With all the talk lately of 15 minute cities - communities where you can live and access most if not all amenities within 15 minutes of walking or cycling, and then mention of Guildford as an example in a tweet I came across in response to a hapless MP who believes 15 minutes cities to be a kind of conspiracy theory,
Have you ever been to Beaconsfield, Kingston maybe, Guildford, or any other traditional British town? All of them are traditionally 15-minute cities. The lack of 15-minute areas resulted in killing the highstreet shops.
— PhoneKills (@phonekills) February 10, 2023
I thought I'd keep a diary for a week of what it's like to live and work in Guildford using only walking, cycling and public transport (quite easy for me, since I don't have a car). Here are the results:
Monday 27th Feb. I walk from home to work. This takes 15 minutes for the mile-long trip. The journey is about half a mile as the crow flies, but with a river and railway line between me and work, the walking route is quite indirect. Most days I drop my son off at nursery first, in which case I cycle, but I like to walk on the days that I can. My walking route involves getting over the river and the railway line on pedestrian / cycling bridges. If I were to drive, the journey would be about 2 miles, but I would not be able to park. I live to close to work to be able to get a parking permit. I walk along Walnut Tree Close to get to work. Fortunately it hasn't been raining, as the road then fills up with puddles, and you have to be careful to avoid getting splashed by cars driving through. It was a frosty morning, though, and one car in particular was sitting being warmed up with its engine running, pumping thick clouds of exhaust fumes over the pavement. I held my breath as I walked through like a member of Ultravox in Vienna.
After the 15 minute walk home, and dinner, it was time to take two of my kids to their swimming club. This is at the local leisure centre, which is a cycle ride of about 8 minutes. We have a cargo bike which fits both kids in the back, and so we went there together. The swimming club times for the two kids are slightly staggered with a 15 minute difference in start time and a 30 minute difference in finish time. The 30 minutes is enough time to get the first child dried and changed, cycle him home so that he can start getting to bed, and cycle back again to meet the other child out of the pool, and the bring her home.
Tuesday 28th Feb. A change of plans this morning: Usually one parent takes the youngest child to nursery (on one side of town) while the other takes two older children to their schools, both on the other side of town. Today, though, I took the 9yo to her school with the 3yo also in the bike, and then I cycled from the school to the nursery. From home to school was 8 minutes, and from school to nursery was 20 minutes. I'm not 100% sure I went the best route, and checking now on Google Maps (not the best for bike routes, but it at least gives some, and it suggests something different, shorter, and a sensible way to go. Not sure if that would have brought it down to 15 minutes but maybe. After nursery, it was a 5 minute ride to work. The nursery is at my workplace, but they have two sites about a mile apart. The nursery is at the one where (far) fewer people work, and the majority of people drive to drop their kids there. In fact, I mentioned in the Monday entry that because I live too close to work, I would not get a parking permit, but that is not quite true - if you have children that you need to drop at school / nursery etc, then you can usually argue for a parking permit at work, even if you live close.
The way home from work involved the 5 minute cycle ride back to nursery to pick up my youngest, then a cycle ride home, around 12 minutes. That can depend on the traffic. There are few dedicated cycle lanes to use, but when the traffic is queuing, I can usual at least filter through much of it.
After putting my youngest child to bed, my partner got home and we went out to a comedy night at our local venue, leaving the older kids in the care of a babysitter (my mother-in-law, who lives with us). The venue is a 3-4 minute walk... one of the closest things to our house. The walk back afterwards obviously took the same amount of time.
Wednesday 1st Mar. I work compressed hours, with 4 longer days and some weekend time adding up to my contracted hours. This week, Wednesday was my day off, though usually it is a Monday. The first task on leaving the house was to take the two older kids to school. This involves the 9yo cycling herself, with me next to her on our cargo bike, with the 6yo and 3yo in the back. We go a slightly odd route to avoid the busiest bits of multi-lane A-road. There are no cycle paths between home and school. Quite a bit of the route is uphill, and when she started cycling in she used to have to stop a few times on the way. Now, she makes it all in one go. It takes about 10 minutes. From there, it's off with the two boys to the 6yo's school. It's a few minutes to cycle from 9yo's school to 6yo's school. It's one of the worst times of day to be out on a bike, thanks to the school drop-off. There are two roads one could use to drive to the 9yo's school. One is a narrow cul-de-sac, and the other a narrow through road. The school request that anyone driving follows a voluntary one way system on the through road, and avoid the cul-de-sac completely. This is ignored by quite a large fraction of parents, and getting up the cul-de-sac on a bike can by quite slow work, waiting for the cars to let each other by, blocking the road while they do.
After the second drop-off, I cycle my 3yo to what is practically our second home - the leisure centre, for a swim followed by his weekly ice skating lesson The cycle ride takes me a bit under 10 minutes. Next, it's back home, a ride of about 7 minutes. The next outing is to pick the older two kids up from school: About 7 minutes to 6yo's school, a few minutes from there to 9yo's school, and then we cycle back together, me with 3yo and 6yo on the back, and 9yo on her own bike. Journey home is okay. On the way back, we do go via the main road, and have a car pull onto a roundabout against our right of way. Bit scary. But then home for the rest of the day. Make dinner, and kids, me, and mother in law eat at children's teatime. Put kids to bed and partner gets home later.
Thursday 2nd Mar. I do the nursery run with my 3yo in our smaller cargo bike. He wants to go a new way to nursery. When we get there, I realise what this means: using a cut-through by the Holiday Inn next to nursery, which avoids the junction in which the cycle path users and pedestrians have to face up to three changes of lights to cross in parts, against car drivers' one change. But I don't understand what he means as we set off, and I go one of the three plausible routes that I ever use to get to and from nursery. They each have their pros and cons. This one involves starting off on the busy main road near my house, and then having a combination of quite wide shared paths, some quiet roads, and a section of somewhat narrow shared path. After getting to nursery the normal way with the car-prioritised junction, I realise that my 3yo wanted to go the "new way" through the Holiday Inn car park... can do that tomorrow. I cycle to work (<5 minutes).
After a short meeting at 14:00 I head home on my bike (between 5 and 10 minutes from work to home) and work for a bit before heading to an optician's appointment. The optician is a 5 minute walk from my house - I go there and pick up my new pair of glasses that is waiting for me, and have a free hearing test that they are offering. A 5 minute walk home and I carry on working for a bit until it is time to head off to London for a gig at Ronnie Scotts with my Dad (a birthday present from me to him). I definitely can't get there in 15 minutes, but I can walk to the train station in 5 minutes and get the 35 minute train to Waterloo, from where it's a 20 minute walk to Ronnie Scott's. We go in, have a bite to eat and enjoy the gig. A 20 minute walk back to Waterloo, 15 minutes wait, then around 35 minutes back to Guildford. The train journey time is slightly variable - the fast service takes anywhere from about 30 to 45 minutes depending on minor stops and congestion. At the other end, a 5 minute walk got me home around 22:15.
Friday 3rd Mar. I take 3yo in to nursery the "new way". It involves using the busy roundabout off the A3, which is the one downside, but it avoids the junction where pedestrians and cyclists have to wait a long time to cross, and can have to wait for up to 4 separate lights (3 for the direction I go). The push-button crossing is just a placebo here; it doesn't alter the timing of the lights. Anyway - we go the new way, and I cycle back to work, which I passed through on the way from home to nursery.
Friday morning is when we have our weekly food order come in from Tesco. The big Tesco in Guildford is next to my 3yo's nursery - close to where I work, so eminently within a 15 minute journey for me. But if I am going to a supermarket in person from home, I go to Waitrose, which is a <5 minute walk. Also close-by in the town centre (no more than 10 minute walk) are a decent size M&S food hall, and a Sainsbury's - a town-centre scale full size one - smaller than a superstore, but bigger and more fully-featured than a Sainsbury's Local. From my house walking in the other direction (my Thursday morning route to nursery) is a retail park with a Lidl, as well as other big stores - a B&Q, Curry's big pet shop, Halfords, Next, a carpet shop, furniture shop.
After work, I go back to the nursery, pick up my 3yo and cycle home the "new way". My usual Friday night involves taking 3yo to the bath and then bed while my partner is with the 6 and 9yo at activities at the Leisure Centre, but gymnastics was cancelled, and so they came home between some of the activities. I, then, took 9yo to her swimming club - the usual ~8 minute bike ride each way.
Saturday 4th Mar. Saturdays involve a lot of activities with the kids, starting with swimming club for the 9yo: I took her on the back of the bike to her 0700-0900 session (~8 minutes each way). Once back, the next thing was to take 6yo to football club. This is one of the most distant things we go to regularly, but still within Guildford. The hardest part about getting there is just how uphill it is (and once there, the icy microclimate at the top of the hill). It’s a little under a 15 minutes bike ride there, and a bit quicker on the way back. Down the hill on the way home, I get up to about 25mph on the bike, which is about as fast as I feel comfortable going.
After a slightly early lunch the next activity is with all of us going to the leisure centre for ice skating lessons. With two adults on two bikes and three children in the back, we have our usual ~8 minute ride. After ice skating, we went for a swim. The leisure centre has a “fun” pool with slides and a wave machine. A shallow teaching pool and a full competition “normal” pool. Due to an unwanted stool, the fun pool had to be closed, so we ended up using the cold competition pool for most of our session. Actually, the 9yo also used the dedicated diving pool with its range of boards. She was proud to get some confidence on the middle board.
Back home and no more trips out.
Sunday 5th Mar. A day with nothing much scheduled. I made one trip to Waitrose, with kids (5 mins each way) to get some nice fresh bread to have with a soup planned for dinner. Ended up buying a lot of things aside from bread.
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In summary: I live in a place where I can get to many in 15 minutes, without needing a car. Places I’ve been this week include: work, nursery for 3yo, infant school for 6yo, junior school for 9yo, swimming pool(s), ice rink, supermarket, recreation ground (for football training), gig venue, optician, mainline train station (for a 35min train to Waterloo). There are many other places within 15 minutes: Countryside walks, cinema, theatre (have a few things booked there coming up), large range of shops, play parks, GP. In fact, I have all the things that are in the top 15 most important things to have within a 15 minute walk that people selected on a Yougov poll: https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1632696242869268481?s=20
Is Guildford a walking & biking paradise? No, far from it. The town is very car-centric. Drivers often bemoan how awful it is for cars, but largely this is because there are just too many of them wanting to get through town. The town is full of roads and cars already. There are already multi-lane roads through central parts of Guildford, and even the one free-flowing dual carriageway (A3) that calls itself the “Guildford and Godalming by-pass” does not by-pass Guildford at all, but carves through the town, meaning that almost wherever you are in Guildford you can hear traffic noise. By the side of the A3 has also been measured to be the site of the worst road pollution in the country. There are very few, if any, segregated cycle lanes. Some roads have narrow cycle lanes marked into the gutter, often called “murder strips” by cyclists since they encourage the idea that as long as a car stays on its side of the lane it can drive centimetres from a bike. There are advanced stopping lines at a few junctions, though it’s not always easy to reach them in queuing traffic as there is not always a cycle lane leading up. The local council(s) pay lip service to active travel infrastructure, but little more. A recent cycle route from the station to the College simply pushes cyclists on to pavements at some points - now we have narrow pavements with bike symbols on them - directs them through footpaths on which they shouldn’t cycle, doesn’t actually meet up with the station, encourages them to go the wrong way down a one-way street, and does about everything possible so as not to annoy car drivers. Recent innovations in favour of pedestrians during lockdown, put in by the county council, were bitterly fought against by the town council, controlled by a local nimby party. A county council project to replace murder strips with Guildford’s first real segregated cycle lanes has been put on hold by angry drivers, and the nimby party’s councillors.
There are a probably typical fraction of bad drivers in Guildford as anywhere else, making cycling sometimes a scary experience, with the angry or careless drivers in their dangerous one tonne metal boxes, which I and my kids are relatively unprotected from if they are driven badly. I don’t want to be pushed off the road, and I don’t want my kids pushed off the road, and I’ll continue to get about on bike and on foot, but cycling on Guildford roads is my least favourite part of every week.
Guildford has almost all it takes in terms of facilities to be a 15 minute community. All it needs to do to make it a 15 minute paradise is to prioritise walking, cycling, and public transport.
I usually like to put a picture with my posts. I didn't really take any relating to this diarised week, but here's one from the morning I am writing the post, showing my view as I walk to work (past the Crown Court - not an amenity that i particularly benefit from living near). I'm walking in the road because the pavement is too slippery.
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