Shortcuts make long delays 

Last time I read a highly-designed cycle route: Bangor Promenade. Today, while taking a diversion I found a nice off piste shortcut. I crossed Garth Road at Capel Emaus and carried my bike up a short flight of steps. At ten in the morning, it is really hot and the path stretched uphill. At least it was shaded by trees all around. Towering ahead of me was another flight of steps, with a young woman sitting on the bottom step. Feeling sweaty and unpresentable despite my work clothes I sidled past and commented on my choice of shortcuts. She took her headphones off, so I repeated what I’d said and she laughed sympathetically.  

Taking a Diversion: a pleasant surprise 

At the top of the steps, drenched with sweat, I rejoined Lon Cariadon, or Love Lane. There is not a car to be seen or heard, the road is closed. It reminds me that the cars are all coming past my house as traffic is diverted. Up ahead there are orange barriers and a big hole in the road. No problem for an intrepid adventurer on a bicycle to squeeze by! 

Decision time 

I’m a little behind schedule because of taking this diversion. I can follow the standard route which has a cycle path some of the way, but I’ll lose a lot of height going down a hill. Not after climbing those steps! I decide to carry on up College Road, and I take a right into the university car park by Hen Goleg or Old College. A tight balancing turn to avoid the entrance gate, and a another tight turn to avoid the bumper of a parked car, and then I thread a diagonal course through the empty parking spaces towards the exit. The exit has a steel barrier on the ground that looks like a tank trap but remarkably you can ride over it. A zigzag through some back streets and I’m back onto my usual route to work without losing altitude. 

I’ve been a commuting cyclist in Sofia, Bulgaria, in Porto, Portugal and now here. Taking a diversion has been part of my commutes in all these places. Something I’ve often found is that the best routes are not designed purposefully. Instead, I make use of temporarily closed roads, diagonal trajectories across parks, or redesign a carpark to be my own personal cycle path. I am not making a value judgement on the effectiveness or not of planned cycling infrastructure – I’d like to see a lot more of it. But to some extent it’s inevitable that people will form their own routes based on their needs. 

Reading this route 

It reminds me of my current book Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996). In chapter 2 it lays out a grammar of images, and one important one is the vector. So while spoken language would have a subject, verb, and object, such as “I go to work”, an image can have a similar structure. The vector in a visual image performs a similar role to a verb. It could be an outstretched arm, an arrow or anything that leads the viewer from the actor towards the acted upon. In a visual representation of this ride, I’ll use an arrow as the vector to perform a similar function to the verb ‘go’. Furthermore, just as we can replace the word ‘go’ with another such as ‘find a way’ or ‘even struggle (to get to)’, we can say similar things with the arrow. Compare the arrow of my actual route to work with one I like to imagine and perhaps you’ll read it more as a struggle than just going! In my research I am not analysing the text of spoken or written language. I am not even analysing images, although Kress and van Leeuwen do this. Rather, I am reading the text of Bangor city. So as I apply Kress and Leeuwen’s vector principle to the text of the city, I understand that there is a discouraging story about cycling emerging. I have retold it in picture form below, and then tried to imagine a more positive alternative. Much as I get a gritty pleasure from ‘hacking’ new routes, it may not be something everyone wants to do, so the current text does not encourage mass take up of cycling.