The Secret Cyclist: Putting in a spoke for delivery riders

Deliveroo riders are a common sight on the roads of Cork City

One evening earlier this year during lockdown, I walked into the city centre to collect a take-away meal from a restaurant. As I crisscrossed the streets, I was happy to have bike delivery riders pass by for some company. A quiet city centre can be an unnerving place and it was reassuring to see small groups waiting patiently outside eateries to take hot meals all over the city using clean and green transport.

Around the same time of the year, the then Lord Mayor of Cork also went for a walk in the city centre. Afterwards he tweeted “Day 28 – Apart from dodging the Deliveroo Cyclists travelling at high speed I’d a good walk in a quiet City Centre”.

For a number of weeks afterwards, I would think about this tweet and how it was indicative of a feeling held by many that bike delivery riders cycle in a way that is reckless to their safety, and that of other road users, in particular pedestrians.

Before we get into the cycling issues, it’s important to think about the people who deliver by bike in our towns and cities. Many have moved to this country to improve their English, to study, to earn a living, or to do what so many Irish people do, experience life in a different country. 

They can be thousands of miles from home during a pandemic and their work falls into the category of the ‘gig economy’ so typically does not offer the security and benefits we associate with employment.

Bike delivery riders have the cards stacked against them before they even sit on the saddle. At which point they then have to travel around towns and cities along roads that show scant regard for their safety and wellbeing.

Let’s start with the cycle lanes. Instead of building routes, cycle lanes have been peppered across our urban areas with a similar level of consistency as a child dropping Hundreds and Thousands on a birthday cake.

Cycle lanes are not the be-all and end-all of making it safe to cycle. Reducing vehicular traffic speeds is a proven way to reduce the risk of serious and fatal injury following road traffic collisions. In Ireland, 30 zones seem to start and end with the same consistency as cycle lanes. Worse still, they are almost entirely ignored by motorists. 

According to the Road Safety Authority’s 2018 Free Speed Survey, 98% of vehicles observed on ‘Urban National’ 30km/h routes were speeding and 70% of vehicles observed on ‘Residential’ 30km/h routes were speeding.

Back to the bike delivery drivers. 

Here’s a list of things you rarely hear people say when talking about them: 

‘I hear Spain is bringing in legislation to give gig economy workers collective bargaining rights, maybe we should do the same!’, 

‘Wow, 50% of the Dutch road network has a 30km/h limit, wouldn’t that make it safer for bike delivery riders in Ireland’. 

I could go on but you get the picture.

As a society, we tend to over-focus on the ‘bad things’ that people cycling do. Worse still, we equate these bad things to other bad things in the transport domain. So we put things like drink driving on the same shelf as breaking a red light on a bike. Bad things on bikes are often highly noticeable, such as breaking red lights or cycling on the footpath. Bad things in cars, like drinking five pints and getting behind the wheel, or driving at 50 in a 30 zone are harder to spot. Bad things in cars kill, bad things on bikes annoy.

Smarter people than I call this the ‘availability bias’ and it’s something that we need to bear in mind when talking about cycling. For the last few years in Ireland, bike delivery riders make up a healthy percentage of people on bikes. I’m not a tribalist and I will not defend the indefensible but in my opinion, bike delivery riders are receiving an unfair amount of criticism, especially from people who don’t seem too bothered by other road traffic infringements.

We should observe solutions to issues being rolled out in other countries and question if we can do the same. Red-light running by people on bikes is just one area that we are far behind other countries. Many countries have come to the conclusion that constantly requiring people on bikes to stop and start makes cycling less attractive and involves the expenditure of lots of energy. 

In 2015, Paris introduced a version of the ‘Idaho stop’ which allows cyclists to treat some red lights as yield signs rather than stop signs. At busier junctions, solutions are looked at to encourage people to wait. In Copenhagen and Chicago, a type of footrest is installed next to the bike lane to allow people remain seated on their bikes while waiting for red lights.

Bike delivery drivers take 1000s of cars off the roads in our cities every day. They lower the cost of delivery. They free up parking spaces for people who need to travel to the city centre by car. They pedal silently around our cities all day and well into the night. 

I would love to think that the powers that be in our cities can engage in discussion and conversation with bike delivery riders regarding their rights and responsibilities rather than tweeting about them online.