Since the spring of this year, the Four Banks in Chorlton, where Wilbraham Road meets Barlow Moor Road – the heart of M21 if you will – has been constantly snarled up with traffic. What was once a busy and bustling crossroads is now a shadow of its former self, reduced to a four-way system, running at a quarter of its previous capacity with only one lane of traffic going at once. As one of the busiest junctions in the area, this has meant that queues going back 20 cars or more are now a common sight in Chorlton, and has surely made the junction somewhat of a no-go area for your average, perpetually running late resident, lacking the requisite patience to sit stationary for 5 minutes or more to travel 50 metres across a junction i.e. me. Happily, on my bike, I can go via the back streets, avoid the snarl up and be on my merry way again, but for those with children and family members to transport, a disability that makes walking and cycling difficult, or without access to or means to store a bike, this isn’t an option. Admittedly, the road closures have actively prompted me to drive much less, and take the bike much more for those short trips in and around the local area, which can only be a good thing. The National Travel Survey of 2021 found that, when reviewing travel data from nearly 10,000 participants over a week long period, 17% of journeys less than a mile were made by car, and for 1 to 5 mile journeys, the number jumps to 67%. For comparison, a 5 mile bike ride takes about 30 minutes. With the impact of cars and motor travel on air quality and the environment now established, the overall takeway is clear: we all should be walking, cycling and taking public transport more, and using the car much less.
In fact, it is this very impulse that is behind these road closures in the first place. The crossroads, like many other junctions in the area, are being upgraded as part of the Manchester Bee Network project. This ambitious project by Transport for Greater Manchester aims to “deliver a joined-up London-style transport system” by integrating bus, tram, cycling and walking routes. In real terms it means that under the scheme, Greater Manchester’s buses will be taken back into public ownership, and upgrades are being made to existing cycle corridors as part of creating “the UK’s largest cycling and walking network”. I have always been a fan of taking the bus and personally can’t wait to board the shiny new TgFM-owned bright yellow buses (they match the trams!!). Like many suburban teenagers I'd imagine, the discovery that my friends and I could get the bus all the way into town by oursevles was a complete revelation, a first taste of freedom and adulthood, and the yearly bus passes I had in college felt like my ticket to independence. Add to all this the fact that I already have a bike, and enjoy cycling, and you’d be correct to assume that for me, the Bee Network scheme is pretty much preaching to the converted.
Andy Burnham poses with a fleet of Bee Network vehicles on St Peter's Square in Manchester. Source: GMCA
(via the Bolton News)
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A mockup of how the junction in Chorlton is intended to look once roadworks are complete. Source: Manchester City Council (via Road.cc) |
Of course, there is no getting away from the fact that roadworks are annoying, tiresome and seem to take ages for what can seem like little reward in the face of the huge and immediate inconvenience. To rebut this, a good few in the comments argue that the present inconvenience will be worth it for the safer cycle lanes that Chorlton will be able to enjoy for years to come. I’ve cycled through other areas where the scheme work is already complete, and I can vouch for them – the newly laid paths, sectioned off from the road by a sturdy concrete riser, really are excellent. But it doesn’t just seem to be about the inconvenience of the works, but rather a sense that it’s just not for a good reason in the first place. No one will use the cycle lanes, the detractors say, what about motorists? Won’t someone think of the drivers? Are they trying to push drivers off the roads? Well, in short, yes.
The topic of the car and its market in Britain, as well as its impact on the environment, is a very complex one and most likely beyond my capabilities in summing up, but I’ll do my best here to do it justice. First of all, there are more cars around and on the roads than ever before previously, with the number of vehicles registered totalling over 32 million in 2022. In 2021, the number of households with one car was around 45%, a figure that has since 1971 averaged pretty consistently at around 43%. The impact of increasing numbers of cars is still felt, however, with 33% of households having 2 or more cars in 2021, compared to just 8% in 1971. Additionally, the proportion of households without a car has fallen from 48% in 1971 to 22% in 2021. On the bright side, cars are in broad strokes lasting longer nowadays, thanks to improving technologies, meaning that the average car is older, and according to Whatcar, sales of used cars outnumber brand-new purchases by around 3 to 1.
When it comes to the environment, greenhouse gas emissions from transport are down 23% from 1990 to 2020, although this was accelerated by the COVID-19 lockdown, meaning we will probably see this drop taper off over the next few years. The average number of trips made, as well as distance travelled, are other statistics that were trending downards already but received an extra push during the pandemic, with a decrease of 32% and 40% respectively since 2002. In 1990, 72% of transport emissions in the UK were due to the car, whereas in 2020 it was just 52%. This will be the result of multiple factors, the most obvious one being COVID restrictions, but also the rise in numbers of electric vehicles, and newer petrol vehicles having much more efficient engines. While these numbers aren’t terrible – are in fact a lot better than I was expecting – transport remains the largest emmitting sector in the UK, having produced 24% of the UK’s total emissions in 2020.
What’s more, greenhouse gases are just part of the problem with exhaust emissions. In their statement on car pollution, the charity Environmental Protection writes that “air pollutants from transport include nitrogen oxides, particles, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons. All have a damaging impact on the health of people, animals and vegetation locally”. According to the council, “every year over a hundred people in Manchester die because of toxic air”, even though the city falls “within the acceptable limits for [the above] pollutants except the annual concentration of nitrogen dioxide, which regularly exceeds the objective. Nitrogen dioxide levels are particularly high in the city centre and close to busy roads”. Environmental Protection makes the link more clear: “in town centres and alongside busy roads, vehicles are responsible for most local pollution”. They also state that “vehicles tend to emit more pollution during the first few miles of journey when their engines are warming up”, making the prevelance of car journeys under 5 miles even more concerning. Putting these facts together I would imagine that in the city centre, where there is a higher concentration of buildings built closely together and fewer green spaces, the same amount of cars on the road as in the suburbs could still pose a greater danger there, where there would presumably be less ventilation to disperse air pollution. And as Manchester becomes increasingly built up with apartment blocks, more and more people will be affected by it. The solution, in the face of this, seems obvious: transport into and around our cities needs to move towards public transport, cycling, walking, and away from the car. So considering what roadworks like these will be facilitating, 6 months worth of inconvenience seems worth it, to me at least.
But the Bee Network isn’t the first or only scheme dreamed up by the council to tackle the thorny issues of transport and air pollution. In early 2022, signs began popping up along the motorways surrounding Manchester, drawing drivers’ attention to the forthcoming Clean Air Zone or CAZ for short. This was to be a charging scheme, aimed at reducing roadside NO2 (nitrous oxide) levels to within legal limits. According to the MEN, lorries, buses and coaches that did not meet emissions standards would have been charged £60 a day to drive within the zone. It also would have applied to taxis and vans (£7.50 and £10 a day respectively) but notably, not to private cars. While well-intentioned, the proposal was met with understandable backlash, especially from small businesses and independent traders who felt unfairly targeted, with many stating that the scheme would plainly put them out of business. “Under Review” stickers quickly appeared over the original signs and the scheme was effectively scrapped. Today, Clean Air Greater Manchester’s website offers the following explanation:
“Following the pandemic, government agreed that this charging Clean Air Zone would NOT be introduced on 30 May 2022. That’s because the pandemic resulted in significant vehicle supply chain issues, rising vehicle prices, and a cost-of-living crisis. The original Clean Air Plan was no longer the right solution and could have caused significant financial hardship. At the same time, it would not have met the government’s legal direction (issued before the pandemic) to tackle harmful nitrogen dioxide on local roads by 2024.”
The new plan is still under development between Manchester City Council and central government, but it looks like government funding will be used to upgrade the “most polluting vehicles that travel frequently on the most polluted local roads”, and that it will focus in on areas where pollution is worst rather than applying as a blanket across the region. To their credit, it looks like the council have listened to the criticism, as its statements on their website could not be more of a climb-down: the Clean Air Plan “aims to clean up the air we all breathe without a charging Clean Air Zone. We don’t want it to add to the cost-of-living crisis, harming local businesses or our economy.”
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| Source: The Bury Times |
Having looked at just 2 schemes, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for the people whose job this is; the policy makers and urban planners whose task it is to try and engender vitally important change, certain in the knowledge that it will be uncool and firmly unpopular. Seatbelts, the smoking ban, designated drivers, paying 10p for a plastic bag: convincing people to change their habits, suffer a little inconvenience, work a little harder, give something up for the benefit of society at large is no easy task. And this must be especially true when it comes to the car, an ordinary inanimate object which to some can be something as humdrum as their means of transport, getting them from A to B, school, work, doing the shopping, a hospital appointment, and to others a symbol of their freedom, independence, place, status in the world, escape from an oppressive home, an abusive relationship, once inside and whisked away, a place of impregnable safety. But the car has become so ubiquitous in modern life as to be almost an entitlement, a God-given right – “what d’you mean, there’s no parking?”. You only need spend 1 day in Britain and look at some of the reaction to low-traffic neighbourhoods to get the picture that some people feel really attacked by a ‘pedestrians only’ sign, and that’s despite the fact that learning to drive, taking a test and acquiring a car plus insurance plus maintenance is a lengthy and costly process, by no means accessible to the average person. Studies do show that cycling levels are gradually increasing, but I’d say the majority culture in Britain remains pretty car-centric, especially when you compare us to other European countries like Sweden and the Netherlands, though thankfully not as much as in the States.
My commute to work is about a 30 minute drive via motorways, or about 45 minutes via a 15 minute bike ride, 20 minute train journey and then another 5 minutes on the bike. It’s a bit of a faff, but I like the days where I don’t have to get behind the wheel. Being able to do this is helped by the fact that my job is not a physically taxing one, involving 0 physical activity other than getting up to use the coffee machine. This means I still have enough energy at the end of the day to make the more taxing journey; getting on my bike and feeling the breeze on my face is actually a welcome break from the 8 hours I just spent sitting down in an air-conditioned office. I’m also not a teacher carrying lesson plans or practicing a trade that requires equipment – a makeup kit, a set of tools – so bring very little with me to my place of work other than lunch, my planner, hair brush, claw clip, and at least 3 different lip products. Lastly, I’m just straightforwardly lucky that there is a train station near my workplace in the first place. I’m lucky to have my own car, and I could drive every day if I wanted to – it would certainly be more convenient – but I don’t. When I first started this job however, I had to go into the office every day, and as I wasn’t living near a train station at the time, I had to drive.
Some people can commute via car every day and not bat an eyelid. Driving an hour, every day, 5 days a week for 2 months on end showed me that I am not one of those people. I had only ever driven for leisure before, seeing friends, my boyfriend, trips to Formby, Blackpool; commuting was a different beast and doing that distance day after day drove me insane. I was never so depressingly aware of my position in the “rat race” as when sitting in traffic, crawling along the M60 on a grey winter morning, looking to either side of me and seeing that every other car going past me also had one sole occupant; doing the mental maths and working out that all the traffic I could see was the equivalent of about 2 coaches worth of people, thinking about how much space (not to mention emissions) could be saved if we’d all got public transport, or even carpooling. But no, we were all in our own individual pods, under our own steam, zipping off to our own very individual important destinations, free from delays and cancellations, not having to rub shoulders with strangers and their smells and their coughs and their music, with our playlist and our air freshener and our Waze, and God help whoever might come along and try and take that away. The private motor car has often been listed among what some consider to be the worst inventions of all time. Given its impact on our environment, the way it has shaped so much of our infrastructure and urban planning, and just the fact that now people have become so used to this convenience that they will be loath to give it up, I think they might have a point.
What’s more, if you drive, and haven’t noticed it yet, let me be the one to break it to you: people can’t drive, and people are infuriating. I remember my parents getting in the car with me a couple of months after starting my job. Within about 5 minutes my mum was commenting upon how much angrier, how much more aggressive I seemed, losing patience easily, swearing at the morons who had the misfortune to get in my way. My dad, kindly, came to my defence by reminding her that I had been motorway commuting. I'm not blaming this solely on other motorists’ incompetence – just partly – but she was right. I am the type to get stressed quite readily, hold on to it and carry it with me if I don’t make the conscious decision to let go of it, and having to drive every day, spend hours hunched behind the wheel, inching along in the glow of a million strangers’ brake lights was simply not good for me. I manage to keep this in check nowadays, but back then, without even realising, commuting by car every day had made me an angrier, and more unsafe, driver.
Call me a weirdo (and many have) but I like getting public transport: it’s a chance to sit back, put my music on, stare out the window and let someone else worry about getting to our destination. It’s a chance to switch my brain off, do nothing for a moment and relax – that is, when it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. For this is surely the principal complaint about public transport versus driving, and I’m sure what turns a lot of people off it: it’s unreliable, prone to delays and cancellations, and turns up late as often as it turns up on time. Taking in the scenic route on the top deck of the bus can be relaxing when you have nowhere to be, but when you’re on a deadline, on the way to the station when your train’s leaving in 20 minutes, a baby’s crying and the driver has pulled over to wait at the stop for the third inexplicable time, it can be anything but. It also depends very much upon where you happen to live, and how much money has been invested into your local public transport network. While Londoners may roll their eyes at having to wait 5 minutes for the next tube, most of us suburb dwellers grew up with a bus service into town that ran once every half an hour and stopped at 8 o’clock. Outside of cities, I can imagine the offering is even more sparse. Where I live now, the bus services are actually pretty good, so I can be evangelical about public transport again, but it’s very easy to recommend something that you already have ready access to. The council have already rolled out a £2 flat fare for all bus journeys across Manchester, which is a welcome move, but how the publicly-owned bus system will fare this autumn (excuse the pun) remains to be seen.
Going back to the Bee Network, then, and the roadwork-induced road-rage that inspired this piece to begin with, why then, do cyclists inspire so much ire in so many drivers? They share the same space and surely the same goal – to get from A to B as quickly and safely as possible – why can’t they get along? As someone who has a foot in both camps, who has been in both positions, I have thoughts on this. The biggest reason, I think, for the conflict is the fact that cyclists occupy somewhat of a grey area. They’re not drivers, but not pedestrians either; they are much more vulnerable to injury than drivers, but bikes are still a vehicle in their own right that can cause real injury to actual pedestrians, and thus need to be manouvred safely. What’s more, they are slower, requiring drivers to have a little patience, a foreign concept to many who just want to get in and go. My belief is that, if you want to occupy the road alongside cars, you need to behave like a car too, and follow the same rules they’re obliged to. It’s the ambiguity and unpredictability of some cyclists where the greatest potential for the road rage – as well as no small danger of a possibly fatal accident – lies. Ignoring the dedicated cycle lanes to ride in the road; riding two abreast making overtaking impossible; zooming through a red light past waiting cars because you assume the road is clear; riding up to and along the pavement to skip past a queue of traffic; not wearing the proper helmet and lights; not indicating. These are legitimate grievances that would tempt the most patient motorist to start mowing the neon-lycra-clad down. I wear a helmet and make a conscious effort to avoid doing all the above, every time I go out on the bike. I’m not asking for a medal for doing so, but I do not take lightly the fact that there are people out there behind the wheel that harbour genuine anger and resentment in their hearts towards cyclists, and I don’t want to give them any more ammunition in a potential conflict situation that is already on an unequal footing by virtue of their being safe inside an airbag-lined, crumple-zoned, one ton metal box, versus me, my folding bike and nothing but my helmet to protect me if I hit the tarmac. I have been screamed at several times by drivers for the slightest mistake that results in them waiting a second or two longer at a junction, and it’s not lost on me that if they wanted to, they could quite literally run me over.
My experience of animosity from drivers is not at all unique and is in fact backed up by several surveys. As reported in Cycling Weekly magazine, research was carried out last year for BBC’s Panorama in order to examine “reactions to the new Highway Code (…) the big addition was the introduction of the ‘Hierarchy of Road Users’ which places pedestrians at the top, as the most vulnerable, followed by cyclists, with motorists at the bottom. This means those with the most risk in the event of a collision are placed at the top”. The survey found that “33% of motorists surveyed ‘feel cyclists should not be allowed on the public highway and should be restricted to cycle lanes/shared pathways.’ It also found that only 53% agree with the idea that they see cyclists as equal partners on the road.” A 2001 study of cyclists and drivers’ attitudes in Scotland agreed that “criticism is levelled at cyclists for not consistently adhering to the law in terms of courteous and acceptable road behaviour (…) such behaviour tends to exasperate drivers. (…) All respondents – cyclists and non-cyclists – readily admit that failure on the part of a small number of respondents to observe the basic rules of the road when cycling will conribute to a poor perception of all cyclists.” As well as this, there is an added resentment in the fact that “cyclists are the only form of road user currently making use of the roads who are not required to pay any form of road tax” which “reinforces views of them as unequal road users (…) it was argued by drivers that the imposition of some form of charge would increase the status of cyclists as having a right to use the roads.” It’s interesting the idea that the right to use the roads – take up public space – is one that is granted by default to motorists, but has to be earned by cyclists.
This is another complex topic likely beyond the scope of this article, one on which there is a considerable amount of academic research and analysis, and I wouldn’t wish to get out of my depth by going into it in excessive detail. When it comes to why exactly cyclists provoke us so much, it seems there isn’t one, straightforward answer. Cycling seems to bring with it an inherent smugness, so blatant as to not even require communicating verbally: I’m fit enough to do this; I can go where you can’t; I’m getting exercise, taking up the same road space as you and paying virtually nothing while doing it. I also think it has to do with having the ability to choose to cycle in the first place. As with the great debate surrounding food poverty and home cooking vs ready meals, just the very fact of having time to do these things is in itself a luxury. It’s a privilege to be able to choose this method of transport that gets you there a little bit slower, is less efficient, requires more exertion. Look at me taking my time while you hurry, the cyclist seems to boast.
If you want my personal opinion (I have tried to keep this piece as neutral as possible so far!), I think that some motorists feel attacked by all this – cyclists, 'pedestrians only’ signs, clean air zones, low traffic neighbourhoods – because they are all an affirmation of the one thing drivers would rather not acknowledge: the fact that cars, as wonderful and convenient as they are for us, as liberating and lazifying as they may be, are, if we’re being honest, bad for us, for our health, our cities’ infrastructure, our environment and the wider world around us. Engaging with these things at all requires the acknowledgement that, if we want things to get better and not worse, we need to wean ourselves off our beloved automobile; the level of comfort and ease to which we have become accustomed must, unfortunately, reluctantly, be abandoned. It’s just like countless others of our creature comforts, luxuries to our great-grandparents but today commonplace, that we’ve realised are detrimental to the environment: flying, eating a lot of meat, cheap new clothes. It’s the uncomfortable realisation that we, even as individuals, are contributing, and so we, as individuals, must either make changes, or ignore it altogether.
That’s why I’d imagine some motorists see cyclists as an affront to their choice to drive. I’ve observed that some people seem to be unnerved and feel threatened by other people’s choosing not to drink, for example. We are after all pack animals and look to each other for recognition, affirmation and validation much more than I think we might realise. I have had my fair share of (mostly) loving flack for being vegetarian, to which I have more than once had occasion to reply that if my choice to not do something bothers someone so much, perhaps they should go inward and examine why they are doing that thing in the first place; whether they’re quite secure in their choices, or merely relying on others doing the same as them in order to validate their decisions, to soothe their ego. We all know that our choices and behaviours have further ramifications. Those who have made the active, conscious choice not to do a certain thing are drawing attention to the negative impact of that action, precisely to the people who I think would rather not be reminded of it.
I want to (start to) draw this piece to a close by saying that I am in no means perfect when it comes to the environment and this is not a piece designed to convince anyone reading this of my virtue. I only stopped eating meat about 3 years ago, I still eat fish occasionally, I eat dairy, I sometimes shop at Primark, I fly once or twice a year, I drive several times a week, even under 5 mile distances to the Aldi in Stretford (I know, shoot me). There is also a wider, but vitally important conversation to be had about where all of this intersects with class and how we are really only as environmentally friendly as our life circumstances – finances, employment, upbringing – allow us to be. Being able to cycle, get the bus, be vegetarian, to find clothes my size in charity shops: I know it is all a choice and a privilege that many don’t have. I in no way believe that doing any of those things makes me a better person than a person who does none of them. What’s more, I don’t believe it’s remotely helpful to turn any honest effort made to reduce our environmental impact into a mean-spirited competition, a point-scoring hierarchy where each level looks down their nose at the one below. None of us are perfect, but I would like to think that we are all doing the best we can and trying to make even those small changes that, when made together by many, can make a real difference. Look at the changes companies have made in even just the last 5 years to cut out single-use plastics in their packaging, and make more from recyclable materials. Look at how second-hand clothing, charity shopping, rewearing and thrifting has become defiantly mainstream. Yes, a lot of that will be pandering, greenwashing, but it’s better than no change at all, and is surely in part down to consumer scrutiny and pressure. So while the lions’ share of criticism can reasonably be levelled at our governments and big corporations, I am a firm, firm believer in collective responsibility; that what we do matters. Those small, every-day actions on a collective level and over a lifetime quickly add up. The Bee Network and its ilk may be bothersome in the short term, but I think their project will be proven to be on the right side of history. Change that is inconvenient, that makes us uncomfortable, can often be the kind we need most.
