Middle of the road cycling
We all know saddling up will help save the environment and get us fit, but the capital's streets can be a battlefield for the biking Londoner. Here's Time Out's expert survival guide to cycling in the city
Middle of the road cycling
Rent a ride
If you want to test out the London cycling experience before you invest in a bike, there are a couple of great hire companies. Go Pedal!
(www.gopedal.co.uk / 07850 796320) delivers bikes where and when you want
them, and then collects when you’re all finished. Mainly servicing
hotels, the company provides bikes of three-geared French design, with
fat tyres to cope with London’s pothole-ridden, broken-glass-strewn
roads. They come with a helmet, lock, advice on where to cycle plus
lights, high-visibility waistcoat and cycle clips if you want. Prices
start at £32 per day, with hefty discounts the more
bikes you hire.
Feature continues
Or if you love Copenhagen’s street-based network of yellow rental bikes, OY Bike (0845 226 5751/www.oybike.com) does the same in London. Use your mobile to organise it. Get the PIN to unlock the bike via text, and they deduct the fee – ranging from free for up to 30mins to £8 per day – from your initial £10 credit. Then off you go. Locations are mostly west and south-west (where OY started), but it has branched out into north-west London and will have all of the city covered by next summer. You can drop the bike back at any OY Bike stand, not just the one you collected it from.
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Get online
There
are plenty of London-specific cycling websites offering everything from
rated local shops to route-planning your commute to work. The most
well-known is the London Cycling Campaign (www.lcc.org.uk), an
independent group with serious lobby power which offers 19 free cycle
guides with all the back street routes, 13 downloadable guides
including ‘Cycle Maintenance’ and ‘Buying a Bike’, and a regularly
updated list of repair workshops, free rides and other events that
people can participate in. Other sites include: www.bike-events.com which details upcoming sponsored, group and children’s bike rides around the country; www.ctc.org.uk, a national cyclists organisation listing events and rides, plus other bike-related information; www.londoncyclenetwork.org.uk
a very useful site detailing everything you need to know about London’s
cycling network; and of course, Transport for London’s official site, www.tfl.gov.uk.
Go bespoke
Bikes designed for women
used to mean no crossbars and the inclusion of a basket, but in the
last decade there’s been a revolution in female bike design. Besides
the obvious stuff such as wider saddles (for wider pelvic bones) and
smaller frame sizes (for smaller statures), there are now entire ranges
of bikes designed from scratch with the smaller-built female rider in
mind. Our favourite is the excellent Trek WSD range, which includes
fast road bikes with slightly smaller-than-standard wheels for improved
fit and handling; the fabulous attention to detail includes smaller
brake levers, shorter cranks and frames that are redesigned, not merely
smaller. Other companies who go the extra mile for women include Giant,
Specialized and Cannondale. A bike that’s correctly sized can mean the
difference between comfort and a pain in the butt.
Expert tip ‘I would leave my full-size bike in the garage, along with all the Lycra and fly-eye glasses. I never ride anything in London other than a folder, and a Brompton ML3 for preference. A folder can be taken home by train, bus, tube or taxi if necessary, and it lives under your desk.’ David Henshaw, editor of A to B magazine (www.atob.org.uk).
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8 comments
UrbanCycleChic.com : bike fashion, velo vogue and bike porn. Bespoke recycled bike advocacy and boutique. Fix it, bling it, flaunt it - join the catwalk on wheels. Fixed, Dutch, road or dumpster? It's just an everyday way of getting around your urban playground, in everyday clothes. Beat the traffic, beat the credit crunch and be inspired.
Re: 'myth 2', the main thing to remember about is that almost all with-flow bus lanes are open to cycles, whereas many contra-flow bus lanes, eg Piccadilly westbound, are not. (Tip: Jermyn Street makes a good alternative to Piccadilly if you're heading west).
Moving to London in September and I plan to bike as my primary mode of transport. Great article! Great advice! Thank you!
I do however worry about the rain. Can anyone recommend proper attire for riding in such conditions? May sound like a silly question, but I've ridden my bike for years in the desert southwest of the United States. Not used to rainy weather. Thank you brothers and sisters.
Peace.
Brian
James Ivy, great tip!
About cycling in the Netherlands, it's more comfortable because it has always been a policy to create a good infrastructure in the Netherlands in the biggest part of the country. It's about much more than only segregated cycycle paths although they are very important indeed!
Other factors which are very important:
1. Limiting the distance to work, shops and recreation
2. Limiting cars in cities
3. Limiting the cross sections for cyclists
4. Choosing for a specific design of roads to limit the number of cross sections
Etcetera
Here is some interesting reading material in Englisch, from the Dutch government: www.fietsberaad.nl/library/repository/bestanden/Cycling %20in%20the%20Netherlands%20VenW.pdf
This literature has been written because they got a lot of questions from foreign governments. It should be olibgated lecture for every urban architect and traffiic politician.
Greets to Eugenie in the NL! Some London councils DO offer FREE cycling lessons aimed all levels of cyclist. Check your local council website, and then go and learn how to play with the multi-lane interchanges! Having last lived in London pre-congestion charge, it was really useful to take up the offer on moving back, as a kind of inner-city cycling refresher course.
Eugenie has one great advantage in the NL as a cyclist - right of way over cars and trucks. A great discovery as a Brit! And with all those segregated cycle paths, no wonder my colleagues there were so chilled. My London commute has different pleasures I guess (namely adrenalin!)
But she is right about the value of the police booking cyclists too: you don't forget your lights often if it's going to cost you 40 Euros each time! That said, having recently being pulled up by a PCSO, for pushing my bike onto the road outside Vict Station, and then getting on to it, the signage needs to be a lot clearer! Apparently this quiet corner of tarmac, with good visibility, controlled by traffic lights, constituted part of the bus station, not the road (??!!!), and was therefore private!
Red lights, are however stop lights, world wide.
An excellent article, very informative and good to read. A great beginner's guide too. Regarding stopping at the lights… I've been cycling for 25 years – no accidents – and have found the safest option is to get away before the traffic behind. If that means me going through a red light then so be it – as long as you still give pedestrians right of way. The cars behind are more of a danger to me than I am to anyone else. By hoing through the lights I don't mean flying tthrough with abandon. Either cross from a standstill – having watched for crossing traffic – or slow down to walking pace before continuing across th junction. You'll live longer that way
I ride a recumbent trike in London a lot, I see all sorts of things and can give the following comments.
Cyclists should stop at red lights, most do but some fools don't, the rest of us get a bad name from them.
Pedestrians are all blind, especially in Docklands and Canary Wharf, they will happily step out in front of a cyclist after first making eye contact, they object to suffering physical contact due to their stupidity.
Cyclists should note hackney licence numbers of any cabs that cut them up, it's actually quite rare, I get a lot of respect from black cabs in general.
Police cars will knock you off your bike, the drivers are blind.
Bus drivers are blind and below average intelligence, make allowances, buses can squish cyclists and not notice.
Don't cycle on pavements and abuse pedestrians, cyclists that do this should be clubbed to death, if I am walking and this happens to me I always make the cyclists get off.
Use lights at night, there is no excuse.
Some cycle lanes are good, most are not, ride the road when the lanes are naff.
Ride a recumbent, it's more comfortable, I think most of the problem cyclists are just miserable because of the extreme pain of having an axe head to sit on.
Love the articles. Have been riding in London for years and worked at Condor. Now back in Holland. Just one thing what I have noticed since July 7: there are more and more cyclists on London roads (positive, of course!), but most "7-July-riders" (as I call them) could do with traffic lessons as many just don't seem to know how to handle traffic (or stop signs!) in London. They are not only endangering themselves but also other cyclists. Maybe Ken should, beside creating a decent cycle network by people who actually know what they are doing, also offer some free lessons for Londoners (or otherwise the Police should be stricter and book them!). Greetings from Amsterdam!