Pedal to the Metal: envisioning how Notts could be transformed via sustainable transport

On the last Friday of August, cyclists of all ages, backgrounds and abilities appear from the corners of Nottingham for a mass ride. I’ve joined for the first time, and in the aftermath of a late-summer deluge I’m unsure if many people will want to brave the rain. But soon a congregation of bicycles has assembled, new and old introductions are made, and the tinkling of bicycle bells fills the clearing air as we set off. A hint of sun comes out, and as Sam, one of the ride’s unofficial leaders, arrives with an enormous speaker wedged onto the back of his bike, it already feels like a party.

Unlike Dom Whiting’s recent Drum & Bass on the Bike ride, Critical Mass Nottingham is something that happens every month – the local iteration of a global grassroots movement promoting cycling. Dating back to 1992 in San Francisco, the movement has spread to 300-odd cities around the world. David Lally, who’s been involved since 2014, tells me that Critical Mass Nottingham has been going strong since the late 90s, echoing a local cycling legacy built by Raleigh and the now-elapsed Great Notts Bike Ride. He explains how the ride works, and what it stands for. Cyclists ride together in a group large enough to claim a space on the roads for themselves, and to be seen by other road users as a rightful part of ‘traffic’. Evolving from frustration with dangerous conditions on city roads, the point is to experience, and demonstrate, what cities designed for people, not cars, could feel like. 

In the majority of cities in the UK, cyclists navigate infrastructure designed primarily for motor vehicles, not active travel. PeopleForBikes, who score cities for quality of biking, finds most UK cities to lag far behind European leaders like France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, despite ambitious visions for cycling and walking laid out by the Department of Transport. Only a minority of people use bikes as regular transport, with as little as 14% of UK residents cycling once a week, the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust found in their 2025 report. In Nottingham, the building of cycle lanes including the 2016 Castle Boulevard ‘cycle superhighway’ have been part of an effort to contribute towards a greener, more active city. Nottingham-based organisations including Pedals, Ridewise, as well as Bikeworks, Women in Tandem and more, put in extraordinary legwork to get change happening. 

Hugh McClintock, former Chair of Pedals for thirty years, tells me why infrastructure is at the focus of the Pedal’s campaigning work. “People’s resistance to taking up cycling comes from worrying about safety on the roads,” he says. “We campaign for cycle routes that make up a coherent network, not just bits and pieces.” Better cycle parking provisions, lower speed limits, and increased awareness of the impact on cyclists of transport policy are some of Pedals’ other aims. Progress is often painstakingly slow. The recently opened Waterside Bridge is the result of twelve years of campaigning, Hugh tells me, but the Council have already found roughly 500 cyclists using it per day, over the first six weeks. There’s still a big task ahead to better connect it to wider cycling and walking routes, but it’s clear that there is a felt demand for dedicated active travel infrastructure. 

As a cycle commuter myself, I know how infrastructure can make a big difference. With Critical Mass, the sensation of riding through city-centre roads empty of motor traffic is exhilaratingly novel: for once, safety isn’t a primary concern. I have a glimpse of what the city could feel like, if people – walking, wheeling, cycling – were the priority. The hope is that the benefit of this is understood by the public, too. “As more people choose to walk, wheel and cycle, there is often greater demand for safer infrastructure and better-connected routes,” Helen Berry from Ridewise, a Nottingham-based charity dedicated to cycling education, tells me. It’s a relationship that works both ways. 

To encourage more people to choose active travel, Ridewise provides training to develop cycling skills and confidence. “We aim to make cycling something that feels achievable and accessible for everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances,” Helen emphasises, recognising that access to active travel opportunities are not distributed equally. “Learning to cycle safely and confidently can be genuinely life-changing… cycling can offer an affordable, accessible and sustainable way to travel, as well as opportunities to improve health and social connection.”

Kidical Mass, the family-friendly branch-off of Critical Mass, was organised in Nottingham for the first time in 2023, and David is enthusiastic about its potential. “The Kidical Mass concept is fundamental, it emphasises what it’s all about: giving people, and especially kids, independence.” It’s also perhaps the most impactful element of the wider Critical Mass demonstration, summing up the questions the movement poses about how we want our city to be experienced, if this includes future generations, and what benefit this can have for the community as a whole. 

As an undeniably positive demonstration, Kidical Mass is hard not to like. Critical Mass, David admits, is a little more provocative, but only because it’s so normal that cars are the priority. “The important thing about Critical Mass is to make it a definite presence, which makes a point,” David explains. “It’s temporary, but very visible.” It’s important to cycle as a single group, effectively making one ‘body’ of traffic. Lanes at junctions are ‘corked’ by members – organised amongst themselves – to allow the length of the group to safely ride through major roads in town. Though David emphasises that this is only temporarily disruptive, rather than permanently obstructive, it doesn’t always go down well with other road users. 

Just like the Mass, part of the problem with campaigning for better cycle infrastructure is that it is often seen as an inconvenience to drivers – particularly if it requires sacrificing road space. Low transport zones have been crucial to promoting cycling in cities like London, but can produce opposition. Cycling provisions can also come into conflict with bus lanes, which has been one of the problems with an ongoing project to establish a North-South Active Travelway connecting Sherwood and West Bridgford through the city centre.

But better infrastructure isn’t something that only benefits existing cyclists. It also contributes to a healthier public environment, less dominated by traffic and noise and air pollution. “Cycling can support local economies, improve social inclusion and help create places that are safer and more pleasant for everyone,” Helen elaborates. “Active travel is part of a balanced transport system that benefits an entire city, including people who never cycle.” 

Patrick Hort, who runs the Mammoth Climate Action Cinema, tells me about a poll board put out during this summer’s Green Hustle and Sneinton Festival: ‘Should we have a car-free day in Notts?’. As hundreds of sticker-votes show, the answer was an overwhelming ‘yes’. 

Critical Mass is not content to wait for policy change to make this happen. Instead – and where it is most effective – it enacts the future it envisions, demonstrating what this could look like, and offering participants a brief and tantalising experience of it. It’s a great example of ‘prefigurative politics’: gaining recognition amongst researchers and practitioners as an effective imagining and acting-out of the societal changes that participants want to see. Where we desire safe and child-friendly cities, for example, Kidical Mass puts this into action in the form of hundreds of children blocking off the most central and visible roads in the city centre. 

It’s clear that many of Nottingham’s cycling advocacy organisations have overlapping goals, strategies, and sometimes even personnel. As I meet cyclists at the Critical Mass ride, I soon realise many of them are involved in other cycling campaigns and groups. Patrick tells me about his work-in-progress integrating the disparate groups via a central platform, Cycle Notts (cyclenotts.uk). Stemming from an initial meeting of council and organisation representatives in May 2025, the goal is to provide opportunities for better dialogue between cycling organisations, a centralised calendar promoting cycling events like Critical Mass, and a general synthesising of the efforts towards transforming Nottingham into a city of cyclists, for cyclists.

Critical Mass is just one sign of the enduring call for cycling to be taken more seriously if Nottingham is to reach its Carbon Neutral targets. It poses the question, visibly, of what we want our cities to look like and be experienced as, and offers active travel as a particularly salient way to imagine alternatives to the fuel economy, and cities better equipped for climate change.

But it’s also an empowering celebration of bikes, and welcoming everyone. As David tells me, it’s this that has kept him coming for twelve years. “It’s such a diverse group. The only thing that brings us all together is the love and promotion of cycling, the belief that cycling is a great way to get about. It’s just getting out there and doing it, showing that it can be done.” This is a case of activism at its best; part of a global movement, taken up by a diverse set of local people who care about making the city a safer, more accessible, and simply nicer place to be. Critical Mass leads by example, and its optimism is contagious.