Green Party politician Baroness Jenny Jones has urged that cyclists be included in figures used to calculate the average speed of London traffic.
The former London Assembly Member made the appeal in a letter to the Evening Standard in response to an article in the newspaper last week headlined Revealed: how average speed of London traffic has plummeted to just 7.8mph.
She wrote:
With the average speed of car travel falling, isn’t it time to include the average speed of cyclists in the figures?
The number of people taking to their bikes has grown tremendously in recent years and they now make up the majority of traffic on some rush-hour routes.
People on their bikes are certainly not grinding to a halt, far from it.
If we keep building safe, high-quality cycle tracks then the number of swift-moving Londoners is only going to grow and the amount of dangerous air pollution will fall.
Road safety campaigner Tom Kearney, who blogs at saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.co.uk, posted a copy of the letter to the Facebook page of the campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists.
> Protesters to target Treasury for cycling and walking budget
One commenter to that post, Ollie Craig, said: “Good letter but average cycling speed should be kept separate from driving speed just to show how much faster cycling is on distances up to 5 kms.”
Another, Faisal Husain, pointed out that some cyclists can be a lot quicker than people in motor vehicles over longer distances.
He wrote: “I average around 18-21mph on my 10 miles commute to work.
“I am sure it will be a dream for car drivers to reach Moorgate from Woolwich in 26 mins.”
> Separating bikes from traffic can halve pollution exposure, study finds
15 thoughts on “Include cyclists in London’s average traffic speed figures urges Baroness Jenny Jones”
THIS
THIS
Ollie Craig, said: “Good letter but average cycling speed should be kept separate from driving speed just to show how much faster cycling is on distances up to 5 kms
To highlight that its faster, healthier, cheaper to go by bike!
The way people on bikes are
The way people on bikes are not counted as ‘traffic’, in more than one statistic, and almost invariably in politicians’ comments, is yet another sign of how deeply irrational ‘society’ is about the topic.
We’ve got into a situation where the car itself is now the important thing, not human beings. So we care about how fast the big metal boxes can get around, rather than people. (It seems that for many, ‘traffic’ includes black cabs with no passengers, but not people on bikes actually going somewhere for a purpose)
I don’t know if the stats should be reported separately. Because I fear that would just encourage the irrational idea that ‘cyclists’ are some strange group of non-people, and if those on bikes are travelling faster than those who choose to drive, that will just be taken by the car-fixated as evidence that those weird non-people are being favoured.
The point is more to emphasise that its the speed of movement of people that matters, and that bike lanes increase rather than reduce that.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
You got it right in your intro – I believe we should report ‘people on bikes’ rather than ‘cyclists’, and ‘people in cars’ rather than ‘motorists’, to blur the line between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Here in Bristol they did a monitoring exercise of where traffic was flowing and not flowing around the city. One of the places that they monitored was on the M32, our urban motorway which pushes right down to the city centre. You know: a motorway, where cyclists aren’t allowed to cycle. And yet they still felt the need to report that there were no cyclists in that area during the period they monitored.
If you seemingly have to
If you seemingly have to disregard all traffic lights etc travelling into central London to boast how fast it is to cycle, you’re probably doing more harm than good.
Even stopping at red traffic lights, I’ve found a fit cyclist can average ~12mph within zones 1&2, which is comfortably faster than 7.8mph for motor vehicles in central London, and not far from the 17.4mph average within Greater London.
What is needed is an app (hey
What is needed is an app (hey, everything needs an app these days!) where you put in your start & finish destination and it gives you a real time report of how long it’ll take and how much it’ll cost in a simple list:
Car, bus, tube, bike, train.
I know TfL and Google both operate similar things but it’s usually for one mode of transport at a time and then you get complicated things like changing trains/buses etc. Willing to bet that for the vast majority of cases within any big city the bike will win hands down for fastest and cheapest.
And yes, I know that in some cases you’ll have tradesmen, etc who cannot use any other means of transport but we urgently need to shift people onto bikes and break this “car is king” mentality.
Including bicycle average speed in the figures is meaningless but publishing them as a separate entity alongside motor traffic average speeds would be brilliant. Car, 7.5mph; bike, 10mph. Might possibly get people to think beyond the “oh but I need a car…”
crazy-legs wrote:
Citymapper app does this mostly (for London at least)
kevvjj wrote:
As does TfL – athough both are only multi-modal for public transport modes.
And (in response to the orginal poster), the private car isn’t really king in much of inner – and certainly not central – London. Most motorised road users are freight, buses and taxis.
“I am sure it will be a dream
“I am sure it will be a dream for car drivers to reach Moorgate from Woolwich in 26 mins.”
Also a dream in this chap’s head. No way you can (safely) average 23 mph cycling in London during rush hour.
I average about 25 kph if I’m lucky on my commute (17km), which involves not jumping red lights or acting like a dick. Still faster than the traffic though.
sw600 wrote:
He’s a noob. Evidently he read his Strava average moving time as a total journey average.
Unfortunately I don’t think
Unfortunately I don’t think you will ever get your average person out of their car. They are in love with their pride and joy and look at cycling as a childish pursuit undertaken by wierdos and poor people. Maybe in London it might happen but nowhere else.
And please, take into account
And please, take into account the time it takes to park the car and then walk to the real destination … The trick is you can park your bike almost at the real destination.
You get used to air quality.
You get used to air quality. A recent trip to London from the coast where I live in East Anglia I found the air was terrible and it left an aftertaste in my mouth. Disgusting. Pollution really is bad in the big city centres and vehicle use needs to decline. It’s going to get much worse too until something drastic is done. Electric vehicle use en mass is way in the future but that won’t solve congestion just help with air quality. Best option now is for people to get on bikes.
I also don’t see the mentality of a commute by car taking an hour yet by bike it takes 25 mins. People still take the car.
Critchio wrote:
Well, it’s over an hour they don’t have to spend with their families so I can manage a little empathy.
7.8mph would be an
7.8mph would be an improvement on my commute.
Days when I have to take the car are the worst.