Photograph: Jacob King/PA
Are cyclists a menace on a similar scale to street drinking and graffiti? Birmingham city council certainly seems to think so. It has recently proposed adding them to its list of antisocial activities prohibited under the umbrella of so-called public spaces protection orders, joining a number of other councils that have recently tried to restrict cyclists from using pedestrianised city centre streets. It just goes to show that Labour politicians can get it almost as wrong on cycling as their Conservative counterparts.
The primary reason Birmingham has given for banning bikes from parts of the city centre are the risks that inevitably come from pedestrians sharing space with rapidly moving delivery bikes. Almost any city dweller will have at least one story of being forced to leap out of the way of a heavily laden Deliveroo or Uber Eats bike weaving around at a good 30mph down a narrow street, sometimes even on the pavement. This is a menace, correct?
Well, yes, even if the laws of physics dictate that a small car going at a roughly similar speed, let alone an SUV, would be many times more deadly. But this is to almost entirely miss the point. What the councillors of Birmingham and other cities have failed to realise is that this is not a “cycling problem”. It is a law enforcement problem, as well as a perverse market-based incentives problem, which we’ll get to shortly.
Many of the food delivery machines involved in close calls with pedestrians are not bicycles. They are illegal electric motorbikes. The law is clear: anything that uses motor propulsion to take you above a stately 15.5mph, uses a throttle to power the vehicle, requires insurance, taxation and the full panoply of lights, indicators and a helmet. There are many, many thousands of machines in the UK used as bicycles that defy this law, and not just food delivery bikes. Blaming all cyclists on their behalf is about as rational as banning all cars to prevent illegal street racing.
So why do so many food couriers equip themselves with such rapid, shonkily converted contraptions, some without pedals or chains, many burdened with often highly combustible batteries? Because it’s the only way they can – more or less – make a living due to their highly precarious, gig economy, pay-per-job status, which hugely incentivises rapid speed and long hours, both of which are much harder on a legal bike. Next time a council announces a crackdown on cycling due to the activity of delivery riders, perhaps have a think about why and how we have allowed companies to operate with a business model that is more or less predicated on mass illegality.
More generally, it can feel baffling to have councils in major cities trying to make cycling more difficult, particularly in an era when the government has declared the Conservatives’ slightly quixotic culture war against cycling to be over, with the promise instead of “unprecedented” investment in active travel.
Whatever the arguments about whether the £100m pledged for walking and cycling in Wednesday’s budget actually represents this, Labour politicians can sometimes seem curiously coy about getting more people on to two wheels, as if inwardly braced for the latest Mail or Times scare story about low-traffic neighbourhoods or 15-minute cities. With the full acceptance that I have never once stood for political office, and it is thus arguably a bit cheeky for me to advise those who have to be more politically bold, there are many, many reasons why the new government could and should do more. But let us consider just one for now.
In a post-budget visit, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves toured a hospital in Coventry on Thursday and chatted about NHS reforms with assorted staff. The conversations, aired live on Sky News, were striking. Several questioners asked effectively the same thing: investing more in NHS treatment is great, but what about prevention? One doctor, a paediatrician, told them: “Every week in my clinic I see at least one child with liver damage secondary to obesity, and they don’t need me. What they need is somebody that can take them out and do junior parkrun or play football with them at lunchtime, or walk them to school. How are you going to address that preventative issue?”
To that list of physical activities you could add: get them to cycle to school, or to see friends. The health benefits of regular cycling are vast, and have been proved in thousands of studies. Other research has routinely shown that children who live near safe bike lanes are more likely to be active. So what shall we do? Allow cyclists to use safe, direct routes on pedestrianised streets? Or shrug our shoulders and hope that the assorted 11-year-olds fare OK mixing it with the buses, lorries and cars – assuming they don’t just give up cycling immediately? As a choice, it seems fairly easy. But it’s one the UK keeps on getting wrong.
Peter Walker is acting deputy political editor for the Guardian. He is the author of The Miracle Pill
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