planning, pavements & parks: the reality of family cycling

4 minute read

On the 4th September Spoke Out organised Derby’s first Kidical Mass event. Kidical Mass is an international movement of family cycle rides for to highlight the fact that cycling in cities needs to be safe enough for children to cycle on the roads.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase “family cycling”? For most people going for a family bike ride is probably something that they only do on holiday, or occasionally at the weekend.

Many holiday parks have cycle tracks and families can rent bikes, trailers and tagalongs to go out for a ride together – but when they get back home the facilities are not available or the roads outside their home are too dangerous to go out for a ride. That is certainly true for one of the families who joined us for Kidical Mass “At the moment our roads are so dangerous that I don’t let [my children] cycle on most of our roads and that needs to change.”

As someone who regularly uses a bike as a way of transporting my children I’m always on the lookout for other families cycling in Derby. However, what I mainly see is children cycling on pavements while parents walk, or cycling in parks, or on well known off-road routes like the Riverside Path.

During the recent “Beat The Street” event, where people could collect points by travelling between special boxes installed around Derby, I felt that I saw a big increase in families out cycling and taking part in the event. This shows that the demand for cycling with children is present in Derby. We were delighted to have around 40 people join the Kidical Mass event, with transport ranging from a balance bike to a tandem, and children on bikes to babies in trailers. We rode from Chester Green into the city centre, along Albert Street and back to Chester Green.

After the ride people shared their thoughts on why they love cycling “fun”, “see stuff and appreciate the world”, “get somewhere using your body” and “good for the environment”. But there was also a feeling that roads need to be better, less priority should be given to cars and people would feel safer with fewer cars around them.

For a lot of people, even confident cyclists, they feel that the roads are simply too dangerous for children to cycle on. We are lucky in Derby to have some good off-road routes but these are mainly used for leisure and if you don’t live near one of these routes or they don’t go to where you need, it will limit the places that you can go by bike which quickly puts people off using their bike for family transport.

When people decide to drive somewhere in their cars they don’t normally think about whether the route they are planning to take will be dangerous, they don’t modify their plans or take a detour simply to avoid a difficult junction but this is the daily reality of cycling with a family. Sometimes you have no choice but to use a section of road that you don’t like because it is the only way to complete the journey. You only need to look at family cycling groups on social media to see these issues being discussed all the time.

We were happy to be supported on Kidical Mass by Derbyshire Constabulary, who were able to stop the traffic at some junctions for us. Without their support it would have been much more difficult to run the event safely.

It was fantastic to see so many people come out to support the idea that cycling on the roads as a family should be easy for everyone. We were delighted to see people come together who want children to be able to cycle around town, and show everyone else that we deserve a safe space on the roads.

Hopefully it’s also the start of a campaign to show that new protected cycle lanes are a real necessity and that they need to be of a high standard, good enough to make a family feel safe cycling alongside buses and lorries.

Some of the ideas that participants had for making cycling feel safer were:
– 20mph speed limits on residential roads and no speed limit above 30mph within Derby.
– Reduce car volume on cycling friendly streets by making car travel less convenient.
– Increasing the width of cycle paths and separating them from vehicle traffic.

The council need to consider the connectedness of the cycle paths in our city so it is possible to make entire journeys where you feel safe, not just a short section. Also the planners need to look at the types of journeys made by families, which are often different to those made by commuters. This means not simply looking at high-speed routes in and out of the city but thinking about how to connect community centres to surrounding residential areas.

If we want cycling to become an everyday way for families to get around these are the issues that must be considered. Everyone who took part in Kidical Mass has shown that cycling with family should be more than a holiday pastime.

James