Who's Afraid of Alker Tripp
by Patrick Field

Midday Sunday, rolling eastward on a boulevard in London SW7, two lanes of traffic are moving freely and everything is nice. Then a taxi in the off-side lane spots a fare and cuts left. He's pulling into empty space: the empty space I was planning to ride through. As the gap between the cab and the line of parked cars shrinks, crisis kicks perception into slow motion. I bellow a warning and swerve through the last half metre of daylight. Glancing back I see the cabby wave an apology. The mellow morning mood is broken.

Congratulating myself on surviving, a question arises. What was the source of that loud thud? I vaguely recall that in the squeeze my left forearm whacked the wing-mirror of a parked car. Inspection reveals shallow grazes and a couple of swelling bruises; typically pain follows, rather than triggers, the realisation of injury.

Every week I spend several hours in the formal dance of traffic. Thousands of negotiations transacted without incident make the occasional mishap all the more chilling.

Having dealt with the emergency, panic at what might have been hits in a nauseous wavve. An impulse to get away from the motor-traffic takes me onto a bike lane in the park. The first section runs on a roadway free from moving or parked automobiles -- a rare resource in the inner city. Here it's used both as cycle track and for informal skate-hockey. Picking through a pack of padded, stick-wielding youths, in a buzz of post-crash adrenaline, potential for chaos appears everywhere. Further into the park pedestrians stroll blithely on a mixed-use track. A little girl is sitting on the cycle track tying up her skates. Her parents apologise as I brake to walking pace to get by. No problem. If I'd been in a hurry I'd have stayed on the road. Trying to make 30 kph here would be much more dangerous than mixing it with the taxis and sports cars on the parallel five-lane road.

The idea that it is impossible for people in cars and people on bikes to share road-space is not new. In 1935, Alker Tripp, the Assistant Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis (London), stated that "Motor-traffic will never, and can never, mix safely with pedestrians and pedal cycles." Tripp's long-term solution to this conflict was to segregate people using different modes of travel, a fantasy that can never be realised. In the short-term he proposed that the freedom of movement of pedestrian and cycle traffic should be restricted. He never explained what it was about 'motor-traffic', or more precisely the people who it comprises, that makes it impossible for them to share space considerately with others.

Tripp was writing at a time when pedestrians and cyclists restricted the movement of motor vehicles. Now cars restrict each other and so domitate urban public space so that any available area is likely to be intensively used. It's in these precious enclaves, away from the influence of motor-traffic, that the pushy cyclist is most despised for spreading the brutal 'might-is-right-of-way' philosophy into new areas.

The angry letters that litter the pages of local papers, and the furious columnists who rail against reckless cyclists, miss the point. The people who try to ride at vehicular speed in congested pedestrians areas when the parallel road would be quicker and safer presumably feel unable to summon the personal authority to comfortably maintain their priority on the road. While the inhuman views of Alker Tripp and his many followers persist, things will get worse and timid boys will ride as fast as possible on the pavement.

A culture of consideration can only prosper when the fantasy of universal motorisation is abandoned; when it is understood that motor vehicles are self-limiting, and that unless they are used with care and discretion they consume far more freedom than they can ever produce. People mounted on bikes should enter parks and walking streets as guests, willing to behave with care and courtesy. Exactly as cars and trucks should enter the town. Then the near-misses on the street will be restricted to hockey games.

© Patrick Field
Cycling Today, August 1998

other stories by P. Field