The Big Apple Gets a Cycling Mayor, #188

‘It’s pronounced cyclist’

This week we’re in New York, Nottingham and Ireland. We’ve the mayor-elect of a global city espousing hire bikes, another exciting new bridge for walking and cycling, hoisted into place this week, and some big little changes for cycling safety across the UK.

BIG STORIES FOR CYCLING ADVOCACY

NEW YORK’S CITIBIKE MAYOR. New York’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, was voted in on a promise to make one of the world’s most expensive cities affordable. His charisma and ease with social media helped. Among his pledges are free buses; that and his use of NYC’s CitiBike scheme are reminders that access to cheap transport - or not - is part of the affordability puzzle. In this short clip, he’s riding around New York and providing the perfect cycling-based one-line retort to a street heckler.

LEFT ON RED LEGALISED IN IRELAND. Last month, Ireland added a couple of handy cycling hacks to its Road Traffic Regulations; small changes to help make journeys by bike easier. As the European Cyclists’ Federation’s Aleksander Buczyński summarises, these changes include “new signs and markings for contraflow cycling, cycle streets, school streets and, last but not least, traffic lights exemption for cyclists”. The latter means cyclists can treat a red light as an obligation to yield (rather than stop) - the ninth European country to enact this legislation.

NOTTINGHAM GETS A NEW BRIDGE TOO. Not to be outdone by Sunderland, a Nottingham resident contacted us after last week’s newsletter to say they too have a new walking and cycling bridge. The main span of the 85m, 175 tonne Waterside Bridge was lifted into place on the River Trent this week, and will be open for business in the Spring. It will connect a regenerating Trent Basin area, with its new homes and schools, and the Lady Bay/West Bridgford area with their sports facilities, including Trent Bridge cricket ground. Our correspondent said: “It will be a great addition to all of the new cycling paths Nottingham City Council has built in recent years”.

SUV AD OFFERS MORE FALSE PROMISES. An advert for car brand BYD’s new SUV pokes fun at people walking and cycling, comparing them to Horse & Carts. It joins a long list of car ads that sell a false promise of convenience and aspiration while punching down at sustainable transport modes. So I made it a bit more realistic...I spliced it with footage of a long queue of car-run traffic shimmying along in snake formation. In reality, some of the drivers would be mounting kerbs too.

CRITICAL SAFETY ISSUES, AND HOW NOT TO DO THEM. It may sound dry but this is the kind of thing that can make or break a cycling route in terms of risks to its users. That’s why Active Travel England has released guidance identifying what increases collision risk, and how to tackle it. Its 16 issues include conflict at junctions with higher traffic volumes, narrow lanes shared with motor traffic, higher traffic speed and volume, tram interactions and poor cycleway surfaces. The new guidance then explains how to avoid those risks. There’s not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and then there’s these no-gos.

OTHER HEADLINES

A FAIRLY BALANCED PIECE ON LTNS. This local piece, by the Greenwich Wire, outlines some of the trade-offs and politics associated with restricting motor traffic on some streets and not others. It’s among the more balanced pieces I’ve read on the topic. It reports the Greenwich and Blackheath Low Traffic Neighbourhood will be made permanent after challenges to the scheme were rejected, and while the piece acknowledges some of the conflicts and concerns about displaced traffic, it never slips into hyperbole. Which is good to read.

INTERESTING GRAPH(IC) OF THE WEEK:

Some of the critical safety issues on a typical street. Source.

ACTIVE TRAVEL WORD OF THE WEEK:

Left on red: This is a safety initiative used in France, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and The Netherlands for some years (only it’s right on red there). That means, if nothing is coming, and no-one is crossing the side road, cyclists can proceed. In the US and Canada right on red are common, introduced to save fuel in the 1970s oil crisis.

Until next time,

Adam

Adam Tranter

CEO, Fusion & Founder, #BikeIsBest

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