A new project in Edinburgh aims to encourage more people to cycle to work

Published on Wednesday 23 June 2010 19:49

Lesley Riddoch takes a look at what it's pedalling to counter the belief that bikes are unsafe and unsuitable for city life

• Bike Buddy Colin Russell has shown Jill Bennett a new side to cycling and a more enjoyable route to work. Rather than leaving asthmatic Jill panting and wheezing, she says her breathing has improved. Picture: Jayne Emsley

IT'LL get stolen." "I've got a lock and chain." "That means nothing. My son had his bike stolen here three days after he bought it. It was locked too. Yours won't last a week if you leave it there." Maddeningly for that neighbour, five months after I first ventured into the overgrown jungle that is our tenement back green, my bike is still intact. But so, too, is her unshakeable belief that bikes are unsafe and unsuitable for city life. She's not alone.

Some 45 per cent of Edinburgh residents live within five miles of their workplace. What stops them using bikes to get to work and school? It's not generally a matter of climate-change denying, fear of hills, theft, or even rain. According to a Bike Station/Sustrans survey, some of the biggest turn-offs are traffic fear, lack of confidence, ROBS (rubbish old bike syndrome), parking problems in flats and tenements, negative neighbours, route uncertainty, helmet hair and workplace parking.

In Scottish Bike Week (20-27 June), an ambitious new project called A Better Way to Work is promising it can overcome all of these problems. The Bike Station (which recycled 6,400 old bikes last year) has won Climate Challenge Fund cash to double the number of Edinburghers cycling to work by the spring of 2011. They plan to do it with a Bike Buddy scheme, where clued-up, fit, professionally qualified trainers come to workplaces to create a "personal cycle plan" for each tentative new cyclist. That can include anything from arranging the free loan of a new bicycle, advising on safe bike parking at home and at work, giving bikes a basic health check and creating a safe and enjoyable cycle to work route.

The Bike Station started with a few cycling obsessives who gathered in the bowels of Waverley station to fix their machines. In 2005, they moved to larger premises in Causewayside and have taken in 21,000 old bicycles, repairing 8,000 and stripping the rest for parts and scrap metal. Most Saturday mornings, a long queue of people gathers to buy the reconditioned two-wheelers for 60-80. Many new recruits go on to cycle maintenance classes – some run by women – and the Bike Station works with Shotts prison so that inmates on five-year sentences can become bike mechanics, fixing the broken cycles the Bike Station van delivers.

According to Bike Station manager Mark Sydenham, the scheme means inmates arrive home socially useful in the eyes of children they hardly know; "'My dad can fix my bike.' That's an increasingly rare skill. I'm continually astounded by people who don't even know the right word for a tyre – they have to point it out, or call it 'the black bit round the wheel'. Fixing a puncture can seem like an epic task to some people, but with some attention, a few tips and the proper tools, it's rarely as hard as they imagine, or as expensive."

Often, though, having an old bike without gears has been a bigger problem than having no bike at all, and the experience of heaving up and down in the rain with the chain coming off and gears sticking is enough to deter many people for life. So a first step for many would-be cyclists is to part with their old crocks and borrow a high-quality, lightweight bike, or an electric bike, or a folding bike for a fortnight. Getting on a new bike is usually a revelation.

Two thousand people in 138 companies have been taking part in the Edinburgh Workplace Cycle Challenge. Over three weeks they've competed to see who can get the highest number of staff cycling. A Better Way to Work surveyed participants, and has pieced together an interesting picture of the mismatch between the perception and reality of cycling in Scotland.

Fifty-four per cent of Workplace Challenge cyclists found cycling was easier than expected, with only 8 per cent finding it harder. Fifty-nine per cent found it more enjoyable than expected, and the rest found it much as they'd expected. Of those who borrowed a bicycle, 44 per cent were non-bike owners, 96 per cent said they were considering or had bought a new bike after the loan, 69 per cent were considering cycling to work, and 91 per cent said they would cycle again. But, despite all this corporate TLC, new cyclists weren't coming forward quickly enough, so the Bike Buddy was born. It's a new service designed to stop half-hearted cyclists falling at the first hurdle: a personal trainer will visit a workplace or home and tackle all the niggles that stop commuters from making bike travel a regular habit.

Bike Buddies chum novice cyclists on their first journeys between home and work to show how to cycle safely and assertively in traffic and how far to stay from the kerb. Seventy-five per cent of these cycling lessons are taken by women.

Jill Bennett, 49, works for the Northern Lighthouse Board and has been back in the saddle for ten weeks. "I have asthma and felt it was getting worse. I thought, what's changed in my life? And one answer was that I'd stopped cycling."

Jill used to cycle from her home in Granton when her workplace was out of town and the daily commute was against the incoming tide of traffic. But when her job switched to the city centre, the combination of traffic and hills prompted her to ditch the bike and buy a scooter instead. The move back to pedal power was a gradual process. "First I borrowed an electric bike from the Bike Station for two weeks, because I had this huge mental block about the hill up to George Street. Then I realised I wasn't using the electric power, but I was carrying all that extra (bike] weight around. So I switched to a 'normal' 21-gear bike and tried that for a fortnight, and finally I bought my own bike with just eight gears."

Now Jill makes two return cycle trips a day because she goes home at lunchtime to feed and walk the dog. Like all recent converts, Jill's become an evangelist and has encouraged her employers to join A Better Way to Work, which launches on 29 June, when her Bike Buddy, Colin Russell, will be back at the Lighthouse Board with a free two-hour basic bike maintenance and personal route-planning session for all staff.

"Without doubt, I'd still be on the scooter if I didn't have Colin nagging me and I hadn't been able to try out different bikes," she says. Jill reports that she hasn't really lost weight, but her breathing is better and she's looking forward to lung tests for the first time in ages. "Cycling is just the cheeriest way to get around; I see people regularly on the cycle path and we say hello. Some fellow dog-walkers don't recognise me, though. It just shows how cyclists are regarded as a different species."

Jill was the ideal recruit, according to Colin Russell. "Even though Jill hadn't been on a bike for 15 years, her scooter experience gave her good balance and good road sense, two things missing for many younger adults who went to school after cycling proficiency had fallen out of fashion."

Astonishingly, given our risk-averse culture, only 14 per cent of Edinburgh primary schoolchildren now get cycle training. According to Colin, another big problem is the avalanche of cheap bikes sold at out-of-town "sports" stores which are often too heavy for children and many women. "They tend to break down with gear or brake failure within months and can make new cyclists lose heart completely. These bikes account for a large proportion of the bikes handed in to the Bike Station, but, ironically, that can create the human connection that gets disenchanted cyclists back in the saddle.

A decent new bike costs about 300, but cycling is still seen as the poor man's mode of transport and many people are reluctant to spend that kind of money."

Jill admits that she was reluctant to follow Colin's suggested cycle route to work. "I was expecting to be given a route that went straight from A to B, the way I would drive the scooter, I suppose. Instead, Colin suggested a more circuitous route that avoided hills, roads with cobbles and traffic lights. But it's proved easier, far more pleasant and just as quick."

Storage at work and home can be another difficulty. Jill has her own door and no neighbours to persuade, though carrying the bike at either end can be a bit of a struggle. But many tenements are full of bikes locked to railings, which pose a fire hazard and a nuisance for other residents with prams and shopping.

One answer is to get into the (often unused) back green with a toughened plastic bike-cover, even if that does mean scything down minor jungles and having the common sense and courtesy to tell ground-floor neighbours, who otherwise think burglars are on the prowl every time the back-door bolts are slid open to lock up the bike late at night.

So far, so good. The project is on course to reach its target of 2,500 new cyclists using the bike three days a week and 5,000 new daily cycling commuters. So far, 92 companies with more than 12,000 employees have registered, including Tesco Bank, the Royal London Group, Basil Paterson College and the Balmoral Hotel. According to Mark Sydenham: "We have deliberately avoided gimmicky promotion of cycling – clowns on bikes or "novelty" cycles which perpetuate the perception of bike travel as a marginal activity. There's no reason why cycling in Edinburgh shouldn't be as normal and mainstream as it is throughout Europe."