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<Sidelines home » Archives » June 2006

DSS man
White van man and his buddy taxi boy show us how patriotic they are by mounting the George Cross on their cars and supporting the football boys. Let's stop and think about that for a moment. These are the characters who accelerate hard, speed when they can get away with it and whinge about traffic-calming measures. They make parents anxious to let their children walk to school or play in the street. Children become lethargic and obese, just when we need to be training fit, athletic children for the London Olympics.
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flat out
Apart from London, cities with high cycle use are at the moment are Cambridge (28 per cent of all journeys), York (19 per cent), Gosport (15 per cent) and Crewe 12 per cent: so it's not just student towns. York, Cambridge and Crewe are very flat cities (Gosport anyone?).

It's unpleasant cycling up a heavily car-congested hill. Cars are at their noisiest and dirtiest, the relative speed between the 2 vehicles is demoralising and pinch points can be an absolute nightmare (the cyclist is not moving fast enough to move out into the traffic before the pinch point). If hills are holding back potential cyclists in other cities (and let's face it it's one reason why Germans, Danes and Dutch ride bikes so much) it's time for another inventor to have a crack at a hybrid powered bike.
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tram economics misses the point
Some of the tram schemes built since 1992 have failed to reach their passenger targets. Sheffield achieved 12 million passengers in 2003 against 22 million expected. Birmingham had 5 million passengers against 8 million projected. However the operating losses sustained (again 2003 figures) are insignificant: £200,000 for Sheffield, £11 million for Birmingham. And it's early days: if the trams are so close to break-even at this point, that augurs well for 10 years time when oil will surely be far more expensive in real terms. It's the same as the popular press trick of deriding a half-empty Park and Ride park 2 weeks after it opens.
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