmer weather, and wider roads and pavements that allow for cycle paths. However it really comes down, in my admittedly ignorant opinion, to two main factors; attitudes towards cycling, and the lack of a cycling tradition in the UK for the last 50 years.
Cyclists in Britain will know all too well the frosty and aggressive attitude exhibited towards them from both drivers and pedestrians. Speak to anyone who cycles regularly and you are unlikely to find one who hasn’t been involved in even a minor collision due to dangerous driving. In London, a relatively flat and cycle-friendly landscape, cycling is reserved for those prepared to risk life and limb; to put it simply, cycling just isn’t enjoyable in most of our main cities. The problem is self-fulfilling by its nature; the cyclist-friendly attitude seen in European cities is largely due to the fact that cycling is so popular. Many of the motorists themselves cycle, so a consideration and awareness of cyclists is second-nature; consequently while cycling remains relatively unpopular in our country, those who practise it remain in a precarious position. But the attitude with which cycling is held here extends beyond individuals; as a society, we tend to view cycling as either a health or a ‘green’ issue, and rarely as a genuinely enjoyable and fun activity. This has left us with an underlying cultural apathy towards it; while plans to create more cycle lanes in Britain are gingerly suggested to combat global warming, the abundance of these paths that line the roads in Europe have been placed there due to a passion and enthusiasm for bicycles.
Finding a solution isn’t easy, of course, but there is hope; the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, himself a keen cyclist, aims to install more cycle paths and to encourage more people to take up the activity. His plans for cycle rental points, a popular trend in Europe, is certainly a step in the right direction too, as are the governments plans to spread these schemes throughout the country. For now, we can only hope that these schemes will a) actually happen, and b) garner the desired results. What is clear is that they simply must happen if cycling is to take off in this country. It is not enough to hope that everyone will be compelled by their environmental hearts to take up a life of two-wheeled joy; no, the conditions must be right, and must be met. Rather discouragingly, Johnson remains opposed to an expanded congestion zone; if Europe is our model, and it has served this article well thus far, then it is clear that an increase in cycling must be propelled by a decrease in the number of vehicles on the road.
However this is indicative of a more significant hurdle on the path of British cycling. Where the tradition has thrived in Europe, we are almost starting again from scratch. Despite being home to the Raleigh bicycle company and a thriving cycling community in the 1950s, our cycling tradition is all but dead. We have no romantic allusions to chic road bicycles and sweeping avenues; indeed, while the stereotype of the Frenchman has him attired in a striped shirt cycling to the local café, the only caricature I can think of involving an Englishman and a bike is some tit pissing about on a penny farthing a hundred years ago. I have already mentioned how an enthusiasm for cycling in Europe has put them years ahead in terms of cycle paths, but there are problems that lie deeper. The first of these is road maintenance. The unrivalled quality of European roads makes cycling; they are smooth and clean, a puncture-free utopia. In Britain, the lack of any cycling tradition for the last 50 years means the roads are maintained only to a level that they are suitable to withhold buses, lorries and the high number of other vehicles. Little regard is given to cyclists, meaning once again that cycling is simply not as enjoyable as it should be, and certainly not as enjoyable as it is elsewhere.
The other problem is the bicycles themselves. In the 1990s a huge influx in mountain bikes came to the UK, and has remained ever since. And so, anyone buying a bike will take a visit to their local Evans, and be faced with the choice between a £700 road bike, or a £150 mountain bike. Thus, the death of the British cycling tradition has seen the market fuelled more by arbitrary consumerism rather than any practical rationale; mountain bikes are fairly redundant in cities, frustratingly burdensome and actually pretty useless for hills, and yet they are the most common bicycle in Britain, and still the most frequently stolen. In contrast second-hand road bicycles, in particular the European fixed-wheel variety which are an unparalled joy to ride through a city and ten-a-penny on the continent, are a rarity and often over-priced due to their association with art school posers and the cycling elite.
The problem, then, is twofold; not only does our society have an apathetic and cold relationship towards cycling, but even more seriously our lack of any tradition for fifty years has left us with an environment inhospitable to cycling, a lack of the things that make cycling so wonderful in the first place. Still, if things sound bleak there is still reason to remain optimistic. What is clear is that cycling is increasing in the UK, albeit slowly. The lack of a cycling tradition in the UK has set us back from Europe significantly, but there is hope that as more and more cycle paths emerge, and thus more cyclists, we will begin to see a more variable bicycle market, and roads better accommodated to two-wheels. And if not, at least you’ve got one good reason to put that German GCSE to good use.
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