Bike lane blues: why don’t businesses want a £30m cycle-friendly upgrade?
|
Version 0 of 1. As cars stream past on both sides, a pedestrian perches on a tiny traffic island waiting for an opportunity to cross. A cyclist dodges round a 10-tonne lorry, held up by a driver trying to reverse into a tight parking space outside a high-street shop. Angry horns blare. It’s intimidating to be on foot or a bike in a space dominated by motor vehicles. In that sense, this suburban street in north London is like many of the radial roads that flow in and out of cities the world over – not a particularly pleasant place to be. This road, though, has been given an opportunity to change. Transport for London has awarded the local authority, Enfield, £30 million from its “Mini Holland” budget to transform four busy streets into routes with Dutch-inspired segregated bike lanes, where people feel safe to cycle and want to spend more time. Under the plans, Green Lanes is to get lightly segregated bike lanes running along both sides of the road; there will be six more zebra crossings for pedestrians; a bleak under-used public space will be remodelled with community involvement; pavements will be resurfaced; there will be more trees, more planters … Local residents and high street businesses must be thrilled? Not exactly. From cafes to hairdressers, furniture stores to funeral parlours – and, strangely, even one shop selling bike parts – almost every non-chain business along the high streets of Winchmore Hill and Palmers Green is protesting against the scheme. “Let’s ruin local businesses and the community – all for a cycle superhighway to nowhere,” reads one poster. “Watch out, there’s a bike about,” warns another. Living on a residential road off Green Lanes, my recycling bin is fed a constant diet of photocopied letters and leaflets warning against the project. The atmosphere here is getting increasingly hysterical. For cities around the world, creating bike lanes out of on-street car parking spaces appears to be one of urban planning’s greatest challenges. Local businesses are understandably concerned that their trade might suffer. Livelihoods are at stake. Yet there’s a growing body of evidence that small businesses consistently over-estimate how many of their customers arrive by car, and numerous studies – from New York to San Francisco, Auckland to Toronto – have shown that introducing bike lanes has actually led to higher sales, as people spend more time and money on a high street which has been transformed into a nicer place to be. The question, then, is can what’s happening on my doorstep in Enfield offer an insight into why shopkeepers all over the world seem so set against cycle lanes? If the people of Enfield don’t want the money, we will take it away and give it to people who do want it In the run-up to the 2012 mayoral election, more than 40,000 people signed a petition supporting the London Cycling Campaign’s Love London, Go Dutch project, calling for safe, Dutch-style bike infrastructure. Shortly after Boris Johnson was returned as mayor for the second time, he announced the Mini Holland scheme, aimed at improving cycling conditions and participation in the capital’s outer boroughs. Across London an average of 2.5% of adults cycle to work, but this city-wide figure hides huge variations: while Hackney’s cycle-to-work modal share is almost 9%, Enfield’s is just 0.9%. Twenty boroughs applied for funding and eight were shortlisted. Enfield’s bid, which had cross-party support at the time (the local Conservatives have since got cold feet), calculated the scheme to transform cycling on the A105 Green Lanes, the A110 Southbury Road, the A1010 and Enfield Town would have a cost-to-benefit ratio of 1:2.95, with a net benefit of £48.7m from reduced mortality alone. On top of that there would be savings from lower health and social costs, better air quality and the like. When Enfield, along with Waltham Forest and Kingston, were awarded £30m each to transform cycling in their neighbourhoods, I was delighted. Since moving to the area a decade ago, I had grown increasingly frustrated with its predominant car-centric attitude. At the induction evening for my child’s primary school, the headteacher told us that cycling to school was banned and that, as much as they’d like to allow it, the roads just weren’t safe for children. Many arrive in the back of cars which battle for parking spaces and clog up the road. Coincidentally, childhood obesity in Enfield is among the highest 10% in the country in reception and year six (4 to 5-year-olds and 10 to 11-year-olds). In 10 years commuting by bike along Green Lanes, I’ve lost count of the number of near-misses I’ve had on this stretch of road – cars part-overtaking before nipping left to avoid a traffic island, nearly getting “doored” by people getting out of parked vehicles, drivers swerving without indicating when the car in front wants to turn right. I was knocked off my bike on the Haringey section of Green Lanes almost exactly a year ago when a car cut across my path into a side road, sending me somersaulting over the bonnet. I’m only just back to normal after months of physiotherapy. Walking around Green Lanes – one of London’s air quality focus areas – isn’t much fun either. Under the Mini Holland scheme, two slip roads which cars often nip down at 30mph without indicating will be closed off or made into shared spaces, with raised cobbles to slow traffic. A roundabout where I saw a cyclist lucky to walk away after being hit by a fast-moving taxi will be turned into a safer, signalled junction. Palmers Green Triangle – a forlorn patch of tree-free tarmac ringed on all sides by metal barriers – looks set to get redesigned as a more attractive public space. Look up at the 1910s and 1920s shopping parades lining sections of the road, and you will see white paint and exposed stone work stained black by fumes. It’s hard not to think the place could be made a lot nicer. The £6.2m Enfield Green Lanes Mini Holland scheme, now rebranded Cycle Enfield – where bike lanes will be “lightly segregated” using armadillos (small plastic humps bolted into the road) – isn’t perfect. The London Cycling Campaign has some concerns about cycle safety at specific junctions, and is worried about confusion where the cycle lane turns into a shared-use pavement at a few bus stops along the route. But it is firmly supportive of the scheme overall, as are most people who cycle in the area, and many more who have told researchers they’d like to but don’t feel safe mixing it with traffic. Their voices, however, are getting drowned out in a row that has helped fill the letters page of the Enfield Independent newspaper for months. “How are people with limited mobility going to be able to get to local businesses and the doctors’ surgery?” asks a worried resident. “Are they supposed to strap their Zimmer frames on their backs and get on a bike?” One local residents’ association declared the scheme “manifestly daft”, and warned of “mayhem … to benefit cyclists who currently form less than 1% of the traffic on Enfield’s roads”. Another sent out a newsletter telling members that all of the pedestrian islands along Green Lanes would be removed; in reality, six are being converted into zebra crossings, while one or possibly two near alternative crossings will go. The rest will be retained. Many business are concerned about the loss of car parking spaces – but the council says that, while 24 out of 109 high-street parking spots will be removed to make space for bike lanes, an additional 91 spaces will be created in car parks a few hundred metres from the shops – meaning a net gain of 67 parking spaces overall. There will be the same number of loading bays as before. The high streets are reliant on women. Most women don’t cycle – either they don’t want to or they are too busy Helen Osman, who runs N21 Online, is one of the driving forces behind the Save Our Green Lanes campaign, and ran as an independent in last May’s local elections on an anti-Mini Holland ticket (she came 11th out of 12 candidates with 425 votes, although she did beat the Lib Dems). “If you make it harder to park, and less convenient, then you are really threatening our high streets,” she says. “We know these businesses are reliant on customers who park; they are dependent on ‘stop and shop’. If there’s no parking, they’ll lose business and a lot of them can’t afford to lose even 10% of their trade.” Another of Osman’s key concerns is that “men buy, women shop” – and that, with women under-represented in cycling, a move away from high-street car parking will affect sales: “The high streets are reliant on women for business. These cycle lanes are all about men rushing here, there and everywhere. ‘Mamils’ – these middle-aged men in lycra – are TfL’s key group. Most women don’t cycle – either they don’t want to or they are too busy.” Talking to council officers and studying the Cycle Enfield plans, it seems many of the claims made in a postcard from the Save Our Green Lanes campaign don’t stack up. It’s not true that “cyclists would have priority over ALL other road users”; that “local people wouldn’t be able to park in Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill to use their local shops, restaurants etc”; or that “businesses wouldn’t be able to receive deliveries”. But even if much of what is written seems misleading, it is accessible and easily digestible – and, going up against a 17-page council consultation document, it seems to be winning local hearts and minds. It’s not just about Enfield, though. The fears of local businesses are being played out in cities around the world whenever parking spaces are threatened by bike lanes. Take Polk Street in San Francisco, where the loss of 140 parking spaces for an $8m (£5.3m) bike lane project was only approved in March after two-and-a-half years of debate. The concerns may be understandable – but are they justified? In fact, a number of studies from the UK and US, Australia and New Zealand have come to the conclusion that replacing on-street parking with a bike lane can boost business – and in the worst case has no negative impact: Research has repeatedly shown that local businesses seriously overestimate the proportion of their customers who drive to their stores. A survey of Dublin’s Grafton and Henry shopping streets found retailers thought more of their customers arrived by car, and underestimated how many came by bike. They also consistently underestimated how much non-drivers spent. Sustrans found the same in Bristol, where retailers thought 41% of customers arrived by car (it was 22%) and thought 6% cycled (the real figure was 10%). In fellow Mini Holland winner Waltham Forest, a survey on Forest Road high street found local businesses thought 50% of their customers arrived by car, with 37% walking, 21% on public transport and 8% on bikes. When asked, 68% of shoppers said they sometimes walked, 49% came by public transport, 39% drove and 28% cycled. All this research leaves Helen Osman unmoved: “We are not urban New York – full of young people flying everywhere on bikes – we’re suburban North London. People talk about Bristol, or Cambridge or Brighton, but we’re not like those places …” Related: 'If there aren’t as many women cycling as men … you need better infrastructure' Rachel Aldred, a cycling sociologist and senior transport lecturer at the University of Westminster, says: “Change is always a challenge … and people are always understandably concerned about how it is going to affect them. Businesses will say ‘most people come by car and we need more parking’, but surveys show these businesses are wrong.” Evidence also shows protected cycle space means more women and older people, who tend to be less willing to put up with the risks of cycling in traffic, will feel safe enough to get on their bikes. In the Netherlands more women cycle than men, and many people in their 60s and 70s still ride bikes regularly. “A lot of those trips were probably made on foot before, so by helping cycling, local businesses can really increase their catchment area,” adds Aldred. Andrew Gilligan, Boris Johnson’s cycling commissioner, says that TfL and the local authority are trying to build consensus in Enfield, but that a small group of people are determined to oppose the scheme whatever. “Every time in the past when you get a scheme like this, you have people saying it’ll damage trade, and it’s not true – it always boosts trade. It makes the town a nicer place to be. It’ll be nicer for pedestrians. There will be more trees, there’ll actually be more car parking … In their current state, are we really saying these high streets are the best they can be? That there’s nothing we can do to improve them? There’s something about cycling, though, which seems to destroy people’s sense of proportion. “Unfortunately, if the people of Enfield don’t want the money, we will take it away and give it to people who do want it. There was a lot of competition for this money. It would be a huge shame if a project with £30m of funding was lost on the basis of what are frankly falsehoods.” The public consultation on the Green Lanes section of Mini Holland closes on Friday 9 October. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion |