Last week I watched the BBC’s ‘The Route Masters’, a series which has attempted to profile the roads side of Transport for London (TfL) in similar style to that given to their Tube cousins last year. It took until episode five before we finally reached an episode on ‘The Future’ which covered cycling. So, what kind of approach are the BBC taking to talking about cycling? And how much of this is a reflection of the institutional TfL view of it?
First mention of cycling comes from Michelle Dix of TfL – “we want to encourage people to use public transport, or of course cycle”
And of course we get a motorist chatting back from behind the wheel – “how to get people out of their cars, I don’t know whether you can.” We then see some enforcement of yellow box junctions via CCTV and police catching drivers using waste ground beside a dual carriageway to escape a jam via a backstreet. “Drivers are not the only ones who are breaking the rules to speed up their journeys”, says the strangely sober voiceover and off we go to the cyclists section.
We start with an aerial shot of cyclists negotiating a multi lane gyratory, this is legal.