Cycle Like You Mean It

There can be few things more exhilarating than cycling hopefully to work each morning.

Beaming with the full promise of a productive day, giggling to yourself as you think of those poor colleagues with their faces pressed into a tramp's armpit by the sheer weight of commuters, you are rewarded with fresh air and an eco-smugness that can only be otherwise achieved by wearing pants made out of hemp (the chafing is probably similar).

Cycling back from the Cambridge News today, fresh from hearing that the local council has shelved a planned congestion charging zone, I felt far less fulfilled than usual. I felt isolated, as if everyone else on the road and in offices were idiots for not seeing the obvious physical (and irrefutably environmentally friendly) benefits of riding a bike everywhere.

Please don't assume that I'm some green paragon of virtue, pontificating about how good for the environment bikes are. I'm not. If I could afford to own a car, I would, even if it were only to travel outside of London, because traveling by train is marginally more expensive than being held upside-down by the ankles and vigorously shaken. It's just that bikes are quicker and I feel the need to extol them, as should motorists.

Those pudgy, wheezing millions sitting themselves and three empty seats in a noxious jam for two hours every morning and night shouldn't shake their jowly heads disapprovingly as some young whippersnapper whizzes by on a bike. They should welcome them and ask for more. Not only would more cyclists force a re-think in carbon neutral urban infrastructure, but it would take more cars off the road. This would, in turn, make it easier for the most stubborn and miserable of drivers to actually move whilst listening to the Five Live phone-in.

Traffic jams would be a thing of the past, so those people who need a car for their job (only farmers, plumbers and racing drivers, off the top of my head) could work better and more efficiently. Everyone's a winner. Except the Government, who would face a huge windfall in taxes and would inevitably invent a novel way of taxing bikes on top of VAT - some sort of 'high visibility helmet tax'.

Still, most of the Shadow Cabinet are cyclists, and we all know what they'll be doing in three years time.

For all the government initiatives, high-profile cyclists and that Queen video, cycling anywhere in any town is still unspeakably inconvenient.

Cambridge, one of the most bike-friendly towns in the UK, is a prime example of cyclists being treated as an afterthought, riding in spite (not because) of infrastructure. There are not enough cycle lanes (any that exist are continually clogged with buses and parked cars,) the road surfaces are pockmarked like Dean Gaffney's face and exhaust fumes mean that even the briefest two-wheel jaunt leaves one with lungs like Amy Winehouse.

But there are more fundamental reasons that not enough people cycle. For a start, it's incredibly dangerous. In the unspoken hierarchy of vehicle pecking orders, it roughly goes: lorry, bus, limo, van, car, motorbike, horse, mule, bendy bus. Bicycles are somewhere down there between magic carpet and Smart car. Drivers of lorries and vans are so concerned with hooting and laddishly ogling pedestrians, that they contrive not to see the cyclist that's just been smeared across their dashboard.

Someone - possibly a cyclist - told me that it is statistically safer to not stop at traffic lights than it is to stop. If by 'statistically', he means 'anecdotally', then he could be on to something. But it doesn't sound awfully plausible, even in view of how dangerous traffic lights can be for cyclists. It's a contentious issue, with many motorists growing apoplectic at cyclists nipping through on an orange. They'd do it if they could get away with it, mark my words.

Motorists and cyclists shouldn't hate each other, they should see them as friends who could help one another get from A to B quicker and without dying - either from obesity or impact.

Until all commuters become more accepting to different (and superior) means of traveling, cyclists will have to endure angry drivers, unsuspecting pedestrians and some really quite steep hills. Such dangers and annoyances are enough to make you scream loudly at passing buses like the homeless lady who sometimes dines out in your bins. It's driving me cyclepathic.