Why has Everyone Got
It In for Cyclists?
by Deborah Moggach
What is it about cyclists
that makes people so angry? Everyone hates the pavement-hoggers, of course,
the ones who barge through shoppers snarling into their phones and scattering
pensioners. But most of us are mild creatures who do no harm to anybody.
You would think that, with a government that bleats on about pollution and with
a London mayor who is considering a traffic congestion charge, our capital city
would be friendlier to the inoffensive pushbike. Not on your life.
Parking meters are being phased out, removing our handy tethering-posts; bike
stands are almost non-existent -- usually a single one with, chained to it for
ever, the skeleton of someone's rusting Raleigh.
Worse than this, however, are the railings outside the buildings. More and more
of them bear hostile little signs: BICYCLES LEFT HERE SHALL BE REMOVED. Needless
to say, some of the worst culprits are government departments and public institutions.
Even my hero, Neil MacGregor, who runs the National Gallery, forbids bike-parking
outside his building.
What strange double standards we have when chauffeurs can wait for hours, their
engines filling the air with fumes, while ministers debate environmental matters
and a few yards away cyclists have their bikes disposed of like IRA bombs. It
reminds me of Earth Day in New York, where celebrities solemnly walked up Sixth
Avenue, carrying banners and little trees to plant, while in the cross-streets
all their stretch limos sat purring, waiting to carry them the 200 yards back
to their hotels.
I've been biking in London all my life. My father did too. In fact, in his early
days in publishing he used to commute from Hertfordshire on his pushbike, a
round trip of 34 miles. No sissy helmet for him; no bottom hugging lycra. He
was properly got up in suit and bow tie, probably a Garrick one, his only concession
a pair of bicycle clips.
Despite working in an office he was a freelance at heart, an independent spirit
like all true cyclists. He adored biking and said he was treated by motorists
with kindly condescension "because a cyclist suggests economic failure".
London is perfect for biking: gratifyingly congested, so one can whizz past
rows of cars and get most of the Today programme through their windows. It's
fairly flat, though not of course as flat as people think. It has a pretty hopeless
public transport system. The buses are slow and the tube too foul. Taxis are
hideously expensive, and there is the obligation to have a conversation and
hear that their drivers never read novels, only war books. Car driving is becoming
impossible. Most residential streets are so full that people no longer use their
cars at all in case someone nicks their place. Besides, when you get to your
destination, there's nowhere to park, and if you do you'll get clamped, or else
it's an underground car park that smells of pee and sets you back £35. And or
course you can't drink.
Biking is free. It's also the most intimate way of getting to know a city --
the back streets and passers-by with whom you're on briefly close-up terms.
Now is the perfect time. Everyone is away on holiday and the streets have reverted
to an empty childhood innocence.
Biking is also the most efficient way to get somewhere, because you know exactly
how long it will take. Nothing holds you up; there are no frustrations. Whatever
the blockage, if the worst comes to the worst you can get off and walk. If the
lights are red you can jump them. I do this in the politest way possible by
ostentatiously stopping for a bit, looking both ways, giving a little shrug
and launching off.
And at the end of an evening your bike is always waiting for a quick getaway.
There's something deliciously smug about seeing rows of people at bus stops,
or vainly hailing taxis, when you can just jump into the saddle and vanish into
the night.
Of course it's dangerous. Hyde Park Corner is not for wimps.
People in parked cars fling open their doors, vast belching lorries cut you
up. And even cycle routes can be lethal.
Our local council, Camden, has a famously asinine roads policy whereby road
humps are built at vast cost along completely empty streets, while on busy roads
they sometimes might have cycle lanes, but lanes specially designed for lulling
you into a false sense of security and then, on a blind corner, spewing you
into the traffic.
Then there's the clothes problem. When I go out in the evening, swathed in hideous
plastic and wearing ancient plimsolls, I park in some leprous alleyway and try
to struggle out of my chrysalis, hopping around on one high heel. But the butterfly
image is always spoilt by matted hair and oil-streaks. Then there are the punctures.
And the rain.
But all this is a small price to pay for the exhilarating freedom. And here's
where the hostility line lies. It's not what cyclists do that makes people resentful,
it's their very existence -- carefree, beholden to nobody. They're the selves
we might be if we hadn't become burdened with responsibility.
This is, of course, an illusion. I'm sure that the same things await cyclists
at home. They just get there faster.
© Deborah Moggach
The Guardian, August 22, 2001
with thanks to
the Guardian
Unlimited for its liberal policy on reprinting.