Whatever you think about the capital’s cycle provision, jibes about ‘City boys’ or the middle class are a silly diversion from the real problems

I’d like to propose an amendment to Godwin’s law, the notion that decrees whoever compares an opponent to the Nazis in an online discussion has lost the argument.

My variant would be this: if you’re debating cycle infrastructure and you use “middle class” in a pejorative sense, the internet automatically deletes your last day’s typed output.

This idea was prompted by an article yesterday from my esteemed Guardian colleague, Dave Hill, whose prolific blogs about London life and governance are, almost uniformly, well informed and thoughtful.

I say “almost” as to me Hill possesses – and we’re a broad church at the Guardian; disagreements are permitted – something of a blind spot when it comes to the capital’s cycle provision. He is a trenchant and regular critic of Boris Johnson’s new cycle “superhighways”, which will for the first time in the city offer riders a good degree of separation from motor traffic.

An arcane disagreement over bike lanes between two London-based Guardian writers, you say? Isn’t that a bit niche? Possibly. But stay with me, because I think Hill’s arguments are a good example of the sometimes confused objections faced by those who support such lanes as a way to boost cycling. Here’s a potted selection of these:

Cycling is a class issue

Hill, I hope he won’t mind me saying, is a serial offender on this. His latest piece has the very sensible premise that Johnson’s £900m or so Vision for Cycling should be subject to vigorous scrutiny. But in the very first paragraph Hill refers to the scheme being lauded by the “middle-class press”, a jarringly odd phrase.

The explanation comes later: Hill notes that cycling in London is currently dominated by younger men from more affluent backgrounds. He worries that significant spending on bike lanes mainly benefits this small demographic, at the expense of more deprived Londoners, for example bus users.

The flaw with this – aside from the sometimes cheap language – is that cycling, when done thoroughly, is one of the most inclusive forms of transport you can get. Discussing cycling in class terms would baffle someone from the Netherlands, where everyone from factory shift workers to the royal family, from schoolkids to pensioners, get about on two wheels. Why are they able to do so? Because it’s safe. It’s everyday. It’s not based on fashion.

Conversely, the many and pernicious externalities of London’s vehicle-dominated streets fall mainly on poorer people. Those living on or by main roads tend to have lower incomes, and are at the brunt of the appalling air quality that kills an estimated 9,500 Londoners a year.

In Hill’s home borough of Hackney, one of the poorest places in the UK, only 35% of households even own a car or van. And yet the borough remains largely built for the convenience of these vehicles.

One bad lane means segregated cycling is inherently flawed

Twice within a week Hill has highlighted perceived problems with a so-called bus stop bypass on Whitechapel Road, a fume-choked main highway in inner east London. Bus stop bypasses are a section of bike lane that curves behind a bus stop, meaning riders don’t have to pull out into traffic when buses halt.

In this example, the bypass is a narrow blue strip cut into what was pavement. Hill complains this puts fast-moving cyclists too close to pedestrians. He calls it, in another descent into class-based oddity, a “rat run for City boys”.

I’ve never used this bypass, so I’m not hugely qualified to judge its merits, let alone to confirm that hundreds of investment bankers have, unexpectedly, abandoned their luxury cars for bikes. But judging from photos and video it looks a bit narrow and badly planned. It might have made more sense to move the bus stop outwards, meaning the bypass takes space from the road, as generally happens elsewhere.

Does it mean segregated lanes don’t work? No. Hill doesn’t strictly argue that. But to devote two posts within a week to the same small section of a part-built lane smacks of ulterior motives.

Bike lanes “take space from everyone else”

This hugely persistent argument had a run-out earlier this week in an editorial by a small New York-based newspaper, the Staten Island Advance.

The US city’s increasing numbers of cycle lanes, the column fumed, had “confiscated” space from cars and trucks, with officials “egged on by the hardcore enthusiasts”.

Less dramatic versions of this view are common in the UK, notably those of some east London anti-bike lane campaigners quoted regularly by Hill, who say segregated lanes unfairly take space from buses.

There are two flaws to this argument. One is the implied notion that a street “belongs” to motor vehicles, rather than their true owners, human beings. Buses are a vital urban transport resource, but they are not without compromise, as anyone who ventures onto the smoggy, perilous, nose-to-tail bus gridlock that is London’s Oxford Street will testify.

There is also the false dichotomy of bikes-versus-vehicle flow. Getting many more people on bikes frees up both road space and seats on public transport, making everyone’s life easier.

Well, not strictly everyone. To make cities more attractive for cyclists they must necessarily be made less attractive for car drivers, with low speed limits on side roads and bike-permeable barriers to stop rat-running. This is a hurdle too far for most British politicians, which makes Johnson’s efforts in London, however flawed they are in part, also deserving of some credit.

There’s no need to rush

It’s hard these days to find someone who openly argues for a halt to the growth of cycling. It’s even tricky to find people who’ll publicly oppose all segregated bike lanes (that said, one of Hill’s most popular sources is a proponent of vehicular cycling, the now discredited idea that riders of all ages and abilities should be willing and able to mix it with motor traffic).

What’s more commonly argued is that none of this needs to be rushed, and those calling for action are extremists, obsessed by a minority pursuit which has little real impact in the grown-up world of motor vehicles and public transport.

To me, this is absurd. It’s difficult to over-stress the public health crisis faced by London and the UK more generally. If 9,500 Londoners a year were dying early because of, say, terrorist attacks, rather than pollution, you’d be a brave columnist to say, “But hang on, what’s the problem here?”

And it’s not just pollution. Well over 80,000 people a year die annually in England and Wales from ailments associated with inactivity. Obesity and type 2 diabetes could soon bankrupt the NHS.

Cycling isn’t the only way to tackle this, but it’s one of the very best. A famous Danish study charted the fortunes of 30,000 people over 15 years, and found that even when other factors were accounted for, those who cycled to work were 40% less likely to die.

Forty percent. If that was a pill, the inventors would win every Nobel prize going.

And that’s what so annoys me about these silly diversions into things like class, or the cheap snipes about self-righteous Lycra warriors. As I mentioned at the start, to me the main message this gives is that those objecting to proper bike infrastructure have run out of real arguments.