Guest blog by @PeteZanzottera
Bring the Tour de France to Yorkshire? I asked myself… you must be kidding… its miles from France. The best connection we’ve got is Joanne Harris and that’s stretching it a bit. But, or should I say mais bien sur, Yorkshire does have enviable cycling credentials. Throughout the years, it’s maintained a strong tradition of club cyclists and every Sunday there are probably more cyclists on the road than any other day of the week. Whilst cycling to work has dwindled since the hay days in the 1950’s when the factory gates were clogged with two wheels, cycling for sport has held up far better.
About 15 years ago, when I first started promoting cycling to work in Leeds, I came up against homo lycrensis (I even became one for a while). People said to me “ride my bike to work? You must be kidding. It’ll muck up my training schedule and it’ll get nicked”. I found this strange because 100km on a Sunday is nothing to many club cyclists, but putting panniers on their bike and cycling to work is all wrong. For many years the world of utility cycling and sports cycling have marched to a different cadence. However, that has changed over the last 5 years. The massive sponsorship of British Cycling by Sky that followed our successful track cyclists has led to Sky rides, Breeze (an initiative to get more women cycling) and a real commitment to making cycling available to all (especially if you buy a sky box). The pulling power of success and the household names of Wiggins, Hoy, Pendleton and so on are a key factor in thousands more cycling for leisure, sport or purpose.
My mission over the years has been to get more people to cycle in Yorkshire, firstly to school, then also to work, and now to just cycle. I find myself working in ever more distant places promoting cycling and coming back to Leeds and feeling a bit sheepish. ”Cycle to work they say? You must be kidding” I say, well look at Bogota, London, Groningen and York (and they say “well it’s flat there”). In York we had our greatest successes in getting children to cycle to school reversing declines and growing the numbers by a third with a combination of safe routes, bike storage, and cycle training. York was one of the first places for Bikeability – the national brand of Cycling Proficiency for the 21st Century. My work with Bikeability has taken me on a journey to every corner of England; now the annual funding of £11m per year teaches a quarter of a million children and is tackling the lost generations of cyclists and hopefully unearthing a few Wiggins and Pendletons too.
For the next 3 years, there is a very real possibility of cycling taking a step change in Yorkshire. South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and York have gained significant funding streams to promote sustainable travel and are embarking on new cycle routes and promotional programmes worth millions of pounds (I calculate the Local Sustainable Transport Fund investment in Yorkshire Authorities to be just under £44 million). To be frank, we need all the help we can get to turn the traffic juggernaut round so bidding for a stage of the Tour de France is more of a possibility than ever before. Competitive cycling shows a strange mixture of individuality and co-dependence so I guess we can all unite behind the banner (#backlebid) however we view cycling.
Allez Yorkshire, le tour? Oui nous sommes serioux!
Pete Z is a sustainable travel consultant living in Leeds – find him on twitter @Petezanzottera
Let me first be clear, I like cycling
I cycled 2 miles to school for over a decade and have the bruised self confidence from the torment of other children taking the mick out of my bike to prove it.
However, bringing Le Tour to Yorkshire sends the wrong message.
We need to back the Tour of Britain seriously and get the waves of fans in our towns for our race. It’s in September and has already done wonders for places like Stoke, so it should be encouraged in Yorkshire.
BackLeBid is nothing but jumping on the Wiggins bandwagon
As for cycle to work schemes, there are 2 things that must happen first:
1) Availability of shower and locker facilities in the workplace.
2) Cyclist respecting traffic laws. When drivers and pedestrians hate the people who run red lights, they don’t want to become one.
To respond to the comment above – I don’t see why supporting ‘Le Bid’ undermines promoting the status of the Tour of Britain. Surely both are possible? And if this is a real moment for cycling in this country, as we all hope it might be, won’t supporting one also lead to an increased profile for the other.
Personally, I think the chances of the TdF making it to Yorkshire are very slim indeed, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get behind the bid. Let’s just hope that the TdF organisers don’t come looking at the state of the tarmac on many of the region’s rural and urban roads, or we won’t have a bat in hell’s chance!
I’d like to see some proper riders take on Otley Chevin!
As someone who does nearly nine miles each way to work on a daily basis, road design and potholes are the biggest nuisance. Boar Lane/Wellington St are a disgrace, ruined by heavy construction traffic for adjacent new developments – surely the council can hold these deep-pocketed developers to account for this? Also the junction at the town end of the new Kirkstall Road scheme is not very bike-friendly at all, getting across lanes to take the Wellington Rd exit in moving traffic is a little nerve wracking even for a streetwise rider like myself. We could do an awful lot better on infrastructure.