LHR: missing the fucking point

The entrance to Heathrow is three lanes of traffic. Motor traffic: cyclists are not allowed


That's because what was a cycle lane, got turned into a narrow, high-restricted traffic lane instead.


Notice how, along with the signs for the terminal there's one for "short stay parking"

That is: in order to cope with the number of cars entering the area, including private cars doing dropoff and parking in short stay parking bays. And of course the multi-storey staff parking in the central mess of what just another pedestrian and cycling hating 1970s gyratory.

They have added a "cycling hub"


That's not a hub: its a fucking spoke —and if Heathrow management are proud of it they haven't spoken to a single person who has ever tried to cycle to the airport.

The approach? That'll be on road on the A4


It's worth remembering at this point is that only a few years ago, LHR promised "No third runway".

They lied. They probably had it on a roadmap at the time. This shows that (a) LHR can't be trusted and (b) if you want a binding commitment from them, you need to include a penalty in the T&Cs. If they really had meant "no third runway", the government should have said "you wont mind signing this clause that says £5000 pounds to everyone in the flight path plus £5B to central government".

Because all of this is about profit. Why do LHR have short-stay parking? Because its so fucking profitable. Why do LHR expect government to fund the M25 tunnels, refuse to pony up for Crossrail: it would hurt their profits: "Heathrow has repeatedly said it is not willing to pay more than about £1 billion, though the costs are estimated by Transport for London to be £15 – 20 billion." (source airportwatch)

LHR's business is about flying passengers in and out the airport. They like the hub idea, as it gets more people through: on the planes, in the shops. The airlines and the business love it too.

Those are the business in the "Greater LHR", the sprawl of companies nearby. All notable by their vast car parks, roads of death and lack of cycle parking.

This street view, for example, is facing 180 degrees away from Hatton Cross tube station. There's a tube station right behind, yet a vast car park for staff to drive to.


This is the mindset of every company supporting the 3rd runway: we want more planes near the offices which we drive to.

It's why the airport and the roads around it stand out as the outer london pollution hub (source: war on the motorist)


Yet LHR think their proposal will not make things worse: things are already fucking awful.

What's their vision? NOx is Somebody Else's Problem which will magically go away

1. Crossrail: this does nothing to discourage the "Greater LHR" staff/business traffic which forms the inner ring of pollution, nothing for the core, nothing for the new and expanded runways. And priced such that it will be a luxury option from the West Country.
2. Euro6 and EVs on the M4. Euro6 has been shown to be a line. That part of the proposal needs to be taken out of the spreadsheet.
3. The cycling hub

Which shows that they don't give a fuck, aren't prepared to do anything about it except pretend on spreadsheets that the actions of others will address it.

What's their problem? Failure to recognise that they are the central cause of the pollution, and should act on it.

A key point must be for them to recognise that they themselves are directly and indirectly responsible for all the pollution caused in Greater LHR, and they have to address it.

They need to understand something simple: every vehicle driving on heathrow related business is four less passengers. Make it that simple and they would start to think about what they should do.

Why are any private cars coming into the airport? Why not taxi only and dedicated disabled access (enforced) only, with special dropoff points for outside the central hub? Remove that traffic, converting one of each direction's tunnels into an electric tram the way other airports do, and you boost the capacity of the tunnels, and provide something for the commuters to get on their bikes with. Commuters —because every single staff parking bay needs to go. That's for the executive down: everyone who drives to work is costing the airport three passengers.

The airport could take baby steps immediately

• impose a toll on all private vehicles driving through the tunnel. A pound would be a start.
• remove that staff parking
• fix the fucking cycle access
• give all staff free bus and tube travel.
• get rid of the magic paint on the A4 and provide cycle routes for the staff from hounslow that are on a par with what central london is rolling out. If there is room for it in Central London, there's room for it by the A4. Boris has shown that.

Then turn to every business nearby whose livelihood depends on the airport and say "every one of your vehicles costs us for passengers: act". Again: close the car parks, offer free public transport, cycle parking. There's a wrinkle there: company funded train or TfL transport is treated as a taxable benefit, employees pay for it. Staff parking is not. That's something that central government could address, but in the meantime, what few parking bays remain could be billed for at significantly more than the tax-per-day of staff commuting by public transport. That will get people to prioritise.

Those trade unions saying "we need this!" —go to them and say "if your employees need this, they're going to have to stop driving". Make it clear there's a fucking choice.

From the perspective of Bristol —which would benefit a lot more from LHR expansion than Gatwick— LHR need to come up with a story. If there is more than one passenger, renting a car to drive from the city to one of those vast airport rental dropoff points is cheaper than two coach tickets, and avoids sitting in that central bus station which is as awful as a Banksy's Dismaland. LHR hate bus passengers. That's in the central hub, its almost as bad at T4 and T5 where you sit in a little bench and are expected to feel grateful.

If there are three passengers from Bristol, a private hire vehicle is less than those coach tickets; a PHV whose driver will come in early, wait in that short-stay parking and so give you a journey home whose experience outshines anything else.

If you are on a company trip and going for less than five days, you can get from the Bristol/S Gloucs North Fringe in under two hours, drop your car off right in front of the airport for a driver of Purple Parking or similar for them to park off-airport, bring it back to you. Because if you can get a private car right up the terminal -you would, wouldn't you? And of course, in a world of autonomous cars, anyone can do this, reading emails to the airport, sleeping on the way back after a long-haul flight to a new BRIC destination

Today the train from Bristol to Paddington and out doesn't cut it. While the LPAD->LHR stage is fast, you go past the airport and back again, on a train which can stop just outside paddington for 15 minutes because "they weren't expecting a train". And on the return journey, miss your reservation and you'll be fighting with all the reading commuters for space. Currently, the Bristol-paddington-LHR route is a premium option which can go horribly wrong. Crossrail will help with the logistics —but do nothing for the pricing, which will still be more than driving to the airport in a diesel car. With an electric car, the cost per mile will be so low that you really won't bother. And while that may reduce your personal NOx, it will create the M4 congestion which boosts pollution of all the diesels on the road.

Now look at Frankfurt airport, one of the big competitors

1. The Frankfurt AirRail terminal has its own baggage pickup: you can walk to the terminal and pick up your bags there.
2. You can check in at Frankfurt central train station, getting issued with a train ticket and the flight boarding card.
3. You can drop your bags at the station too. At heathrow: its trollies, queuing for elevators, pushing them up slopes, walking about half a mile underground.
4. If you get a flight with Lufthansa, you can buy a return train ticket to anywhere in germany for 29 €.

Imagine if you could do the same in the UK? At Paddington, Reading, Bristol, and at Kings Cross/St Pancras you could check in while waiting for the next train, get on the fast electric train to the airport, arrive at the station, drop off your bag and walk straight to security. For less than today's cost of a Heathrow express return ticket.

That would transform airport access for passengers from places in driving distance to the airport —suddenly it would be both cheaper and easier to get the train.

Finally, it's notable that LHR cite Paris and Amsterdam as the other key competitors. That's paris which bans cars on polluting days, which is trying to go car free. And Amsterdam, which has so many people cycling that their NOx map doesn't resemble other European cities. LHR need to look at London at a whole and conclude that anything done to reduce NOx and CO2 pollution in the city itself benefits them. If flight is so essential, then they need to think about offsetting flight pollution through a reduction in road pollution throughout the city —and work towards it with TfL.

Do Heathrow see that? Do they look at mainland europe and think "we should copy Frankfurt"? Go to BA and FGW and say "copy Lufthansa or we won't give you extra runway slots". Do they go to the business round the airport and say "what are you doing?"

No they fucking don't. They produce PDF files with the usual "empty road" bollocks you always get, fingers pointing at EURO6 cars, which, when that fails, LHR can say "not our fault", and build a cycling hub in the bit of the airport the furthest from the centre of the airport as it is possible to build.

Bingo card #2

Based on the recent London Taxi Drivers Association commentary on the proposed london cycle routes, here is an updated version of our original bingo card.

If you listen to the interview (35 minutes in), you can hear the taxi driver spokesperson say the entire checklist except for the "mutual respect". Nobody else has ever done this unintentionally before —the LTDA deserve to be nominated for the award for "most backward looking organisation", alongside the New Forest National Park Authority.

Boris the Blamer: the elephant in the room

This is probably the worst week in Britain's cycling history -to the extent that that the fact that someone else was crushed to death in London today: this time a pedestrian, was barely a surprise to cycling and road safety campaigners.

But to the families: the police turning up to advise that a loved one was dead will be a shock that will last for the rest of their lives.

The sheer awfulness of this week is brought out by the fact that the Bow Roundabout protest mid-week was protesting the death of four cyclists in eight days.

What would Boris Do? He's blaming the cyclists.

Why would he do this? The obvious answer: he's a selfish wanker who despite the claims that "dutch-style" cycling matters, doesn't mean it. He still thinks that cyclists can survive "if they keep their wits about them", and if not then it's their own fault, "they ran a red light" -which is of course the TfL world view.

TfL have that opinion because they are stuck in two worlds: mass transport -tubes and buses- and the car. Either way it's the big infrastructure projects their civil engineers love: overpasses, tube stations, grand things to be proud of -no shitty little bike lanes for ungrateful cyclists who are always complaining about your work.

With their direct control limited to the main roads, they end up being forced to build death-ways on them, because their overreaching objective "traffic flow" prevents them from building safe routes

To get more cars over per cycle, widen the road at each junction to let two cars through at once, then shrink it down at the far end. Gets cars over, but removes space for  a bike lane at the approach -and at the end you are left fighting for space with whoever is racing to the pinch point.

To get more cars over a junction, there's no time for all way pedestrian lights, meaning walking across more than one road means two waiting periods, then two sprints: slower to cross than a car. For cycling, it means that there is no time in the Bow St junction to have a dedicated cycling session. So the lights give you a couple of seconds head start, not the time you need to actually get over.

Finally there is parking. That's more of a side-road issue, which means the councils -but the TfL seem unwilling or unable to change the focus of the councils -Westminster and K&C councils in particular- to focus on cash through parking. Yet TfL have so much power if they really wanted it: the power to change the lights so that nobody could ever leave K&C, to cross over to westminster.  Those same main roads that break up cycling are a weapon TfL could use to get their way with councils -if they really wanted to. But they don't as they have  shared agenda. The councillors want their free parking spaces, the councils the paid parking, and TfL are happy to smooth the flow to those parking spaces.

That's TfL: stuck in time and collaborating with the councils to do nothing to make cycling safe. They could be changed, but that doesn't just take the time that Andrew Gilligan claims is needed: it takes motivation. It takes someone telling TfL "It's OK to slow down traffic if it encourages a shift to cycling". To instruct TfL to say to Westminster council "we're going to close Westminster Bridge to cars every Sunday -deal with it".

Who is the someone. The person who could is clearly; Boris the Cyclist Killer.

Except Boris the Blamer is again saying "no knee jerk reactions", "get all the facts" and reminding cyclists not to the break the law: with the obvious implicit message: the cyclists broke the rules and died for it"

And yes, he does it because he's a wanker who probably believes it.

However, he has a problem: he's an ambitious wanker.

Ambition one: get re-elected mayor
Ambition two: become leader of the conservative party, and then prime minister.

This week threatens this. Nationally.

Before the spring's elections Boris came round to supporting a "dutch style cycling revolution"

But where is it, apart from a half mile strip to CS2 -which you only get to from the city if you survive Bow Street.

That new segregated stretch is notable as the first TfL segregated superhighway route -but given it was opened the during the "massacre of the cyclists", the launch isn't going be a high point of Boris's second mayoral stint, it's going to be seen as a sign of him being out of touch with the real issues -and not just in London, this is making international news, as well as papers across Britain.

This threatens him because even if he thinks the cyclists are dying for their own failures, he's now exposed to his own failings:

If Boris can't build a bike path, how can he run a country?

It is that which may be the key to getting TfL to change their ways -but he needs to be reminded of this, every single day.

Councils don't give a fuck about cyclists -how to make them?

This week we have Southwark Council closing one of the main cycle routes in their area for a year, the city of London, proposing to divert cyclists out of their area, and Twickenham converting a bus lane to another roadway. -adding an advisory bike lane that even they state in their press release will be of no fucking use at peak hours -that is, school run and commuting times.

What to these things have in common?

1. Local councils that don't give a fuck about bicycles. 
2. Last minute discovery of plans about to happen.
3. Last minute objections by cyclists
4. Councils unwilling to accept they've fucked up or make any changes.

This happens again and again. Only one thing appears to stop it: large scale protests which generate negative press reports about the council and trigger the electorate contacting all their councillors.

This works because councillors need to realise that cycling facilities are not just for "a few cyclists", but are for their electorate, the businesses of the region -and for them themselves. If we get viewed as strange lycra-and-hi-viz troublemakers, we won't get anything.

This is not so much a safety-in-numbers story, as a strength-in-numbers.

The councils need to know the cyclists matter. TfL and Boris may have got this message, even if they aren't willing to do much about it. Addison Lee's management have the message, even if their drivers have different views.

Regional and Borough councils seem to have different views. The worst is Westminster, which resents the very presence of anyone on a bicycle in their area. The City seems, well, to have twentieth-century street models. They may say the road designs are "medieval", but that's no reason to put in 1995 road narrowing/pavement widening.

How to put in extra pressure on them:

• Public protest. Southwark and Twickenham could be targets here, with different reactions. Twickenham: some kind of mass protest outside the council house might be noticed.
• Southwark could be a site for some other experiment -what about an organised "bicycle bus" over the diversion at set times of the morning? If you don't feel safe going over the diversion on your own, wait until the  half hour and set off en-masse with everyone else who is doing it. A kind of critical mass for commuting. It might annoy some people trying to drive through, but as nobody is going to go out their way to cycle over Blackfriar's Bridge in the rush hour, it would actually reduce cycling traffic between the "bike buses". 

What about here in S. Gloucs? It has the Waltham Forest problem: so few cyclists that they really can afford not to give a fuck. Which is why they

• Block a bicycle only route to prevent motorbikes also using it -without bothering to mention this plan to the cycle forum.
• Propose new off-highway routes that mix pedestrians and bicycles in 3m of unsegregated pavement, so laying the way open to future "ban bicycle" rants in the local rags.
• Totally fuck up Shellmor Avenue and show they really do leave bicycles as an afterthought, no matter what they claim.

The Bristol Cyclists, they have their own issues (BRT2 anyone?), and need to focus their efforts there. Few of them would willingly come out to S Gloucs unless they were heading as fast as they could to nicer areas (over to Wales, the Cotswolds). Which means the council can get away with cycling facilities that at best suppress cycling, at worst make it more dangerous.

Fighting the battle here is -almost- a losing battle. Almost, because even if the residents are a bunch of fat-arsed car potatoes who would rather raise a petition to stop the one bike friendly thing the borough has done -a bus and bike only route- than use a bus or bicycle themselves.

If change is going to come from Bristol, it would have to come from the employers of the big North Fringe businesses. 

Returning to London, then, a nicer note to finish on: Londenneur's proposal for a cycling city plan. The vision the councils and TfL lack.

Bluewash from Boris

The statistics on road safety are out, and the RAC foundation are off the mark blaming pedestrians for being on the phone and the ipod. Never mind there's no data to back that up. Never mind that you could make similar allegations about drivers on the phone, texting, not paying attention. The allegations would be no more valid, but that's the whole point -the RAC Foundation is showing their opinions, not their knowledge.

Where they do make a point is the reduction in road safety campaigns -a direct side effect of cost cutting measures. Yet the one road safety campaign whose costs were covered by the fines they raised were the speed cameras -the ones everyone said should go? They've gone. Has it helped? Has it freed up lots of police to enforce "Bad driving". Bollocks. All that has happened is people can stop complaining about being ticketed.

Why do so many drivers hate speed cameras? Because they catch you, 100% of the time. Not because they focus on speed over "bad driving", but because everyone who sprinted past one got a ticket. Before -you just made sure you went below the speed of the fastest cars out there and let them take the blame. Now -everyone. That complaint about "cash cow" really meant "I get caught".

Why not bring them back and change the rules? Less fine, even a lower penalty -but leave them on, and the people who get caught will soon run out of points. Back that up with actual enforcement of the twelve-points-out rule. Then worry about the dangerous driving issue -which as the helmet cameras show is common out there and yet, when confronted with the videos, the Metropolitan "roadsafe" unit turn out to be the "fuckall" unit. As for London's Taxi Licensing Authority -Gaz45 would be better off complaining that he was overcharged by the taxi drivers than they cut him up and hurled abuse at him when he complained. Because the TLA don't give a fuck about bicycles either.

Returning to the stats, the tragic increase in cyclist Killed and Seriously Injured shows that TfL's actions over the past few years have made things worse, not better. All that money on Cycle Superhigways? Cycle Death Roads would be more accurate.

Cyclists in the city make the key point -the focus on "traffic flow" means "cars, buses, taxis and HGVs at the expense of the city itself". They've ripped out crossings, willfully excluded cyclists from new road designs (Blackfriar's Bridge &c). There's a distinct possibility of a Corporate Manslaughter charge over the Kings Cross design, while if the campaigners can get to the bottom of "who said no to the segregated path" story there may be one there -or at least the blame can be put squarely on the door of Boris or his motorbiking transport minion.

The fact that KSI is increasing faster than the growth in cycling shows that safety-in-numbers isn't valid, safety-in-safe-infrastructure and safety-in-legal-enforcement-of-dangerous-driving is what delivers safety -the numbers follow.

Boris's personal decisions have resulted in the death of cyclists.

The other big issue is the London Shard -if the number of people killed by trucks on the shard's delivery schedule, then somehow the HSE needs to be pulled in. Just as they used to have an "acceptable" death rate building railway lines, the London Shard shows that there is a death rate for cyclists that is being implicitly allowed. Implicitly -because each death is treated as an unrelated incident, not a structural flaw of a delivery schedule that was unrealistic, along with the fact that it generated a lot more lorry traffic in the area.

What could Boris do to dig TfL out of the hole they've dug

Delay and denial

• Kick the 'go dutch' campaign into the long grass. Promise things, promise reviews -and slow the momentum.
• Somehow, dampen the Times campaign. This is going to be hard precisely because one of their staff is part of the statistics. It's hard to have dinner with the editor and say "I've give you a scoop on some of my plans if you back of" if the editor knows someone who is in a coma as a result of TfL's plans
• Get a small amount of money from central govt and say "dangerous junctions" will be fixed, blaming these dangerous junctions as if they are natural things, like "dangerous mountain gorges" or "high earthquake risk areas". 
• Ppick on some small, symbolic problem they can do something about (e.g. better enforcement  of parking in superhighways) without doing anything to address the larger issues.

The junctions in London are dangerous not just from years of indifference of TfL, but by their active effort in making things worse through "smoothing the flow"

If this is what Boris/TfL do -and let's be realistic, its the first thing they'd think of as it is the one that avoids any admission of blame, much spending, or much effort-

The cycling campaigns need to push back sooner rather than later to stop this happening.

One idea, have a consistent name for TfLs half hearted efforts: call it "bluewash". Refers to whitewash, but brings those blue lanes right to the front as the key example of what's done wrong. Keep calling all of Boris's actions Bluewash and wheel that phrase out whenever any spokesperson -which includes all the excellent bloggers out there- is asked for a quote. Repeat that phrase until it takes hold.

What else could Boris and TfL do? Change direction

• Admit that the CSH scheme failed to deliver the safety
• Redo the new TfL junction plans, not just for cycling, but for pedestrians too. 
• Pick some key streets and put in proper segregated lanes. One of the bridges is the obvious target -there's no secret back route to avoid them, and it would have a tangible difference on the people who use it
• Provide safe feeder routes to and from this showcase route. If there's a safe river crossing, people will go out their way to use it, so give them ways to do it.

Achieving that would not cost that much -not compared to the bluewash money wasted on the superhighways, not compared to how much TfL are spending "to improve traffic flow"

What it needs is something else: a fundamental change in TfLs outlook away from Traffic Flow as their pure goal. To recognise that joined up routes, segregation and safe junctions are the key. Not "keep your wits about you" junctions but "take the kids to school this way" routes.

Boris got elected. Before that election cyclists did become a political presence. Now he has been elected, he could get complacent. These awful statistics on road safety are a call to action.

For anyone asking, why should S. Gloucs care -London sets an example for the rest of the country. If you can make cycling in London safe, nobody can say "it can't be done here" for any other town or city. We could point to London and say "they managed it -why can't you?".

Addison Lee declares war

There's a theory in some cycling circles that the more people who cycle, the better it will be as everyone else will expect cyclists and be nice to them. Bollocks.

You don't get cut up by a minicab driver on a phone in NL because its not "enough people cycle", it's because everyone cycles, so they all know what it is like. And because the roads are set up to keep minicab drivers away from the schoolkids.

London -like the rest of the country- isn't set up this way.

There's another theory: that as fuel costs and congestion gets worse, more people will cycle.

Maybe. But maybe not.

Many of those people who try cycling will have such a bad experience that they will change their mind. It may be "they aren't properly trained", but you can't take the lane in a city unless you are fit enough to do 20mph, and ruthless enough to smack on the side of any vehicle trying to take that lane from you. Schoolkids don't get a look it.

Some of the people who try cycling will stick to it, learn the back routes round cities -and the Roads of Death that are almost impossible to avoid, even if it is just crossing them. If there's good parking at their destination, somewhere at home to keep a bike, they may stick to it and be happy -possibly even start campaigning for cities and suburbs to support their needs.

Will everyone else be greatful? Bollocks.

That same fuel costs and congestion is going to make everyone who drives even more angry and resentful.

You can see that from the hate comments in papers, in radio. "pay fuel tax", "pay up", "we pay", "fair costs". The more you pay to drive, the more you resent freeloaders, and the more you feel that you have the right to be there, and cyclists don't. There's also "Cognitive Dissonance": the more you spend, the less willing you are to recognise you made a mistake. People who drive feel they have paid enough to be there, and we haven't.

There's also the feeling of injustice that bicycles aren't stuck in traffic jams. Again, the comments complain about that "undertaking", "not staying in lanes". And of course "use bus lanes".

Addison Lee's actions fit entirely into this model

1. The drivers have had enough of congestion, so want to use the bus lanes. Griffin thins he has the political clout to get the rules changed, win new accounts, and have his drivers get more customers/day.
2. Griffin is also fed up with the amount of money he feels that his company pays to be on that road, and that we, the cyclists, don't deserve any space.

That's why he wants the bus lanes: money.

The rant about cyclists being untrained and diving under his cars? That's just resentment about the growing number of bicycles. View that as a measure of success.

After all, he's done more to give Addison Lee Cabs a bad reputuation than any number of youtube videos has done. He's got the cyclists and black cabs allied. And he's even got the Daily Mail on our side.

That means he's done more for cycling in a week than Boris Johnson has in four years.