Last year bicycle commuting rose by 16 per cent, helping drivers by reducing congestion without any investment in urban infrastructure. It’s therefore perhaps prophetic that Ranier Fsadni’s article ‘Transport: It’s not Fate’ (September 29) pointed out that the road signs on Tower Road show a cyclist overtaking a car rather than riding in the gutter.
Actually the sign is not there to indicate which side of the road either should be, but that both should be there. Interestingly, a number of US cities are replacing old ‘share the road’ signs with ‘cyclists may use full lane’ signs, because the former hint that it’s okay to squeeze past, while the latter clearly state that a cyclist has every right to be there.
When anyone cycling over the age of 12 was forced off the promenade several years ago, it was pointed out that while some cyclists rode too fast, which is an enforcement issue, forcing them onto the road did little to protect them, particularly the slower, less confident and younger riders.
Technical measurements on Tower Road proved this to be true and that traffic did not have the space to safely pass a person on a bicycle at the current speed limit.
After rejecting a number of cycle lane options, the Bicycling Advocacy Group suggested that the most pragmatic solution would be to add ‘sharrow’ pictograms, much like the ‘may use full lane’ signs which avoids vehicles squeezing past causing accidents.
If we are really trying to encourage people to use a monorail, why would you propose in the same breath to making it easier to use a car?
In the end even ‘sharrows’ were rejected by TM in order not to slow cars down, which basically means they found the risk to people on bicycles acceptable.
That’s interesting, as the latest police accident reports show a vehicle hitting a cyclist on Tower Road. So maybe the cyclists were right after all?
Maltese cyclists, however, were not the only people worried about drivers squeezing past last month.
The West Midlands police force lit up the cycling world by stopping and either fining or retraining drivers who passed too close to a plain clothes colleague on a bicycle.
That’s because a study of 750 bike-car accidents in the area found a staggering 98 per cent were caused by car drivers, who often simply did not notice cyclists. In the first hour, two drivers pulled over in this way simply said: “What cyclist?”
The programme has been so successful that the metropolitan police in London are rumoured to be following suit, but will TM be doing the same on Tower Road?
It would encourage more people on bicycles to use this flat commuting route and perhaps that’s the kind of hard choice Ranier was hinting at.
Those difficult choices extended to the recent Chamber of Commerce seminar on ‘Business Opportunities for Sustainable Transport’. Discussion quickly descended into how we can have more cars, with only one of two comments about business opportunities.
Dire warnings from the floor that we should not copy what other countries have successfully done, simply because we are Maltese is all too often code for ‘I don’t want to give up my car’.
Even Angelo Xuereb’s monorail presentation swiftly gave way to where we should build new roads.
Now if we are really trying to encourage people to use a monorail, why would you propose in the same breath to making it easier to use a car? People will just do that. The metro-tramo-monorail or anything else for that matter… not so much.
That’s just sustaining car growth, not making car use sustainable. The former means being stuck again, the latter, preferring alternatives, means being able to move and keep moving.
Jim Wightman is PRO of the Bicycling Advocacy Group (Malta).