The scene: A small room set up for an interview. Two comfortable chairs, face a table with some mineral water and artificial flowers. There’s a very bland picture on the wall. Julia and Nigel are sitting in the chairs and, Julia seems to be doing most of the talking.

Julia: Hello again Nigel. How are you feeling?
Nigel: Terrible.
Julia: It’s okay, that’s normal at this stage of the therapy.
Nigel: You mean it gets better?
Julia: Probably not. Now, I’ve got the report from the workshop you attended last week: „Buying Petrol“. They say you didn’t do too badly, although you did have trouble paying.
Nigel: So… much… money…
Julia: You’ll get used to it, Nigel. They also say you only half-filled the tank. That’s okay for now, don’t worry. So tell me how the week went.
Nigel: Well, I drove around for about twenty minutes on Friday …used the car to get to work on Monday. And Tuesday…
Julia: Good, well done. And what about Saturday?
Nigel: Er… no.
Julia: Why not?
Nigel: (Shifty) I didn’t go anywhere on Saturday.
Julia: Really?
Nigel. No…
Julia: What happened on Saturday Nigel?
Nigel: I… I…
Julia: You went cycling, didn’t you Nigel?
Nigel: Well… Yeah.
Julia: Nigel, you really have to try harder than this. I know you’re gaining weight and getting more aggressive than you were, but that won’t last as long as you keep taking bike rides on the quiet.
Nigel: I know… I couldn’t stop myself. I deliberately stayed in bed late so I’d have to rush to get the milk, like you said. And I kept telling myself „Cycling is dangerous, Cycling is inconvenient and too much work“
Julia: Good, and then?
Nigel: Well, I went downstairs and saw my bike and I thought I’d move it… and the next thing I knew I was riding down the road and I’d forgotten about the milk and it was three hours later… But the strange thing was…
Julia: What?
Nigel: I felt happier after that than I felt all week. I was smiling, and I didn’t swear at Mrs. Smith, I even offered to help her with the rubbish bin, I haven’t done that for ages.
Julia: Mrs. Smith?
Nigel: My designated target of undeserved anger and abuse.
Julia: Nigel, you still haven’t managed a week of driving yet. I can’t recommend you for the next stage of training as a proper member of society until you are being aggressive and unhealthy at least seven days, and that requires driving.
Nigel: I know… I’m trying, I really am…
Julia: What about yesterday?
Nigel: (Suddenly nervous) Yesterday?
Julia: You mentioned Monday and Tuesday, now it’s Thursday. Yesterday was supposed to be your first unaccompanied pavement parking day. Did you do it?
Nigel: I tried. The car wouldn’t start: I turned the key thingy in the hole and it made a whirring sound and that was it.
Julia: (Sighs) Did you put petrol in since the workshop?
Nigel: You mean you have to do it twice?
Julia: Several times a week, Nigel.
Nigel: I can’t afford that.
Julia: You have to be able to afford that from now on. A lot of people are depending on you Nigel: mechanics, banks, investors, oil executives who haven’t had a raise in a fortnight, and  third world dictators who need your money to pay for their military hardware and private villas. Not to mention the doctors and nurses who depend on the pollution you make to keep them working.
Nigel: But… It doesn’t make any sense… You really mean everyone has to be miserable so the system will work?
Julia: What would happen when everyone thought about how much it costs, and stopped driving? Hardly any children would be admitted to hospital with breathing difficulties, obesity would drop… think what would happen to the healthcare system, the pharmaceutical industry. That’s why having a car is so important: It shows you are a Good Citizen, contributing to society.
Nigel: It’s no good, I can’t do it.
Julia: Be careful, Nigel, I could throw you off the course. You’ll be considered odd by everyone you meet for not having a car. People will make assumptions about your income and your emotional stability when they see you on the street. How will you manage to be aggressive?
Nigel: But… what if I don’t what that?
Julia: (The big one) Your earning potential could drop…
Nigel: But… Hang on. I don’t have to keep buying petrol, so that’s not a big deal.
Julia: But you are so close to the next level of initiation, the right to use the new slogan „Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Bad“, and the free pink Furry Dice.
Nigel: (He’s tempted) Pink furry dice?
Julia: To hang on the rear view mirror. (dangling dice) think about it…
Nigel: Hmm… fresh air…
Julia: Nigel. Don’t throw it all away.
Nigel: The feeling of having achieved something when I get home…
Julia: No! Fight it, Nigel! Remember: Cycling is dangerous! Cycling is inconvenient! Cycling is hard work! Think of those poor oil executives!
Nigel: I can’t do it. I need the fresh air… To see sky… (Exit)
Julia: (shouting after him) I’ll throw you off the course…
Nigel: (in the distance) Do it! (Car keys fly through the door onto the table)
Julia: (Gets up and follows) How can you be so selfish? (Exit after Mike)

(Hat tip to the Champaign-Urbana blog for the link to ‘How to give up cycling‘ Which set me off thinking about this.)

I can imagine the meeting where this was discussed:
“We need to add a few kilometres of bike lane to keep the greenies happy. Put a white line along this road here.”
“It’ll be tight with two-way traffic, can we make it one way?”
“No, that would slow down traffic.”
“Well, we’ll have to take out the parking”
“Don’t even think about it”
Pity the poor transport planner. There is no way you can fit traffic in both directions, and a cycle lane, and space for residents parking on a road this narrow without someone getting the short end of the arrangement, and naturally you can’t expect Mercedes Man to drive a detour of almost a hundred metres to make the street more liveable. There are similar cycle lanes in this part of Stuttgart, including about a kilometre of lanes, broken by roundabouts every two hundred metres, where the cycle lane stops abruptly, spitting you into traffic, and then starts again the other side.
On the other hand, the drivers I encountered seemed quite used to a bike riding outside of the bike lane, so I guess it’s normal for them. Stuttgart also does seem to have worked out that a red cycle lane – which is equivalent to a blue lane in Denmark, and gives bikes travelling along it priority at junctions- is a good thing to remind motorists that cyclists have right of way, which puts them a few decades ahead of Ostfildern.

I wrote this before we moved and planned to post automatically, typically, not only did that not happen, but Karl at Do The Right Thing beat me to it with with a more entertaining version in Edinburgh.

It’s been a bit of a fight with the internet provider but it seems they have now agreed with me that as I’m paying them a monthly fee, they probably should get on with making a connection and providing me internet access, so they sent someone to find the plug or to whatever it is that they need to do when customers move house. Goodness knows why big corporations find it so hard to handle this sort of thing. It also seems my cunning plan to keep entries appearing on a regular basis didn’t work as it was suposed to: unfortunately after getting the pictures up and ready, I didn’t have time to make the rest publishable before the connection went down, hence the silence, Sorry about that: I’ll rewrite those over the next few days. On the other hand I’ve come back to several kind comments and emails wishing us well with the move: many thanks for those.

The Xtracycle was used a lot in the move and at some point during the shuttling back and forth we managed to clock up 1000km since I accidentally reset the computer in February. This and the weight it’s been carrying help explain why the brake blocks were worn down to almost nothing, and were even showing bare metal at the back: the poor thing wasn’t made for this sort of punishment.

Anyway, we’re here: we have a garage that we can use, and which I’m making into a bike workshop, (more of that anon) in a network of relatively quiet streets we can cycle on without too much trouble from Mercedes Man: We can see green trees, the boys can get to the meadow to play within three minutes, and every couple of days a buzzard or two flies past, so on balance I’m happy…

We’re moving to a new apartment on the edge of the village next week, and as our telephone/internet provider apparently can’t manage to change the account inside of three weeks, we’ll be without a broadband connection for that time. To make sure both of the people who come here don’t lose interest, I’ve a few photo posts stacked away to pop up automatically every few days until I return.

This seemed a good start: a sunny day, on the way to an early appointment, stopping to have breakfast on the way…

…this is wrong.

From the 2020 vision blog. By the way, the UKIP is the ‘United Kingdom Independence Party’:

The local Cambridge Cycling Campaign sent out a questionnaire to the local election candidates asking about their views on a selection of key cycle infrastructure/culture issues. Many did not bother to reply, of those that did, most were ‘political answers’, but the UKIP’s Peter Burkinshaw sums up White Van Man culture of the UK;

Q. Do you have any other general cycling-related comments or points?

A. “Provision for cyclists is already adequate. Please remember that motorists are the people who pay to use the roads whereas cyclists are “freeloaders”. They are entitled to use the roads but not disproportionately”.

“If everyone cycled, as you suggest, there would be no roads to ride on”.

Wow. Narrow, patronising, and based on complete twaddle from the frst sentence.

If motorists had to deal with roads that suddenly became narrower, went via a roundabout route, avoided where you wanted to go, were dangerous to use, or  just stopped for no apparent reason, they would hardly call those “adequate”.

Motorists in the UK pay Vehicle Excise Duty, not road tax: The revenues go into the general government budget and are used as the government sees fit: roads are paid for out of the general public purse, which is funded by all taxes. So much for freeloading.

What is ‘disproportionate’ use of roads? Speeding? Congestion?

If everyone cycled, roads would last longer, be cleaner and more open and those who need to drive like emergency vehicles would be able to get where they need to go faster.

And I haven’t even started on indirect and healthcare costs.

I’ve mentioned before that there is a harebrained scheme in the offing to lay yet more tarmac on the fields by our village, and last week there was an information evening where a local traffic planner was giving us details of what they were going to do. I naturally felt I had to go: I’m a local resident with children, I had a duty to both of my readers to blog about it and besides, there may be food

Some background may be needed here. We live in a fairly small village just outside of Stuttgart which happens to be between an Autobahn to the south and a port and industrial centre to the North. There is a bypass to the east and west, but we still have a lot of traffic through the village (about 13500 cars and 1500 trucks every 24 hours). Almost everyone wants a bypass because they believe it will ‘finally’ solve the problem. Like the last one was supposed to. And the one before that. It never does because traffic expands and contracts to fill the available space. Naturally the Strassenbauamt (Road building ministry) are aware of this but keep quiet about it.
While almost everyone wants the bypass, no-one wants it going past their house, and I don’t blame them. So now there is a new scheme being proposed by Stuttgart. They are offering to build a nice new road under the village to connect to one of the existing bypasses. This will take the traffic well away from the village and the noise, and no-one will have their view spoiled.

This is marsh gas. Absolute, 100% unadulterated cobblers. Anyone capable of walking erect should smell a king-sized rat when Stuttgart offers to build something for Ostfildern. Why would a city offer to spend taxpayers money on an infrastructure project in another administrative district? The answer is geography.  There’s a major intersection of north-south and east-west autobahns, to the South West of Stuttgart used by a lot of traffic, but also a lot of traffic from the North-west going to the South East. This traffic has to curve around three sides of Stuttgart and climb a major hill.  For about 20 years the Strassenbauamt has been quietly working on a plan for a bypass to the east of Stuttgart avoiding the hill, and it’s a section of this road that will go under our village. In other words, the road isn’t a bypass for us, but for Stuttgart, under this village.

Unfortunately, they’ve done their spin well: the notion is fixed in people’s minds that we need a bypass.

The economy is now going fast down the toilet, and the transport industry is going with it. As the majority of the traffic is cars, and about half of that is internal traffic, we could reduce traffic in the village simply by making less parking spaces and more bike infrastructure, because traffic expands and contracts to fit the space available… but I’m being rational, and using science which isn’t going to get me anywhere in this debate.

Not that any of this matters, because despite the huff and puff, no-one has yet committed to the €20-30 billion that this white elephant will cost, so I suspect it’ll be a while before any diggers turn up, but rest assured the Strassenbauamt is out there somewhere, building pointless roads to link up their fantasy network…

Freiburg looks ever more attractive…

Early morning ride before work: It had rained in the night which had cleared the air: the muggyness of the previous day was gone and the air was sharp and clear.

The cloud had collected in the valleys making a set of monochrome layers stretching into the distance…

Days don’t start much better then this.

The Totcycle blog, which for some reason I neglected to link to, has a report on their Kidical mass event which they held over the weekend. As far as I can work out this is an all-age family party involving bikes, but without the “in-your-face” approach of Critical Mass protests. They obviously had a Bakfiets-load of fun and will be doing it again. In fact, it sounded like so much fun, I’m thinking of suggesting it to the local cycling club as a way to get families on bikes locally. After listening to several local politicians making excuses over the weekend for not improving infrastruture,  (More on this later) I think this more grass -roots stuff is more the way to go in future: maybe then they will take a bit more notice, but either way we will get more people cycling which is good for everyone.

It’s pretty safe too. The photo was taken early yesterday morning while taking a suprise bread delivery to my Goddaughter’s family for her daddy’s birthday breakfast. A car free road perfect for relaxed riding.

Last week Beautiful Wife was under the weather, and I had a couple of hours with Youngest Son during the morning. We went exploring as he loves to ride on the Xtracycle. I had a vague idea about visiting a playaground, but we didn’t really have a destination, just followed any road that looked interesting.

One of our frequent stops. This time it was to watch some bees on the meadow...

Youngest Son had a walk alongside the tram line. This has the advantage that he gets to see big yellow trams every few minutes, so he doesn’t get bored.

A short stop by a farm to look at the chickens...

And then time to get some bread. Youngest son trying to get the coin out of the shopping trolley.

We never did make the playaground: by this time we needed to go home and pick up Middle Son to bring him home.

There’s been a lot of blog-based discussion of This article in the New York Times about the car-free suburb of Vauban in Freiburg, which I’m all for: much as I moan about how hopeless Ostfildern is, I live in Germany because I love the country, so it’s good to see some all-too-rare positive reporting about Germany in an English language newspaper, and with a slide show, no less. Mind you, they really should have checked their facts: Vauban isn’t just an ‘Affluent Suburb’  but has different income groups (It just looks affluent because it’s pleasant), and a sign showing a bike and ‘Frei’ written underneath actually means bikes are permitted, but there we go.

I’ve not been able to post about it as quickly as I’d like, but on the other hand I can now include this video of the place and its place in Freiburg as a whole, along with an interview with the mayor, who is part of the Green Party, about how they have worked to make Freiburg a more sustainable/pleasant/livable city.

(Thanks to ‘Cycling is good for you’ for the video)

Ostfildern had the opportunity to do the same, but of course decided to build a new road and make it easy to drive through, but it does at least show that when we do this sort of thing in Germany, we do it well.

Vauban’s English-language website, showing their aims and ideas is here.