Cycle Lifestyle

I’ve just returned from two thoroughly enjoyable days at Play’s The Thing, a conference exploring creative aspects to well-being. Congratulations and thanks to the host Pat Kane and his team; what a great group of people you assembled for a unique and wonderful occasion.

At the conference I gave a talk on cycling. Part of what I wanted to convey was that cycling is a canny way of injecting playfulness into our daily lives. Most people commute, and so twice a day could be bringing out their inner child and getting healthier, happier and fitter on two wheels.

But part of my brief was also to talk about social enterprise; and for this I wanted to champion some of the overlooked good things about modern life and capitalist economies. Here’s a good thing: whenever any two people trade they are basically trusting each other to perform a favour; so as trade has become global, so has trust. This has the knock-on effect of making trading countries less likely to go to war; a phenomenon known as ‘gentle commerce’. Trade also associates positively with democracy and longer life expectancy – all of which should be a cause for great celebration.

By raising these points, I wanted to highlight the commonly committed logical fallacy of confusing the statement “capitalism has some things wrong with it” with “capitalism has everything wrong with it”. The first is correct, the second is ludicrous. Indeed, it can arguably be a little hypocritical; often people who advocate the second statement are so busy denouncing the system, they’re not actually doing anything to improve peoples’ lives within it. Have I missed the point? Should I be sitting in a tent rather than running Cycle Lifestyle? Instead of picking up the phone, writing emails, attending meetings, packaging up and posting magazines, writing articles and lobbying politicians, should I be sipping on a Starbucks coffee and denouncing the modern world? Bringing out our inner child doesn’t have to make us childish.

I’d also include a certain kind of "socialist" in this category of people who ‘denounce rather than do’. I'm not talking about all leftists - just the ones who make you wonder whether their insisting repeatedly that the state "should" do something is actually a mask for them saying “I can’t personally be bothered to do anything”. This is why I offered a defence of the Big Society at the conference. Strong communities are absolutely crucial to the well-being of a society, and so a culture of voluntarism, local enterprise and togetherness is a worthy cause – whether it’s advocated by David Cameron or, indeed, Neil Kinnock, whose passionate keynote speech in Blackpool in 1988 seems to have been forgotten by Guardian readers.

Isn’t this a bit of a digression from cycling? Far from it. Cycle Lifestyle’s London Cycle Map Campaign is calling for a properly signed and mapped network of safer, quieter routes (mostly comprising the 2,000 kilometres of London Cycle Network). This would enable new cyclists to navigate confidently in the capital. Rather than channelling bikes onto main roads, where there is a heavier concentration of dangerous trucks and other fast moving vehicles, a London Cycle Map would make cycling on the backstreets as easy as catching the Tube.

The point is: this, too, is a classic social enterprise approach. It combines realism about the economy with a real desire to fix aspects of it that aren’t working properly. The realism accepts that Londoners are going to need busy main roads and trucks for the foreseeable future. (How else are 10 million mouths going to get fed every day? How else will businesses and tradesmen transport goods and equipment?) The real desire I'm talking about means championing a solution that really could work. If you want to get to the moon on a bicycle, you don’t really want to get to the moon.

Likewise, if you want to get more people cycling but you don’t have a sensible proposal for doing it, your desire can’t be taken as seriously. Regretfully this is an apt description of the London Cycling Campaign’s adversarial but ineffective approach. By campaigning for more cycle routes on main roads (and against lorries) they are picking an unnecessary and unwinnable fight with capitalism. Despite (ironically) having a huge budget and massive resource base, in their hands the bicycle is in danger of becoming a naively regressive symbol (like a tent) rather than a symbol of hope and progress like Parker’s glorious London Cycle Map design.

An interesting short blog on the Guardian website asks which are the greenest football clubs in the country. The piece focuses on fans travelling to away games and the potential for car sharing, as well as other green initiatives clubs have been involved in (Ipswich Town, for instance, commendably passing on food waste generated during the game to a nearby bio-energy plant).

But one obvious avenue to greener football clubs was overlooked by the blog: the potential for fans to cycle to games, especially home games. Gareth Jenkins and myself rode to see Tottenham Hotspur in action at White Hart Lane, and had a glorious time. The thing we noticed most was how much more exciting the build up to the game was when we were on our bikes, soaking up the atmosphere around the ground.

It seems to me that football clubs, Spurs included, could be doing a lot more to promote cycling to the tens of thousands of fans who attend home games. How about players doing a lap of the pitch on bikes as a PR stunt? Or the club director swapping the 4x4 for a bicycle? Or clubs just installing more bike parking, and promoting cycling in the matchday programme? What if the premier league incentivised cycling among fans with a 'green league', which could give clubs extra prize money based on their positions at the end of the season?

With lots of football clubs in London, fans in the capital could even cycle to away games as well. It's something that football has overlooked, and perhaps the cycling community has too. There is a lot of focus on commuting, but matchday also sees a mass migration of people - and perhaps because those supporters are inherently attracted by sport and physical exercise there's more scope for getting them interested in cycling?

What do you think can be done to encourage more football fans to cycle?

Do you cycle to see your favourite football team in action?

Transport for London's cycling website has been updated with useful information about riding in winter - including tips on safety equipment, cycle maintenance, clothing and accessories.

Registration for training sessions is also available, if you wish to gain confidence for cycling in the dark.

tfl.gov.uk/cyclesafely

Charity Sustrans reports that as many as 580 deaths and serious injuries among children could be prevented in Britain each year with the introduction of 20mph into urban areas where 30mph is the current limit.

Indeed, as the clocks go back and children make their winter journeys to and from school in darker conditions, the need for safer roads is more urgent.

Miranda Krestovnikoff, Ambassador for Sustrans’ Free Range Kids Campaign, says; ‘Dressing our children in high-visibility clothes from head to toe does not tackle the source of the danger. What we need is to reduce traffic speeds in residential and urban areas to 20mph, and invest far more in creating safe walking and cycling routes, to school and beyond.

‘If we don’t then our children will be denied the freedom we so enjoyed, and miss out on so much that makes childhood special.’

Thirty years ago 80 per cent of seven and eight year olds walked or cycled to school on their own. Now that figure is reversed and 80 per cent of children of a similar age are accompanied by an adult, increasingly in a car.

As a result, children are less independent, less physically active (and getting fatter), and having less fun and freedom than they would like.

Sustrans launched its Free Range Kids campaign this summer to help change that and give children more opportunities to be active and independent. Support the campaign at www.sustrans.org.uk/freerangekids or urge your local MP to sign the Free Range Kids Early Day Motion.

Cycle Lifestyle enthusiastically supports this campaign.