CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 15years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
To link in to a previous debate, it is surely no coincidence that growth in cycling in Scotland is occurring where we have the most active lobby group (spokes).
I would definitely like to think that this also reflects work on part of cycling officers/active travel dept at Council, and cycling Councillors, but I don't have data to reliably assert the difference to other councils.
I'm sure it's no coincidence but did Spokes create Edinburgh or did Edinburgh create Spokes? The distinctive level of cycling in Edinburgh only makes sense to me if I imagine the city as the sort of natural swamp where that level of cycling could evolve.
You know, compact, studenty, middle class with an usually high percentage of its affluent middle classes in the city centre and within cycling distance of their studies or employment or transport hubs. Add a bit of environmental awareness, some socially and attitudinally similar and sympathetic councillors and officials and evolutionary magic happens. People campaign and advocate in their own interests and out of that perfect mix grows a lobby group.
You know, compact, studenty, middle class with an usually high percentage of its affluent middle classes in the city centre and within cycling distance of their studies or employment or transport hubs. Add a bit of environmental awareness, some socially and attitudinally similar and sympathetic councillors and officials and evolutionary magic happens. People campaign and advocate in their own interests and out of that perfect mix grows a lobby group.
You mean, like Oxford and Cambridge?
Maybe. Don't know them at all. They seem a bit more like St Andrews - the class mix, the student population and small but without the transport and office-based employment that distinguish Edinburgh. Maybe Bristol would be better. But I don't know Bristol either.
I do remember that after I'd been working on the Edinburgh car club I worked for a company looking to set up somewhere that their analysis suggested had many of the same characteristics as Edinburgh - Oxford.
I've lived in Oxford and Edinburgh for almost equal amounts of time. and in both north and south of both as well.
Oxford is odd mix of University + University press (huge employer) + schools + hospitals and former industrial town. Since at least 20 years ago much of the service sector workers come in from surrounding towns (think penicuik/fife).
One thing that makes Oxford really different is almost total lack of out of town shopping malls(until large supermarkets opened up + Bicester village), so large proportion of people travelling in/out doing so for shopping. I don't have data, but I think Oxford's park&ride much more successful/more used than Edinburgh.
Does Oxford have a Spokes?
I was entirely unaware of it at the time but: http://www.cyclox.org/ you may also have seen http://www.transportparadise.co.uk/
On twitter he suggests that you can have a cycle-friendly city w/out segregated bike routes. I think he underestimates how unusual Oxford is - its centre is not much bigger than Durham, despite being a much bigger city.
In googling, I thought this was interesting:
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10521773.Oxford_s__Boris_bikes__are_riding_high/
Bike share - what is notable is that it is being based out of the park and rides, with assumption that people will (long distance) bus or car to the park and ride, and then ride to work.
To be fair, Edinburgh has a larger population than Oxford and Cambridge put together. I take the point about St Andrews, but that's really small. Dundee is about the same population as Oxford.
Edinburgh has it's own unique mix of employers, but a really big concentration of office workers: higher education; public administration (Scot gov and lots of quangos, etc.); financial services; and so on.
It would make a lot of sense for many of these workers to adopt active travel in their commute, if for no other reason than offsetting their sedentary occupations.
CTC membership at record high, British Cycling membership at record high, huge numbers of riders participating in sportives, many of them newbies, bike sales booming. Hardly what I would call flatlining.
@crowriver
Yeah, that's what I mean by the perfect swamp. Almost unique.
@Charterhall
Those are perfectly compatible with the same people doing more. Not necessarily with more participants. Sorry but happy though I would be to collect better data you'll have to tell me what that much better measure would be.
Insto it's not for me to tell you which statistics to use but you do need to be aware of their limitations and to take care to factor those in to your conclusions. Your 'flatlining' statement appears to refer to primarily commuting cycling. Have you applied the same filter to your accident statistics ? You need to compare apples with apples.
Okay, anecdote time, as I don't have any stats to prove or sisprove my point.
I've been cycling for 34 years. For most of that time, I was blissfully unaware of any of the organisations Charterhall mentions. I think I was made aware of Spokes in the late 1990s, and became a member about 10 years ago if memory serves. I was mostly ignorant about CTC, British Cycling, etc. until more recently. I joined CTC in 2009, Audax UK last year.
Why do I mention this? I'm a textbook case of someone who was cycling anyway (primarily transport, some leisure) who joined cycling organisations only after many years of just being a bloke on a bike. I'm not claiming to represent some kind of trend. I'm sure there are youngsters who join ERC before they enter their teens. I'm certain though I'm not the only 'regular cyclist' to have left it until much later before joining cycling organisations.
So it's perfectly possible to explain growth in membership of cycling organisations mostly through people a bit like me.
I think I'm as aware as I can be of the limitations of the measure that refers to usual mode of commuting and, for the years that data is available, I've compared trends in alternative commuting mode, leisure cycling and the modal share of cycling the SHS travel diary.
We can compare all that with trends in the GB as a whole, which also show that cycling is more or less static, in spite of what we hear about massive growth in London. For instance, the National Travel Survey reported in 2011 that "there has been a small drop in the number of bicycle trips per person per year from 18 trips in 1995/97 to 16 trips in 2011." Cycling still makes up only about 2% of journeys, like it has for years.
So, pretty much all the evidence we have about cycling at a Scotland or GB level says much the same thing. The only information that suggests any increase in cycling is the distance travelled measure published by the Scottish Government. This suggests that cycling on roads has increased by 30% in the last 10 years.
I'm pretty sceptical of that increase because it doesn't tally with any of the other indicators. Also, the Government isn't exactly brimming with confidence about the estimates. They say, "traffic estimates, indicate only the broad level of traffic, shouldn't be relied upon for year-to-year changes as they are based on a very small cross-section of the roads in Scotland: 12 hours in one day traffic counts taken at around 750 sites per year and data from automatic traffic counters at about two dozen sites in Scotland (then combined with data from automatic counters at similar sites in England and Wales)."
So if they are only broad indicators for all traffic and unreliable for year-on-year changes, taken from a small number of sites in Scotland, I'm guessing that the estimates for cycling are even less reliable (and really they have no business publishing them with the levels of spurious accuracy they give them).
So, I think I'm giving due weight to all the sources I have available to come to my 'flat-lining' conclusion about the general level of cycling in Scotland. I'm not really sure what you mean about applying filters to the accident statistics. I can't separate out the accidents associated with travel to work.
"not really sure what you mean about applying filters to the accident statistics. I can't separate out the accidents associated with travel to work"
That's exactly my point. Your argument that cyclist accidents have gone up but cycling use has remained static is flawed as you've only looked at one aspect cycling use, ie. commuting, whereas the accident statistics include those involving every type of cycling use.
If you were to look at every type of cycling use you'll see that the total across all uses has risen substantially.
If you were to look at every type of cycling use you'll see that the total across all uses has risen substantially.
I'm not convinced it has.
Are there any figures available which support the theory that there is a cycling 'boom' going on?
People may be buying more bikes, but that could just be the n+1 effect.
There may be more cyclists about, but it could just be existing cyclists riding more often/further.
Cycling organisations may be growing memberships, but that could just be greater awareness of these organisations amongst existing cyclists (the internet helping people with common interests to connect, for example).
Is this cycling 'boom' any more real than the previous ones? The 'boom' in the late 1970s/early 1980s; the 'boom' when mountain biking became popular; etc.
How do we measure who is cycling, how often, and how far? Quite a difficult thing to measure reliably, I would think.
I haven't just looked at commuting. I've used commuting as a leading indicator of what seems to be happening with cycling across the board. In the SHS I have four indicators of cycling: as usual commuting, as an alternative mode for commuting, leisure participation, and, from the travel diary, cycling's contribution to all journeys.
I've focused on the commuting indicator for two reasons - it's been in the survey unchanged since data collection began in 1999 and, pragmatically, it's readily available to me. The others have been there for less time but these indicators and the national measures from the National Travel Survey back up what we see in the commuting indicator.
But, let's look at what we have for 'every type of cycling use'. Turns out Transport Scotland have time series tables from the SHS travel diary on their site. The travel diary has been in the survey since 1999 and covering all journeys it shows that cycling was the main mode of transport for 1.1% of journeys in 1999 and 1.3% of journeys in 2011. Where is this substantial rise in cycling?
Insto, the massive growth in cycling in recent years is clearly in the sport/leisure area, an area that you are choosing to ignore. Just because you haven't got metrics for it, it doesn't mean it's not happening. You can't simply extrapolate from the figures you do have for commuting and assume that the same trends apply uniformly across the board.
And Crowriver, the same cyclists riding further and more often amounts to the same thing as new cyclists in the context of this thread, ie. they both provide more cyclists on the road.
OK. You believe that if you want to.
I do have metrics for for leisure cycling. One direct - adult participation in cycling, variable sprt3ad in the Scottish Household Survey - and I've already said several times that it has shown no significant change since it was introduced to the survey in 2007. One indirect - household access to bicycles (cos you'd think they'd be buying bikes and more households would have them) but that hasn't increased significantly either.
And I've also said that I haven't been just using the figures for commuting and extrapolating them. I've been using commuting as a leading indicator - a sort of bell weather of cycling and supporting it with five other measures and finding that they all show the same thing - no significant growth.
In contrast to that all you've done is repeatedly assert the same thing about a massive growth for which there seems to be no evidence. Find some evidence and then we can maybe take this conversation a bit further. I'd love for there to be evidence of a massive unrecognised growth in cycling. It would better and more pleasantly support demands for more funding than increasing deaths and injuries do. But I'm an evidence kinda guy and can't just accept your assertions based on the strength of your faith.
I've already told you where you can find the evidence, in membership numbers of cycling organisations, in participation numbers in cycling events, in sales numbers. But as you are not prepared to accept these there's clearly no point in continuing this conversation.
"membership numbers of cycling organisations, in participation numbers in cycling events, in sales numbers"
But they only signify an increased interest in 'cycling'.
More members could mean more people wanting third party insurance or wanting to 'belong' or better marketing by those organisations.
Presumably it's analogous to people going to football matches for years and deciding to join the Supporters' Club - more members, no extra people spectating.
More people taking part in events, is partly because there are more events. It would certainly show up as more mileage if they were all measured - but I'm not convinced that it would be a significant amount. In general such events are not ridden by people who have 'just' started cycling.
An exception may be Pedal for Scotland. Presumably Cycling Scotland has done surveys to see if riding PfS has resulted in more people cycling more(?)
More bikes being sold means more N+1 and maybe more miles ridden. It also means some people buying bikes with the intention of using them, but deciding not to.
Dave has just written an entertaining piece on the QBC, it contains -
"cyclist numbers are just exploding, with virtual traffic jams on the canal and North Edinburgh Path Network as large numbers of ordinary looking people take to two wheels in an environment free of the tender mercies of the Edinburgh motorist."
http://mccraw.co.uk/qbc-swansong
Which is anecdotal, about Edinburgh (a very particular route) and recent.
If this is an increase (rather than just a blip caused by a few sunny days) and replicated more widely than one attractive/'safe' corridor then the figures should show up in next year's published surveys.
It's undoubtedly the case that there is more cycling going on - especially in parts of Edinburgh and London. It's also the case that short of all bikes having GPS, and automatically uploading data somewhere, the 'facts' will never be known.
However flawed the current system is, it shows an increase but not a massive one - and certainly not enough to give CEC or SG any confidence that its various 'targets' will be met.
Maybe time for some policy changes...
I also showed early on that the impression of significant increase in Edinburgh (27% growth since 1999) was perfectly compatible with flat-lining nationally. This was the original extrapolation error - of translating personal experience in Edinburgh into a massive increase nationally.
Well, the Active Travel Action plan states that the overall modal share declined from 2% in 2005/6 to 1.6% in 2007/8. In other words, the undoubted rise in commuter cycling was being cancelled out by a decline in cycling for other reasons at that time. We would all love to think that a big increase in cycling is either happening right now or is just around the corner, but on the basis of these figures I don't feel that's a credible position to take.
We're forever hearing about how commuter cycling in Edinburgh has reached the dizzy heights of 8% (or whatever it is), and that cyclists make up fabulously high proportions of the traffic on certain main roads. What I would be very interested in seeing is recent figures for the modal share - that is, the percentage of all journeys by all people for all purposes that are cycled. If Edinburgh is serious about meeting its targets it should be able to supply these figures on a regular basis and they should be showing a consistent upward trend.
"If Edinburgh is serious about meeting its targets it should be able to supply these figures on a regular basis and they should be showing a consistent upward trend"
I think that is a reasonable expectation...
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