14. Shared use

I feel confused by the urge to put cyclists onto old pavements. I know that – technically speaking – they stop being pavements, once they’ve been widened and formally converted to shared use, with lines clearly demarcating walking and cycling space. But still, this change in the appropriate space for cycling does my head in. This might simply show how inflexible I am; I was taught to ride on roads, have spent thirty-odd years doing so, and now my head’s struggling to get around the fact that things change.

I also understand the rationale. Most people are scared to ride on busy roads. Many parents won’t let their kids ride on busy roads. People want to feel protected from the menace of cars. So put cycling elsewhere. Easy.

The demo towns have also been issued a mandate to experiment, to demonstrate. I respect Cycle Exeter, particularly Zsolt, for trying to do things differently, for taking risks. But as we move around the city, sometimes on ‘the pavement’, sometimes on the road, sometimes manoeuvring around people walking, sometimes mixing with cars, hopping up and down kerbs, I start to feel confused – just where, these days, is cycling supposed to be?

Exeter’s answer, it feels to me, is ‘all over the place’. Part of me welcomes this. As the mode of mobility most clearly compatible with the creation of a sustainable society, people should be able to ride anywhere and everywhere. Cycling should be privileged above every other mode of transport. So long as people ride sensibly, with courtesy, where’s the problem?

As I’d sat drinking my coffee on Exeter’s pedestrian-friendly Quay, I’d watched the dance of sustainability produced by cyclists moving among time-rich strollers. Though they have different gaits, pace and rhythm, these modes look good together. The narrow bridges looked like they might generate conflict between cyclists and walkers, but I saw none.

So maybe my unease about putting cycling on ‘the pavement’ stems from a suspicion that it’s a strategy which allows motoring-as-usual. No doubt it has to do with the route Zsolt takes me, but as we pedal around Exeter, cars often seem to be thundering past. Cyclists, I start to think, are being moved out of their way. Of course, this can be easily justified as being for cyclists’ own good. Why, after all, would anyone want to share the road with trucks and cars travelling at 40, 50 or 60 mph? Why indeed. So slow the cars to a much more civilised 20 mph, and reclaim the streets, and the city, for everyone.

Zsolt’s team have some awareness of the politics of cycling space. The city has a ‘Road Code’, which explains that the new shared-use routes have been designed to help less confident cyclists, particularly school children, move around safely. The Code also advises motorists that “some cyclists feel safer on cycle routes but some will stick to the roads – we are all traffic and have a right to be there”.

According to Zsolt, “the road culture here is pretty tolerant. We get the occasional ranting email, saying cyclists should be on the cycle paths if they’re there. We’ve done radio campaigns, we’re doing adverts on the backs of buses, to say that cyclists have a right to be on the roads, they don’t have to use the paths. It’s quite hard to get to all the motorists, but ..”. They’re trying. Devon County Council, meanwhile, has launched a Give Cyclists Space campaign.

All well and good. But how many motorists read and register the intended messages of road codes and campaigns? And what, I wonder, will they think when they notice how kids are riding to school off the road, and then they encounter a local cycle commuter, with perhaps ten miles to cover, on the road? ‘She’s doing her bit, and has every right to be there’, or ‘road hog’? In the Netherlands, cyclists are often obliged to use cycle paths, but those paths are invariably good and continuous, giving the cyclist priority over motorised traffic. If we’re serious about transferring many, many more car journeys to bike, that’s the sort of provision we need here.

Zsolt knows that they’re prioritising some things over others.

“We’ll do the shared-use paths to schools, so that less confident people can go first. Then we’ll work on things like advanced stop lines, sunken drains, pot holes, things like that”.

There is also, he says, good stuff happening on the roads.

“We’ve got a big policy for 20 mph zones in residential areas. There’s quite a lot of them all around the city already. Generally, when I go around other towns, it seems like we’ve got a 30 mph limit where they’ve got a 40 mph limit”.

“One of the points we want to get to is where motorists expect to see cyclists around the corner. Like Oxford, Cambridge, York, you expect to see cyclists. Whereas here, we’re not quite there yet. And that’s when you’ll see the accident rate go down, as the numbers go up”.

I hope so much that Exeter gets there. Cycling needs this city, as the best of the first crop of demonstration towns, to get people on bikes. Cycling is depending on Exeter to light the way ahead. And in Zsolt, we have a passionate, tireless, committed soldier for cycling. I just worry about his officers, the lack of leadership from on high. Most of all, I worry that promoting cycling without deterring driving leads to an insipid message, confusion on the ground, an almighty fudge.

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