Seville: A Dense and Consistent Cycling Network

One thing that UK towns and cities seem to focus on is routes. Whether they be branded as 'Cycle Super Highways' in London, or 'City Ways' in Glasgow, the focus is generally on moving people (often targeted at commuters) from their home to their office. Seville doesn't have individual branded routes. Instead, there's a dense network of separated cycling infrastructure, which, for the most part, follows main roads for cars.

Here we can see the the Seville cycling network. Notice the relatively high density of cycling infrastructure. What you can't see from that map is the consistency of the network. For better or worse, the vast majority of cycle lanes are to be found bi-directional on one side of the road. Unlike if I look at a map of cycle facilities in the UK, I know that the infrastructure marked green on this map will

• be genuinely 8-80 safe
• not require me to 'keep my wits about me' or cause me stress
• not force me to decide whether to try to enter an ASL (there are zero ASLs for cycles here)
• not force me to decide whether to 'take the lane' or 'hug the kerb' (since it's all separated)
• ensure I am separated from motor vehicles by space or time at all times

All those obstacles to cycling are completely eliminated on the network, which, as you can see, covers a pretty dense grid. 

With London allowing so-called CS1 to be included in their cycle network, even by sticking to marked routes I don't know that my journey will meet the above criteria. Similarly, Edinburgh's Quality Bike Corridor meets absolutely none of those criteria.

What Seville, on the marked network, has done very successfully is provide a consistently-good network for cycling. Note that I'm not saying that it's perfect or even excellent, but consistently-good. And I think that consistency has been important to the relative success cycling enjoys here.

As always, photos say more than words, so here are a bunch taken on the network shown in the map above.

This is the second in a series of (long overdue) posts about cycling in Seville. Find the first here. Stay tuned for more! Follow me on Twitter, @justacwab

Cycling in Seville is just so... pedestrian

Long time no blog. Sorry. You'd think that spending a lot of time in Southern Europe's poster child for safe cycling, Seville, that I'd have a lot to say. I'd be blogging furiously. But, I haven't. And I think I've figured out why.

'Pedestrian'

Google gives us two definitions for 'pedestrian'. Firstly, 

(noun) a person walking rather than travelling in a vehicle.

but also,

(adjective) lacking inspiration or excitement; dull.

The Oxford Etymology Dictionary suggests these two meanings are related, with the dull or boring sense of the adjective being used to describe people walking as a contrast to those on horseback. Walking is pedestrian, going to your local supermarket to buy a bottle of Coke is pedestrian, and, in Seville, cycling is rather pedestrian. Since I've never found any great urge to blog about walking or buying Coke, cycling has fallen into that category.

Of course, that sharply contrasts to most other places, including the UK, where close-passes, dangerous junctions and high stress levels that tend to be associated with cycling are anything but pedestrian.

Out Group

It also strikes me that in the UK, even though I've never worn a helmet or donned Lycra, 'cyclist' is part of my identity. Scotland has a tiny modal share and by cycling for transport I'm at the very least a bit unusual and at most some kind of freak.

In Seville, I'm cycling more than I ever have in my life (all for transport), but it's not part of my identity. The vast majority of my colleagues (Spaniards and immigrants) cycle. My Spanish flatmates cycle. I pass countless fellow people on the street cycling every day. They cycle because it's the most convenient way to move around the city for many journeys. Sorry, but if cycling doesn't make me feel special then I'm less likely to think about spending my evening blogging about it!

How can you make cycling in your city more pedestrian?

To be clear, I don't mean pedestrian in the sense of making it slow and sharing space with people walking... quite the opposite. I mean how can you make it boring, unremarkable? How can we reach a point where 'I cycle' is as noteworthy and as much of a conversation starter as 'I eat ice-cream on warm days'? Despite having a less-than-perfect cycle network (I'll describe why over a few blogs over the next few weeks), Seville has achieved the status of making cycling quite boring. That's bad for my motivation to blog, but good for pretty much everything else.

Boring Cycling Infrastructure in Seville

This is the first in a series of (long overdue) posts about cycling in Seville. Stay tuned! Follow my on Twitter, @justacwab