Harry got his Toddlebike at 18mths and after a few false starts he was away. The fact it is light enough to be picked up by a small toddler meant it came everywhere with us and the design meant that if he got fed up and wanted to walk, it was easy to hang on the buggy.
I may suggest to Jo a carrying strap for days when you are without the buggy.
Harrys love of his toddlebike, meant that for a while he turned into a miniature Madge from Benidorm choosing to scoot everwhere, even in the house rather than walk.
One morning he managed to get his entire breakfast ready and eat it without ever getting off his trusty steed!
As I mentioned in my review on the official site, the fact he used it so very much meant his transition to two wheels was very rapid indeed. He had his second birthday party at one of the Strider Cup sessions at the Velodrome in Manchester.
We even made an appearance on BBC Breakfast!
So 12 mths after and now having progressed onto two wheels is our relationship with Toddlebike consigned to the past?
Well I will admit, I thought it might be. It was what I had expected. But considering the price of Toddlebike, I didn't mind one bit.
But no! A year later and it is still without equal in the played with stakes. It is an almost constant companion. Perhaps it is because we are lucky to have enough indoor space for him to scoot, I don't know. I had thought about donating it to his Nursery, but they will have to wait quite some time I think!
I genuinely can't say enough nice things about Toddlebike. I wish the company and Jo every success for the future.
The whole sorry mess of boarded up shops and neglected ghost towns, its all the fault of some poorly paid person, who walks the streets everyday trying to make a living by enforcing rules that they have had no hand in shaping.
It even lead to one 'journalist' to call them names like Urban Pests.
Cristina went on to say "I blame traffic wardens for local shops' slump in sales, restaurants' empty tables, and over-congested roads", yet she has no evidence to back up this claim.
And lest we forget that tabloid journalists are not renown at present to being truthful, or basing anything on fact.
She continues with "I live in central London, thanks to heavy-handed traffic wardens I rarely have friends dropping by: they daren't risk a fine." Now I will venture into her realm of opinion not based on fact, but I doubt its the fines that's keeping them away....
But back to Mr Pickles. He believes "I believe we need to give people the good grace to pop into a local corner shop for 10 minutes, to buy a newspaper or a loaf of bread without risking a £70 fine."
Mr Pickles, may I suggest that you don't need to drive to your local shop? That is is this fact that damages local business. The fact that our streets have become such unpleasant places to be, that people feel compelled to travel everywhere in their own 2 ton VIP section of tin box? Surely you can see that this is unsustainable. We have to enforce parking outside local shops because of fat lazy twats in their cars who will only drive everywhere.
I am generalising, but hey, take a look in a mirror some time Mr P.
Why are people still blaming parking as a reason? I went to have a look at our local council to see if they were to blame. I like blaming them for all sorts.
I am beginning to sense some sort of collusion as this is not the first time their names have been linked.
For example http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/yourbusiness/9039443/Eric-Pickles-is-having-a-laugh-say-market-traders.html and http://www.guardian.co.uk/local-government-network/2012/jun/08/richard-vize-mary-portas-high-streets-patronising-drivel
Have they changed anything? Not as far as I can see. And I sense an uneasy backlash building among the Portas towns where regeneration is supposed to be happening. Tales of money being spent on Peppa Pig outfits do nothing to give the project credibility.
But it is quite simply that they are paying lip service to the whole process of regeneration. It is a complete smoke screen to appear caring without having to do any actual work.
Unless you have been half asleep, or not knee deep in a twitter feed of cyclists sat typing with their mouths half open, not quite believing what was being announced, then you will know all about Boris' announcement today that he is going to spend lots of money on cycling.
I kid you not. OK, its not a complete panacea, its nowhere near on the same levels as a road building scheme and its not even the coffee, tea and biscuits budget for HS2, but in terms of the UK, it is an unprecedented level of money being allocated to improving cycling for them dahn sarf in Larn-darhn.
Whilst the cycling community and everyone else who would like to venture onto two wheels were it not for the Alton Towers factor of sharing the Capitals roads with HGVs and cocaine fuelled motorists (yes I have heard the urban myth about £20 notes in London) cheered from the cheap seats, the scheme was not without its naysayers.
The response from Mr Lawson of the Alliance of British Drivers was that Mr Johnson's vision was "bonkers".
OK, I am not going to listen to you if you use the word bonkers as an argument That's the sort of thing my kids....oh no wait....they wouldn't either.
He said: "As a London taxpayer I strongly object to this waste of financial resources on a scheme that favours cyclists over other road users.
Right. Just stop right there cockwomble,
As a UK taxpayer for 20 years (I know I am only a wee whipper snapper), you can go fuck right off.
I am sick to bleeding death of the bleating, hand-wringing motoring lobby. "Please sir, don't be unkind to us...."
Piss off. This country, this Government and previous Governments have presided over the subsidisation of car use over and above every single other road user. Over pedestrians and over cyclists. Greedy greedy greedy. We all pay. All of us, for your 'right' to own and drive a car. Everyone. All the cyclists and all the pedestrians.
So at long last a small, really small in the scheme of things, thing is being done to redress the balance.
And you Mr Lawson, sound like the spoilt little shit at school who never gets invited anywhere because you wont play nice and share.
I would just like to add to my blog post, I am not entirely against Vehicular Cycling.
It is a good mechanism for coping with the conditions we are faced with.
But it is not a panacea.
It has not enabled the mass uptake of cycling.
It works for those people confident and dare I say, brave enough to share the road with motorised traffic.
But it shouldn't get in the way of demanding better.
Like car manufacturers shouldn't give up trying to make cars safer still, even though some clever so and so invented seat belts or air bags.
It has its place in helping the 2% who use our roads do so more safely. But this is not enough.
We shouldn't be asking people like me (or probably you) what we need to do to get people out on the road. We should be asking the 98% who aren't out there cycling.
If Vehicular Cycling was the solution, then in Trafford where I reside you wouldn't be able to move around secondary schools for the amount of bikes. All year 6 pupils before they leave primary, get Bikeability training. So why aren't they continuing to cycle?
Probably the same reasons friends of mine who are confident capable club cyclists gave.
I thought it sounded like the title of a band or an album
Warning: This blog post requires a small pinch of salt
So a few days ago, this Chris Thingy bloke posts a video. You know, these bloody ninja cyclists that go everywhere with a camera strapped to their heads. Militant bunch they are. They go looking for trouble.
Well based on a few things my new bestest mate Maggie Richardson had to say, I wanted to take the opportunity to tell Chris Thingy that he is a shit cyclist.
I don't care who he thinks he is the jumped up flaming leftie.
Now, where do I start? According to my new mate Maggie, anyone who talks about cycle lanes is clearly a crap cyclist. I don't know who this guy is but I have to agree with her. Look at his positioning on the road. not once does he take the lane. And then like so many dreadful cyclists hopping on and off the pavement. you'd never see anyone from the CTC or British Cycling doing that.
There would be no need for a cycle path next to this roundabout if this Chris Thingy cycled according to the laws of Vehicular Cycling! What he should have done was position himself in the middle of the road and taken the lane, then proceeded to carry on as if he were a car across the roundabout. SIMPLE!
And without the need for any of this cycle lane nonsense.
BUT....
The problem is, he is only small compared to those large cars and even smaller still to a HGV driver.
Most collisions where cyclists are involved take place at junctions, where drivers simply do not see them. We can talk until the cows come home (which will be a long time as I do not own any cows) about better training for drivers, but the basic biology is that our eyesight has not evolved enough to see everything we 'think' we are seeing. Our eyesight is made up of where we are looking now and peripheral vision. When we scan a junction we do not look at each individual point we look back and forth and the scanned image is mainly made up of fuzzy peripheral shots and put together by our brain.
No amount of training is going to force us to evolve quicker.
Would you let your child cycle around this roundabout?
This has to be the litmus test for anywhere we expect people to use a bike.
Oh and Chris Thingy happens to be one of the best cyclists this country has ever produced.
I read recently that the boss of Tesco has said a few mean
things about you, like calling you medieval. But my mum always taught me not to
call people names.
Actually that’s not
true.
She was a Scouser with a vicious tongue and wit to match, so if she’d
have thought it was funny, you’d have been called much worse than medival.
I wanted to give you my humble opinion.
I am not as important as the big boss of Tesco, but I hope
you will take the time to listen to the people you are calling on in your
valiant campaign to get people to #shoplocal.
You are probably quite intelligent and have realised that I
cycle a bit. The clue, after all is in
the blog title. But I also drive. I used to drive in the T.A. and have a love
of Landrovers and big trucks. Now I
drive two (albeit not at the same time) 4x4’s.
When I get there it’s a flipping pain in the arse. Finding somewhere to park, often having to
get change for the parking. And the
Quattro is ruddy enormous, I often drive round and round trying to find a big
enough space.
To be honest, once I am in the car, I may as well go
somewhere that is free to park and has a big multi-storey carpark.
Does this sound like somewhere familiar? You see, the moment I utter the words ‘FIREUP THE QUATTRO!’ you have lost me.
The
money it will cost me in petrol, insurance, parking, etc etc I may as well go a
bit further afield and get a few more things.
Shopping that I know will probably go off and be thrown away before I
eat it, but hey, I was there, it was on special offer……..
As for clothes shopping….I mean… you've seen the Trafford
Centre right? And if my kids wanted to
spend the day shopping, would I let them go on the bus into town? Hell no! I
would escort them directly to the door of <insert local indoor massive
shopping mall> and arrange to pick them up later. They are dry, safe, etc
etc.
But I don’t want to do that.
I want to go to my local Butcher and buy tonight’s tea. Not
£150 of over manufactured crap. I want a steak, or some sausages. I want to go
to a proper Greengrocer for the veg. I
would like to go on my bike, not have to worry about parking or change. I just
want a nice trip to the local shops.
I would like it to be a nice place to go. I don’t want to
have to cross roads and negotiate busy junctions. A town centre choked to death
by cars is not a pleasant place to be (there aren't any cars in the Trafford
Centre right? Well OK one, but that’s a Bond car and it’s not going to run my
kids over)
Don’t believe me huh? Mad Manc Bike Mummy you’re thinking?
A study by the New York City Department of Transportation
found that small businesses near protected bike lanes installed in 2007 saw
sales grow much more sharply than the borough average. Another study by
Portland State University found that people in Portland who drove to local
businesses spent more money per visit than bicyclists, but cyclists visited the
same businesses more often and spent more overall.
ok yep *nods*
A study by the Frontier Group think tank last year found that
annual miles travelled by car among 16- to 34-year-olds dropped 23% from 2001 to
2009.
It also found that people in that age group took 24% more bike trips in
the same period. A 2011 study by researchers at the University of Michigan
Transportation Research Institute found that the percentage of young drivers
with licenses is declining.
So young people aren't driving as much. So they must then chose to live somewhere that makes non car ownership easier.
"I
think a lot of cities have found that bike infrastructure helps you keep your
highly educated young people in the city after they graduate."
Keeping highly educated people. That sounds like a good plan. They've got dosh right?
But you
still want to focus on more parking and cheaper parking do you??? OK we can continue……
Jobs.
Who doesn't want to create more jobs?
Overall we find that bicycling infrastructure creates the
most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling
projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the
project is located.
Pedestrian-only projects create an average of about 10 jobs
per $1 million and multi-use trails create nearly as many, at 9.6 jobs per $1
million.
Infrastructure that combines road construction with pedestrian and
bicycle facilities creates slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending,
and road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1
million.
On average, the 58 projects we studied create about 9 jobs per $1
million within their own states. University of Massachusetts
Create more jobs, shop
local! They go hand in hand!
Evidence shows that for
every £10 spent in an independent shop £25 is generated for the local economy
compared to £14 spent in multinationals.
Getting to local shops
easily is especially important for elderly, vulnerable and those without
transport. Keeping your shops open by buying locally helps the whole community.
This is my favourite one so far…..
Research in
Leicester has found that as motorised traffic flow increases so does the
proportion of vacant shops along that particular street.
“Leicester Environment City
Trust, 1993 Streets, traffic and trade: A survey of vacant shops sites in
Leicester City Centre. Leicester: Leicester Environment City Trust.”
Yet here is Mary Portas
completely ignoring the evidence and saying the opposite.
“changing planning rules to allow councils to
provide more parking spaces in town centres so they can compete with
out-of-town supermarkets”
She goes on to say about her project “ensuring its sustainability". How do you do that if you are increasing the use of cars?
Still
unsure?
How about a good old fashioned case study? Everyone likes a case study.
Valencia Street, Mission District, San Francisco
Traffic lanes in this street
were slimmed to slow down cars and accommodate other users. Merchants reported
that street changes enhanced the area. Nearly 40 per cent of merchants reported
increased sales, and 60 per cent reported more area residents shopping locally
due to reduced travel time and convenience.
Overall, two-thirds of respondents
described how the increased levels of pedestrian and cycling activity and other
street changes improved business and sales. A network of complete streets
appears to be more safe and appealing to residents and visitors, which is also
good for retail and commercial development.
What's even better, they close some of the roads for a couple of Sundays in the Year.
If you wouldn't want this happening outside your shop, restaurant or bar, on a Sunday, maybe retail isn't for you!
What a wonderful sense of community, but Hightstreet you probably don't care about that, just look at the HUGE FOOTFALL!
I shall continue.....
A German study showed that:
·Motorists
are not better customers than cyclists, pedestrians, or public transport users.
·Because
they buy smaller quantities, cyclists shop more frequently (11 times a month on
average, as opposed to seven times a month for motorists).
·Approximately
75 per cent of motorists purchase two or less bags of goods, and so could carry
their goods by foot or bicycle.
·Most
shopping trips involve distances that could be walked or cycled
MORE MORE!!!
Give us more case studies!
Changing car parking to bicycle
parking in Lygon Street, Melbourne, Australia
Lygon Street,
Carlton, is a popular cycling route near Melbourne University. It is a mixed
use mainstreet – groceries, cinema, comparison goods, cafes, etc.
It has few
bicycle parking spaces. Surveys have
shown that the average cyclist’s expenditure is 73 per cent of a car user’s,
but space required to park a bike is only 12 per cent of the space required to
park a car. Cyclists spend more on comparison goods, such as clothing and
eating out, and less on groceries/cinema per visit.
In Lygon
Street:
• Each m² of space allocated to cars
generates $6 per hour.
• Each m² of space allocated to
bicycles generates $31 per hour.
Put another
way, the researcher estimated that:
• 1 car space produced $27/hr retail
spend, but
• 6 bike spaces replacing the car
space would produce $97/hr in retail spend.
The report
concludes that incrementally replacing car parking with bike parking would
therefore make economic sense
So, to cut to
the chase my lovely dear highstreet, we all want you to survive and do
well.
You make where we live individual
and a nice place to be. I don’t want to
live in A.N Other copycat town. I want you to be special. We should be joining forces. The people asking for better cycling provision and the #shoplocal brigade. WE ARE ON THE SAME SIDE!
But it’s a two way street. You must listen and evolve.
You must stop competing for more motorised
traffic.
It seems to be a cycling hot potato at the moment, with
the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group starting their ‘Get Britain Cycling’
inquiry the discussion of cycling provision in this country.
There seems to be some really polarised views amongst two
distinct ‘camps’ (I am purposely using camp as it makes me think of a John
Inman style bitch fight) which are at loggerheads with what they would like to
see happen.
There have been many bloggers out there with far more
knowledge than I possess at present who have done a very good job of documenting
pros and cons of each.
The things that struck me most from his report was that
2.2% of people use a bike.
Wow, really,
that low? That fact made me feel quite sad. Ask around. Go on, ask the person
sat next to you if they can ride a bike, chances are they will say ‘Yes, but I've not cycled since I was a child’.
So most of us can ride, but only a very small number of
us are choosing to.
2% of children ride to school compared to 40% in Denmark
and 20% in Sweden.
I actually thought
this was about right. At my sons school only 1 family cycle. I am sad to say it isn't us. We used to, but there is no safe place for us to leave his bike. There
is also a large main arterial road which we can use the pavement albeit illegal
(and I defy any police officer to suggest my son should ride on the road) but
it is not ideal. However I am hopeful
this will change, I am fighting for a cycle path and a bike pod at the school.
Out of that tiny 2.2% of people who use their bike a massive
¾ are men. Now Peter Walker got a bit of
stick in the comments section for suggesting “a
statistic that speaks of a macho, gung-ho cycling culture where riders are
expected to mix it with speeding cars, buses and trucks.”
I couldn't agree
more, but I took to twitter to ask my friends why they did not cycle. Oddly (or not) I got the same response from
both my cycling friends and my non cycling friends. All the people who replied were female.
“sore
bottom and the traffic, I have a bike but only ride@centerparcs..tried around Sale, crazy
motorists made me sad n fearful..” “I dont cycle to work cos I like being this shape
with no broken mangled bits. And alive.” “I do
drive but not into work. Too much traffic to consider cycling, plus only one
shower at work, crap bike parking...” “I have hardly cycled since living in London. As withxxxroads and traffic here
just too much to cope with.” “Too many taxis, buses, other random
cyclists. Assault on the brain trying to navigate.”
What I was most surprised by
and then really quite cross about was some of these people had done IRONMAN!
These aren't inexperienced women on an old bike dusted down after a lifetime
in a shed. These are competent cyclists who are fit and can handle a bike. Yet they are citing traffic as a reason for
not cycling!
THIS IS NOT F*****G
ACCEPTABLE!
Can you see I am angry?
Many many people are
asking for segregated bike lanes. The
CTC and many others have suggested that if we ask for segregation we will lose
our right to the road?
WHAT?
Who will lose out? That
tiny 2.2% of people (of which I am one)? Please?
WE HAVE ALREADY LOST OUR
RIGHT TO MANY MANY ROADS
Look at all the hundreds
of cyclists using this main road.
Oh wait hang on. There isn’t any. In fact I
walk along this road every day. It is permanently gridlocked. I see one maybe
two cyclists. But look how wide it is and how much space the pavement takes up.
This is how it used to
look
Can people not see? We
already do not have the freedom of the whole road network.
There is a complete de facto ban if 97.8% of
people are too scared to cycle!
What about the rights of
those people?
What about my son and his friends RIGHT
to be able to get to school? What about YOUR kids? Your friends and neighbours who don't cycle? What about the family who can't afford a car? Should they just HTFU and get out there?
These people are the
majority!
I am a club cyclist. I
love a good 50-60 mile jaunt into deepest darkest Cheshire on a Sunday. Is anyone seriously suggesting that by
providing decent cycling provision in towns and cities I will somehow lose my
right to my Sunday Club cycle run? Wake up!
And to suggest you wouldn't use a cyclepath if you are a ‘proper’ cyclist is nothing short of complete
arrogance!!!
Holy shit…..its people
using cyclepaths in club kit and PROPER ROAD BIKES!
I am trying to resist talking about theThe Hierarchy of Provision, I refer you back to the earlier link to David Arditti’s Vole O'Speed Blog. I work in Engineering. I
understand Health and Safety. You cannot simply expect people to do as they are
told and to behave. The same is true for motorists. There has to be good design
to eliminate human error. The
construction sites I often work on, one of the biggest causes of fatalities is
vehicle movement. What has been done to
prevent this? Better driver training. Speed
limits yes sure, but these were already being done before. Now we have strictly
enforced physical separation from pedestrian traffic and when there is vehicle
movement a banksman is provided to ensure it is done safely. We don’t just assume Trev the lorry driver
who has been driving safely his entire life will always get it right. We design
out the chances that today Trev might get it wrong and squash someone.
I hope that the APPCG take
note that we shouldn't be just listening to cyclists. The people we should also
be listening to are the non cyclists. We shouldn't be fighting for the 2.2%. We
should be fighting for everyone's right to be able to cycle without fear.
