Breadcrumbs and Totems? No, I haven’t completely lost the plot. In fact, this blog entry is all about plotting: plotting a route through London’s streets using a London Cycle Map.

Since I started the London Cycle Map Campaign, the most common ‘objections’ I’ve heard are:

1. You can’t actually use Parker’s map because there are no signs on the streets; and

2. You can’t actually use Parker’s map because it doesn’t include enough detail to show which streets his coloured routes are on.

Along these lines, one critic has lambasted the allegedly “mythical routes” on Parker’s map; another has called it an “utterly useless schematic diagram”. Time to roll up the sleeves again and get explaining.

First, objection number 1.

Simple: it misses the entire point of the London Cycle Map Campaign. If Parker’s map were usable right now, there would be no need for a campaign! The campaign is lobbying for adequate signage and markings on the streets, so that cyclists in London can follow coloured routes corresponding to Parker’s design. The sheer groundbreaking bolt-from-the-blue (or green or red or orange) brilliance of Parker’s ‘compass colour system’ is that, with adequate signage on the streets, cyclists would always find a long straight cycle route marked with a single colour leading them in the general direction of wherever they wanted to go. This is ‘almost as marvellous an invention as the bicycle itself’ – as one commentator has put it.

Of course, the assumption is that roads can be marked in such a way as to make Parker’s routes navigable. In contemplating putting up a few more signs, I’ve heard many a borough officer grumbling about unnecessary ‘streetscape clutter’, as if the millions of cars currently smoking out London’s streets aren’t already untidy. But there is a legitimate query lurking in there somewhere. What is important is to explain how exactly the signage would work.

A big part of the answer may be ‘breadcrumbs’. Bear with me. Traditional road-side signs (i.e. on lampposts) will be necessary whenever Parker’s routes turn corners or where routes intersect, but it will be markings on the road which do most of the work leading cyclists along. Just as Hansel and Gretel left a trail of breadcrumbs on the ground so that they could find their way out of the forest, the streets represented by Parker’s London Cycle Map could have coloured spots – ‘breadcrumbs’ – all along them, for cyclists to follow.

These breadcrumbs needn’t be too big or obtrusive: no-one needs to worry that their hard-earned Georgian mansion with its Bentley parked outside is going to be devalued by ugly loaves strewn across the road. All that’s needed would be small coloured dots of paint every, say, 10 metres, accompanied by the occasional code (e.g. R1 or G2 or C6) informing cyclists exactly which coloured route they were on. Such a small and relatively inexpensive measure; but such a big, big help to uninitiated cyclists trying to plot their way through the quieter backstreets of the London Cycle Network.

The breadcrumbs could even be illuminated – like, say, the little dots which heroically lead cyclists out of Cambridge along Ditton Lane. When you leave town along this road, the environment becomes more rural – and in the dark, rural can mean ‘scary’. Thankfully, Cambridgeshire County Council has sensibly studded the cycle tracks beside the main road with little lights which keep cyclists safely oriented. The lights are solar-powered, so they charge during the day then lay-out a glorious, gently-glowing trail at night-time. It looks like an airport runway, but more subtle: think LEDs rather than powerful uplights.

Marking out a path with colours is not unprecedented. Hospitals use this principle to help people find their way about. Who can claim never to have been relieved to encounter those streaks of colours snaking around labyrinthine Victorian corridors, directing visitors through a gauntlet of incomprehensible -ology departments? How wonderful it would be if London’s thousands of kilometres of cycle routes were woven together in a similar fashion, with lines of coloured dots, like pearls.

And regardless of the fact that it involves colours, Parker’s system is admirable simply because it imposes order on chaos. Like a magic eye, his map makes an identifiable pattern out of a tangle of London Cycle Network routes. We’re used to encountering logical organisation in so many other areas of our lives: whether it’s a decent map of a festival site, the intuitive layout of the internet, or the sequential orderliness of house numbers along a normal street. Why shouldn’t cyclists demand some organisation and logic when navigating through the capital on a bike?

This leads to objection number 2. How will people know which streets Parker’s routes are on in the first place? I’ve addressed this question many times before, so I’ll put it plainly here. In the case of the Tube map, you’ve got to use another map, or ask someone, if you want to find out where the Tube stations are. If you don’t do this, you can’t get onto the network (or off it, to your final destination). The same goes for Parker’s routes: you’d need to use another map, or ask someone, in order to get on and off the London Cycle Network.

But there is another option, and this is where ‘totems’ come in. For the majority of Tube journeys, people don’t need to consult an extra map showing them how to get to and from the stations. People just know where the stations are. They’re landmarks in London, with their ‘roundels’ jutting out from street-side buildings, like beacons. People meet at Tube stations, indeed, precisely because we all know where the most famous ones are.

The point is: one day the junctions on the London Cycle Network could be as deeply embedded in Londoners’ minds as Tube stations. At every junction could be a tall post with a sign – perhaps a sphere – on top, signifying which two routes were intersecting: a ‘totem’. So, ‘C2G3’ would be at the intersection of C2 and G3, ‘G106’ would be at the intersection of G1 and 06, and so on. Over time, the totems could be given colloquial (and more memorable) names, relating more directly to the local area – just like Tube stations, such as St James Park, Baker Street, Barbican, and so on.

What a prospect! A grand and proud city draped in glorious strands of colour, punctuated occasionally by totems thrusting skywards, asserting London’s commitment to modernisation. All it would take is a little imagination. And all that would take is to shake off the old prejudices, the old arguments with car drivers, the old ways of mapping cycle networks; to look forward instead. Now that’s worth plotting for.

Please help us by signing the London Cycle Map Campaign petition.