Pedal Cycles

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe, for initiating this important debate. I am a cyclist in London, my children cycle to school and my wife cycles to work. We all agree on the benefits, and obviously more people should be encouraged to take up cycling.

Life has got better for us cyclists. Low-traffic zones; new cycle paths and superhighways; we can buy our bikes tax-free on the bike to work scheme. E-bike hire has given us another option for one-way trips. But there is a problem. There is anarchy in London—and other cities, I suspect—as my noble friend Lord Birt so graphically described. We have got to a stage where, on a cycle journey, it is more unusual to see someone stopping at a light than jumping it. Red lights have become optional. People go the wrong way, as we have heard, down one-way systems, regularly riding on the pavement. Untidily parked rental e-bikes and scooters are causing problems for those with visual impairments and mobility problems.

The author Douglas Adams described one of his characters as stepping off the pavement and being shouted at

“from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit”,

and this attitude seems to pervade all cyclists, whether on Lime or in Lycra. There seems to be an attitude that cyclists are above the law, and there seems to be no way of enforcing it, as my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe so powerfully showed.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, pointed out, Cycling UK says that if you introduce measures, cycling rates could drop by 36%. How do we balance the rule of law with encouraging people to use a bike?

Over the past 10 years in London, about two cyclists were killed or seriously injured in bus crashes every month. In London, in 2022, TfL buses accounted for less than 1% of road traffic, but 40% of cyclists’ deaths were caused by them. We still do not know enough about the causes. I join my noble friend Lord Hogan-Howe in his plea for better data. Can the Minister comment on that? Cycle deaths in rural areas are also a real problem—I wonder whether this is more to do with the heady cocktail of V8 engines and an ageing population. The good news is that, in the UK, there was a 23% drop in cyclist fatalities between 2013 and 2023, but I wonder whether this trend will be reversed.

It is hard to argue for better education for motorists if cyclists are not going to behave better. What is the solution? As ever, it is education—but I would say that because I am a teacher. Bike helmets are a really good idea, and we need to campaign for them to be worn regularly. We need to persuade cyclists to ride defensively to minimise risk. We need more cycle lanes, more cycle zones at lights and more cycle traffic lights, which give cyclists a head start—sometimes it is safer to jump the lights than do a Formula 1 start at junctions. We need to separate motor traffic from cycles as much as possible, especially in rural areas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and my noble friend Lord Burns said. Can the Minister update us on the progress of cycle lanes?

As we talked about this week at Questions, road surfaces need to be much better. My wife was cycling home recently and her front wheel went into a pothole. She went over the handlebars and did quite a lot of damage to her face—it was very lucky that there was not a car behind her. I thought that electronic chips on bikes might be a solution—it works for my cat. I had a conversation with a friend who was involved in the setting up of the congestion zone, and she convinced me that that was expensive and unworkable—although it works for cats.

As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, we need to use common sense and to encourage more people to cycle, but in a way that promotes safe and legal cycling, so that those of us who enjoy it so much can welcome a new breed with a clear conscience.

Bus Franchising

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his comments. I particularly note his support for the effects of the initial tranches of franchising in Manchester, which have indeed increased service and produced better reliability. He refers to the very old organisation of public transport in Manchester. Many of those magnificent vehicles are in the Manchester transport museum at Queens Road.

These days, the increasing number of combined authorities are of a good size to take advantage of this Government’s franchising proposition. It is, in effect, bringing together local authorities of sufficient size to be able to take advantage of the benefits of a network. I do not have an answer to whether this will allow individual local authorities to join together, but I am happy to write to the right reverend Prelate about that.

The right reverent Prelate raised the subject of the integration of rail services. We have already made a lot of progress with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, and with the Mayor of the West Midlands, in integrating rail services into the local transport network in information and in ticketing. Although this is not the subject of today’s discussion, I have no doubt that there will be some announcements on that. He is right to aspire to an integrated local network that is modally agnostic and includes rail and, in Manchester’s case, metro and buses.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, if we are going to use TfL and the London bus network as the example for going around the country, the dread problem of safety goes around again. Carrying on from the question I asked the Minister earlier this week, it often seems that in London—where, from memory, someone is killed by a bus every six weeks—the bus companies investigate their own incidents, with the DVSA checking for legalities. Who will be responsibility for safety in these franchises, and will they have teeth?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

One of the benefits of London’s large system of bus franchising is the work that Transport for London has done on the design and safety of bus travel. The noble Lord has to remember that those vehicles are on the road for 18, 20 or 24 hours a day, and they form a major part of the mileage of vehicles in London, even though their numbers are fairly small.

A significant amount of work has been done on the safety of driving and drivers, and on the design of vehicles. I know that has been shared with manufacturers and bus operators across the country, and with organisations such as Transport for Greater Manchester and the Urban Transport Group. I would expect more of that to happen.

The safety of buses is considered by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Authority, which is an executive arm of the Department for Transport and has the power to investigate serious bus accidents, which it does. It has the power to prosecute the drivers and operators of those vehicles. None of these proposals would alter its powers to continue to do so.

Local Bus Sector

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The programme to reduce emissions from the bus fleet has been carried out by successive Governments over many years. There is no doubt at all that government intervention has created both cleaner diesel buses, which now meet that Euro 6 standard, and an increasing fleet of electric buses, which are the modern equivalent of tram-cars. This Government hope to continue that, subject to funding, because it is clearly a very important contribution to air quality in urban and other areas.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, while we talk about support for buses, I think we ought also to talk about support for bus safety. I quote the BBC website from this morning:

“At present there is no independent investigator and no independent recommendations when it comes to bus collisions. The families want to know why there is one policy for trains and another for buses”.


Perhaps the Minister could comment on that.