Letter: Only One in Ten of Us Are Potential Cyclists

Published on: 27 Oct, 2024
Updated on: 27 Oct, 2024

From David Roberts

In response to: To Believe Drivers Will Switch to Cycling is Absurd

Cycling should be encouraged for both health and environmental reasons. But planners need to accept that most people will never shift from four to two wheels.

By “most people”, I include the very young and very old. Many disabled people. The overweight, unfit, nervous, lazy or infirm. People who support public transport. People carrying shopping or luggage or accompanied by pets. Those with too far to go. People who like to travel in comfort or company. People who love their car, treat it as a safe, personal space and appreciate the freedom it brings.

Then there are commuters and others too short of time to cycle and need to arrive looking neat and tidy. Cyclists who cycle only for fun rather than for getting from A to B in fumes and heavy traffic. Villagers living on dark, flooded, potholed roads.

And there are people who see EVs [electric vehicles] as a green reason to carry on driving. People in flats and small homes with nowhere to keep a bike for themselves, let alone each family member. People with nowhere safe to park a bike at work or other destinations. The many people who can’t even afford a bike. And people like me who never learnt to ride one.

Realistically, that probably leaves only about 10 per cent of Guildford’s population who are ever going to cycle routinely. The vision of a general “modal shift” to cycling is as illusory as the 1950s prediction that, by now, we’d all be travelling around in personal rockets.

Responses to Letter: Only One in Ten of Us Are Potential Cyclists

Jack Bayliss Reply

October 28, 2024 at 5:45 pm

Spot on – commenting as an octogenarian with a dog who uses his e-bike to go the half mile or so up and down a steep hill into Guildford town centre for light shopping etc but not when it is raining hard, which deters even your 10 per cent.
Sara Tokunaga Reply

October 28, 2024 at 7:16 pm

Excellent letter. It’s good to see there are still some realists in this world.
Sylvia Flanagan Reply

October 29, 2024 at 12:26 pm

Well said. The roads are more dangerous as time goes on. How many drivers still don’t know the latest rules for cars near cyclists and pedestrians, forget or don’t care?
Moira Brown Reply

October 29, 2024 at 8:53 pm

No one mentions the unhealthy side of cycling – breathing in fumes from the inevitably slow moving vehicles. Should this really be encouraged? Most cyclists are doing it for exercise and use their cars at other times. Build velodromes and outdoor gyms to promote health. Given the short length of the “safe” parts of the proposed route of the London Road scheme schoolchildren have the option of walking.
- Mike Smith Reply
  
  October 31, 2024 at 6:15 pm
  
  Does your car carry a separate air supply or do you also breathe in the same fumes from these slow moving motor vehicles? It’s a fact that cyclists live longer, healthier lives than motorists because of the benefits of exercise.
Richard Taylor (Dr) Reply

October 30, 2024 at 3:31 pm

David Roberts says “that probably leaves only about 10 per cent of Guildford’s population who are ever going to cycle routinely”. On what does he base that claim? Is it just his guess as someone who never learned to ride a bike?

I’d prefer infrastructure planning to be based on real evidence rather than the “intuition” of people who are clearly biased.
- David Roberts Reply
  
  October 30, 2024 at 7:07 pm
  
  My 10 per cent is a guess – not a hard calculation. But if, as a man of science, Dr Taylor would care to subtract his best percentage estimates of the groups I have listed from Guildford’s total population, he will be forced to agree with me.
  
  Commuters alone make up over half the travelling public in the borough and the average UK car commuting distance is 19.5 miles. Rural dwellers also account for about half of Guildford’s population. 24 per cent of British people are disabled and 26 per cent are obese. 22 per cent live in flats. 13 per cent of people nationally are under 5 or over 75 years’ old.
  
  Most people in groups like these will never be regular cyclists. The “modal shift” fanatics need to get real.
  - Robert Mitchell Reply
    
    October 31, 2024 at 5:56 pm
    
    I don’t know who the “us” are that David Roberts is referring to here. It seems to be a very small subset of the population.
    
    As a reminder, no one under the age of 17 is allowed to drive a car – are they part of “us”? He excludes the very young and the very old, and those who support public transport, presumably they are not driving in the first place anyway? People who can’t afford a bike, but somehow can afford a car?
    
    What a ridiculous letter and argument, suggesting that our default approach to transport should be every individual being carried around by their own 1.5 tonne steel box.
    
    Cars are an option, but just one option, and one that we didn’t have for most of human history.
  - Richard Taylor (Dr) Reply
    
    November 1, 2024 at 3:01 pm
    
    Adding up the percentages of the groups David Roberts lists will not give a meaningful number since many people will be included in more than one group, so they will be double or triple counted.
    
    Also, it is incorrect to state as fact that the entirety of those groups will never cycle. Look at the excellent work of Marley Bronsky promoting cycling for overweight people.
    
    But primarily David Roberts misses my point. There is no need to guess about the number of people who could be encouraged to cycle. The work has already been done to find the data – have a look at the National Travel Attitudes Survey published in January this year.
    
    Some relevant figures: 43 per cent of people aged five and over own, or have access to, a bicycle. 18 per cent of respondents travel by cycling at least once per month already. 61 per cent of respondents said that unsafe roads put them off cycling and 29 per cent said they would cycle, or cycle more, if roads were safer.
  - Terry Newman Reply
    
    November 1, 2024 at 3:05 pm
    
    How astute David Roberts has been. There is indeed a publication issued by the Department for Transport called the Active Mode Appraisal Toolkit User Guide. Far from being a “page turner”, it is the kind of document a tutor once described as “the kind of book that once you put it down, it is hard to pick up again!”
    
    However, it provides “advice for assessing the overall benefits and costs of proposed walking and cycling interventions, ranging from capital investments to behaviour change programmes.” Buried deep in the sub-paragraphs of 3.26 is the statement: “… based on research undertaken on behalf of DfT… the proportion of new cyclists or walkers that are expected to switch from travelling by car, because of the intervention, is 11 per cent. This means that if a new cycle intervention results in 100 new cycle trips there would be expected to reduce the number of car trips by 11.”
    
    Bravo for your intuition, Mr Roberts!
    
    Terry Newman is chairman of the London Road Action Group
- Malcolm Stanier Reply
  
  October 31, 2024 at 12:32 am
  
  I think David Roberts is about right in his estimation that only about 10 per cent (maybe 15 per cent) of Guildford’s population are going to routinely cycle for all the realistic reasons he has listed.
  
  It is rather insulting to say that David Roberts is “someone who never learned to ride a bike?” as I would think he does ride given his saying “Cycling should be encouraged for both health and environmental reasons”. [David Roberts said he has never learnt to ride in his letter. Ed]
  
  Going on from that you label David Roberts as “clearly biased”. He has not vigorously opposed the construction of cycle lanes, only suggesting that in the real world, suggesting that the Government aim of getting 50 per cent of people cycling is highly unlikely.
- Alan Judge Reply
  
  October 31, 2024 at 10:23 am
  
  Spot on. It’s probably closer to five per cent.
Mark Percival Reply

October 31, 2024 at 10:08 pm

Cambridge manages around 45 per cent of its population cycling once a week.

Mr Roberts may be against cycling as an option himself, but to then double down on made up stats that a moment’s Google searching shows to be wrong does suggest he also wants to remove the option of non motorised travel from all others.

Take my late father, who following a stroke lost the ability to drive but then chose to use a bicycle which gave him freedom and independence.

As a disabled person he would be unable to cycle according to Mr Roberts.

I do hope he never loses his own driving licence.

Also, the commuting distances mentioned should be checked against the census data for I believe he is way out there too. UK wide, the majority of people who travel to work have a journey less than 10km.

In Burpham 30 per cent of commuters travel less than 10km to get to work.