Motonormativity: A blind spot we all share

Just over a year ago some UK based psychology researchers published a study about how the standards that we apply to cars and driving is at odds with those that we apply in other areas of life. They called this motonormativity.

Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard

One of the authors recently gave a presentation on this subject at a conference and this is available on-line. It is interesting and certainly gives plenty of food for thought.

You can watch the presentation below.

Lancaster Cycling Demonstration Town

The Cycling Demonstration Towns programme saw levels of funding for cycling approaching levels that are more typical of The Netherlands over a period of 6 years between 2005 and 2011. Lancaster and Morecambe was one of the locations, and averaged a spend of £13 per person during this period.

Of the six towns that took part in this project there was quite a bit of variation in terms of how much cycling levesl increased over the period compared to a baseline from 2005, i.e. at the start of the programme. It was noted that the individual delivery programmes, political support, funding changes, influence from other interventions and weather influences may have each contributed.

The Cycling Demonstration Towns project involved a lot of monitoring of cycling levels, and during the programme Lancaster had more than three times as many permanent cycle counters as there are in Utrecht! Virtually all of the cycle counters in and around Lancaster were abandoned relatively soon after the end of the programme though, amking it much more difficult for people to know how levels of cycling in Lancaster have been changing since then.

the cycling levels in each of the towns was compared against a matched town that was not part of the programme to understand how useful the additional funding had been in promoting cycling in the area. The figure below shows how increases in the levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to the matched area.

A greater growth was recorded in the corresponding matched area than in Lancaster with Morecambe. Whilst there was no significant investment in cycling in this matched area, political leadership strongly supportive of cycling is reported in this location during the corresponding period. There was some relatively small scale delivery of schemes to enable cycling, such as the installation of cycle contraflows, and a considerable effort to restrict car movement and to increase permeability of the town centre for cyclists.

Government road traffic estimates over a similar period of time indicated a increase in cycle traffic of approximately 18% between 2002 and 2012, which is broadly similar to the degree of change seen in Lancaster during the Cycling Demonstration Towns programme.

You can find the Sustrans reports on the outcomes of the Cycling Demonstration Towns progamme here.

Levels of Cycling in the UK

The National Travel Survey provides information on the levels of walking and cycling nationally.

The data suggest that on average there are between about 15 and 20 trips per person per year, and that this figure has been quite consistent for about 20 years.

Average number of cycling trips per person per year

However, we know that about 85% of people aged 16 and over in England do little or no cycling in a year.

This means that there are a small number of people making quite a lot of trips each.

This means that on average the few people who do actually cycle are probably making about two trips per week each by bike.

We will be looking to see if there is any more specific data for the Lancaster area in future posts.

Lancaster's Air Quality Management Area turns Twenty!

There has been a big birthday celebration this week, with the 20th anniversary of the Lancaster city centre Air Quality Management Area last Tuesday. Basically the entire one-way system is likely to exceed the 1 hour and annual mean objectives for nitrogen dioxide.

However, there may be some positive news in that we have heard rumors that Lancashire County Council will be receiving almost half a billion pounds of additional funding from next year onward to transform transport across the County. That’s equivalent to almost a week and a half’s worth of that mythical money that we used to pay to Europe and somebody said we could give the NHS instead if we left. The question is whether any of this will be used to address the air pollution problem in Lancaster.

The Northern Bypass was supposed to solve the already longstanding air pollution problem, but instead it has been used as a relief road so that more through traffic can use the city centre as a though route. Rishi Sunak certainly doesn’t need to be worrying about any of that nasty Lefty “War on Drivers” here.