2020 Vision
External internet blog of Matt Polaine & family
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National Cycle Plan for England
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling
This January, the Cyclists’ Touring Club - CTC - took a survey in reponse to the UK government’s National Cycle Plan for England, as Gordon Brown has stated his objective for making ‘cycling as [a] mainstream form of transport’. Read the rest of this entry »
Modal lawlessness in Los Angeles
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling
A Doctor was sentenced to 5 years in prison for assaulting bicyclists in Brentwood, L.A., U.S. today.
A doctor convicted of assaulting two bicyclists by slamming on his car brakes after a confrontation on a narrow Brentwood Road L.A. was sentenced today to five years in prison. Read the rest of this entry »
Democracy Live: Scottish Parliament: Transport
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Uncategorized
The committee heard 61% of people in Scotland want to cycle to improve their health, but many were afraid of road dangers on 24 November 2009.
The research was carried out for the Scottish government by transport consultancy Steer Davies Gleave. Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Heros Award - please vote
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Campaigns
Simon Nuttall - Nominated by: Martin Lucas-Smith
Simon has worked tirelessly & without pay to create a journey planner and photo map for cyclists in Cambridge and all over the UK. Already used to plan 30,000 journeys, a grant would enable Simon to develop the website & encourage more people to get on 2 wheels!
He shall be explaining CycleStreets.net, and why you should vote for it to win the local award on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s Drivetime show from 5:35 pm this evening.
Voting involves going to and clicking on a button, no registration or emails are required.
Cycle culture ‘boom’ in Japan
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
credit: tomoko otake, the japan times
Picture: Riders pass the landmark Wako department store building in central Tokyo’s Ginza shopping district during ‘Tokyo City Cycling 2009’, a 40km event staged by the Japan Cycling Association on 20th September 2009. Photo by Yoshiaka Miura.
Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama could have made a stronger impact at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in New York last week had he trumpeted another environmentally laudable proposal in addition to his declared goal of Japan cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020: riding bicycles. Read the rest of this entry »
Cambridge IAM biker on Route 66
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Motorcycles
One of the guys in my local IAM group (Graham Pryke) is currently riding in the US on Route 66. His blog is about the fantastic holiday he has booked where he travels the mother road of the US, Route 66, with his good friend Steve and a group of other people all organised by MCi Tours. The blog will show the highs and the lows of his 2,500 mile journey from Chicago in the east to Los Angeles on the west coast.
More and more of my biker friends are managing to do these mega-rides. Perhaps I will one day…
LEL photos
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling
Here are some photo links from the LEL. Some of my choice ones below. It looks like I came out of the event lightly compared to these riders!
Ideal bikes for English weather?
Half the event was like this, a typical English summer.
Tesco protest is criticised by judge
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Campaigns, Cycling, Cycling infrastructure, Transport
credit: raymond.brown@cambridge-news.co.uk
A last-ditch High Court bid to stop Tesco opening today in Cambridge’s Mill Road has been thrown out.
The judge said the effort by No Mill Road Tesco Campaign was a “misuse of Judicial Review”.
Campaign committee member Richard Rippin filed the application against Cambridge City Council.
He wanted an interim injunction on Tesco to stop “dangerous” deliveries to the new Express store. Read the rest of this entry »
Print Fair in Norwich, UK
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Family
My father, Peter Polaine, is one of the artists exhibiting at the 14th Norwich Print Fair from 7th -19th September 2009.
LEL 2009 1400km – blown off course
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Events
This is a long post. I am using it to record what did and didn’t work for me on the LEL, so I am better prepared next time.
Failure. There, I’ve said it – I failed. I failed to complete the 1,400km Audax in the allotted time. Worse still, I didn’t even make it back to the start and had to pack it in at 821.6km. So what happened? What went wrong? Read the rest of this entry »
12 days 14hrs
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Cycling
Twelve days and fourteen hours until I set off on the toughest bicycle ride I’ve ever entered. 1,400km in 120hrs from London to Edinburgh and back - the UK Audax LEL 2009. You can read more about it here and my training program here although ‘training’ is not really the right word to describe it.
Follow my progress during the LEL Event via Twitter: http://twitter.com/mpolaine
Please also support the charity I’m riding for here.
I am not sure of the failure rate for the LEL which is held every 4 years, but this year there were no qualifying rides of 100, 200, 400 and 600km within the preceding year. I feel OK about meeting all those criteria except the 600km. I’ve managed 330km in an unstressful 19hrs, but I was able to recover the next day. Not possible for the LEL.
It’s not called ‘EL & back’ for nothing…
Driver behaviour towards cyclists: video
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling infrastructure
Whenever discussion over cycling on the UK highways comes up, there are those in motor vehicles who rant on about cyclists who ‘jump red lights, terrorise pedestrians, are law-breakers, cycle wherever they like’ and so on. It is as though motorists do nothing wrong and cyclists are urban vermin. Read the rest of this entry »
Is the human race worth saving?
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Uncategorized
When I have to deal with drivers who nearly kill me through arrogant, selfish or plain stupid driving while I am riding my bike, I do often wonder if the human race is at a branch again. It seems that some of our species are really wired differently. It is almost impossible to communicate with ‘them’, and no matter how terrible their actions are, they just don’t see it.
The depths that humans can go to in maiming, torturing and killing other humans is so off my comprehension ability I know I am not of the same species. How that other species can kill and eat children, hack them to death with their mothers with a machete, and even worse crimes of torture leaves me questioning the value of standing in the way of climate change that may eradicate us all.
Just when I thought I’d seen the worst, along comes another deeply disturbing chapter in our so-called evolution. If you are easily shocked, do not read on. If you think you know what horror exists and would rather pledge or donate (no gruesome images), jump here. Read the rest of this entry »
UKIP on cyclists in the UK
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling infrastructure
Risking publicity for UKIP, I hope that those reading this blog are more pro-cycling than petrolhead or Clarkson mentality. I’m certainly not linking to the UKIP.
The local Cambridge Cycling Campaign sent out a questionnaire to the local election candidates asking about their views on a selection of key cycle infrastructure/culture issues. Many did not bother to reply, of those that did, most were ‘political answers’, but the UKIP’s Peter Burkinshaw sums up White Van Man culture of the UK;
Q. Do you have any other general cycling-related comments or points?
A. “Provision for cyclists is already adequate. Please remember that motorists are the people who pay to use the roads whereas cyclists are “freeloaders”. They are entitled to use the roads but not disproportionately”.
“If everyone cycled, as you suggest, there would be no roads to ride on”.
If this represents the honest opinion of the majority of politicians - and honesty is somewhat lacking in UK politics right now - then Peter Burkinshaw represents a new level of local government ignorance born out of a motor-myopic culture, sentencing many to an early death and massive NHS burden from an obesogenic timebomb and gridlocked towns and cities.
God help our children with people like this in local government.
UK cyclists becoming social pariahs?
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling infrastructure
I have to write this blog after reading about Judge ‘barking mad’ Richard Lowden recently, and the sabotage of the UK biggest cycle ‘closed road’ race with carpet tacks. Our UK culture is sick. Very sick. Tell me, is it?
Forget being a banker with their ‘bonus’, an estate agent with that 2% fee or politician with dubious ‘allowances’ (the three least trusted professions in the UK), if one really wants to feel a member of the underclass, get on a bicycle. Read the rest of this entry »
At last, a motoring fine with bite.
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cars
I’m not anti-car but I am anti UK car-culture. Wander around a crowded street with a loaded shotgun with the safety catch off, after having a few beers, slip and the gun goes off killing someone - you’re in trouble. Yes you have a shotgun licence, yes you have a clean record, yes it was ‘an accident’.
Um, hold on a minute. It wasn’t an accident, it was an incident. It was inevitable the gun was going to go off eventually, and the owner’s behaviour is entirely at fault. Just as driving a car while using a mobile phone or after drinking is exactly the same; licence, lethal weapon, carnage etc. Read the rest of this entry »
UK HSE culture, AUK and Copenhagen
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Cycling
Will the future of the LEL and other long distance UK events fall foul to UK-style H&S dogma?
AUK is right to feel paranoid about the HSE creep. In the UK, local authorities and some corporate environments have adopted a bizarre cross-breed of cultures from those of an isolated island, European joie de vivre, and American liability extremes. The result is possibly the worst of all worlds. Read the rest of this entry »
How did the Briton cross the road?
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
credit: stephen dowling, bbc news
The green man, an icon for pedestrians across the UK, could be joined by a countdown clock as part of London’s plans to ease traffic flow. But from Cairo to Chicago, how people cross the road speaks volumes about a country’s cultural values.
You only need to step outside your hotel when staying in a foreign city to know that when it comes to crossing the road, there’s no such thing as an international standard. Every country does it differently. Read the rest of this entry »
Cycle helmets - again.
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling infrastructure
I’ve avoided these helmet discussions because they aren’t factual, can never be factual, and are part of a complex cultural mindset. You can’t quantify why there are far fewer injuries in Copenhagen than Cambridge from cycling, where the former has 5 times or more the level of cycling and virtually no helmet wearing, but you can say that many, many small cultural differences add up to a huge difference in hazard perception and intermodal behaviour. Read the rest of this entry »
Grit all major cycle routes in Cambridge during winter
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Campaigns, Cycling infrastructure
Background (Preamble): According to Cambridgeshire County Council more than a quarter of all transport to work in Cambridge is done on bicycles and it wishes to increase this figure in order to lessen the tear and wear of roads. Yet no cycle routes are gritted during the winter when the temperature is sub zero. Read the rest of this entry »
Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Uncategorized
source: urmee khan, the telegraph
Prof Piers Steel, a Canadian academic who has spent more than 10 years studying why people put off until tomorrow what they could do today, believes that the notion that procrastinators are either perfectionists or just lazy is wrong.
Prof Steel, who admits to becoming distracted by computer games himself, argues in a new book that those prone to putting things off suffer from a vice of their own - impulsiveness. Read the rest of this entry »
Men under threat from ‘gender bending’ chemicals
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Uncategorized
source: urmee khan, the telegraph
Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone oestrogen.
The males of species including fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles have been feminised by exposure to sex hormone disrupting chemicals and have been found to be abnormally making egg yolk protein, normally made by females, according to the report by Chem Trust, environmental group. Read the rest of this entry »
Are transport priorities the right way up?
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
It has long been the stated aim of many places to have a road user hierarchy in which pedestrians come top, cyclists follow soon after, public transport fits in next and in which private cars come in at the bottom.
However, very few places actually behave like this. Typically there is very little obvious link between what literature states about priorities and what is done on the street. David Hembrow’s excellent blog ‘A view from the cyclepath…’ looks into this topic in more detail.
read about it
What makes a motorist use a bicycle? IAM report
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cars, Cycling
In the recent edition of the Institute of Advanced Motorists’ magazine ‘Advanced Driving’ winter 2008, the IAM reported on a survey they commissioned on ‘what makes a motorist use a bicycle rather than a car?’
When and why do they cycle? The IAM Trust survey of cycling motorists and their reasons and concerns revealed that of the 90 per cent of motorists who had ridden a bike at some time, half still own one, and of those, only one-third are cycling motorists. Read the rest of this entry »
Copenhagenize Cambridge
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Campaigns, Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
Some of us have experienced other European cycling cultures, and through comment and debate on my (and other) blogs I found an informative comparison between Cambridge and Copenhagen. The posts and debates centre around Health & Safety culture in the UK, Cambridge highway engineering through risk averse design, and British cycling chic - the lack of it. Yes I wear yellow Lycra too. All these elements are linked to two key factors: educated hazard perception and a common sense approach to risk. Something our UK H&S culture is rapidly eroding, and I’ll come back to this point.
One of these blogs is ‘copenhagenize.com’ . The aim of this blog is to bring Copenhagen Bicycle Culture to the world. In a few city councils around the globe they speak of ‘Copenhagenizing’ their streets to accommodate bikes. In the Danish capital it’s just a way of life. Copenhagen is already regarded as the best cycling city in the world and Denmark is the second safest place to cycle (after Netherlands), and those of you out there who need inspiration for cycle advocacy in your towns and cities can find a wealth of info at copenhagenize.com.
Read the rest of this entry »
Alpine Motorcycle trip
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Motorcycles
As some of you know, I’m also a keen motorcyclist and I am planning a mini-tour of Europe, hopefully with some fellow biking friends. In a recent IAM magazine, there was a motorcycling section which contained report on five friends, five countries, and seven days, through famous Alpine passes taking in Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Lichtenstein almost in a loop.
I thought this would be a good starting point for planning a European route:
Now I’ve ridden out to Offenburg, about 300km / 3hrs ride west of Augsburg on the map in the PDF article above. I am sure we could visit my brother to stay over at certain points of the trip (loop start and finish), instead of travelling to and from Munich.
Cycling: UK H&S hysteria versus Copenhagen chic
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
I am a driver, motorcyclist, cyclist and of course pedestrian. I have raced bicycles on road and off road, driven on a race track, and motocrossed on a motorbike. I’ve done 70kmh on a bicycle down French mountains and cycled through London traffic. I am pretty good at judging risk and hazards.
However, in the UK we have a real deep-seated problem with pervasive and socially corrosive Health & Safety culture tipping into the insane. Born out of the good intentions of hazard awareness, now we have US-style liability vultures wrecking the social glue of common sense and personal responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »
A worthwhile Cambridge street sign
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
There’s a behavioural campaign at the moment with car doors placed around town of Copenhagen and the message “Catch the cyclist with your eyes, not your door” printed on the door.
Pretty straightforward campaign. No real fear-mongering at play. Just a good reminder for both motorists and cyclists alike. Never mind the fact that I have never heard of anybody getting smacked by a car door in Copenhagen. Most of the bike lanes are wide enough to avoid this. But hey. At least the campaign helps motorists [most of whom are cyclists, too] remember the bicycles. Read the rest of this entry »
Why cyclists make good hypermilers
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Cars, Cycling
I was reading some notes about hypermiling and realised that sport cyclists are natural hypermilers, as they drive like they ride a bike. Well, not on the pavements or through cyclelanes, but you know what I mean.
Sport cyclists know that they have finite energy. Indeed running out - ‘bonking’ - is like hitting a brick wall. Each pedal stroke is like turning a water mill with lead boots. So we try to maximise output with minimum energy input. As we think about spending energy as wisely in our car as we do when we ride, we automatically become aware of several major hypermiling techniques: Read the rest of this entry »
Cyclist loses leg in road rage attack
Published by Matt Polaine | Filed under Bicycle, Cycling, Cycling infrastructure
credit: bikeradar
I think the attitudes towards cyclists are really taking a bad turn…
A cyclist in Toronto has had to have his leg amputated after a row with a cab driver turned nasty. Police yesterday said the cyclist lost his leg after a cab reversed and pinned him to a utility pole.
It’s understood people heard arguing before the sound of a loud collision and then someone screaming for help as a vehicle sped off. Police who rushed to the scene at 2.30am found the man lying in a pool of blood, with his right leg barely attached. His $5,000 cycle was lying nearby in pieces (library picture above, not actual bike). Read the rest of this entry »