Will UCI Championships bring change for Glasgow cyclists?

Yes, people feel attached to their cars. Yes, people feel their cars are vital. Does anyone really identify as “a motorist”? What silly, tribal language for a prime minister to be using, what a tiresome sop to the culture wars.

All because of this assumption that the Uxbridge by-election win, Boris Johnson’s old seat, was a revolt against a perceived attack on so-called motorists, a stand against supposedly punitive green policies.

A slim win for the Tories against what was assumed to be a safe Labour win and an entire political narrative has been turned on its head. Labour’s leader Keir Starmer has been accused of wobbling on his environmental pledges; London mayor Sadiq Khan has had to defend his.

Slews of copy - my own included - have agonised over the future of a net zero UK. Rishi Sunak has come out as the champion of motorists, making a pompous fool of himself in the process. You wonder: has anyone asked the people of Uxbridge why they voted the way they did?

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Perhaps it was very little or even nothing to do with the ultra-low emissions zone and prompted by something else. Wouldn’t the chatterati look fools then, and the politicians with them.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, we’re trying to get citizens on their bikes. Especially women, who cycle in far fewer numbers than men. What can help? Improving road safety by moving away from tropes about motorists vs cyclists and a refusal to divide people into warring factions.

I took part in a led ride for the media last week around some of the venues being used for the UCI Championships. We started at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in the east end. Or, that is, the others started at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome in the east end.

I drove to the velodrome with a view to hiring a Nextbike and using that for the ride. Despite being early, I discovered the nearest bike hire point on the Nextbike map no longer exists. The next nearest was showing on the app that it had two bikes for hire but there were no bikes to be found.

Overall, the Nextbike service in Glasgow is a success. It is, according to Andy Waddell, a senior officer at Glasgow City Council I interviewed last week, the second most-used in the UK outwith London. My experience was a hiccough, an irritation. It only shows the service is generally very good but not always perfect.

On the led ride, which meandered through Glasgow Green, crossed the bottom tip of the South City Way and headed along the Clydeside, we were told about the huge improvements to cycling infrastructure in Glasgow.

I love the South City Way. It runs from Queens Park, in the - you guessed it - south of the city, passed my flat and takes me right into town. I mention this to be frank about any allegations of bias. That is, I’m biased here, and frank about it.

I remember what it was like, as a novice bike commuter, plucking up the courage to ride in traffic with no respite from close-passing cars and aggressive private hire drivers. Every day there was some issue to make me infuriated or afraid.

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Now, there’s a mix of on-road cycling and protected cycleway. It would be marvellous to have protected cycleway all the way - or at least not some of the whackier routes that see people in bikes having to do mad manoeuvres - but what we have is generally very good but not always perfect.

The other members of the led ride didn’t have the chance to see the South City Way in all its glory. While it is a protected cycle lane, you still have to be cautious.

Not everyone driving is used to such a bike lane and so cars still cut across junctions with people on bikes in them; not all passengers are used to such a bike lane and so they’ll fling their doors open. Folk on foot wander up and down the lane and so are another hazard to skirt round.

The South City Way should have been completed by now but delays - Brexit, the pandemic, the way of these things - mean a section running from the Gorbals to the Merchant City opened only recently.

After driving home to fetch my own bike, I rode from home down to meet the group at Glasgow Green - my first experience in this new section.

It's an improvement to be out of the road, which is heavy with buses as a main artery to the south side. But already there’s broken glass on the route, overgrowing untended weeds and it was clear the police horses had been out. Manure in one’s tyres really adds to the experience. Generally good, but not always perfect.

As we headed along the Clydeside on our way up to Kelvingrove Park, I was talking to one of the officials from Glasgow Life about cycling in the city. I do it, every day, and I love it. Only illness has stopped me. But would I recommend it to other people?

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I still feel there is so much anti-bike aggression on the roads and so many routine stresses - close passing, dangerous driving - I would worry about encouraging someone to cycle. Could I recommend it with a clear conscience? I wrote in 2019, following the death of a cyclist, that I could not. Four years - and more fatal accidents in the city - later and I still wouldn’t.

As I was explaining this to my cycling companion, a woman behind the wheel of a van drove through a red light, across the bike lane and, when I looked through the window, she was on her phone.

Mr Waddell, when I interviewed him last week, told me car is no longer king in Glasgow. Cars are at the bottom of the heap when it comes to design and planning in the city. That is clearly, from the decisions being taken, the case.

And yet how do we filter that attitude down to the people doing the driving?

When it comes to the day-to-day of cycling, good but not perfect is fine. When it comes to the attitudes of people driving, good but not perfect can lose lives.

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So much campaigning work – Cycling Scotland as one example - has been done to humanise the people driving and cycling and remind us all that we’re just people, scooting from A to B.

I look at a prime minister trotting out this embarrassing narrative of “war on motorists” and despair. It’s such a regressive and damaging narrative. There are clear aspirations for making Glasgow a cycling city and having it as a guiding light for other cities around the UK.

Reality will only match this aspiration with attitude changes but we can’t have a hope of filtering down positive change when the political top is so utterly, ridiculously rotten.