bikes and cars

Riding home from lab tonight was a total nightmare. The temperature hovered near freezing and bit my fingers with insistence, but that was the least of my worries. What drove me nuts was traffic. Kensington High Street was clogged in three lanes, though the road is only two wide. Buses, garbage trucks, taxis, fat Bentleys, and ridiculous G-Wizes were all idling about and turned the road into one big parking lot, most resourcefully packed. The efficient packing led to minimal space between vehicles, making passing or squeezing through on a bike nearly impossible. One van's side-view mirror almost got me. I could only dodge at the very last moment and felt it scrape my shoulder as I yanked my upper body to the other side, nearly hitting a black Mercedes in the process.

With these obstacles, in the way but big, highly visible and immobile, my commute would be a bit slower than on a normal day but not necessarily unsafe. The danger comes from unexpected sides. Pedestrians, lurching behind these bright red buses, feel compelled to cross the road as they would a Tesco parking lot, without looking left or right, and inevitably only split seconds before a cyclist passes the bus. When your focus is on a massive wing mirror on collision course with your head, a wayward pedestrian is the last thing you need. Then there are the other bikes and scooters that all zigzag through the maze according to their own perfect trajectory, trying to make the trip home as fast as possible. These paths often intersect and only aggressive brake control will avoid disaster.

Traffic tonight was denser than ever before, a sad culmination of a few days of constant deterioration. This degeneration coincided with the news that Boris Johnson, our circus clown of a mayor, was going to scrap the congestion charge for the part of town that I ride through. What a fool he is. As the congestion charge, despite my initial fears, won’t go until 2010, it must have been the time that caused my experience tonight. London’s streets are free of charge after six. During the day, you pay, but a night, you glide (if you excuse my ill-conceived poetry).

In light of the obvious effect of free driving, a three-year old can figure out that scrapping the charge will do nothing good. The number of vehicles in the streets will go up, just as it went down when the congestion charge zone was extended almost two years ago. I’m puzzled that all drivers do not support the charge. I’d hate to ride in traffic like that every day, but I’d hate it even more to be the traffic, to be sitting in a car, in a hurry to get somewhere but unable to move, burning gas and wasting time.

In the end, it all comes down to this: Even on a day like today, when fingertips slowing going numb from the cold, riding a bike is the best way to commute here. If you don't find a better way of spending your time than being stuck in traffic, why do you live in London?