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High Street, Worcester (Google Maps)Build safe cycling routes to help people ditch cars for local journeys, urges senior doctor "redressing balance" of city's "polarised" cycling ban debate
A senior doctor has urged Worcester policy makers to see past "so much negativity locally" and implement safe cycling routes that encourage and enable people to leave their cars at home for short local journeys, the comments coming in a bid to "redress the balance" of discourse around cycling in the city that has predominantly centred around controversial cycling bans in recent times.
Doctor Jonathan Leach OBE, who was a colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps and now works as a GP in Bromsgrove but lives near Worcester, spoke to us today to provide "balance" to the "polarised" cycling ban talk that has dominated the discussion around cycling in the city centre this year and has been the subject of several stories on this website.
Much of the headline-grabbing coverage has come courtesy of the only remaining Conservative on Worcester City Council being outspoken about "dangerous and selfish" cyclists, and his desire to see a TRO (Traffic Regulation Order) banning bike riders from the city's high street between 10am and 6pm kept in place.
In March, Worcester City Council opted not to extend a PSPO (Public Spaces Protection Order) which banned cycling in other parts of the town and that campaigners branded a "psychological barrier" to people using bicycles. At the time, councillors said they were "never convinced dangerous cyclists were the big issue" and the ban felt like "political theatre".
Now, it has also been proposed that the high street TRO should be reviewed, prompting more comments from Cllr Amos about the decision only being made to "appease the cycling lobby", that it had left disabled residents "horrified", and that it would transform a "safe and welcoming area where pedestrians can shop and walk" into a "dangerous and unwelcoming place".
And while Dr Leach agrees the high street pedestrianisation should stay in place, his overall message is that enabling people to cycle through the city and to its shops and amenities via other routes and safe cycling infrastructure should be the priority.
Urging policy makers not to get bogged down in "polarised" cycling debate, Dr Leach gets straight to the point about the health benefits of cycling that should be being targeted.
"If I could prescribe it, exercise would be one of the most effective drugs," he told road.cc. "Especially physical health, especially mental health, it helps people keep fit. I've got a number of my patients who can't walk very well because they've got osteoarthritis in their knees, back, but they can cycle... but they're bloody terrified about going out because of the aggressive nature of too many car drivers.
"Particularly for shorter journeys where people are going to the shops, they're going to take the children to school, going to the doctor, things like this, then it would save an awful lot of money in terms of their cost on their cars, but also it would be far, far better for their overall health."
Dr Leach cycles for transport and travels to local home visits by Brompton. This afternoon he travelled to Plymouth by train, cycling to the station first. He tells us he recently took an old washing machine to the tip, a journey he drove. He's also a member of IAM Roadsmart (formerly the Institute of Advanced Motorists).
"So I'm not anti-car," he continues. "But we need to encourage people to be, particularly for short journeys, leaving the car at home.
"I'm just trying to get some balance in this discussion which is far too polarised and as I said, I'm not anti-car, I'm actually a member of the Institute of Advance Motorists which is brilliant training and it made me a better car driver, a better motorcyclist and a better cyclist because it gives you far better hazard appreciation.
"There are lots of these shorter journeys where a bike is absolutely fine, but we need to be encouraging people. The evidence is very clear that the infrastructure and their being fearful of cars is a major impediment."
When talk inevitably returns to the whole discussion's starting point — the ongoing talk around Worcester's former PSPO and existing TRO — Dr Leach says he wouldn't change the rules around pedestrianisation on the high street, but points out so much can be done elsewhere to make the city accessible and safe to cyclists so they wouldn't have to use it anyway.
He also raises concerns about the need for "much better enforcement" of people using "motorbikes that look like bicycles" (the bikes often labelled as e-bikes in the press, but which exceed the 250w maximum power output and 15.5mph speed limit at which the motor should cut out) which he says aren't helping public perception of cycling and legal e-bikes.
Ultimately, however, Dr Leach wants the take-home message to be about the health benefits society could unlock through cycling and safe, accessible and well-designed cycling infrastructure.
He says: "I'm just in my own little way just trying to redress the balance because we've had so much negativity locally and we need to find better ways than just saying you can't cycle."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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18 comments
The entire concept of "safe cycling routes" is insane, and bassackwords. A town near me is debating officially designating about 5% of its roads as such -- and I have had to observe to them the lunacy inherent in that decree.
In what other areas of life would anyone accept a 20:1 ratio of 'unacceptably dangerous" to "safe"?
If you discovered that only 5% of the food you purchased at your local grocer was safe to eat, would that be acceptable? If tests revealed that only 5% of buildings connected to your municipal water supply were receiving potable water, could that be allowed to continue? If you found that the airline on which you just booked passage only landed 5% of its flights safely, how would you respond? If it came to your attention that 95% of your electric devices were known to randomly burst into flames, would that be met with a shrug?
In fact, we wouldn't accept a 20:1 failure ratio anywhere -- even where lives are not at stake. If 95% of mail was lost, wouldn't the people responsible be sacked? If televisions only received 72 minutes of broadcasts daily, there'd be riots.
So why, exactly, is it seemingly fine that 95% of roads are too dangerous for two-thirds of the potential user groups to actually use? How about we at least consider enforcing existing traffic laws -- before consigning 95% of roads to the waste bin?
Thanks, neatly put into perspective, and a brutal demonstration of motonormativity.
He's exactly right about the arthritis. I have psoriatic arthritis and it affects my feet and one knee. It's fairly well controlled now but I used to have flare-ups which prevented me from climbing a flight of stairs. Yet I could still cycle at those times. The rigid nature of cycling shoes prevented my feet from flexing, which caused the pain.
Even my cycle short commute transformed my health in less than a year. Now, at 61, I have a VO2 Max of 46 and an RHR of 55, despite being rather too fond of a drink.
The simple fact is that we just can't go on like this. Even if we hadn't just had the NHS starved of investment for the last decade and a half, we've got a ticking time bomb of chronic ill-health. We HAVE to start investing in preventative health measures instead of allowing diseases to develop and only then treating them.
It's interesting that the guy is a former Army officer. I used to work with British Army officers and a surprising number of them were regular cyclists. Apparently it's the fastest growing sport in the British Army.
Dr Jonathan Leach OBE says if he could prescribe exercise it "would be one of the most effective drugs"
Can't he? I thought there was a "social prescribing" programme?
Dr Jonathan Leach OBE says if he could prescribe exercise it "would be one of the most effective drugs"
Exercise is incredibly effective in dealing with modern lifestyle illness, but is almost completely ignored by the msm, which only seems to notice food and medicines. For instance, the media has been full, almost 24 hour coverage of the latest government plan to inject obese people with a drug to suppress their appetite, but no mention of the statement by Louise Haigh about unprecedented spending on Active Travel because of the health benefits. Also not mentioned was the NICE statement of maybe ten years ago that the best way to tackle the obesity epidemic was to achieve the government's cycling targets.
The BBC is especially noteworthy in this respect, with innumberable items about health and weight control, which exclusively talk about diet and drugs, never mentioning exercise. When Henry Dimbleby brought out his report about obesity and diet, he featured on just about every BBC news and chat show, because the BBC is obsessed with the Dimblebys and food. I've given up complaing/commenting, they just ignore anything about exercise in general and cycling specifically, despite the fact that they are a better solution than the ones they keep pushing.
It's due to late-stage Capitalism.
Treatments are only promoted if they can make someone a bunch of money. Exercise is freely available to anyone that's able-bodied and it doesn't actually require a gym membership despite all the social media pictures.
Similarly, active travel will reduce the market for expensive cars and so most media that is heavily funded by motor adverts will take pains to only mention it in derogatory terms e.g. always pointing out how dangerous it is to cycle and how people must be idiots to not be wearing a cycling helmet.
The question is whether we want to keep watching/listening to people who are only self-interested or start paying attention to ideas that actually benefit society?
And many, if not most who aren't.
Let's be clear, if green transports and energies are promoted by the PTB, it's NOT because they are healthy and environment-friendly, but because they allow to stack more people in the limited space of our cities, without excessive pollution...
I'm not convinced that the richest people care much about pollution levels as they live in a nice green belt and will either take a helicopter or air-conditioned car to pass through the urban areas. Also, it can be advantageous for them to exploit a workforce that dies earlier so that there's not so much worry about pensions and the like - see right-wing policies for more details.
Of course! Thank you for clarifying.
Just so. And how does "late-stage capitalism" get away with it? By suborning then owning the minds and behaviours of a vast swathe of the populations upon whom they operate.
Adverts are one mechanism but there's a much more pernicious engine, known as "the press", better named "the gutter press". This article by a rather olde fashioned newspaper not yet fallen into the open sewer of the gutter press illuminates the machinations involved;
https://bylinetimes.com/2023/05/18/its-not-the-economy-stupid-its-the-pr...
The gutter press (and, let's face it, the less guttery newspaps too) are an instrument of, amongst other mad schemes underlying rabid profit-making, motornormativity, which includes not just the Divine Rights of Motorists but a whole supporting ideology that regards any form of bodily effort as stupid, pointless and a danger to the lazy-laxy pleasures & thrills of self-centred little me-my-I skinbags everywhere.
**********
There seems no chance that the population at large will ever give up the dubious pleasures of the sofa & carseat, with their accompanying passive entertainment gubbins that reinforce the propagana-blares of newspaps, anti-social media and all the other elements of the capitalist cacophony.
There is no rational & reasonable human "we" that can be brought to its senses by worthy doctor-pronouncements, only a sea of mostly eejits stirred into a frantic consumer Brownian motion in their cars and in "their" crazed opinions.
The gutter press has also directed these consumer-robots to murder & maim those who have managed to reason-out the notion that exercise is good for a body. Peds and cyclists are for running over to teach-'em, not for admiring and emulating.
But as the consequences of what HP says imply - making money is the primary motive force we have. (Being cynical I go with "big bung theory" - large concentrations of money - or the prospect of them - has the power to generate activity or (per Douglas Adams) fundamentally bend
office-holdersreality).After that it's "charity or the state got to do it". I think it's mostly the latter *. At that point "making some business money - so they can lobby people" is competing with "no one person really benefits - it's just this will save us money".
Alas "small benefits for everyone" and saving money aren't what most people get out of bed in the morning for.
This is where I find Chris Boardman's recent talks hopeful - apparently he's been meeting with the likes of Chris Whitty at health. Could be a really helpful collaboration!
* I'd maybe be wrong if it's "care" though - think that's mostly down to friends / family / locals.
Good on the good doctor generally but I still can't see the justification for keeping the cycling ban on the High Street. Unless the photographs are completely misleading, as noted elsewhere there's a massive wide pavement on one side (at least 8m) and a decent width one on the other (about 3m), and an existing path down the middle with a different surface and kerb edging (good for the visually impaired). If one set out to design a good workable shared space for pedestrians and cyclists one couldn't do much better.
Until we start banning cars from roads (e.g. due to lack of law adherence or too many KSIs), then we should not have any cycling bans. And no, I don't consider LTNs to be a ban as cars still have access, just not able to use them as through routes/rat-runs.
TBH I can see bits of worcester high street being unsuitable for cycling at times;
Of course the reason its unsuitable for cycling is a total lack of alternative routes and some very nasty nearby roads (engineered to look like high speed A roads despite being in the middle of a city AND between one of the railway stations and the centre (sure, most of the time you just get the train between); Add in a couple of side accesses + pedestrian bridges off the high street that will be used by cyclists but aren't wide enough;
So the minute you allow cycling, every cyclist is going down the high street, often at speed, because its basically the only sane option other than 3 lane gyratories with drivers who seem to think they are on a motorway instead of a 20mph inner city residential road...
But the fix for this isn't cycling bans that will be ignored by the people causing problems; Its fixing the parallel routes so that the high street is generally used for access...
If they want a ban they should have to prove they have a full, built to standard (i.e. 3-4m wide fully segregated) cycle lane for the same route.
I might have a skewed view on this as Cardiff's traditional high street has been pedestrianised my whole life, despite being very wide. Doesn't mean you don't have to look out for delivery riders flouting the rules of course, but it makes for a pretty plesant space as a pedestrian. But then Cardiff has at least recently installed a segregated (if much longer) cycle route for the cyclists who can't cut through here.
The issue, much like with shared paths, is pedestrians rarely conform to the they must only walk in this bit and be mindful of cyclists on this other bit.
They tend to wander across the whole space once you remove the threat of motor vehicles running them over.
The consequence then is most encounters with any type of cyclist, tend to shock them, which then makes the whole space feel dangerous to them.
Old towns like Worcester need safe cycling routes. They are not designed for today's level of traffic. Many of them were built in pony and trap days before cars were even invented. Anti-cycling bigots like this man simply refuse to acknowlege what is happening around them.