UK study to examine how people can be encouraged and supported to keep cycling into old age

Nice work if you can get it.

It seems to me that the main thrust of the study is older people using bikes as a means of transport, not for pleasure or fitness.

I started cycling at the age of 64 because I've always participated in sport and enjoy endurance based activities - my running days having been ended by knee problems. I'd guess that most older riders have a similar background.

I fear that getting older people who are not sport orientated to take up cycling for transport is doomed regardless of infrastructure, we have free bus passes.

If some of these clever dicks ever attended time trial events they would be absolutely speechless at the ages of the veterans ( vets often being more than half the field) competing. Having these facts to present in their research will go a long way in ramming home the benefits of cycling into old age. A lesson on how not to be intimidated by riding in traffic, great for self confidence, great for self reliance. The vets are to be greatly admired and it's time they were held up as inspirational subjects.

It's definately get 'em young. If you've been on two wheels (petrol, electric and legs) for most of your adult life as I have (now 70), then traffic does not hold the imagined horrors that someone starting out say in their 60s would suffer. The health advantages that cycling offers is massive - low impact exercise, heart rate up, blood pressure down, fat burnt off - I've proven beyond doubt that a bike ride of say 30 miles a couple of times a week has far more effect on lowering blood pressure than all the pills my doctor tries to convince me to take. The electric bike went as it wasn't providing the real exercise I needed.

longer term, get people to ride bikes from as early an age as possible.

Getting people to change there ways is not easy, not about safety or exersion, purely about habit.

People are creatures of habit.

to get a change, carrot and stick, give the network where it is safe and pleasant to cycle and then make the car option less atractive.

LOL! 3 years to work out what i can tell them in less than a minute?

Build cycle paths, done.

I work with lots of people in this age category. The key is nothing to do with physically demanding. It is almost entirely about Subjective Safety. See http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/09/three-types-of-safety.html

Especially at the top end of this age group falls are a big concern, healing takes much longer and a broken bone can easily result in a permanent loss of freedom. Mixing with fast moving traffic is very scary and so people stop riding.

At the upper end of this age group a huge number used to cycle, they have fond memories of it but they are frightened of the huge increases in traffic since they used to cycle.

The answer is high quality segregated Dutch infrastructure (not cheap copies that are not properly thought through or connected).

Last year I conducted the funeral of a lovely man who had a debilitating lung disease for years. He rode his bike only 1 week before he died, it gave him better mobility than his mobility scooter and it kept his legs and lungs working. I am convinced he had a better quality of life and more independence than most but he was restricted to where he could get to using quiet residential roads and the limited local infrastructure - there was no way he was going to ride on a busy road (on that last ride he was down to 1st gear on his elderly mountain bike to climb the "hill" to home which is a barely discernable slope).
The Dutch are embracing e-bikes in large numbers but only because safe infrastructure has been sorted first.

I also appear to be knocking on the door of "later life". Thanks guys.

solution is infrastructure. only way to get a substantial number of new people riding bikes is to make it feel safe, which is separating bikes from motor vehicles.

UK's tried training & being nice etc for 40 odd years since the rise of the car started, and there's generally 1 or 2% cycle. NL, Denmark, Germany have put in safe infra & lots do cycle.

Why is it gonna take 3 years to work this out?

How older people can be encouraged and supported to cycle into their old age ?

Stop the three-year study led by an academic from Oxford Brookes University.

Take the the £1.4 million budget and create "cycling" financial incentives aimed at older people.

Will give 'approaching later life' a thought whilst I do my 60+ miles on the Wiggle Steeple Chase this Saturday, hopefully hitting my regular 15+ mph ave!

Nick (Aged 57 and 3/4)

Apparently, I'm 'approaching later life'