| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Why bikes lanes don't make traffic worse. | |
| Posted by: | Ed Saper | |
| Date/Time: | 23/05/22 23:20:00 |
| You could make a similar argument that car owners in London "also tend to be mostly male, white, in employment, and with relatively higher household incomes." Around half of households have access to a car - the richer you are, the more likely you are to have one. Around 21% of Londoners reported cycling in the last year in 2019, as you quoted, and that grew to 27% in 2020/21 and "Londoners from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities were not significantly less likely to have cycled over the past 12 months than white Londoners." https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2021/october/the-people-cycling-in-london-are-more-diverse-than-ever But if I were to paraphrase your point: cyclists are a tiny, white minority who are given disproportionate attention and money, and even if we want more people to cycle, people just won't because it is so elitist, they all wear lycra and it's unfair on everyone else. However, when you look at the numbers, the number of people cycling isn't a tiny minority. In Outer London 14% of people cycle once a month, 10% once a week (2018/2019). In Inner London it is 23% once a month and 18% once a week. Hounslow is 16% monthly and 11% weekly, but Hammersmith (Inner London) is 31% monthly and 18% weekly, while Richmond (Outer London) is 36% monthly and 27% weekly. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/walking-and-cycling-statistics-england-2020 You can pull out statistics from the link above and if you like you can "prove" that cycling is a tiny minority by limiting it to Outer London and those who cycle 5 times a week and only for travel and not leisure and you can get to less than 2% and therefore we should reopen Fishers Lane and remove C9 because cycling will never, ever be a legitimate activity of the majority and the cars need all the space. Or you can take the view that cycling is a legitimate transport option because it is high capacity, zero carbon / pollution and healthy and is the sort of think we should do more of, while we do less of the stuff which is inefficient, high carbon / pollution and is making us unhealthy - oh, and it works pretty well in other countries. And if you take that view, then tackling the reasons people don't cycle more - mainly because it is/feels so bloody dangerous to cycle on the roads with tipper trucks, let alone doing it with kids on the school run - then a cycle lane doesn't seem like such a bad idea. |