"Vonny Moyes: Let's face it - cycling has an image problem"

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"Vonny Moyes: Let's face it - cycling has an image problem"

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Started 8 years ago by chdot
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chdot
Admin

"

If we want cycling acceptance to increase, we have to fold it into every part of society. We need to see pensioners on bikes. We need to see kids cycling to school. We need mums collecting the kids on bikes. We need to see what our icons are riding. If cyclists remain ring-fenced, we’ll remain a subculture, and never become a priority. Infrastructure won’t happen, and we’ll never transform active travel. To make this happen, Scotland has to develop a true cycling culture, and that starts with making it open to everyone. Only then will our streets become “democratic spaces” we all have a say in.

"

http://www.thenational.scot/comment/vonny-moyes-lets-face-it---cycling-has-an-image-problem.16720

Posted 8 years ago #
chdot
Admin

"

Vonny Moyes (@vonny_bravo)
25/04/2016, 8:13 am
@joelcacooney @POPScotland perhaps. I've been told more than once I'm 'not a cyclist' even though I regularly do 100 miles a week

"

Posted 8 years ago #
dougal
Member

With apologies to David Bowie et al, this seems like an endless cycle.

You remind me of the cyclist
What cyclist?
The cyclist with the power
What power?
The power of voodoo
Whodo?
You do
What?
Remind me of the infrastructure
What infrastructure?
The infrastructure of the cyclist
What cyclist?
(etc.)

Posted 8 years ago #
The Boy
Member

This is just the cycle chic argument again, isn't it? 'Normal' people don't cycle because it's seen as niche, and you can't build infrastructure until more 'normal' people cycle.

It's completely arse about tit. 'Normal' people don't cycle because they're - frankly quite understandably - scared of mixing it with traffic. More 'normal' people won't cycle without making their routes to the places they need to go less dangerous.

Posted 8 years ago #
crowriver
Member

Catch-22 ain't it.

That there London seems to have less of a cycling 'image problem' than in the past. Possibly a side effect of relatively low car ownership due to good public transport, congestion, parking issues, etc. 'Normal' cycling (i.e. for transport, not sport) and regular driving seem to be mutually exclusive.

Now it's just the Provincials that need to catch up with yon trendy Bohemian metropolitans...

Posted 8 years ago #
I were right about that saddle
Member

"Why is the car still king when it’s not working for us?"

It's clearly working for some people. Consider this large office in the central belt. Count the parking spaces. Note the nearby motorway network. Search in vain for the pedestrian entrance. People choose to work there specifically because they can live in a semi-rural house and drive straight to work.

Alas, the office is physically divided in two. Jobs paying low salaries have been outsourced to staff who generally arrive in buses. It's technical and managerial roles that pay enough for the Quashquai and the house in Crook of Devon.

Cars are working for some of us.

Posted 8 years ago #
Rosie
Member

"Cycling tribalism is rife in Scotland. There’s a pecking order, with the Lycra elite and the rest of us somewhere further down. No-one wants to talk about it, so we can keep up appearances as one happy community. A unified community, with a set of cohesive demands the government can provide. It’s nonsense. We have work to do ourselves. We’ll never become a welcoming space to new cyclists if we look down our nose at one another. And that’s just the insiders."

A new one to me. I've never noticed this pecking order when it comes to cycling infrastructure. How are the "Lycra elite's" demands different from the rest? Aren't they wanting decent infrastructure as well?

Posted 8 years ago #
Rosie
Member

"A welcoming space" isn't the attitude of other cyclists. It's a literal and physical space - ie a segregated route where a normal human being can cycle.

Posted 8 years ago #
dougal
Member

@Rosie As I understand it the trials riders want more steps and thin platforms and the track riders want ultra-smooth roads with high-banked corners.
Whitehouse Loan is currently meeting the needs of fat bike owners.

Posted 8 years ago #
HankChief
Member

I feel torn in this discussion. My route to school is mainly quite safe using QuietRoute9, but in places the infrastructure just doesn't work for us and so we have to take a more dangerous route including uncontrolled crossings of the A8 and other busy roads, so we dress the kids up in Hi-Viz & helmets.

No idea if we are helping or hindering the cause by taking this approach as we are promoting family cycling dressed like an aliens, but it's what we feel is necessary before we venture onto the road.

Riding solo, I'm much more relaxed about what I wear.

The thing is that our route could be so much safer by fixing the few bit of infra that I have been banging on at the council about for years and not feeling that I'm are getting anywhere, hence my #schoolrunstories blog last night.

Posted 8 years ago #
Murun Buchstansangur
Member

I had high hopes for that article when I read "We have a fundamental problem to address: people don’t like cyclists. Until we change that idea, nothing will change." That much seems true.

Unfortunately, all the rest is just nonsense made-up reasons excusing it and victim-blaming, rather than addressing the fact that there's a strong constituency in all strata of Scottish society that the proper response to observing faster/cheaper/healthier/more fun ways of doing even simple things like getting from A to B, isn't to think about doing it oneself, but instead hating on people. Tall poppies, indeed.

Posted 8 years ago #
Morningsider
Member

It isn't the clothes that put people off cycling. It isn't the opinions of some shadowy "elite" group of cyclists. There are no "cycling insiders". Owning a bike isn't a political act.

People don't cycle as they are scared of being flattened by a truck, there is nowhere to park safely, there are no changing facilities at work and owning and driving a car has been made easier (and cheaper) then other options.

Build the infrastructure, make it harder and more expensive to drive and you will produce the culture change. If every cyclist in Edinburgh ditched their cycle specific clothing would more people really cycle? I doubt it - although there would be a huge leap in wet cyclists and sales in sudocreme.

Posted 8 years ago #
I were right about that saddle
Member

Owning a bike isn't a political act.

True, but I think using one on a road probably is. Political in the sense of concerning the distribution and manifestation of power in our society.

Posted 8 years ago #
neddie
Member

I've seen quite few 'unusual' bikes around Edinburgh recently. Today, I saw a kind of mountain bike / hybrid with really high handlebars - like the ones you used to get on a Raleigh chopper - giving a really upright riding position.

There seems to be quite a lot of Dutch style bikes kicking about too.

It all makes it seem like slowly cycling culture is changing for the better and bikes are becoming more normalised, at least within the city.

Posted 8 years ago #
crowriver
Member

"Political in the sense of concerning the distribution and manifestation of power in our society."

Absolutely. It challenges the normative view of who "owns" the road, and who has the right to use it. As many drivers are only too willing to point out, usually by bellowing through their open windows at cyclists, or by other behaviours (horn beeping, close passes, cutting up, etc.).

Posted 8 years ago #
Morningsider
Member

IWRATS - I agree, but the original article states "Owning a bike has become political." which is clearly nonsense.

Also, the woman in a short skirt photo again! Clearly popular with the Herald and Times photo editors. I thought they had already taking a roasting for using this before.

Posted 8 years ago #
Rosie
Member

@dougal - I rode down Viewforth this morning, and that was designed for Danny Macaskill.

There is a tar & crushed stone eating monster roaming Bruntsfield who had taken hungry bites out of the speed bumps.

Posted 8 years ago #
Rosie
Member

Also re the civilian clothes issue.

When protests against the Vietnam War included a lot more people wearing ordinary clothes as against the tie-dyed, beardy, beady, Indian muslined, hairy hippies, the tide was turning.

Posted 8 years ago #
crowriver
Member

"the original article states "Owning a bike has become political." which is clearly nonsense."

Indeed. It only becomes political when you actually ride the bike in a public place. Bikes lying neglected in garages, sheds, common stairs or hallways are either symbolic of a failed politics of the public realm, or folk just can't be arsed. One of the two.

Posted 8 years ago #
PS
Member

It all makes it seem like slowly cycling culture is changing for the better and bikes are becoming more normalised, at least within the city.

I think this is the case as well. I went for a wee spin around Bellevue and onto the NEPN yesterday afternoon. I was in full mufty, rather than the lycra I wore at POP on account of having just been on a club run, and hatless.

In the less than a km it took me to reach the NEPN I must have seen five folk on bikes, all of whom were non-fluoro and helmetless.

This is in line with my observations of more non-specifically dressed people on bikes in and about the New Town and Broughton over the past year or so. Numbers are up.

Posted 8 years ago #
SRD
Moderator

http://deceasedcanine.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/normalising-cyclingcycling-normally.html

Posted 8 years ago #
stiltskin
Member

I think it is difficult to assign a single cause to a 'cultural' issue. I think people underestimate how much the Dutch regard cycling like being a pedestrian on wheels. That is why you see people riding a bike while carrying an umbrella in one hand, for example. It is going to take a lot to 'normalise' cycling over here. Even more for folks to stop regarding it as being a motor vehicle without the motor.
It is also a vicious circle. Look at the Roseburn issue. Try to encourage people to ride bikes by building the infrastrucure, but because people don't ride bikes (apart from the world's most cyclist) the infrastructure ends up being the target of hysterical misinformation and prejudice.
PS. Nice blog SRD

Posted 8 years ago #
gembo
Member

I know this guy either 24601 or maybe

7621.

[I appear not to know how to put his picture up, anyway he wears a Tam O'Shanter with a pom pom, and thinks it is stylish, instead of a helmet, there is a picture of him looking very happy at POP16 on the spotted thread]

He had been out cycling pre-POP16 in West Lothian about 40 miles of mostly hills and was in lycra and a helmet. A van passed him and his mate on the west calder to addiewell road on a blind summit with a big lorry coming the other way. The motorised vehicles passed each other so closely and at such speed the air between them made a WHOOM, WHOOM noise like you got in the 1970s with the big rainbow coloured tubes you spun round above your heads. Clearly, lycra, helmets and highh viz are not safety features.

Posted 8 years ago #
fimm
Member

Really good blog SRD.

(Does this mean that I should be coming to PoP next year with my TT bike and in my trisuit? ;-)
see: http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=746&page=255#post-217623 )

Posted 8 years ago #
Arellcat
Moderator

Does this mean that I should be coming to PoP next year with my TT bike and in my trisuit?

I was thinking much the same thing as SRD outlined in her blog. The number of Proper Roadies heading out of town, when every right-thinking individual was heading into town for POP, was surprisingly high. For them, it seemed weekend warrior training comes first, and all that tricky politicking for bike lanes is best left to the people that need it. I don't need bike lanes, for I am tough, and I fear nothing.

And then I did concern myself with the possibly deleterious effects of turning up in a spaceship, as though I was sending out the message that one needs all this special equipment to cycle effectively in a city. Jeans and trainers used to be my cycling attire. But lycra is both more comfortable and wears out an awful lot slower, yet sometimes it's just not quite the right look.

Put it this way: there are days when I wear lycra and cycling glasses and ride a posh bike with a speedometer and powerful lights, and a choice encounter with a drivist is enough to put me off for a day or two. It's not the equipment, it's the attitude of those blinded by red mist and a heavy right foot.

Posted 8 years ago #
gembo
Member

I entered the Tour of Lauder with my road cronies forgetting that it is always on at same time as PoP. (£30 that cost me but for a good cause). It is infact exactly the same age as PoP too.

From the photos of the two events, I look a lot happier in that cheery snap Chdot took of me compared with shattered roadies with arm warmers hingin doon at their wrists

Posted 8 years ago #
chdot
Admin

"Does this mean that I should be coming to PoP next year with my TT bike and in my trisuit?"

Personal choice!

I'm glad SRD 'welcomes roadies'

I hope this is true -

"

But in order to get that sort of infrastructure built we need to send the message that everyone - not just me and my kids - will benefit from investment. And that is why I love seeing the roadies there - because they send a signal that even those die-hard road-warriors want and need better road design.

"

I'm sure many (most/all?) are aware that, in spite of skills/experience/speed, they are "vulnerable road users".

So I hope that no 'roadies' are perpetuating the old idea of 'man up and use the road' - also (more an old CTC attitude) 'if they provide segregated infrastructure they'll make us use it'.

It's great that anyone goes to PoP (don't even need a bike!) - individuals, families, feeder rides, clubs.

My impression on Saturday was 'more yellow and more helmets'.

I might be wrong. It could be that in some previous years there was a conscious effort to 'dress down' in a cycle-chic fashion.

So it could be that the demographic of PoP attendees is shrinking to 'committed cyclists' (whatever that might mean) or that more regular bike riders are 'dressing to their feelings of the dangers of the road'.

Other suggestions here -

http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=15715&page=7#post-217664

So maybe for PoP6 greater effort to involve the non-involved (easier said than done!) or just enjoy the fact that THOUSANDS are still prepared to turn out for the political purpose of wanting 'better', leaving MANY MANY more just riding bikes as and when they choose.

Posted 8 years ago #
fimm
Member

I think there may also be the fear among some Proper Roadies that campaigning for infrastructure will end up with us being legally forced to cycle on 1m-wide shared use paths covered with dogs, toddlers, broken glass and dog dirt... or more realistically having issues now with drivists who shout "get in the cycle lane" with no understand of why the cyclist isn't.

I'm another person who wears more than one "hat" as a cyclist (a cycle-chic wooly one or a plastic-head-covering-of-dubious-usefulness). Is this more of a female thing?

Oh, and PoP is a place to see all kinds of bikes. The torpedo is definitely the thing to bring to it!

Posted 8 years ago #
PS
Member

Is this more of a female thing?

No.

Posted 8 years ago #
Charlethepar
Member

Anyone who can write "We need mums collecting the kids on bikes" in 2016 is clearly a total tool, in any case.

Posted 8 years ago #

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