By James Styring
I HAD to smirk at Keith Mitchell’s rant last week (last Wednesday’s Oxford Mail). I can only imagine he mistook the Mail for a mirror when he accused yours truly of “arrogance and stupidity”. … more

James Styring

As a society, we allot reasonable expectations to different modes of transport. In cities, bikes are about getting from A to B quickly and hassle-free. We use cars, trains and Buses to go longer distances at higher speeds. … more

While Oxford’s arterial roads, and those in the market towns, suffer heavy traffic at commuter times, Cowley Road is rammed all day long.

The crawling queues start at 8am and stop-start traffic appears, car after car, until mid-evening. Even outside school and Brookes terms, traffic is slow and relentless. more

We’ve been driving a lot more than usual lately because my wife is pregnant – or was, at the time of writing. Her due date is today. We don’t know if the little critter is a boy or a girl but one thing’s for certain: it’s a cyclist. It whirrs its little legs at an alarming rate. It has to be seen to be believed: my wife’s belly moves about like a sack of fighting puppies. A bicycle frame was clearly visible on the scan. A chip off the old block.

Driving has made me realise what a load of Jekyll and Hyde lot drivers are. more

LAST Friday, in the pouring rain, we ventured down the M4 for the launch of the first ever Bespoked Bristol.

It’s the event for custom handmade bicycle makers to showcase their wares, and is a real treat for bicycle nuts.

Held in a trendy little venue called Paintworks, it featured the like of Condor, Downland cycles, Villiers Velo, Brian Rourke and many other custom frame builders. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

Being the launch, however, and with Saturday and Sunday being the real show days, not every exhibitor had decided to stay to talk to we trade visitors, preferring instead to knock off early and sample Bristol’s nightlife. … more

I was at a table outside a bar in Manhattan in 1997. The street was rammed with wheezing and spluttering V8 beasts. An SUV nearly took the back off my head as it parked. The engine roared, belched a bomb of black soot and died. Its occupants piled out and sat two tables away.

My beer arrived, I lit up. “Ew, that guy is smo-king! Let’s go,” they yelled. I was incredulous. Here, in this polluted street, these nincompoops, high on the sulphurous fumes belching from exhausts, objected to the whisps from my cigarette. Talk about skewed priorities.

Fourteen years later, I no longer smoke. New York has banned smoking, and, for all their odd priorities, they have got one thing right: the art of bicycling.

Once, the car was king. Only freaks and low lives sneaked through the gutters on two wheels. These days, six-lane roads have had a lane removed and converted into bike avenues. Manhattan is criss-crossed with bike paths.

I lived in and drove around Barcelona 20 years ago. Beautiful, bustling, yes. Bike-friendly? Ay caramba, no! Yet today, Barcelona has a massive bike hire system and Catalans of all ages and sizes cycle to work and play on an excellent cycle network.

This bicycling renaissance is repeating the world over – Paris, Seattle, Bogotá, even London.

In all of these places, cars used to rule. But somehow, someone somewhere in power had a vision of their city cutting congestion and increasing the fun with bicycles.

People have cycled in Oxford for 100 years, and about 20 per cent of journeys to work in Oxford are made by bike – the national average is about two per cent. Most councils would give their right arterial for 20 per cent.

Oxford City councillors would, I am sure, be delighted to paint cycle superhighways everywhere. But it isn’t up to the city council what happens on Oxford’s roads; it’s up to Conservative-controlled Oxfordshire County Council.

Boris Johnson wrote in 2006: “When Cameron’s Conservatives come to power it will be a golden age for cyclists and an Elysium of cycle lanes, bike racks, and sharia law for bike thieves.” So you’d think that the county council would be well into providing for bikes.

Think again. There is a massive appetite for cycling in the city, and we could see numbers double if the political will was there. Yet while many millions have been spent on projects for driving into or circumnavigating the city, the county council is reluctant to spend anything on making Oxford a smooth ride for cyclists.

This begs questions about local democracy and accountability. If 20 per cent of us cycle to work, should they not spend 20 per cent of the budget on cycling?

The paltry sums scrabbled together for the odd new cycle crossing and so on must amount to, what?, 0.2 per cent of the budget?

Councillor Ian Hudspeth has been forced from the Tory county council cabinet. This is a disaster. He was the only cabinet member who showed an interest in improving the transport network for those who live in the city. Mr Hudspeth’s Tory cronies were incensed about the £300,000 spent on the 20mph zones, wanting that cash for their own areas, and it is to his great credit that he convinced them that 20mph is right for the city. Now he’s gone, we need another senior Tory with the vision to champion cycling – anyone?

The council owes it to the city and to the county, to Cameron and to Johnson, to give our world-class city world-class cycling facilities. If New York, Paris, Barcelona and London can push bikes, Oxford surely can.
from http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/yoursay/columns/9055801.ON_YER_BIKE__Cyclists_in_our_world_class_city_deserve_better/

EVERY now and again, you come across someone truly inspiring. Someone who makes perfect sense and who in turn helps you to make sense of what you’re striving to achieve.
For me, one such person was Paul Cullen, who died tragically on May 2. He was doing what he loved most (cycling) with the person he most loved (his wife, Ros Weatherall) when suddenly, he suffered a heart attack. …  more

and “Tributes paid to ’20 is plenty’ campaigner“

People definitely talk about their cars as persons and describing your motor as a ‘he’ or ‘she’ is not frowned upon, as far as I know. Boats too, even more so, but bicycles? Increasingly I have heard people describing their bikes while borrowing from the biological gender binary to talk about its capabilities.

Just the other day an avid cyclist was telling me ‘she’ did Land’s End to John O’Groats in record time where ‘she’ was the bicycle, not the avid cyclist.

We are seeing rapid increases in bicycle use in Europe, and what can only be described as a bicycle revolution in London and in Oxford. more

By James Styring

WE WERE walking near Spitalfields Market in East London when our path was blocked by a cavalcade of hundreds of tweed-clad cyclists. They weren’t just wearing tweed jackets, but the full 1920s monty: deerstalker hats, trousers tucked into long socks with shiny brogues.

Some sported Sherlock Holmes pipes and most had managed to find a vintage bicycle to complete the look: beautiful black 1930s Pashleys and 1940s Raleighs in British racing green livery with gold leaf trim. The sight transformed my day.  more

Sir – Your correspondent Hugh Jaeger (Letters, January 27) writes: “Richard Mann, of Cyclox . . . wants 20mph both enforced and extended to Oxford’s remaining 30mph roads. How many libraries or youth centres might have to close to fund such gestures?” I’m not an economist, but I fail to see why such a sensible step should lead to the closure of any libraries or youth centres.

He goes on to write: “Several times I have seen police ignore illegal cyclists. Occasional enforcements are useless stunts. Oxford needs daily enforcement against cycling’s dangerous, lawless majority.”

Now that, I suspect would cost rather a lot. Especially flushing out this dangerous, lawless majority from where they skulk, seemingly emerging only to annoy Mr Jaeger. Most cyclists, it seems to me, are sensible, environmentally-aware, public-spirited people who put up with a lot of hassle from thoughtless drivers and a lot of hot air from rather silly people.

Priscilla Waugh, Oxford