I've just enjoyed reading the Guardian's latest blog about the Cycle Hire Scheme, one year on. There are some negative remarks about demand exceeding supply at many of the docking points, causing some cyclists to neither be able to find a bike nor dock the one they're riding. But the figures on safety are extremely encouraging: just 100 accidents in a year and none of them serious. That's 100 too many of course, but it's not the multitudes of lemmings people predicted.
I was also fascinated to read about the demographic data: apparently the bikes are being used 'overwhelmingly' by 'white men aged between 25 and 44, many of whom earn more than £50,000 a year'. Now, I don't know why there's a racial/financial effect involved here (although I suspect it's simply based on the fact that people working in the viscinity of the docking stations 'overwhelmingly' tend to be white and rich: this would mean that it's not riding a hire bike which attracts the people in question, but the city institutions they work for).
But I have a suspicion that the gender effect may have something to do with navigation. Psychological research shows that men tend to be better at mentally rotating pictures of three dimensional objects - which translates practically into finding it easier to navigate around London's complex road network. Obviously, this is not true for all men, but it might explain why more men than women are willing to venture out on a bike. Why the gender difference should be so 'overwhelming' is still another question: maybe it's got to do with women, say, being more concerned about safety or getting sweaty or wearing inappropriate clothing: I don't know.
There is, of course, a solution to the navigation problem: a London Cycle Map. A Tube-style map and signed network of cycle routes would make it a million times more simple to plot a journey through our labrynthine capital on a bicycle, and might encourage more women to give it a go. A London Cycle Map would also have the benefit of suiting the manner in which women tend to approach navigating. Psychologists suggest that women, on the whole, prefer to navigate in a rule-based way (e.g. follow the road until a, then turn onto b, then swap onto c, and so on) as opposed to men who, on the whole, use more of a 'homing-pigeon' technique - which involves having a strong sense of compass direction and using it to inform navigational decisions. The great thing about a London Cycle Map is that it would make almost any journey in London navigable using rules: you'd just have to remember a few routes (e.g. R1, C2, B3 - as easy as a, b, c!) and then follow the signs or markings till you get to your destination. Simple!
At present, to navigate on a bike in London you need to either remember hundreds of turn-rights and turn-lefts (impractical) or have a very good sense of direction - which suggests why more men than women may be cycling. This also suggests why the figures may be so skewed for the hire bikes in particular: because these bikes, by their very nature, are used for spontaneous journeys; journeys with little planning; journeys you can only undertake if you have a damn good spatial sense of how the city connects together, so you can forge ahead without knowing all the exact directions. Young men please form an orderly queue.
I say these things not to discourage female cyclists: quite the opposite. Cycle Lifestyle's goal is to help all kinds of people cycle in London; to help everyone experience the liberating effects of getting around on two wheels. We're just trying to be realistic about it. What realistically would help more women cycle is a decent London Cycle Map - to make navigating by bike as easy as catching the Tube. Initiatives aimed at encouraging participation are important, but when faced with a big bad city sprawling out in front of them, too many women are opting to choose transport options they feel more comfortable with. This is not a caricature: it's a fact.
Something else which caught my eye about the Guardian article was the dynamic graphic showing where journeys were made on the hire bikes. One thing really stands out: the image looks nothing like the radial routes described by the Cycle Superhighways. Rather, it is clear that the route trajectories people are actually taking (even if 'overwhelmingly' male) look more like the muddled spaghetti of LCN routes so brilliantly rationalised by Parker's London Cycle Map.
For goodness sake, then, let's stop spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds painting blue lines on major roads. Let's just get a decent London Cycle Map and network of quieter routes up and running (for much, much less money) in time for the Olympics, thereby making the LCN accessible and navigable by everyone, and showing the world that Britain is still streets ahead in terms of innovation.
We're delighted to annouce that London Cycle Map inventor 
