As accusations about my views on cycling continue I have found, and posted below, an archived copy of the blog I wrote for The Chiswick Calendar about the bike ride challenge I accepted from Chiswick resident Karen Liebreich. I have added it here as if on the date it was originally published – 2nd October 2017.
Conservative local election candidate Joanna Biddolph has been exchanging views about cycling in Chiswick with cyclist Karen Liebreich, who has proposals of her own for improving cycling safety. In a flurry of emails described as ‘rigorous’ Joanna took issue with cyclists who ride on the pavement, amongst other things. Karen offered to show her the problems cyclists face first hand and Joanna took up the challenge. She hadn’t been on a bike for more than 40 years.
Their route took them from Grove Park, across the A4 up Sutton Court Rd to Chiswick High Rd and across Chiswick roundabout to the North Circular. Once she’d grasped what access cyclists are supposed to be entitled to, and how difficult it is for them to claim it, Joanna says it didn’t take long for her to realise that her determination to claim the space that was rightfully hers could easily tip over in to aggression:
“I might become one of the cyclists whose behaviour I find so distressing – the red light runners, the left hand turners, the pavement mis-users, the shouty-abusers, the heads-down commuters – because conditions for cyclists are shabby”.
Conservative local election candidate Joanna Biddolph has been exchanging views about cycling in Chiswick with cyclist Karen Liebreich. Karen offered to show her the problems first hand and Joanna took up the challenge. She hadn’t been on a bike for more than 40 years.
It started off very, very wobbly. On a quiet road in Grove Park, the first problem was getting one leg on each side of my borrowed bicycle, then re-learning how to start, stop and go round corners without ending up where I was when I last went for a bike ride. That was 42 years ago in June 1975 in Toronto. I’d been offered the use of my 6’3” tall boss’s horizontal crossbar bike. I’m 5’3” and couldn’t work out how to lower the saddle. As I should have predicted, the bike tipped over, my right foot got caught under the pedal and scrunch went my fifth metatarsal, right in front of 200 kids coming out of a school playground. They went home laughing. I went to A&E.
Where I live now, in the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate (those pretty black and white Mock Tudor houses on the east side of the North Circular), which everyone is surprised to find is in Chiswick’s Turnham Green ward, I’m known for the strength of my irritation when cyclists use the narrow pedestrian-only pavement outside our garden gates, despitemany ‘no cycling’ signs on posts and a perfectly good dedicated cycle path on the other side of the road.
During a rigorous email exchange about this with Karen she invited me to get on a bike with her to experience that cycle path as a cyclist. I issued the precondition that I would not do anything illegal, which meant I would not cycle on a pavement; I would get off and walk. She lent me a bike and a helmet and we were off.
The route we took is all a bit of a haze. At some point we crossed the A4 going north, with Karen saying this was the most scary bit. I looked hopefully atthe underpass but the lights changed and there was no turning off;we were off across the road. Not in as straight a line as I’d hoped. Dangerous junction for cyclists.
The next leveller was how un-level some road surfaces are. Drain covers, manhole covers, sloppy repairs that are far from flat – it was one heck of a bumpy ride. “Avoid the puddles,” Karen said from behind. “You can’t tell if they are hiding potholes.” We saw quite a lot of them, puddles and potholes. If they are near the kerb, it means swinging round them in front of traffic – or stop-starting if you are sandwiched next to a car. We did quite a bit of stop-starting of our own, when Karen wanted to explain something to me. Such as how to cope at traffic lights – waiting in the advanced stop line box, or bike box, in front of the cars so drivers can see us and so we can be off first and speedily when the lights change. I didn’t always manage speedily. If any drivers reading this shook a metaphorical or actual fist at a cyclist wobbling alarmingly to the right wearing a bright green mac, that was me. Sorry.
We’ve all seen daft cycle paths that stop for no reason. What reason could there be, I wondered as I cycled over the end of one on the High Road into no man’s land. Cars or vans parked over them? There were several. I’ve never done that and I never will. Drivers of long-nosed cars who nudge forward at junctions till they extend well into the road? Stay back, that’s my space! I’m a head-turning driver (I don’t rely on mirrors before swinging out into traffic) so I was interested to find that I didn’t have to think about being a head-turning cyclist. Coming towards a block in my path, my head spun round impressively fast as I checked if there was a car coming up behind me. An image of Bradley Wiggins flashed across my mind. Not the speed aspect, or the competence, obviously. Or the lycra. Just the head turning. I did that as I passed a bus, checking it was ok to move out, using hand signals too (wobble, wobble went the bike). I’m what I consider to be a considerate-of-buses driver, stopping to let the bus go first, annoyed when other drivers don’t do the same. After I started passing this bus, it signalled right but I thought I’d be ok to carry on. Out it swung as if I wasn’t there. “*?*#*?*” my head said. Don’t you know how many times I’ve followed the bus first rule, receiving a wave of thanks and returning it with a wave back and a smile?
We turned up an alley, Karen ahead of me saying, “I know this is a cycle path” and me saying “but there are no markings!” “It’s been a cycle path for decades”, she assured me. The lack of markings is an intriguing point. I suspect many pedestrians see an absence of markings as a clear sign that it’s a pedestrian-only path and that cyclists see a cycle path that is not marked. Mismatch.
Cycling is all about looking ahead for hazards, Karen advised me. Many of which are to do with selfish drivers, I said to myself. Or pedestrians who dart in front of you thinking they can get across your route faster than we are cycling towards them (only just). At one point on the High Road I found it difficult to steer the bike confidently through what seemed like a much narrower cycle path. Barely a handlebar width wide, I thought, worrying if my brain was playing tricks with my spatial awareness as I wobbled through trying to keep within the line. “That bit’s not compliant,” explained Karen. As for the cycle path on the western side of Gunnersbury Avenue, it wasn’t as impassable as cyclists have implied but, by the entrance to Gunnersbury Cemetery, there are dropped and tactile kerbs for pedestrians; the cycle path ends (or starts) on a raised pavement edge. The choice is crash into or off – or use the pedestrian dropped kerb. Contradiction.
So, what was the result of this interesting challenge, apart from saddle soreness and a right trouser leg drenched in black bike chain grease?
Alarmingly early on, I felt an unexpected and surprising sense of determination – to beat the car behind me when setting off at the lights or to loop round the van parked on the cycle path (you’ve stolen my patch of road, I’m stealing yours) – perhaps putting too much emphasis on Karen’s reminders that we had right of way. I wondered if this determination might spill over into aggression, if I might become one of the cyclists whose behaviour I find so distressing – the red light runners, the left hand turners, the pavement mis-users, the shouty-abusers, the heads-down commuters – because conditions for cyclists are shabby.
As every cyclist knows, cycling infrastructure in Chiswick is a disaster. Non-compliant cycle paths, interrupted cycle paths, or none; shoddily maintained road surfaces made worse by patch repairs; lack of clarity about who can cycle where; terrible junctions where no thought has been given to how cyclists fit in; not enough bike racks near the shops – it’s disrespectful to cyclists, to drivers, to pedestrians, to our wonderful independent shops, to all of us. In the centre, it should be much easier to hop on and off from shop to shop, on both sides of the High Road.
As TfL makes clear on its website, the Cycle Superhighway is about travelling from A to B. It’s not about cycling within an area. In my view, it will change Chiswick’s character. I’m particularly concerned about the effect it will have on the Catholic church; the congregation congregating on the pavement is part of the Chiswick landscape.And it will form a barrier (perceived or actual) between the north and the south side of the High Road. What we need for cycling within Chiswick, is improved cycle paths along both sides of the High Road, integrated with sensible cycle paths up and down roads to and from the High Road, and to and from the villages within our village. They need to go from north to south, east to west and directions in between on relevant roads. What is also badly needed is education – for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists – to increase awareness, improve practices and reduce resentment and abuse.
Karen and I will no doubt continue our rigorous debate. She was a patient guide and encourager of this unintentional non-cyclist (if only I’d brought my Raleigh Twenty with me when I moved to London aged 17). And who knows, she might one day see me walking out of Fudge’s and setting off, in a cycle path, on my own bike …
