Just to be clear on this from the start, this is by no means a football chant! In fact, coming from me, this is a heartfelt cry to the residents of our fine City to get on their bikes and ride!
Earlier this week I tweeted that I was pleased to see so many cyclists in the city centre during my commute home. That then got me thinking.
You see here we are on the cusp of hosting the start of the finest, biggest most prestigious cycle race in the World. On Yorkshire soil for the very first time in its long history and having been won by a Brit for the previous two years.
In many ways, we as a county have opened our arms to this event. The Yorkshire Festival is well under way with a whole host of amazing cultural events. You can’t travel through a community on either of the stage 1 or 2 routes without seeing yellow bikes, art work and some sort of celebration of the tour. This is all fantastic stuff and each week I find myself with so many opportunities to get involved with excellent cycling related events. In all honesty too many to have time to do them all!
So is all this encouraging people to cycle in Leeds? Sure enough there are plenty of cycling clubs and events doing the stage routes of the Tour de France and cycle club memberships have seen a lot of growth and an influx of new people in the last two years. Through the Sky sponsored British Cycling Breeze network there has been a real focus on getting women cycling and this is realising results now too.
So when I tweeted on Wednesday that I had seen a lot of people on bikes in Leeds, how many did I actually see? Well I decided to follow this up on Thursday with a head count when I cycled home. I have previously blogged about my usual commute. Homeward, it goes from the North West of Leeds, through the City Centre and out to the extreme South East of Leeds, 19.6 miles and on average it takes me 1hr 13mins.
Bearing in mind the population of Leeds is around three quarters of a million and two million people live within thirty minutes of the city centre, there are certainly plenty of people too cycle. Also given that the weather over the last fortnight has been great for cycling, dry, pleasantly warm and not much wind you would expect there to have been a lot. So what did I count up to on Thursday? The answer is sixty-two! A very disappointing total I think. I felt sure I had seen more on the Wednesday, perhaps this low figure was a fluke. There was some England World Cup football loss being played at 8pm, perhaps this meant people weren’t cycling between about 4:30pm and 5:45pm? So I repeated the count on Friday. This was at the earlier time of around 3:45pm to 5:00pm and the grand total on this day, wait for it! … Was 56.
This speaks volumes to me on the state of cycling infrastructure in our City. Surely if it was better, some of the people I whizz past every day on my bike would have the sense to get out of the traffic jam and cycle commute. I think the general feeling is that you have to be very brave, stupid or at least a very experienced cyclist to brave the roads of Leeds.
There is of course £28 million being spent on cycling infrastructure for the #CityConnect project over the next two years and this should greatly improve cycling on a single route through the city from Bradford. This then seems to be a case of ‘ If you build it they will come’ . I really, really, really hope they do and that numbers increase.
Yet there is nothing quite like mass movements of people to show the money holders that there is a demand for something. Events like #space4cycling , critical mass and Sky Ride all help to show that people want to ride bikes in the city! But people simply getting on their bikes and riding to work each day can be just as effective if not more so. There is a safety benefit to there being more cyclists on the roads. It raises awareness among drivers if they expect there to be cyclists and driving skills are adjusted to accommodate. It would be wrong to suggest that road casualties are needed before the authorities will act to improve cycling infrastructure but time and again this has happened in London and other cities.
So my plea to the population of Leeds once again is come on, be brave, get out there and ride so we can push forward the rate of change!
Cycling Commuter Blog 