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Christchurch is the major city of the South Island of New Zealand, an attractive place that I have visited a few times. It is one of the most anglicised places in the Southern Hemisphere, designed with parks and squares around … Continue reading
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After the hustle and bustle of Sydney we set off for the South Island of New Zealand for a complete change of pace. Before heading to my wife’s home town in the far south of the country we decided to … Continue reading
So Aussie is done. 28 days, 3 cities, about 20 bike rides and many more trips by train, tram, ferry and car.
And like all travellers I will come back to the question “how was it?”
Of course I am going to say “brilliant” – because what will stick longest in the memory will be the high points. Velo-city Global 2014 was full of inspirational people and I met many more en route. And I had some excellent rides that will always be fond memories.
I had hopes for a strong cycling presence on the streets because I had heard that there has been something of a renaissance of cycling levels, especially in Melbourne and Adelaide. But when I reflect further on my overall impression of cycling and cycling culture in the three cities I visited I am more inclined to say “curious” and even “challenging” because there are many aspects that present our Australian cycling friends with big challenges.
First the good news.
If there is going to be great cycling in cities the opportunities don’t fall in to place by accident. Things happen because there is some mix of advocates, politicians and technicians who have vision, passion and influence. And faced by the challenges of their cycling culture they are willing to stand up and be different, starting to promote cycling as a mass activity not just a sport.
There is no doubt in my mind that those people were at Velo-city and across Australia. Politically our Adelaide host was Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood who was a role model on the podium and at events like the Big Bike Brekkie where he seemed more like the Europeans by turning up in his day clothes and just riding.
Most advocacy organisations in Australia are not huge and are heavily reliant on events to boost membership and pay the bills. But Bicycle Victoria is per capita possibly one of the biggest cycling advocacy organisations in the world with over 40,000 members from a population of just 5 million, hugely impressive. The other organisations are no less passionate if perhaps not as big.
The other community we met were the local promoters, entrepreneurs and activists who were great fun and great to be around. And of course in that community a huge shout out to Tina McCarthy our ride host in Melbourne. Her boundless energy and enthusiasm is infectious.
There are lots more people I could mention and many more who I didn’t meet but heard about and read their valuable contributions to the Velo-city discussions. I have no doubt that I was among friends and fellow travellers on the road to more cycling and I have to thank them for being great hosts.
The second bit of good news is that things are happing on the ground. At the moment the amount of really high quality cycling infrastructure is very limited so the signs have to be considered “green shoots”, especially because the quality infrastructure in the cities is far from established. The one high quality cycle route in Adelaide was only part finished and already there is a vote at the state parliament to try and get rid of it.
However in central Melbourne I saw that the much more established infrastructure was working because there were many more riders and some of them were not the usual suspects in lycra, this felt much more like a cycling city with a wider selection of riders.
The urban leisure infrastructure is well established and well used. I have posted how much I enjoyed the River Torrens route in Adelaide, the round the bay routes in Melbourne and the Olympic Park in Sydney.
As well as the urban routes I will long remember my ride out to West Head in Sydney’s Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, it was spectacular.
And these leisure routes were being used, there was a steady drip-drip of cyclists on all of them.
So on reflection I can report that these three Australian cities gave the impression that they could be joining the international group of “starter” cities that have begun their cycling revolution and could move up to next level where cycling starts to take a proper place in transport.
But, but, but……
This revolution currently looks different to anywhere else I have been. It isn’t Dutch or Danish, that’s for sure, but it is also different from the other low level cycling countries I have visited.
Just as Australia is inhabited by different looking animals as far as I could see Australian cycling culture is really all about different looking people, manly MAMILs (Middle Aged Men in Lycra). Yes there are hipsters on fixies. Yes there are some women and young people and even people in day clothes just pottering about on bikes. But it seems to me that they are having almost zero impact on the understanding, reporting and promotion of cycling. Throw in the image of the Prime Minister thrashing about on a road bike with his mates to show his machismo and you can see what cycling promoters are up against. The Bike Brekkie in Adelaide was supposed to promote city cycling and most people turned up in lycra. Doh!
Some of the Australian advocates were also getting just a bit frustrated with the European delegates who they said were “obsessed with helmets”. Having spent a month here I think I understand that much better. Helmets really don’t matter as much if the vast majority of cycling is a sport you dress up and something you do as an “activity” because you could take away the helmets and not much else would change. So the helmet issue is really the tip of a much bigger iceberg, the problem that so few people have any concept of cycling as a daily activity, as a normal mode of transport for short trips. I may have photographed a few people in Melbourne in normal clothes but when i observed evening rush hour the vast majority of riders were dressed for sport, not travel.
And I am really not sure some of the advocates are actually helping this situation either. I reported on the “extremist” cycling infrastructure in my last post, but it is much more than that. For example almost all the advocacy organisations rely hugely on leisure events for their income. That means their image, their web sites, their brochures and their exhibition stands are covered in images of people who look like cycle racers on fancy bikes and wearing lycra, sunglasses and helmets. To me the idea that these organisations represent what we would recognise as daily cycling just seems to get lost.
The other reason any possible cycling revolution looks different to me is because Australian cities really are really challenging places to promote cycling. As an English cyclist I didn’t enjoy cycling much 30 years ago when I lived in Australia and I still find the city layouts and transport patterns alien. In the central business districts there are grid pattern roads around huge tall modern buildings. Wide multi-lane highways leading right across the cities.
And then there are the suburbs, spreading and sprawling over a huge footprint because of the amount of space commanded by both houses and the huge wide roads that links them and the many out of town shopping malls. Car use and car parking dominated every aspect of the streetscape then and it is much worse now. In Sydney that is worse because it is steeply hilly, and hot.
Because of the colonial heritage I know some people thought Australia would be a version of Britain or Europe, just a long way away. In transport terms Britain is the easy comparison to make: they speak English, they drive on the left and they have failed to grow cycling for 30 years. Pretty obvious really. But wrong.
To my eyes there is almost nothing European about this urban form, it seems to have shaped itself on similar lines to North American cities which have developed over a very similar time period. In much of Europe we constantly battle over space, here there is almost too much of it and the cities have run amok. The few cities we have like this are more likely to be in Eastern Europe than anywhere else.
So whenever you cycle on road in Australia you have to be able to cope with extended distances because of the urban sprawl and I had to cross or turn on big multi-lane highways several times on every ride, a process that varied from challenging to terrifying, in particular in Sydney.
That is an impossible for all but the brave and it strikes me that without comprehensive national or state strategies for junction management cycling in Australia will be forever stuck with just the most fearless of cyclists. The existing on-road cycle lane network is frankly worse than useless as I wrote here.
I’ll make just one final observation that I found seriously disturbing.
One of the most important motivations for getting people cycling and keeping them cycling is the fact that cycling makes you feel better. It is fun. It makes us smile. We know there are mental health benefits of cycling. We know that according to research the health benefits outweigh the risks by factors as much as 20:1.
But probably because of the compensation culture in Australia parts of the cycling world somehow seems to have let their lawyers squeeze the joy out of cycling.
Take this sign beside a beautiful, smooth, car-free cycle track.
Or this wording on the web site of a cycling organisation.
Whatever happened to joy, spontaneity, freedom……..?
And when the cycle helmet discussion flared up in the media in Adelaide I was astonished to see on television that instead of the usual trauma doctors that we always debate with the entire debate in favour of helmets was being conducted by accident compensation lawyers.
It was all deeply depressing.
So what do I conclude overall?
From this evidence promoting cycling as a mass activity in Australia looks like a doomed enterprise. The advocates are probably right, the cycle helmet compulsion that we Europeans see as a huge barrier is actually as more a symptom of an underlying culture where cycling is a sport and leisure activity operating in a suffocating legal climate.
One international expert at Velo-city was so frustrated by all the lycra, the helmets and the accepting attitude of the advocates he said to me “I give up on this country”.
I disagree. Against the background of cycling in Australia the change agents at all levels demand our respect, our support, maybe even our sympathy and certainly our encouragement because every bit of progress that they make to “normalise” cycling is a bigger victory than it would be almost anywhere else.
And it can be done. The new lanes are going into the centre of the cities despite the opposition. And almost at the end of my trip I went out to Sydney’s seaside suburb of Manly. I found bikes at the ferry terminal like at a European station. And I found a whole community of laid back people just pottering about on bikes, carrying surf boards and children and generally living a bike friendly life. No special clothing, almost no helmets.
It was lovely, a breath of fresh air, a real cycling treasure. If here, why not everywhere in Australia? C’mon Australia, every cycling day could and should be like this.
I do not despair.
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One thing was absent for seven days during my recent trip to in Melbourne. Cycling. Catching up with family and friends is always special. We explored some lovely settings. We consumed large quantities of excellent food and drink. But my … Continue reading
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Another of my short gallery posts from Australia, this time leaving Melbourne to visit Fish Creek, two hours south-east from central Melbourne in the farming region of South Gippsland. This could so easily have been a cycling post. Having arrived … Continue reading
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Next in my mini-series of the Melbourne suburbs where family and friends now live. By contrast to yesterday’s post on the country suburb of Yarrambat this time we go back to the waterside and the boating heaven of Patterson Lakes. … Continue reading
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I always understood that Sydney is Australia’s glamour city in terms of tourism but Melbourne is the constant winner in terms of lifestyle. From this trip we certainly found that our family and friends in Melbourne have developed amazing variety … Continue reading
Not two words often combined – cycling and dolphins.
I have had not one but two encounters with these beautiful creatures and both times it happened while cycling. I am sure some readers come from places where they are common but for me they are an extraordinary treat, a fascination from nature programmes on TV since childhood.
On Monday I took a Melbourne bike share bicycle out from the city to revisit the area I lived nearly 30 years ago when I was working in the city. I was returning along the beachfront cycle paths in Middle Park when I spotted the few people on the beach were staring out to sea and taking photos. I couldn’t pick up what it was while riding but I assumed an interesting boat or some divers so I stopped against the beach wall.
I was absolutely delighted when I realised that there was a small family of dolphins, two adults and a youngster, circling around about 200 metres off shore. The water was millpond smooth on the almost windless afternoon so every ripple was visible. Sadly they never jumped right out of the water but I spent nearly 15 to 20 minutes watching and trying to coincide my photos with the places they surfaced. I was told there were dolphins in the bay when I lived here before but despite coming to this beach to run or swim for much of that year I never saw them. They cannot be that common off these beaches because their appearance was reported in a local paper the next day so I felt even more privileged.
My mind was also taken back nearly nine years to my previous dolphin encounter which remains one of life’s cycle touring highlights. My son Ben and I had a special cycle tour down the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island in December 2005 when he was 14 years old. On the longest day’s ride from Fox Glacier to the Haast Pass the road passed right along a beach and we decided this was the place for our lunch stop. Obligatory stone throwing and larking about ensued before we tackled the sandwiches sitting on the low sea wall. (Bruce Bay I think)
However the notorious West Coast sandflies soon discovered their own free lunch and despite the prodigious amounts of deterrent spray we were about to give up when we had our magic moment. A little group of black and white dusky dolphins started surfing in the waves. They clearly seemed to be playing as they returned time after time in ones and 
twos to race in just under the wave crests. Then as quickly as they had come they disappeared with just a departing fin and a splash on the surface.
On both these occasions I really feel I would not have stopped if I had been in a car or on a tour bus and I would not have recognised the dolphins at driving speed.
Slow travel with the ability to stop and start almost anywhere is part of what makes cycling so special and I treasure my wildlife encounters almost as much as my human ones. I also perhaps wish I carried a bigger, higher quality camera when I am photographing animals because they are even more difficult than cyclists for reasonable images.
But the quality of the photos cannot take away the memories and dolphin encounters remain rare and precious moments in my cycling life.
Time flies at Velo-city, and it goes even faster when we have to dash off for a tour of long neglected friends and relatives around Australia and New Zealand.
So before I am swamped by the hustle and bustle of Melbourne and Sydney here are my final visitor’s reflections on Adelaide.* The most common description of Adelaide I hear from Australians is that Adelaide is “just a big country town” which is something of a put down from its big brash neighbours. But as a country boy myself that isn’t a put down, it’s a commendation.
There is undoubtedly a grain of truth in the description. At its heart Adelaide remains a very accessible and relatively relaxed city. Its design helps, the 19th century utopian layout with green spaces and a circular park around the compact central district create a nice atmosphere. That’s the impression I really remember from when I first went there in the 1980s, work trips that sometimes involved a weekend break in the city. The city is working incredibly hard to keep, or maybe recreate that feeling, as a modern liveable city with improvements to the city open spaces, pedestrian streets and eating quarters where people want to spend time. I liked it then and I liked it this time.
There are also still quite a lot of those 19th and early 20th century buildings that we can call “colonial” style, from government buildings to churches, pubs and shops. They are unmistakeably Australian and a vital part of the city character.
However these are somewhat swamped by the modern buildings that are allowed to dominate the skyline and create the impression of much narrower streets, especially on the gloomier days.
Biggest shock of all was to see the Adelaide Oval dominating the banks of the River Torrens to the North. I recall a traditional green painted cricket ground that nestled into the parkland and was an attractive companion to the nearby cathedral. Now it is a monster, but one that attracts up to 70,000 footie fans (Australian Rules Football) every weekend and is a major contributor to the city economy. As a fan I like these great cathedrals of sport, however I have to say that it just seemed a bit intrusive compared to what I remember.
The cycling environment reflected the city.
There is a huge amount of space for cycling and it would be so easy to grab a lane in most streets but at the moment that is not a political reality. The city Mayor and the state government of South Australia both understand the need to do something about the impact of cars on the city and to deliver the liveable city they want. But with big wide streets and low traffic levels compared to many other cities the imperative for change in travel behaviour isn’t there yet. The one segregated cycle lane in the centre lane has yet to be completed due to the anti-cycling pressure, but there are at least other facilities which can act as the forerunners for change.
I found it quite easy to ride most of the time and I think the traffic really wasn’t especially aggressive compared to many other cities I have ridden in. And the traffic levels really were very light, except for a brief burst in rush hour and the hours after the footie on a Saturday night.
However the huge roads with multiple lanes did make it almost impossible to work out how to turn right and I spent frustrating amounts of time stuck at traffic lights which made progress painfully slow. Some of our colleagues from countries that have superb infrastructure found it intimidating and it certainly isn’t conducive to nervous cyclists because of the difficult junctions.
Confirming that impression the cycling levels were apparently low and completely dominated by sporty looking cyclists. You can see from my photos that I hardly ever had a cyclist as a backdrop. It was autumnal and rainy on some days – but none? At the weekend along the Torrens there were lots of families but even in the city the number of riders in day clothes was almost non-existent. The mass ride for Velo-city was called the Bike Brekkie Ride and was meant to attract the city cycling community. If the turnout was typical it showed that the city really doesn’t have an underlying daily cycling culture.
The Mayor and the Adelaide City CEO almost stood out in their day clothes. I was riding along in my shirt and jacket and felt like I had completely met the brief “to stand out in the crowd”, I even attracted comments to that effect.
And the cycle helmets really, really do not help. It is almost impossible in my mind to remove the “warrior” impression portrayed by almost cyclist I saw just because they were forced to wear a plastic lid. Normalised cycling remains a bit of leap of faith at the moment, it is going to take a lot more efforts to get to that point. However the sport and leisure base is strong so that should give confidence that there is an underlying demand waiting to be tapped.
On balance I would say that Adelaide is meeting the challenge of modernity and liveability in a way that I can really identify with. For those that know their British cities it reminds me of Cardiff – with many of the amenities and lifestyle options of a capital city but in a manageable package. I lived happily in Cardiff for 10 years so I could certainly do the same in Adelaide and it was a great place for a visit.
If the on line chatter after Velo-city is anything to go by so did our many other visitors.
*There are numerous reflections and commentaries on the Velo-city conference itself on other sources. I have linked to a number of them from my Twitter account @maynekevin and our ECF web site has a daily summary on our news pages here
Some of my other favourites are the Australian ones by Steven Fleming ; Bicycles network and ABC television.
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My kind of place.
Off to the distinctly hip East End of Adelaide for a coffee at the “Bikes and baristas” Saturday event as part of Velo-fringe.
And joy – a bike jumble. Old bike bits, renovations, upgrades, fixies and lots of steel bikes.
Sadly luggage limitations stop me cashing in. (And the watchful eye of my travelling companion). Indeed I might have made a killing with my personal collection of 1960s and 1970s European cycling rubbish had I but known.
But a very cool start to the week if you like that kind of thing. .And great coffee!
I have a new proposal for how to measure quantities of bikes. It is called the “Utrecht scale” and it is based on the “ocean of bicycles” I described several weeks ago.
I had some hopes of my own. I suggested then that we needed a new measurement for cycle parking. The “Mayne scale” would be based on how long it took to walk the length of the bike park. In the case of Utrecht, it would be top of the scale with over 8 minutes from end to end. When cyclists rule the world we will need a new vocabulary, just like eskimos were supposed to have 40 words for snow and maybe my scale could have become as established as Richter, Geiger or Beaufort. But the Mayne scale is not to be.
No. For for the international comparison of bicycle numbers only the “Utrecht scale” will do now. A scale based on oceans, seas, lakes and puddles will tell us all we need to know about numbers of parked bikes.
It was a simple phrase that started it. I wrote “In Utrecht I saw a sea of bikes. In fact no I didn’t, I saw an ocean of bikes.” And then I linked it to this picture and sent it off on social media.
The rest, as they say, is history.
By the following weekend it had made two local papers and the traffic on this blog had reached heights I could hardly have imagined even a week earlier.
We even made a news story about cy
cle parking making the news on the ECF web site.
But it was not only Utrecht. Since then people keep sending me their cycle parking pictures from around the world and using the phrase “sea of bicycles” whenever they meet a big quantity of bikes.
The first phase of the huge new underground cycle park in Utrecht opened this week, taking the first 2000 bikes off the streets. So as a legacy of those amazing displays of bikes that may soon be no more, and for the proud people of Utrecht who love their cycle parking here is my first attempt at the “Utrecht scale” for cycle parking.
Ocean of bicycles
Bikes as far as the eye can see. Over 20,000 bikes. Take some emergency rations before you go and look for your bike, this may take some time. Example? Utrecht!
Sea of bicycles
A concentrated mass of bikes. More than 5000 in one place. You may need a guide and some time to get in and out of here. Example? It seems to be almost any Dutch station, but increasingly Flanders including Bruges and Ghent.
Lake
Now the minimum standard for any decent cycling town is to have 1000 bikes at main hubs like universities and railway stations. An honourable mention now to Bologna, Italy which has the biggest lake of rusty old student bikes round their railway station that I have ever seen.
Pond
Every village should have a pond. Ducks on the water, somewhere for children to paddle and for animals to drink. So every small area of shops, every park, every street corner should have at least a pond of bike parking to cater for local needs. Examples? Hopefully everywhere, but Copenhagen is a perfect example of putting the parking on every corner, including cargo bikes.
Canal
A level especially created for Amsterdam. Or any other city where the bikes are not parked together in a massive body but instead flow through the streets like the waterways that run through the city.
Puddle
Well you couldn’t get very wet in that could you? Just one or two bikes? Berlin – could do better!
Muddy puddle
As above, but with mountain bikes! From Whistler, where else!
Frozen puddle – Memmingen, Germany, at minus 14 degrees centigrade.
To complement the Utrecht scale I did think of some other useful phrases with a watery flavour
Tsunami of bicycles – what happens when everybody in Utrecht tries to get on their bikes at the same time.
Desert – Trying to find any evidence of bicycle life here is pretty hard.
Splash – several bikes thrown together informally, the basis for much of the cycle parking in Salzberg, Austria.
Dried up river bed – speaks for itself.
Reservoir – 700 Bixi bikes waiting for Velo-city 2012 delegates to arrive – Vancouver.
So now then readers – does this work for you? And what would your watery terms for cycling be?
To finish – my favourite watery cycling photo. I look forward to your comments!
If I lived in Rimini I would spend a lot of time in the Café Delle Rosa.
I am a morning person. (If you regard mornings as a torture inflicted on you personally by the devil you can probably ignore the rest of this post!). I wake relatively early when I am at home and in hotel rooms it is quite common that I am awake at four or five am. More than a few of these blog posts have been written in the early hours, but more importantly I think morning is the perfect time to be out in the world. The light, wildlife, tranquillity, empty roads all add up to a great time to see a place or a country. Here in Rimini the view from my room to the mountains of the Marche was just so much sharper in the morning it was tempting me out immediately.
The frustration with that is that I am also a breakfast person and waking up in a hotel where I cannot even get a coffee until 7.30 am can really takes the shine off an early wander.
As a chilly morning started in Rimini I was tempted out of my hotel room by the prospect of a walk and a chance to catch the beach while it was deserted.
To my joy I discovered that close to the sea front was this wonderful 24 hour café serving delicious fresh pastries and confirming why the coffee machine is perhaps Italy’s greatest gift to the world. (More than Campagnolo?….now there’s a debate.) I needed some “me-time” and a passed almost an hour sorting out the world in my head.
I cannot imagine that I would ever want to live in a place that has 7 million visitors a year and in peak season sells its beach by the square metre. But if I did I would come down here on one of the shared Rimini bikes that have a parking point perfectly positioned in front of the café. My only dilemma would be whether to walk and cycle along the beach before or after my coffee.
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My last Sunday in Belgium before I head off for Australia and New Zealand for Velo-city 2014 and some overdue holiday. So it was fitting that the weather turned on a spectacular day, the Walloon countryside was beautiful and we … Continue reading
Stepping outside my hotel at the ECF AGM in Dublin I cannot help but smile.
Aren’t cute pets what the internet was invented for?
And just nearby the Dublin bikes are waiting for action in front of the historic Christchurch on a lovely spring morning.
It’s going to be a good day.
I Do Not Despair 