BIG INTERVIEW
Mallinder at Cycling UK’s celebration of the 100 Women in Cycling in 2019 riding along London’s Embankment with Angellica Bell
‘I THINK THE BIGGEST CHANGE I’VE SEEN IS CYCLING’S PLACE AND RECOGNITION IN SOCIETY’
“So the trade could probably do better actually at ceding good credit for bikes in the way that the car industry did back in the 70s – they really pushed finance and that’s how most people buy cars now.” Mallinder also mentions the Highway Code, which now has the ‘Hierarchy of Road Users’, simplified rules for non-signalised junctions, new rules to tackle dangerous overtaking and ‘close passes’, and the inclusion of the Dutch Reach.
“The rules in the Highway Code trickle down to
highway design,” said Mallinder. “So junctions will become safer, crossings will become safer, because cycling or walking is a priority over driving there. “Those are little things sometimes that we miss – the advocacy works a little bit mysteriously behind the scenes and sometimes it’s actually really boring legislation that we need to change.”
The future looks bright So what does the future of cycling look like now? “We had two years worth of sales in about six weeks, didn’t we at the beginning of lockdown, obviously that leads to normalisation but that would have brought more people in,” Mallinder said. “They’ll want a second bike, they’ll want that bike replaced, they’ll want it fixed. “From when I started to now, there’s been a few blips along the way but the reality is funding in cycling is at record levels compared to where it has ever been. The future looks bright from governments really investing in
28 | December 2022
it. Obviously, there’ll be times when they have to make cost savings, but I think in terms of the trajectory, I’m very pleased. “I’m always blown away by the trade, how they’ve managed to reinvent themselves every couple of years. The touring bike market was dead and then basically they put knobby tyres on it and it’s a gravel bike, and we’ve reinvented something.” Mallinder continued: “If I have to predict another boom, I do think workplace cycling might become a really important thing for society because it’s a massive contributor to traffic at nine o’clock in the morning and five in the evening. “If people see their petrol prices carrying on going up and the cost of living, the employee themselves will be looking at ways of how could it make this cheaper, quicker, especially the sitting in traffic jams. “The employer themselves, for the Government to hit their net zero targets in the future, they’ll probably look at big contributors to transport which is obviously a key contributor to greenhouse gases. They’ll be looking to push work employers to think about how they move their staff around. “Workplaces can facilitate things like cycle to work
schemes and making it easier for people to get bikes. Things like our Cycle Friendly Employer scheme, which started about five years ago now, that kind of model of really helping workplaces become cycle friendly is really important.” ●
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