A smug expectation, a messy reality - and why it's time to get to grips with a tough conundrum

Before I got out on my bike, I was anticipating that Monday, January 9, was going to be my smuggest cycling day since returning to London from New York in July. A strike by station staff on the London Underground had brought the busiest bits of the capital’s most important public transport system to a halt. And, as I sat at home writing initial stories about what was happening, I noticed account after account of chaos on the roads as would-be underground users turned to cars and buses to get to work. I imagined myself slipping casually through the traffic on my bike, warmly congratulating myself on the excellence of my transport choices.

In the event, the day ended up feeling less like a triumph and more like a reminder of the acuteness of the transport policy challenges facing London. By the time I left home to ride to the office, around 10am, the bus lanes that I’d normally use for the early stages of my journey were choked with other forms of motor traffic. Progress was so slow I retreated to the side streets, which in places were little better.

Traffic backed up on Vauxhall Bridge on January 9: a visible
demonstration of London's reliance on its underground.

The incident dramatised an issue that’s been worrying me for some time. London’s roads become congested when people are emptied out of the underground and other non-road forms of transport onto the roads. Yet it’s an uncomfortable truth of campaigns to encourage cycling in inner London that the vast bulk of the growth in cycle commuting must be coming from a similar, slow-motion shift from rail-based modes onto already over-stretched streets. More and more complex demands are being heaped onto constrained roadspace, without much sign of a strategic plan to manage the resulting pressures.

On top of that, I noticed once I got to work how many twitter users were complaining of having hours spent on buses even on short journeys. Later in the week, would-be commuters on Southern, the mainline rail service, would undertake similarly unpleasant journeys during strikes by their service’s drivers. The stories illustrated the shortcomings of decades of efforts to encourage cycling. Cycle provision in most of London still consists of signed routes down backstreets, most of which are growing ever busier and less attractive. It’s clear that most people will not consider riding on these, even in the most desperate circumstances.

Faced with placating demand for better cycle provision and the challenges of congested, polluted roads, Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, seems anxious about building more of the direct, segregated cycle routes that might get such reluctant cyclists pedalling.

The challenge for everyone in London who wants more, safer cycling in central London is to devise arguments for better provision that recognise the new realities. It’s vital as the system accommodates growing cycling to safeguard road provision for the buses, delivery vehicles, emergency vehicles and other vital road-users that make up a high proportion of central London’s current road users. The challenge is similar for advocates in other big urban centres - including New York, my old home - where people shift to cycle commuting mainly from modes that don’t depend on the roads.

 

Pedestrians spill out of Southwark underground station by the
north-south cycle superhighway. How many of them can switch
to cycling before the roads get even more congested?

Yet some of the most influential figures on London’s transport scene continue to insist that the conundrum is so simple it barely exists. On January 5, Andrew Gilligan, London’s former cycling commissioner, tweeted a graph from Transport for London’s latest “Travel in London” report that attributed 75 per cent of London’s congestion to “excess traffic”. The conclusion was “blindingly obvious to all but motorists,” he wrote, dismissively.

A little digging into the statistics for central London fills in the details of the policy dilemma. Traffic volumes entering Central London fell 3.4 per cent between the June to September quarter in 2015 and the same quarter in 2016, part of a long-term decline that’s seen the volume of motor traffic entering central London decline by more than 20 per cent since 2000. Instead of increasing with declining traffic volumes, however, average traffic speeds in central London - the easiest available proxy for congestion - fell 3.5 per cent, to 7.8mph. The network’s capacity is very clearly falling even faster than motor vehicle are going away. The amount of traffic that it takes for traffic to become “excess” is falling.

It is not clear, either, which part of the traffic can easily be reduced to alleviate the problem and free up space for cycling. The same Travel in London report that Andrew Gilligan quoted says that private cars now account for only 18 per cent of motor traffic during weekdays in the central London congestion charging zone. The other vehicles - private-hire cars, taxis, vans and heavy lorries - all have at least some arguable economic reason to be in the area. They are likely to be more resistant than private vehicle owners to stopping driving in the area.

 

A typical traffic queue on Southwark Bridge: it's not clear
crackdowns on private cars or encouragement for cargo bikes
will solve this problem.

One of the most popular suggestions among cyclists for reducing the traffic is that more of the growing numbers of internet deliveries being made in central London could be shifted to cargo bikes. The idea is sufficiently attractive that I investigated the subject in my day job for a piece about the growing numbers of cargo bikes I see around central London. Yet I emerged from interviewing even courier companies that use cargo bikes a little depressed. While cargo bikes were helping them to make urgent deliveries despite the heavy traffic, courier companies told me, they would always be a niche vehicle compared with the vans that were their fleets’ mainstays.

Amid this growing crisis, meanwhile, the one unutterable suggestion among cycle campaigners is that the building of segregated cycle superhighways along a number of central London roads might be contributing to the problem. When Florence Eshalomi, a member of the London Assembly, asked cyclists on twitter on January 11 whether they agreed with a senior TfL manager that cycle lanes had had some impact on bus journeys, the replies mostly struck a similar note.

“Making London a byword for cycling is more important than bus usage,” one twitter user replied.

“I think any far measurement of bus delays would show that excess cars are the main cause,” wrote another. “There aren't that many cycle lanes.”

The replies drew on the now-conventional wisdom among London cyclists that the 12 miles of new cycle superhighways in central London - which I love using, especially when with my children - have had no significant effect on congestion. The facilities, however, have been put in on arterial roads that were already operating at or near full capacity. They have, crucially, introduced new, cyclist-only light phases that can only have introduced extra waiting time for motor vehicles both on the streets with the new facilities and those crossing them.

 

A bus in a traffic jam by the cycle superhighway
on Blackfriars Road: the superhighway has no bearing
on what goes on on the rest of the road, it's said.

While there are plenty of other factors restricting London’s road capacity, it seems fanciful to imagine that cycle facilities alone can remove capacity from busy roads and have little effect on congestion. It is certainly clear the capacity of London’s roads fell around the time the new facilities were built. It is not unreasonable, it seems to me, for Sadiq Khan and Mike Brown, commissioner of Transport for London, to seek to reduce the effect of any new facilities on congestion before giving them the go-ahead.

Yet to say that the challenges facing London’s leaders are hard is very definitely not to say they are impossible. It is quite clear, for example, that action that reined in the growth of services such as Uber in central London could have a significant effect. Private hire vehicles - the vehicles that provide the Uber service - now account for 12 per cent of traffic in central London on weekdays. Any measure that makes deliveries to the scores of construction sites in central London more efficient could free up significant amounts of road space. It is hard to understand why low-emission vehicles, which take up the same road space as others, remain entirely exempt from congestion charging.

It is regrettable, meanwhile, that London relies so heavily on the double-deck New Bus for London given its poor capacity and the time it takes to load and unload. A wholesale reform and extension of the current central London congestion charge to make it more sophisticated and more closely related to the space each vehicle takes up on the road seems overdue. The mayor should continue to pursue increases in cycling because bikes provide clean, healthy, flexible transport. Extra cycling journeys can almost certainly be catered for more economically than extra journeys on the underground.

 

Fog and pollution haze sits over south London:
more cycling might avert such incidents

It is far too easy, however, for the debate over this complex issue to slip into glibness. Taxi driver groups slip into this trap when they claim the simple removal of new cycle paths would restore London’s roads to flowing freely. Cycling groups fall into it when they pretend new cycle paths magically shift London commuters from wasteful cars onto space-efficient bikes.

The rest of my ride to work on January 9 was a stark reminder of the risks of ducking serious debate. I encountered drivers engaged in fierce rows over road space, a furious woman cyclist yelling at a man who had somehow wronged her and, in van after van, long lines of stressed-looking delivery drivers and workmen. An air of unhappiness and frustration hung over everything.

While the scenes were far worse than those on a normal day, I made an inward vow to renew my efforts to think more seriously in future about the less acute but still worrying levels of congestion I encounter daily.

If others do the same, it may prove easier to build wide support for the kind of excellent facility I found myself using towards the end of the trip. Wanting to take in the scene, I rode over Vauxhall Bridge then down the east-west cycle superhighway along the Embankment. As van and taxi drivers sat motionless in the neighbouring traffic jam, I was finally slipping by the traffic jams, as I’d anticipated. Looking at the grim faces of the stationary drivers, it was a pleasure I was keenly aware I shouldn’t take for granted.

A daily obstacle course, a problem denied - and why I think it's vital to tackle congestion

One of the many old habits I’ve resumed since returning to London is to buy my lunch from a branch of Eat cafe very close to my office in Southwark, on the south bank of the River Thames. I head up the stairs from my first-floor desk, leave the building by the second-floor entrance on Southwark Bridge, then cross the road before descending again to reach the cafe, on the riverside walkway.

But a key aspect of the experience has unmistakeably changed in the four years I’ve been away in New York. The challenge used to be to dodge cars and trucks speeding across the bridge towards the City of London, the financial district. The task most days now is to pick a way between the long line of vehicles backed up across the bridge.

Traffic on Southwark Bridge: a barrier between me and
my lunchtime pie

The Southwark Bridge hold-ups are only one manifestation of a gradual worsening of traffic congestion across London in recent years. The problem has grown despite the gradual decline in traffic levels as a result of the Central London congestion charge and the general absurdity of bringing a private car into London. Average motor traffic speeds in London in the first quarter this year were down 3.9 per cent on a year before, according to Transport for London statistics, despite a 1.1 per cent decrease in the volume of traffic on major roads.

I first noticed the change on July 7, the day I returned from New York. It took me and my family a good two hours from Heathrow Airport to reach our temporary accommodation in Stepney. Forced to take a taxi by the challenges of moving five suitcases and a bicycle, we sat in nose-to-tail traffic for nearly the entire journey.

Yet I have the feeling I’m relatively rare among London cyclists in thinking that this congestion is a serious problem, which cyclists have at least as much a stake as others in having tackled. Most comments from cyclists about the issue on Twitter dismiss the problem as a reflection of motor traffic’s fundamental inefficiency. There has been particular anger over a flawed report by David Begg, a transport economist whom I’ve known for 20 years, that linked the delays facing bus passengers partly to the building of London’s segregated cycle superhighways on some roads.

Yes, the mode on the left wastes road space and, yes,
the mode to the right takes up less road space than some
critics contend. But it's still worth pondering how scenes like
this look to people stuck in traffic jams.

But, having cycled the past four years in New York, I worry about how present conditions might influence policy, particularly as Sadiq Khan takes over from Boris Johnson, champion of the superhighways, as mayor. I’ve lived, after all, through the long backlash that followed the departure from office of Janette Sadik-Khan, New York’s former pro-cycling transport commissioner, at the end of 2013. For most of the time I was in New York, few new cycling facilities were built and those that were constructed were insultingly inadequate. Those already in place were allowed to decay or become useless through non-enforcement of rules over parking or yielding to cyclists.

As long as cyclists downplay or ignore the seriousness of London’s current congestion problems, the debate about how to tackle the problems will be left to others. The ultimate risk is that London’s authorities follow the lead of Ed Koch, New York’s mayor from 1977 to 1989. In 1980, concerned about high fuel prices, Koch installed high-quality protected bike lanes along many of Manhattan’s busiest avenues. Stung by criticism of their effect on congestion and modest use levels, he then went on to rip the lanes out again within weeks. His volte face was so complete that he even sought to have cyclists banned from midtown Manhattan altogether.

I should stress, of course, that none of my concerns means I’m accepting the simplistic account of London’s congestion problem that attributes a significant role to the reallocation of road space to the cycle superhighways. Transport planners have known for many years that the number of lanes on a road has far less effect on its capacity than might be supposed. A large amount of congestion comes from motorists’ unnecessary lane-changing, which elimination of a traffic lane can actually reduce. It’s also clear - as David Begg tells me he now accepts - that the figure of 25 per cent for the reduction in road space is a ridiculous exaggeration.

The north-south Cycle Superhighway in Waterloo:
no mistaking the success

It’s also unmistakeable that the segregated superhighways are proving hugely popular as a commuting route. This past Thursday, when we moved back into our house in Brixton, I cycled in the morning rush south down the north-south cycle superhighway. I was astonished at the vast numbers of cyclists heading the other way, north into central London. Pelotons of 30 to 40 riders powered past me in clumps formed by the timing of the traffic lights. Much of the time, there must have been at least as many people using the narrow cycle track as using the far wider road for motor traffic. That striking result has been achieved only a few months after the cycle paths’ opening and before the two main cycle tracks have been extended as far as is eventually intended.

It is clear, meanwhile, to anyone observing with an open mind that there have been far more dramatic changes on London’s roads than the handing over of a single lane on a small number of roads to cyclists. For example, the traffic that I dodge as I go to buy my lunchtime pie is currently made up far more than in previous years of heavy dumper trucks going to and from the huge numbers of development sites dotted across the City. The rise of Uber has produced a surge in the numbers of private-hire vehicles on the roads, which Transport for London has very little capacity to restrain.

In the past week, I’ve cycled on multiple bits of road whose capacity was restricted for one reason or another. But they included road narrowings for work on both Crossrail, the project to build an east-west rail line right across central London, and the extension of London Underground’s Northern Line to Battersea. Both of the rail projects are generating significant construction traffic and forcing the narrowing of roads in a number of places.

Cyclists by the new route over Vauxhall
Bridge: all modes are contending with
restricted road space.

Nevertheless, I keep returning to the feeling I had as I sat in that taxi from the airport on July 7 as I sat in stalled traffic. It was hard as I looked at nearly-empty, mid-morning cycle superhighways not to yearn for my taxi driver to turn onto the invitingly open stretch of tarmac to shorten our interminable journey. If I thought that as someone who would later the same day be cycling along the same routes, it’s hardly surprising if people with less stake in encouraging cycling feel frustrated at the current situation. If that feeling is not to end up leading to the abandonment of the superhighway programme, it is vital that something is done to tackle the on-street congestion.

That, David Begg tells me, is the essential argument he was seeking to put across in his report in June on the impact of congestion on bus passengers. While much of the commentary around the report focused on the erroneous 25 per cent figure and some loose phrasing that Prof Begg tells me he also now regrets, it’s hard to escape the report’s central argument. Boris Johnson encouraged changes to the use of London’s streets that were bound to make streets more congested without having the courage to make anti-congestion measures like the congestion charge more effective. The former mayor instead did a great deal to exacerbate the congestion crisis by removing the congestion charge in Kensington and Chelsea. He also replaced high-capacity, articulated buses with the lower-capacity New Bus for London.

Another day, another set of people failed by roads policy

If cyclists are not to suffer the consequences of Boris Johnson’s policy failures, it is vital that cycle campaigners start to recognise the nature of the competition under way for scarce road space. People who start cycling, after all, are mostly switching to riding from underground, rail or bus so are not self-evidently reducing the burden on the road network.

Cycle campaigners consequently have to start noisily pointing out that the present crisis’s causes extend far beyond the installation of cycle lanes. It's also vital to start advocating for measures to manage other modes' use of that limited space. There’s a powerful case, for example, for charging lorries far more for entering central London in peak hours, for encouraging the shift of far more short-distance deliveries by bicycle, rather than van and for installing new, better-protected bus lanes to ensure buses don’t sit trapped in traffic created by demand for Uber and Amazon Prime. It’s absurd that neither taxis nor minicabs currently pay the congestion charge when they enter central London and it’s imperative that they start to do so.

These are all sensible policy measures that I’d support even if I weren’t a cyclist. As a person interested in transport policy and determined in particular that bus passengers should get a better deal, I’m convinced on principle that it’s critical to come up with solutions to pointless, wasteful congestion.

The Great Bus Wall of Fleet St: proof of failing policies

But an experience on Friday underlined to me how it’s also in cyclists’ selfish interests to deal with congestion. Coming back from a meeting on High Holborn, I rode my way through the quiet urban oasis of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and out onto Fleet St, seeking to make my way to the east-west cycle superhighway. I was greeted, however, with a scene of chaos, a nearly immobile wall of buses crowded onto the historic street, edging forward at well below walking pace.

I was in the fortunate position that I could edge my way through cracks between vehicles the few hundred metres I needed to go, find an alley leading down to the Thames and escape to the generously-proportioned, fast-to-travel-on superhighway. I am conscious, however, that the passengers on the buses - a vital form of transport used disproportionately by the poor - lacked that option. They remained stranded as I slipped away. No-one who has London’s interests at heart can think such a situation should be allowed to persist.