This weekend I…
- spent a day with Dr Bike, provided by Better By Bike, at St Paul’s Community and Family Centre
- participated in the Bristol World Naked Bike Ride as a steward
- followed the Easton Arts Trail and chatted with Jen and Jet who cycled from Bristol to India
- played some bike polo
- saw fixed gear riders getting filmed for BÖIKZMÖIND

Kat and I recently co-wrote an article on group rides and how they generate particular types of public sociability. (This paper isn’t publicly available yet but I am happy to send anyone who asks a personal copy). This might be called cycling etiquette – social rules of behaviour – which may or may not conform with the Highway Code’s rules. (Did you know that the Highway Code says that drivers may talk but should not argue with their passengers?)

As with any set of behavioural norms, cycling etiquette changes over time and may be very different in differenct geographical and social contexts. It can both be widely understood and contested – not least by cyclists themselves.

While we were watching the Bristol commuters on Tuesday, I could see rules of cycling etiquette that I thought were both specific to that junction at that time, and more representative of cycling in Britain generally. I was on the East side of the junction, watching cyclists coming South down Gloucester Road under the railway bridge. There is an ASL and then the carriageway narrows, widening again a few cars lengths’ after the box junction has been crossed. This is what happens:

Cyclists coming through tend to position themselves right on the yellow box junction line, meaning that they end up riding close to the kerb. This is to allow motor vehicles to get past, which might otherwise have to wait behind the cyclist until the road widens again. Often this resulted in close passes being made – the car at the front is small and the gap between it and the first cyclist is reasonably wide, but larger cars and even bigger vehicles tended to pass close.

The assumptions being made here by both cyclists and drivers, are that motorists do not need to give cyclists as much room as they would give another motor vehicle, and that cyclists have a responsibility to keep in to the kerb and allow drivers to pass. These assumptions runs counter to advice in the Highway Code and in the Bikeability guidance, but are I suspect common among drivers and cyclists in Bristol and elsewhere (I’ve seen similar patterns of cycling behaviour at junctions in Hull last year).

We have been leaving postcards on bikes, inviting people to take part in the project by being interviewed. So far we have left postcards on Stapleton Road, in the Broadmead shopping area and Cabot Circus, at UWE, and near the waterfront around Welsh Back and Canons Way. These interviews, with people who cycle in Bristol, ask participants about their cycling experiences over their lives; we’re interested in all types of cycling.

At the shopping centre on Friday afternoon, there were a lot of bicycles locked in pairs, like this couple of Bromptons.

And some creative additions to bikes – including the unorthodox locking device below.

Rachel and I are starting Bristol fieldwork today. This is the third of four fieldsites in the research project. As per our ethnographic and interview-based approach, we will spend a week in the city to familiarise ourselves with the area, meet people, go on rides, visit bike shops and begin to recruit respondents. We will then return to Bristol at the end of May to live full time in the city for a month. We also expect to visit the city regularly throughout July/August to participate in various events and activities that are relevant to the project. I have only been to Bristol once before and I am really looking forward to it. We have a packed week ahead with meetings, rides and interviews and the weather is finally looking up.

Bristol was chosen because it has had a lot going on policy-wise: Greater Bristol was selected as the UK’s first  “Cycling City”, which has meant a total of £22.8 million over three years (including local authority funding) for cycling infrastructure, training, and promotion. This programme will be finishing as we do our Bristol fieldwork, so it will be interesting to study people’s perceptions of its effects on cycling experiences and places in Bristol.

Sustrans was born in the area in July 1977 as was  Cyclebag (Cycle Bristol Action Group). Bristol is also home to UWE’s Centre for Transport and Society, which is involved in a variety ofinteresting cycling-related projects.

Unlike the other three sites, Bristol is hilly and on the relatively wet west side of the country, and yet cycling rates are still double the national average.