cyclenation news

Issue 32 January 2015

With the General Election less than 17 weeks away (7 May 2015), how many copies does YOUR Group want?

S4C: Core Principles Protected space on main roads Removing through motor traffic in residential areas Lower speed limits Cycle-friendly town centres Safe routes to school Routes through green spaces

As a reminder, Cyclenation News is reprinting its report of the S4C meeting held in Sheffield last year: With the General Election fixed for 7th May 2015, cycling campaigners throughout the country are lobbying local and national government to produce and provide an infrastructure that encourages more and safer cycling for riders of all ages and abilities on the country’s roads. The CTC, the Cyclenation Board, members of campaigning groups and individual campaigners met to discuss progress to date. Local councillors had been canvassed and a map of results was circulated; the colour coding indicating the percentage signups around the country with a clear difference in support between the two main Parties. Roger Geffen, Campaigns Director for the CTC commented that S4C was, so far, city dominated and that the campaign had not yet taken off in more rural areas. Some groups had approached their MPs; some were supportive, others simply responded ‘along party lines’. Ashok Sinha (London Cycling Campaign) emphasised that pre-Election Manifestos tended to be dominated by ‘mainstream’ issues so incorporating S4C into transport, congestion and economic issues may attract an MP’s attention (AND THE MEDIA) Outside London, over 10,000 people have taken part in the campaign, with over 400 Councillors having signed up in support, including over 40% of the Cllrs in Newcastle. Aiming to reach 500 before the party conference season begins.

Cyclenation is holding a high stock of ‘Making Space for Cycling’, which need to reach your local MPs and councillors in the runup to the General Election. Here are a few samples from its 35 illustrated pages:

Three pages explaining and illustrating S4C – Segregation, hybrid lanes, separation from pedestrians et all..

Continuity and maintaining a level track are emphasised.

Three pages for junctions: maintaining separation, visibility, minimising stopstart manoeuvres.

Two pages of ‘Dos’ and Don’ts’ for infrastructure planners and providers….

Plus a page aimed at your local Developers. ‘Making Space for Cycling’ has 35 pages, was written by Cambridge Cycling campaign, funded by Bike Hub and endorsed by Cyclenation, the APPCG, CTC, British Cycling, Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, London Cycling Campaign, the CPRE and Cambridge Cycling Campaign. HOW MANY COPIES DOES YOUR GROUP WANT? Request copies by sending your name, postal address and quantity to [email protected]

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Birmingham Post, January 1st 2015. As a major stride to get more people cycling in Birmingham, Raleigh has supplied 5000 bikes to the city – 3000 will be given away and 2000 hired out. The hire bikes will be part of the ‘Big Birmingham Bikes’ scheme which will include cycle training, bike maintenance and led rides. Councillor Lisa Trickett, Cabinet Member for a Green, Smart and Sustainable city said: “We are improving all the cycling routes within 20 minutes of the city centre. We have got some bike hire schemes, like the Brompton bikes and we are also going to be offering bikes in various hubs around the city. But this is about giving 3000 bikes to Brummies who want to cycle but the cost of purchasing a bike is stopping them”.

Cambridge redesigns its ‘floating’ bus stops. Segregates cycleways with the cycle lane continuing around the back of the bus stop and a “very clear demarcation between footway, bus stop and cycleway” will be principal features. The cycle lanes will be 2.1 metres wide, reducing to 1.5 metres on the approach to the bus stop. (Local Transport Today) And from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign magazine: “Of course roundabouts are difficult for those on cycles…but many experienced users would not wish them to be changed for traffic lights, as they know that this can increase delays”. (A dilemma for the Highway Engineer then….Ed) ====================================================================

Can

Can cyclists and drivers be friends? They certainly were when

when the CCC gave a talk to its local branch of the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) Campaigning, infrastructure and Bikeability were included, the latter raising much comment when ‘taking the lane’ and Primary Position were mentioned. A couple of motorcyclists were in disagreement, suggesting they might undertake the cyclist, as they were going faster! However, other IAM members agreed this would be bad driving and that the m/c should wait behind. It turned out that the IAM also recommended ‘taking the lane’, calling it the ‘Command Position’. Incidentally, the IAM has discontinued its ‘IAM

Cyclist’

Cyclist’ membership category.

And, of course, there is London…………………………

This is just a segment of a two-page ‘spread’ in Local Transport Today.

From LTT: “Boris Johnson has done more – much more – than any other politician to raise the political profile of cycling. But his eight-year tenure as London’s mayor will end in 18 months from now and there’s no guarantee his successor will pursue the cycling agenda with the same gusto. Johnson is therefore determined to drive through big changes for cyclists in his final months and none is more ambitious – or controversial, than the plans for two almost completely segregated cycle superhighways running east-west and north-south across central London”. Of the “divided opinion” LTT listed supporters as London Cycling Campaign, the CEs of the Financial Times and Barts NHS Trust – plus a supportive editorial from the London Evening Standard. LCC Campaign Officer Charlie Lloyd told LTT: “We think the mayor needs to show leadership and ensure that all his employees in TfL are fully behind this project. It is one of the cornerstones of his ‘Vision for Cycling in London. Delivery of this project is an essential part of the election promise the mayor made before he was reelected in 2012”.

Taking the lead role in opposing the plan is the Canary Wharf Group. The ‘Guardian’ has said that the Group….was behind an anonymous briefing paper that makes strong criticisms of the plans. Also in opposition (says LTT) is the City of London; proposals are “too heavily biased towards cyclists with insufficient consideration given to the needs of other users” Phillip Everett, the City’s director of the built environment, told his members. Andrew Gilligan, the mayor’s cycling commissioner, said that segregation was ‘vital to changing the capital’s cycling culture’. Subject to the outcome of consultation, construction of the superhighways should begin early this year. p.s. again from LTT: About 10% of cyclists on the extension of Cycle Superhighway 2 are continuing to use the main carriageway rather than the segregated lanes, according to TfL. AND THEY ARE PERFECTLY ENTITLED TO DO SO! Ed.

Simon Geller gives his review of Cyclenation during 2014… At the beginning of the year Cyclenation was in a very different position from where it finds itself now. The federation had come a long way from the days of the Cycle Campaign Network, with a strong brand, high profile and highly active board members at a national level. Our "Cyclenation on tour" programme had reconnected us with many of our local groups. However, there was concern at some levels. Although many of the big city groups were thriving some of the smaller groups were having problems maintaining momentum. The reduced income from this decline in membership meant that we faced some hard decisions as a Board. For the federation to continue to be effective we need a level of funding - about £5k per year - and it looked as though we would have to look elsewhere for this. It appeared to us that there were two possibilities here - London Cycle Campaign, our largest member with over 12,000 members - or the CTC, with whom we have enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship. We launched a consultation on our future direction which culminated in a lively workshop at our AGM in Birmingham, and the message we got back was that we were not in an "either/or situation - we needed to talk to both organisations and other possible partners as well. With that mandate in place we were able to start talking in earnest to our partners about resourcing the federation appropriately and more effective collaboration.

To add to our problems André Curtis, our long-standing Chair, announced that he was going to step down at the AGM, so we knew we had to find another outstanding individual to fulfil this role. There was some ‘carping’ at us from other quarters - where were our policies? Were we taking decisIons without fully consulting our members? The Cycle Safety Fund bidding round, in which we participated in the

evaluations along with our campaigning partners, raised some issues although ironically it was one of the better schemes, the Bedford "Turbo" roundabout, that drew the most criticism. I think the lesson we drew from that was that this was not the way to develop cycle schemes - we need a fully funded long-term strategy to deliver a coherent cycle network, not a short-term, fairly random allocation of cash as a knee-jerk reaction to a newspaper campaign. That was one of the reasons the "Space for Cycling" campaign appealed to us. This had been initiated by London Cycle Campaign in the run-up to local elections and had immediately had an impact. The six "asks" of the campaign looked like something we could take out to local groups and indeed there was already a lot of interest in getting involved from groups across the UK. The local elections in May 2014 provided an opportunity to pilot the campaign with a small number of groups. I particularly liked the idea of getting local campaigners to contact their councillors to persuade them to sign up to the campaign principles, although that didn't work very well in Sheffield where most of the active people live on the west side of the city, so many councillors didn't get asked whilst a few got asked a lot! With hindsight we should have contacted them centrally as well. Still this was a useful "first pass" at an event of this nature and the Cyclenation Board intends to be more heavily involved in the campaign in future. The AGM led to major changes in Board membership. Eric Booth had impressed when he led at the Cyclenation conference in Bristol so it was great news when he agreed to be chair. Lizzie Reather from Leeds and Jonathan Fingland from Manchester brought fresh blood onto the scene while the inclusion of Ashok Sinha and Roger Geffen, both LCC members but with Roger declaring an interest as Campaigns Manager of CTC meant that we had created the closer working relationship with our larger partners that the membership had asked for. Meanwhile some of the old guard of the Board remained, with myself as Secretary, John Mallows taking over as Treasurer and Graham Hankins remaining as Membership Secretary and Newsletter Editor. We said au revoir to Ken Barker and Jayne Rodgers as well as André and I’d like to personally thank them for all the hard work and support they put into the Board. Jayne’s help was invaluable in getting the new website up and running. Following the successful AGM where we established the principles under which we would work with our partners we conducted a further consultation about the campaigning principles we should be following. This led to a set of motions that were put to an Extraordinary General Meeting just before the annual conference in London in November. The key points of these motions were as follows: 1) We established a Vision for Cyclenation 2) We adopted Space for Cycling as our key campaign 3) We adopted a policy on protected space for cycling, using the Dutch measure of 2,000 Passenger Car Units as the benchmark for when Protected Space should be provided. With all this in place I think we are in a good position to take the Federation forward in 2015 and we have some challenges to address. The General Election is upon us along with local elections, oil prices are falling, not all of our prospective Transport Ministers seem particularly cycle-friendly and we have yet to see the Government put any serious money into cycling or even promise to do so. I think there will be some serious campaigning work to do so let’s put whatever difficulties we’ve had in the past behind us and get to it! Simon Geller Secretary - Cyclenation

The Cyclenation Forum gives you an opportunity to discuss issues with campaigners from other groups across the coun- try. It's a Google group so if you have a Google account (recommended) go to https://groups.google.com/ search for cyclenation-forum and sign up. If you're using a non-google address, you can subscribe by email - send an email to [email protected]. Contact the Secretary, Simon Geller if you have any problems.

Board Members President: Phillip Darnton

Contacts: Cyclenation New s Editorial Team Email: [email protected] Local Group New s Email: [email protected] Public Enquiries Cyclenation, 2 Newhams Row, London SE1 3UZ Email: [email protected]

Delegates UK Cycling Alliance Eric Booth European Cyclists' Federation Simon Geller Bike Week Andre Curtis

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Jonathan Fingland. Lizzie Reather Ashok Sinha Roger Geffen

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