Deb13b
New Member
An article in the guardian. Interesting, but depressing.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyl...cling-campaigns?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article
http://m.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyl...cling-campaigns?cat=lifeandstyle&type=article
"Years of government effort to promote cycling......" :?:
"Perhaps above all, and probably most controversially, our research has made it very clear to us that in order to create a mass cycling culture in English cities we need to segregate cycling from motorised traffic along main roads. Combined with a range of other measures, very high quality segregated cycle routes could push English city cycling from its currently marginal status towards a mass phenomenon."
well, to be fair, the money was pushed out as fast as anybody could spend it, and sometimes faster than they could spend it. One former minister told me that he's signed orders for tens of millions of pounds worth of cycle paths and he hadn't the faintest idea whether they'd done any good. The chances are they didn't. Jonesy's illustration tells us that some of the money (perhaps a lot of it) was spent unwisely, but the intention was good.
....
People will choose cycling when it's convenient and quick, and they can do it without getting wet or smelly.
Do you really think that their intentions were poor? Keith Hill (for it was he) is a man with a crystal heart. When he said that his intentions were to encourage people to cycle I believed him completely.
And, lest we forget, a lot of the money got spent through Sustrans and the LCC, while Borough cycling officers did their enthusiastic best.
surely, though, the national bodies ran local projects. Or is this wishful thinking?We took part in the research mentioned and the results are being talked about at a conference in Leicester this weekend. Cyclemagic isn't taking part in that conference.
Our problem is the arrogance and bandwagon jumping of some councils (including I'm sad to say, Leicester) British Cycling etc. We, and lots of other people, have been quitely promoting cycling for years and have been held back by lack of funding. As soon as funding becomes availaabe, who gets it? Grassroots projects of national bodies? I think you know the answer to that.
I take your point entirely. The divide between the DfT and whatever the Communities department is called this week was only bridged, to my knowledge, by the Transport Planning Network, and, even then, the discussion was about 'facilities' rather than urban form.And I don't doubt it either. But the support of one minister was not reflected in wider support across government, and within DfT in particular. If it had been, then far more effort would have gone into the wider measures needed to create an environment supportive of cycling, the planning measures, urban design, speed management and traffic restraint, and there would have been a proper evaluation of where and how it is effective to target spend on cycling specific measures. It wouldn't have been left to NGOs etc. It isn't as if the information needed for an evidence based cycling policy doesn't exist- look at the research cited by Red Light and others, that objectively assesses the Dutch and Dainish experience, yet you rarely see any of this sort of analysis in the policy papers produced by Cycling England or the NCS Board that came before it.
surely, though, the national bodies ran local projects. Or is this wishful thinking?
Did you catch what was going on in Derby and the other demonstration towns? What''s your thoughts on those?
sorry to badger you, but what was it that made Derby stand out from the rest?The national bodies appoint there own people to work with the local groups. In Leicester the CTC and Sustrans/Bike It have been very good but the city council and British Cycling are currently re-inventing the wheel and sticking their noses in to local projects that have been running successfully for years. Result, local organisations and volunteers get p***ed off by highly paid managers.
That is why Cyclemagic is not at the conference in Leicester this weekend and is not supporting Sky Ride Leicester. We've got plenty of other work including several other Sky Rides, so it's not us missing out.
We worked a lot with several of the Cycle Demo Towns, Cycle Derby were by far the best and achieved a lot. The same can't be said for some of the others, though.