With eBikes prominent is now the time to invest in long distance cycle routes?

Thursday, 26 May 2022 Mark Sutton

The University of Westminster’s Active Travel Academy has launched a special edition of its journal, looking beyond the traditional focus of short, urban cycling trips to explore longer distance cycling in the age of eBikes. Laura Laker caught up with the ATA’s Tom Cohen, and read the five Active Travel Studies reports, to bring you the lowdown…

For those unused to reading academic papers they’re not always an easy read, but cover some really important ground around what long distance cycling is, how more trips could be made easier by bike and how to achieve that in an inclusive and environmentally sensitive way.

Longer distance cycling for interspecies mobility justice in Canada considers how active travel infrastructure can benefit all life, including humans, by replacing car space with cycling in a way that’s sympathetic to ecosystems and social inequalities. Such infrastructure, its author Nicholas Scott argues, could improve access to active travel among “marginalised and colonised populations, especially Black and Indigenous populations”, if built in the right places. Using ride-along interviews in Halifax and Vancouver, with planners and cycling advocates and the author’s experiences, Scott discusses the success of two case studies and a need for “knitting together tens of thousands” of routes and places by cycle to achieve “interspecies mobility justice” goals.

“You can go out 14 miles away with the knowledge that you’ve got the battery to help you back if you need it!” Narratives of ranging behaviour and wellbeing in diaries of eBike trial participants, charmingly details an 8-week electric bike trial among over-50s returning to cycling. Using first-hand diary entries, alongside maps of ‘ranging behaviour’, it demonstrates both the power of electric bike trials, and of eBikes themselves, in boosting people’s confidence to cycle more and further. Participants explored near home and then further afield, growing their confidence and competence on the bikes, with all the resulting health and wellbeing benefits that brings.

In Distance, Time, Speed & Energy: A SocioPolitical Analysis of Technologies of Longer Distance Cycling, Peter Cox examines, among other things, the need for cycle routes to account for the physics of longer distance trips and different cycles’ characteristics, including electric bikes and recumbents. Cox discusses the most efficient machine design “per unit input of energy” (it’s not the road bike) – which matters because on long-distance rides, stop-start acceleration is the greatest energy output. The author discusses how this, among other time and energy sappers, such as poor junction layout, can be minimised with good design, improving the efficiency of longer cycling trips.

In “Cyclists, Dismount – Car Drivers, get out and push? An Autoethnographic Account of Long-Distance Cycling: Joy, Speed, and Unexpected Hurdles in Dutch Traffic”, Ida Sabelis relates her long-distance cycling experiences on paths often designed for ‘slow traffic’ in the Netherlands and Germany. On Sabelis’ velomobile, as well as sensory delights, she experiences pitfalls Brits would recognise, like: “cycle path combination… apparently designed by someone with no cycle experience” and “no real insight into the practical implications”, with criticisms of “fragmented” planning which favours drivers. Sabelis asks what if we realised “long distance cycling has the potential to avoid traffic jams, provide an alternative for bad public transport connections, and save city space for parking? Maybe then it is not ‘Cyclists dismount’ but ‘Car drivers look for an alternative’”.

The Netherlands has a programme of 300 fast cycleways, 52 of which are complete, linking urban and suburban residential areas to places of work and study. In “Cycle Highways as a ‘liquid’ policy concept” Arnoud Lagendijk and Huub Ploegmakers interview 27 planners, engineers and lobbyists about development of these fast cycle routes (snelle fietsroute or SFR), to understand how they become embedded within public policy. Issues examined include naming and framing routes, attempts to standardise design, developing and delivering provincial routes, ‘planning diplomacy’ – winning hearts and minds – and funding.

The Special Edition’s editors, Professor John Parkin and Dr Anders Fjendbo Jensen conclude: “Covid-19 has affected social connectedness and longer distance cycling may be a valuable method for enhancing connectedness and wellbeing. It may also create a greater level of mobility justice.”

Tom Cohen at the active travel academy pitches in

What was the need for this special issue?

People propose Special Issues for a variety of reasons, but I think mainly it’s because they think that the topic is topical and deserves some attention.

Why is the topic of long-distance cycling particularly interesting to explore?

Perhaps [Anders, the editor] was thinking that there was plenty of focus on short distance, urban cycling and the need, therefore to widen our thinking a bit, draw attention to the fact that there’s an increasing amount of longer distance riding going on, and of different kinds.

What counts as long-distance riding?

I don’t think we were too categorical. In fact, I think we just take it as meaning that if you think of a journey as being longer distance, then that probably qualifies.

Is this a way of thinking about cycling differently? We usually think of cycling trips as shorter trips.

My take on that is that the electric bike is proving revolutionary in this respect. And you will know as I do that there has been investment lately in the Netherlands into inter-urban cycle routes, reflecting the fact that people seem to be happy and able to travel further than they used to, when they were just doing it under their own steam. I think that’s probably the significant change.

So, it’s not just leisure riders or cycle tourists doing longer distances, but transport cyclists going further?

The papers do address various different forms of riding; it’s not all leisure, but leisure is very definitely representative. I suppose that’s the interesting thing for me: longer distance cycling probably does mean a slightly different combination of purposes than you would get if you looked at a cross section of five kilometre trips, right?

I think for a journey of 15k leisure is probably in the lead and utility would be in second place or maybe in third place, after taking exercise. I wonder how many longer-distance trips are things like taking a train to the nearest station and cycling at either end, even up to something like 20 or 30 miles, plus how many more people would make these kinds of trips if decent routes were available? If you can find a nice off-road route, it’s a complete game changer, because it turns what would otherwise be a possibly stressful experience and something you can expect to enjoy.

I did one ride which was York to Leeds, and I think I may have planned it poorly, but I did find myself alongside some very busy roads.

The papers are available from www.activetravelstudies.org