Two Wheels Good

This bike park is always crammed and busy. There are often 15 parked bikes here in the space it takes to park one car. (On the left you will see two empty disabled car parking spaces.)

More car parking spaces behind bike rack.

On this street, bike parking is pretty limited compared to car parking. But, the key thing is space taken by bike v car. If you sacrifice one car parking space, you create room for at least 10 bicycles. When designing and planning city centres (where space is limited) it is crazy that we encourage so much motor cars which take up so much more relative space.

(By the way, this Cafe Nero in Blackwells bookshop is as close as it gets to my place of work, where I write and blog. Cycling here is my daily commute. )

A Talk to a local Councillor

When someone comes knocking on the door to canvass / sell / annoy me, I’m pretty good at saying ‘sorry I’m eating dinner’ whilst unceremoniously closing the door in their face. But for some reason the other day I actually spent a few minutes talking to some local Lib Dem Councillors who came knocking on the door. They were quite charming and skilled at drawing me into conversation, and for once I allowed myself to chat. They asked me what I did for a living ‘An economist’ – but despite having views on the economy, I wanted to bring up cycling – because this is a big factor that affects local quality of life.

When asked what I would like changed in the city. I couldn’t think of anything better than saying ‘enforcing 20mph speed limits‘ and a bit more bike parking. In one sense it sounds a bit feeble – there are after all more important problems in the world than a difficulty in parking your bicycle. But, sometimes small gains are worthwhile. (I was surprised earlier in year, when a note to council led to queens lane being re-closed to traffic – cycling activism)

I was also interested in comments on Dutch Cycling problem. One reader observed:

“…The one reason we in the Netherlands have such excellent facilities (not the one featured here obviously) is that we keep on nagging..”

They vigorously nodded their heads in agreement with everything I suggested. So I eagerly await the radical transformation of Oxford into a cycling paradise. But, I’m glad to have brought up subject.

A Vivid Demonstration of Space taken by a Car.

If you walked around the city centre like that, you would get a lot of people complaining about the space taken, but if you take up that space and drive at 35mph, it’s accepted.

Other End of Broad Street

To be fair to Oxford council, at the other end of Broad Street there is a bigger bicycle rack (which again is often full). Also a real problem the council have is that bikes often get discarded in racks and abandoned. (and it can take them a year to cut lock and remove them). This is a real shame as abandoned bikes take up a lot of space and I assume is time consuming to remove them.

Anyway to summarise

• Bicycles are good. They don’t take up much space.
• Because cars take up so much space in city centres it is justified to discourage use, through parking charges and limiting space in town for car parking.
• Providing more bicycle parking is good, as it makes centre look less cluttered and also encourages people to leave bikes in town
• It is safer to have a proper bike rack to lock a bike to. So many times we are told don’t lock a bike to itself, but in practise it is often difficult to find a bike stand to lock it to
• Politicians are people too. Speak nicely about cycling and it may help us get better facilities.

Related

• How to encourage cycle use