Oxford cycle style

Last week I wrote about my talk at the National Conference on Urban Design, and using street design to improve the subjective safety of cyclists.  The conference was held in Oxford and it was fantastic to be able to talk about riding a bike whilst outside in the city hundreds of people were doing just that.

I'd not been to Oxford before, and I wasn't sure what to expect.  I half imagined there would be dons in capes on rusty uprights smoking pipes as they darted to the Library by bicycle.  But then I realised that's Cambridge.  Instead I found a busy city with busy streets, full of conflicting demands for space and supremacy.  Some of the city street's carriageways felt unnecessarily wide - and subsequently fast - whilst I was surprised to see quite a bit of on-street parking in the historic city centre.  The main road through the middle of the city - the High Street - is an essential bus and bicycle route that allows hundreds of people to come and go without using a car, but the pavements were incongruously narrow and walking here was not exactly a pleasant experience (especially alongside Magdalen College).  The cycle lanes there were also narrow, which is why I couldn't understand why so much space had been left over to encourage fast driving.  The street design felt very dated, to be honest.




Even the New College Lane passing beneath the so-called "Bridge of Sighs" - surely one of Oxford's most photographed locations - looked decidedly tired with gaudy double yellow lines splashed either side of the narrow road scarred by utility trenches.  Seeing as New College Lane is a little-used backway predominantly populated with pedestrians and bicycles, why hasn't this street been surfaced with some beautiful paving, and made in to shared space already so that more people can enjoy it without feeling that what little motorised traffic there is here must take priority?



Still, there are certainly plenty of cyclists to be seen in Oxford and it's charming to see the predominantly young two-wheeled population of the city going about their ways.  Most unusually for the UK upright bicycles ruled the day and many bikes were free-locked in the street - something you'd never see in London - which helped to lend a care-free attitude to the city's unencumbered cyclists.  The look seemed to be college sports kit, or book bags and long scarves as opposed to high vis vests and helmets, which was refreshing.






Crocodiles of bicycles weaved their way past Oxford train station, the forecourt of which was littered with a mixture of smart commuter frames parked up for the day and the detritus of decades of uncollected dead and dieing bicycles.




In town there was a fair balance of women and men, which is unusual in the UK where three quarters of all bicycles journeys are undertaken by men.  It was fantastic to see a better balance of the sexes on the roads.







I even spotted a gentleman who looked uncannily like Mark Ronson, singer and composer of The Bike Song.  Maybe it was him, who knows?



In the city centre some young (and even some very young) children were being transported by bicycle, which is always a really encouraging sign that a city's streets are safe and inviting enough to allow parents to feel confident enough to ride with their children on board.



But most excitingly for me, I also saw a healthy number of older people riding bicycles.  This is something which in central London - with its relatively younger population - you just don't see as often.  When older people feel safe and comfortable riding a bicycle then conditions on the ground are generally good, and of course encouraging more older people to ride can only be a good thing for the city as it helps to give older people independence whilst giving the city more eyes on the street and more mobile customers in return.  I even saw one particular lady conducting a side-step dismount of her bicycle at a set of traffic lights, waiting beside her bike whilst the lights changed, and then scooting off and stepping through the bicycle frame as she picked up speed - something I've only ever witnessed on the continent before, and not something I'm sure you could attempt successfully on the Elephant and Castle roundabout.





All in all I like Oxford a lot, and I felt that with a little bit of bravery and movement in the right direction it could go from being a good city for pedestrians and cyclists to being a really great city for pedestrians and cyclists.  I can just imagine the pages of faux uproar the local newspapers probably turn out every time a new street design or layout proposing one less car parking space is launched, so I can appreciate how hard it can sometimes be for local Councillors.  But if we designed all our cities to the agenda of local newspapers they'd be very unpleasant places indeed.  Let's hope that Oxford's leaders have got it in them to take the steps the city needs to take to become an even more modern, safe and inviting city for cycling in the future.

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