Bicycle Mayor
Pete Dyson
A Bicycle Mayor is a concept which began in 2018 in the Netherlands. It aims to establish someone in a community who will advocate for active travel and cycling policies and encourage more people to cycle. The 150 Bicycle Mayors around the world are organised by BYCS (www.bycs.org), an NGO (non governmental organisation).
Bath’s second Bicycle Mayor, Pete Dyson
Local Councils make cycling policies. The bicycle mayor fills in some of the gaps that Councils might miss.
I started as Bicycle Mayor in Bath in mid-2023. My predecessor, Saskia Heijltjes, was the first one. She established Bath’s first Kidical Mass – part of an international programme. Four or five times a year groups of children gather and cycle around some of Bath’s streets and lanes. The roads aren’t closed off. There are ride leaders ahead and behind and they have a sort of cycle parade, which is a nice bit of activism. It is an opportunity to cycle, and, in a clever way, it demonstrates that some roads aren’t easy for children on bikes at the moment.
Kidical Mass event in Bath (photograph by Jamie Bellinger)
A Bicycle Mayor is not ceremonial and is not paid. He or she is independent of any political party, and they are not elected. I applied to the charity and their selection panel reviewed everyone interested in doing the work. They chose me. I want to help Bath become more cycle friendly without clashing with other types of transport.
The Mayor changes every two years so there is not much time to influence things. I try to build on what Saskia has done. I might take part in a demonstration about road safety; volunteer at local events; or be there to help if there is a diversion or change to a road layout. People email me for support and advice, and I think it’s good to be a middleman, a go-to person.
In short, it’s a question of doing the small things - reporting street level issues, responding to consultations, putting forward ideas and getting involved with volunteering.
Cycling in Bath
The main challenge for cycling in Bath is the hills. They are difficult for anyone, at any fitness level, because they're pretty steep.
What’s more the geography of Bath concentrates a lot of the road network down into the valley and puts a lot of traffic through the Upper and Lower Bristol Roads, the two roads that run parallel to the river.
The challenge is how can we have some safe and segregated cycling on those roads in a way that doesn't conflict with big goods vehicles.
Other university cities such as Oxford, Cambridge and York are flatter and have a long history of bicycle use, going back 100 years. Those cities have emerged with lots more bicycle parking, different street designs, and decades of drivers who know there are lots of two-wheelers around.
e-bikes
The first step in getting more people to cycle is to identify what’s holding them back. Can they cycle? Do they have the opportunity and the social environment? Does their schedule allow for it? Are they motivated to do it? Do they consider it safe and beneficial to their health? Is it seen as being cheaper than other options?
e-bikes with batteries (the black pieces marked ‘Swap!). Batteries can be removed for charging. These bikes are part of the shareable e-bike scheme.
Bath Council is in the process of improving cycling infrastructure: the ‘build it and they will come’ approach. But that needs to be accompanied by more people with suitable bikes. There is real potential for e-bikes to give everyone access to cycling. E-bikes have a little battery that drives a small motor. When you pedal, the motor gives you a bit of extra power. It can really transform pretty much anyone's ability to go up a slope. Instead of grinding up a hill it is more like riding on the flat.
Another aspect of my role is to hold people to account. For example, a new shared e-bike and e-scooter scheme has been introduced in Bath with 350 e-bikes. But there are parking challenges. At the moment many of the allocated parking bays are over capacity or untidy. Bikes are left blocking some of the footpaths. As a Bicycle Mayor, I can collaborate with community groups to write to the Council saying: the scheme looks good; we're in support of it; but parking is going to cause problems for pedestrians and other road users.
Bike bus
Every school day morning in Barcelona, groups of children and some parents meet up on bikes to ride to their schools. Parents lead and flank the children to protect them and even stop the traffic at dangerous junctions. Because the cyclists all travel together they are called a ‘bike bus (bicibús)’.
When they are adults, those children will remember cycling to school. That's something I never did, though I grew up in a village only two miles away from school. I would have loved to cycle. I would have found it joyful.
If we want to cut carbon emissions, improve local air quality and reduce car dependency, then we need to look at what's going to reduce traffic meaningfully in the city. It’s not enough to have more primary school children cycling to school. It is sad that those children in Barcelona require adult supervision. I'm sure someone from the Netherlands, Denmark or Germany would say: “Why do they have a bike bus? My 7-year-old just gets on a bike and goes down the road and that's that. She does that independently because we think it's safe enough to cycle.” The concept of safety is obviously variable. It's not that these places have no accidents, but parents look at it in the round and they say it's safe. “Safe enough” in the same way that children playing in the park is “safe enough.” Because they know that it has so many benefits for their development.
Transport issues
I was drawn to transport issues for two reasons. One is my enthusiasm for all the neat ways that transport systems interlock, from trains to bikes to cars to ferries and planes. It captured my imagination. But also, there's a more enduring interest. Transport combines the solid concepts: engineering and infrastructure; with the soft concepts: society and culture.
I see transport as a more cooperative endeavour than most people acknowledge. As individuals we buzz around without noticing that we're reliant on the behaviour of others to stay safe. We cooperate at every road junction. We cooperate when we use a bus: the bus only exists because other people are willing to use it. We get to enjoy these multi-million-pound transport systems because there are lots of people who also want them.
I hope it has come across that Bicycle Mayors advocate for wheeling, but also for walking and for other modes of transport. I am responding to a groundswell of demand for cycling. People are saying they want it, but it needs to be safer and more affordable. In the UK for many decades there's been a strong voice for motoring, to design cities that prioritise vehicle traffic. And there have been benefits to that. Let's rebalance things towards adapting for other road users.
Value of cycling
There's so much evidence that active lifestyles can help us all feel better, live longer, and be more sociable.
Disability charities like Wheels for Wellbeing (www.wheelsforwellbeing.org.uk) point out that the bicycle can be a form of liberation for many people with disabilities that otherwise make walking difficult, especially lower limb injuries.
But new technologies are enabling a lot more types of wheeling. Wheeling can mean three wheels – a trike with a trailer on the back and electric power is something that is open to people with a lot of different abilities. Warmley Wheelers (run by Milestones Trust – see www.milestonestrust.org.uk and click on “What We Offer”) provide cycle experiences for people with quite severe mental and physical disabilities. They use the Bristol railway cycle path, which is free of motor traffic, and it enables some amazing experiences. It performs an important social role.
It's telling that Professor Chris Whitty, whom we got to know quite well during the Covid pandemic, is now a strong advocate for cycling and walking and a big proponent of cutting air pollution.
Where cycling replaces motor traffic, there is a reduction in polluting emissions. Detractors might say that bikes slow down the movement of vehicles, but that's probably not the case in all areas, and it's not the case with segregated cycling. In big cities where there's a lot of cycle participation you can get a lot more traffic throughput.
I think the urgent need is to update the vehicle fleet. Some research that I've seen about the air pollution in Bath says something like half of it comes from goods vehicles and buses. Only a small fraction of those could change to cargo bikes. So, there's an engineering and mechanical challenge to clean up the combustion engines or electrify them. The other half comes from cars. There individuals do have some control over whether they have an older vehicle that emits a lot of pollution. Since 2005 design standards of cars have improved a lot. I can't think of an exact analogy but imagine how much better your computer or your phone has become over the past 15 years. It's that sort of effect. Maybe we can help people move to younger, cleaner cars with financial support, not just through pollution charges.
It's important to understand the ways in which electric vehicles still have a big cost in lithium and other minerals and materials that are used in their creation and the problems in disposal at the end of life. They don't last forever. And they still produce particulate matter from tyres and brakes that will affect future generations.
One interesting statistic, that I don't think is known well enough, is that the driver or passenger within a vehicle is not protected from the air quality outside. You think you're in a bubble and protected from it? No. With any air conditioning on, you're pumping those fumes right into the cabin.
More people will have to accept that they've lived a life where air quality has affected their health and that of their friends, family and perhaps their children too. I've come to terms with that, I think. But it's a shame when people push back on moves to improve air quality. Some of it is an element of denialism. It's difficult to get your head around the fact that the way we've been doing things hasn't actually been working that well. As they say, the best time to change might have been 20 years ago, but the second-best time is today.
If we look back in history there was a lot of denial about the impact of smoking, but people have come to terms with that. Now the challenge for scientists is to communicate the evidence about air pollution in a way that gets across compassionately and accurately what the problems are for us as individuals. We do need to travel but we need to start accepting that our behaviour has consequences for other people. There is a place for artists as well to help us understand this. If you look back at things like the HIV AIDS pandemic, which was very scary in the 80s and 90s, a lot of art and culture came together in support and solidarity to help people understand and change attitudes.
It is going to be hard. Social change doesn't really happen linearly. We'll have tipping points and we'll have landmark moments. Landmark moments like the attribution of Ella Kissi-Debrah's death being caused in part by poor air quality in London.
Finding a balance
At this point in 2023, we've probably not noticed just how close to the pandemic we still are. The history books will show that 2020-2021 was a time of reflection, of change. I'm not convinced that we know right now how much we’ve returned to ‘normality’. For instance, road traffic across the UK is something like 95% of where it was pre pandemic. But that crude measure of vehicle miles disguises the way in which there have been shifts. There is less weekday commuting and an increase in vans and online shopping and deliveries. You need to take the picture apart.
During the lockdowns people realised just how much they had been travelling and how they can live a life where there is less. It is important to have the freedom to move but the quality of that journey is crucial. Some trips are very low quality: painful, stressful, arduous, expensive. But other journeys, like a walk or a cycle, can really boost your spirits. People can have a balanced diet in their transport habits.
November 2023
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