How will this turn out?

Start my GM Commissioner job on Friday...but already had ~30 meetings. 50% of district leaders met, ALL very postive & up for REAL change!

— Chris Boardman (@Chris_Boardman) August 30, 2017

We've had promises before - the outcomes have mostly been pretty dreadful.

Middlewood St Update - WTF?

This is what Salford's flagship cycle route, featured on many TfGM leaflets, looks like today...



If proof were needed that Salford Council and it's contractors couldn't give a shit about cycling, then this is it!



Sot armadillos, these pieces of recycled plastic have served their purpose (which was to avoid putting in good quality cycle infrastructure). Now that lie has been accepted by the DfT Salford Council have allowed a developer to wipe out this cycle route without any care for cycling safety.



The priority here is not cycle safety - that was last year.



Now it is all about handing over road space and pavements to developers who couldn't care less.



After all if the occasional person gets killed by an HGV or tipper truck then that is presumably an acceptable price to pay?



Who gives a shit anymore round here?

Getting moving: a cycling manifesto for Greater Manchester

Are you responsible for a company, corporation or charity which would like to show its support for cycling in Greater Manchester?

Love Your Bike has updated its cycling manifesto for Greater Manchester and is now looking for new signatory organisations to support the updated manifesto.


Image from Love Your Bike

You can find out more about how to become a signatory and what it means to you.

Contact Love Your Bike by email at gmloveyourbike@gmail.com or tweet to @gmloveyourbike to show your support.

Operation Target Cycling

The Greater Manchester Police seem to have a very negative attitude towards cycling.

Yesterday came the news that someone was killed cycling along Upper Brook Street.

Cyclist dies after crash on Upper Brook Street http://t.co/liYT2kyOAx

— Manchester News MEN (@MENnewsdesk) January 13, 2015

Today the police response is to target people cycling on the pavement on Oxford Road.

#opconsiderate £50 fine to cyclist for cycling on pavement @gmpcitycentre pic.twitter.com/Mpn1SMlu5G

— GMP Traffic (@gmptraffic) January 14, 2015

You couldn't make shit like this up, as nobody would believe you, would they?

The actions of the GM Police flies in the face of current government guidance.

Cycle Forums in Greater Manchester

I've taken on the task of getting all the cycle forums into the Love Your Bike Cycling Events Calendar and there is quite a contrast between the different councils.



Manchester Cycle Forum runs every quarter, is chaired by a city councillor and usually packs out the room it is held in. Details of the meetings are posted on the council web site, but agendas and minutes of the meetings are not posted on the web site.

Salford Cycle Forum is also held quarterly, run by the cycling officer. Details of the meeting are available on the council web site along with agendas and "Action Sheets".

Trafford Cycle Forum is held quarterly. It is chaired by a cycle campaigner rather than an officer or councillor. Agendas and Minutes are both posted on the web site and the meetings are well attended.

Oldham Cycling Forum has restarted this past year and is an ad hoc affair. There is no information on the web site and meetings have come to my attention via twitter, so I have publicised them as best I can. Some details have also been posted on the TfGM web site.

Stockport Council’s Public Cycle User Group "meets once per month in the Town Hall, and is open to all cyclists and others who have an interest in cycling." There is a web page with the most recent draft minutes. In fact the general meetings are every other month with specialised meetings in the other months. Attendance is a bit smaller.

Bolton "At long last, the Bolton Cycle Forum is back! The next meeting will be on Wednesday, 12th November 2014, starting at 6pm." First meeting will be at the The Bolton Artillery Suite, Bolton Town Hall, Victoria Square, Bolton, BL1 1SA. So far this information hasn't reached the council's cycling web page I could find.

Bury Cycling Forum "was established in 1996 at the request of local cyclists. Until 2011 it met four times a year to discuss cycling issues and was attended by cyclists, Council officers and occasionally, Council Members. The Council doesn't currently have a cycling officer so meetings of the forum are not being convened." So this is a dead cycle forum.

Tameside is another dead cycle forum, it folded over four years ago.

Rochdale has no sign of a cycle forum, and very little info on their web pages.

Wigan also has no sign of any consultation on cycling, there are just the usual platitudes on cycling on their web site.

Bike Month Manchester

Today is the first day of Bike Month Manchester.



Thoughout June there will be over three hundred cycling events across Greater Manchester, including some very special events that have yet to be finallised.

These range from free bike maintenance sessions to adult cycle training, bike jumble sales, cycle rides and a giant bike in the Manchester Day Parade.

There will be something for everyone – all ages and all abilities.

See the Bike Month cycle events calendar for more details.

Though for some reason Manchester's Critical Mass bike ride on Friday 27th June hasn't been included...

Car-Free Households in Manchester

The processed Census data published by TfGM is a mine of information that overturns many people's assumptions about driving in Manchester, including mine.

Many people in Manchester won't go half a mile down the road to fetch a newspaper without resorting to their car, even some people who live in the city centre, or at least that is the impression you often get.

So it comes as some surprise to discover that 45% of all households in Manchester do not have a car or van. Outside of London, the only other local authorities with lower levels of car ownership are the Isles of Scilly and Liverpool. The figure is 31% for Greater Manchester as a whole.



Manchester City council need to stop wasting time and money on pandering to the motorists and enable more people to get around Manchester without a car.

Image and stats from TfGM.

Cycling levels up and down in GM

The processed Census data published by TfGM is quite revealing when it comes to people's chosen method of travelling to work.

Whilst there have been exaggerated claims in the press about increases in cycling levels in Greater Manchester, the reality is rather more sobering.

The headline-grabbing figure of an 82% rise is only for the Manchester area, and is wildly exaggerated by a number of factors.



This figure is only for Manchester where the population rose 19% during that same period, so the rise is closer to 55% corrected for the rise in population.

However, if you correct for the increase in travel as well by looking at the proportion of journeys the rise is more like 22%. Cycling in Manchester went from 3.2% to 3.9% of journeys to work, a quite modest rise.

If you look at Greater Manchester as a whole the proportion of people cycling to work went from 1.9% in 2001 to 2.1% in 2011, a rise of around 10%.



In other parts of Greater Manchester cycling fell overall and as a proportion of journeys to work in Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Thameside and Wigan.

So cycling is both up and down in Greater Manchester, depending on where you live.

Images and stats from TfGM.

Observations from Bristol

On a very brief trip to Bristol a couple of weeks ago I took the opportunity for a walk round to see if I could understand why cycling is becoming a real success story there.

It is 15 years since I lived in Bristol, and some things have changed quite a bit.

For a start the entire city centre and beyond is all one big 20mph zone.



There are also contraflow cycle lanes on almost all the one way streets.





This one near Broadmead has been there a very long time,



But these on Nelson St and All Saints St are more recent



So why does Bristol have double the weekly level of cycling of Manchester?



Figure 1. Proportion of residents who cycled (any length or purpose) at least once a month in England’s 8 core cities (plus Bath and East Somerset, North Somerset, and South Gloucester during 2010/11 - from Considerate Cycling 39

 There are a lot of people on bikes in the centre of Bristol,



even where there is no obvious infrastructure,



and there is a good variety of approaches to cycling clothing.



This is despite the fact that Bristol wont win any prizes for cycle lane maintenance,



or enforcement!



And their traffic free routes get obstructed too,



and there were several of these signs about the place



It may have helped having Sustrans head office in the city,



and there is a vibrant cycling culture that just keeps growing.



I don't think there is any one measure that you can point at and say that it is the reason for cycling being more popular in Bristol than in Manchester. Bristol has many very steep hills, yet this seems to be no barrier. By contrast much of Manchester is fairly flat.

I think some of it is down to the energy of may different people in Bristol over many years. From the people in the Bristol Civic Society who prevented the docks being concreted over in the late 1960s to the forming of Cyclebag (Channel Your Calf and Leg Energy Bicycle Action Group!) in 1977, who began building the Bristol to Bath Railway Path and then the formation of Sustrans, to the more recent foundation of the rather more radical Bristol Cycling Campaign in 1991 which brought together a group of people, including me, who were prepared to push much harder for change and target the damaging effects of motor traffic on our lives.



I left Bristol in 1999, and things have continued to change for the better in Bristol. Levels of cycling have grown steadily despite all the problems with the Bristol cycling city project where money was spent badly, but out of that has grown the Bristol Cycling Festival and many other home spun projects that have become very successful.

It is, in my mind, Bristol's radical and vibrant cycling culture which has created the conditions for the city's cycling success over the past 30 years and created the conditions where policy can shift from wasting money on roads to reducing road traffic and encouraging walking, cycling and giving the streets back to people..



Photo from the Bristol Post

Worse Than Nothing

Some cycle facilities aren't just tokenism and a waste of money, they are also worse than nothing.

A great report by Warrington Cycle Campaign called The Effect of Cycle Lanes on Cyclists' Road Space demonstrates clearly how a 1.5m wide cycle lane reduces the amount of road-space available to cyclists.

Yes, a 1.5m wide cycle lane is worse than no cycle lane at all. Yet if you measure the cycle lanes in Greater Manchester you will struggle to find any that are wider than that and Salford have put in cycle lanes that are considerably narrower.



Then there are the shared use pavement schemes. This shared use pavement on Broadway, round the back of MediaCity apparently cost £300,000 pounds to install, but by all reports people prefer to cycle on the road, not least because of all those "cyclist dismount" signs. If anyone has more details on the Broadway Cycle Scheme I'd be interested to see where the money went.



And then there are the plain idiotic cycle facilities. Pavement lanes with traffic lights or lampposts in then are a firm favorite of mine. This is another from Salford, again part of the Broadway Cycle Scheme.



With all the money now flowing in for Velocity 2025, we need to ensure that all future cycle facilities are significant improvements on what went before.

Who Pays the Piper?

The old saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and this is as true in the world of cycling and cycle campaigning as any other walk of life.

In the world of cycle racing the sponsor is emblasoned across the riders' clothing, bikes and cars. Nobody can miss the fact that British Cycling/Team Sky is funded by the Murdoch TV organisation and others, including £24m from Manchester City Council.




However, in the world of cycle campaigning it is not always obvious who is paying whom. It can be a real problem understanding what interests people have at cycle campaign meetings. There are may people who work in cycling based jobs in the UK.

There are many people working in cycle shops as mechanics or sales staff, people who work as cycle trainers, local authority officers and even professional advocates and campaigners as well as "consultants" who work freelance and then those employed by architectural and engineering firms and other organisations that design, manage and build cycle routes. There are also professional writers, photographers and artists and probably many more I've forgotten.

The problem is that it is difficult to remember who is being funded by what organisation.

Almost all bike shops and mechanics are entirely self funded, so whilst they will obviously want to see more people on bikes, because that should mean more sales, they have no worry about speaking their minds. However, people who's work is cycle training or route building will sometimes be funded through a local government scheme. Just think for a minute, if the local authority pays these peoples' wages, are they going to risk their funding by openly criticising the organisation that funds them? I think not.

So next time a "cycle campaigner" says that you shouldn't criticise the local transport authority or local council, ask whether they receive funding from that same local authority, either indirectly through the organisation they work for, or directly as an employee, consultant or pensioner. If they are funded by that local authority then it is perhaps best to ignore their advice...

#TAKECAREGTRMCR

There is a whole road safety industry out there that seems to treat people who walk and cycle as vermin to be removed from the road. The latest incarnation of this in the local area is the campaign from the Greater Manchester Casualty Reduction Partnership.

The attitude towards people like us can be seen in this line advising drivers:-

You might think you know the roads but every day new hazards appear; road works, pedestrians and cyclists so make sure you pay attention.

So the Greater Manchester Casualty Reduction Partnership regard pedestrians and cyclists as "hazards" alongside roadworks. To them we are no different from traffic cones or holes in the road!



The whole approach is to push blame towards the victims and young drivers, rather than enforcing road traffic law and reducing traffic speed and levels.

Worst of all is the advice for "cyclists"

Remember that cycle lanes are there to help you and when you need to make sure you share the road.

Don’t go unseen make sure your wearing high visibility clothing and always wear a helmet.

Cycle lanes are there to help you? Not round here they aren't, most of the cycle lanes in Manchester are CRAP!



Many are even downright dangerous.



As for Hi-Viz and Helmets, they are both causes for concern and may actually be counterproductive. The case for Hi-Viz is demolished by the Road Danger Reduction Forum as yet more victim blaming, and the case against cycle helmets has always been clear, as collated by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation.

Of course neither are a legal requirement on our roads and promoting either of them actually discourages people from cycling, with all the consequent health risks of inactivity.

This campaign is doing nothing to improve the safety on our roads. We desperately need better road traffic law enforcement in Greater Manchester. Every day I walk down Deansgate I see drivers openly flouting the law and endangering lives... Here a bus goes straight through a red, long after the other direction has gone green.



It is time to properly enforce road traffic law and take the dangerous drivers off the roads, not blame their victims.

-------------

UPDATE

Following our complaints this page has now been reworded to remove some of the offensive language...

You might think you know the roads but every day new hazards appear; road works, pedestrians and cyclists so make sure you pay attention.

Has been replaced with

You may think you know the roads but are you prepared for change? Are there roadworks along your journey now? Are there any pedestrians in the road or waiting to cross? Is there a cyclist ahead? Give room! Slow Down! Be respectful. Share the road!

and

Remember that cycle lanes are there to help you and when you need to make sure you share the road.

Don’t go unseen make sure your wearing high visibility clothing and always wear a helmet.

has been updated to read

Remember that cycle lanes are there to help you and can be useful for your journey, please use them when safe to do so.

Don’t go unseen make sure your wearing high visibility clothing and always wear a helmet.

Which is no better, except that it acknowledges what we have known all along, that some of Greater Manchester's cycle lanes are actually dangerous.

A Cycle Strategy for Greater Manchester - (CILT meeting)

... or how Manchester won't be Going Dutch, but may be taking a route to Camden with armadillos in the roads.



Photo from James and the Giant Bike Ride

Last Tuesday I went to a CILT (The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport) meeting at the Rain Bar in Manchester on the theme of A Cycle Strategy for Central Manchester. The billed speaker was Helen Ramsden, Head of Travel Choices at TfGM, but the talk was actually given by Nick Vaughan of TfGM. The room contained the usual gender bias that afflicts such occasions, Helen Ramsden was present, but was one of only 3 women amongst 24 men.

Nick Vaughan got underway by admitting that his real expertise was in bus routes and that he had only recently taken on responsibility for cycling. He did, however, say that he regularly rides a bicycle, to and from his local station to get to work. He made some good points about the conditions for cycling in Manchester being potentially better than for Amsterdam, including the fact that Manchester has a LOWER average annual rain fall level than Amsterdam, 32 inches against 36 for Amsterdam. He then conceded that a lot of work on cycling in the UK has been focused on cycle sportif and said that we "need to move beyond this" in order to address the key benefits of cycling for health, the environment and the economy.

The figures from the 2011 Census show that there were 25,000 cycle to work trips in Manchester, against 800,000 by car. However, 30% of these car trips were less than 3 miles, and these 240,000 car based commuters are the people that TfGM think can be persuaded to take up cycling.

He introduced the Velocity bid and then talked about how TfGM intend to spend the money, touching on 7 main areas:-

1) Infrastructure

This was the point where the excuses came out. TfGM have clearly decided that they will not be providing Dutch standard cycle routes in Manchester. Their main excuse is cost. The reasons given included drainage and litter, so they are going for what they call "light segregation" using splitter islands and not solid boundaries.

It seems that TfGM are sold on the idea of installing, so called, armadillos to mark the edge of the cycle lanes. These cheap plastic lumps which are bolted onto the road will be trialed on a cycle route in Salford by the end of 2013 (possibly Liverpool Street between cross lane and Albion way).



Photo by Laura Laker from the Cycling Weekly web site.

The idea is that these lumps (available in three heights, 5, 9 and 13 cm) will keep traffic out of cycle lanes. The GMCC Deputy Secretary, present at the meeting insisted on calling these "protected" rather than "segregated" cycle routes. However, whilst they may dissuade all but the largest of cars from using the cycle lanes, they will not protect the lane from being used by taxis and delivery vans as a convenient stopping area. After all such drivers have no qualms about driving onto the pavement in places like Oxford Road, so a few lumps of plastic won't stop them blocking a cycle lane..





In Camden, where these armadillos have been installed, they have not been used in isolation. Large, heavy planters have also been placed along the lanes to clearly mark the cycle lane and deter parking.


Photo by Jean Dollimore of Camden Cyclists

So, we will have to wait and see how TfGM use armadillos in Salford, but I strongly suspect we will not see our schemes being as good as Camden's and there are cycle campaigners who are not happy with what has been built there. The bus stops are just dreadful!


Photo from The Alternative Department for Transport

I do not think that TfGM will ever have the motivation to produce good quality cycle infrastructure in Manchester if some cycle campaigners in Manchester are prepared to give the thumbs up to half baked designs. I do not see a few lumps providing sufficient protection for a cycle route when road traffic law is not enforced in the area.

2) Interchanges

This part of the presentation was all about TfGM's Cycle Hubs. There was lots of talk about the small park-and-ride style hubs that cost users £10 a year at Tram Stations like Bury and absolutely no mention of the big expensive white elephant in Manchester City Centre...

3) Partner Schools

TfGM are looking for a long term cultural shift by encouraging children to cycle . They will be partnering with 10 schools in the area, which seems a very small number to me.

4) Health, Wellbeing & Physical Activity

This section linked into the recent transfer of public health money to local authorities. There is an excellent guidance document from NICE on the topic of walking and cycling.

5) Practical Support and Training

This was all about TfGM's cycle training programme and other measures that are already underway.

6) Marketing and Communications

Again this section restated existing work on the GM cycling maps and other cycling information.

7) Monitoring and Evaluation

The final section was about the development of a "Bicycle Account" for Manchester.

This will be assessed across 5 areas:-

• Infrastructure
• Cycle flows and modal share
• Satisfaction
• Impact e.g. environment
• Practical Support and Monitoring

I opened the questions that followed by asking why the presentation had contained nothing about restricting car traffic, when the cities that have high cycling levels have been those that have restricted car use. This triggered a lot of excuses about the failure of the congestion charge in Manchester and some comments that car access will be restricted by the bus priority schemes and other measures. Reference was made to the Transport Strategy for Manchester City Centre as being evidence of this. It was very clear from some of the comments that council officers have suffered from some very nasty reactions from the road lobbyists in recent years, which left me wondering whether cycle campaigners should behave likewise.

I left the meeting feeling that whilst the level of funding for cycling has improved in Manchester, the attitudes of the local authorities need to change radically if Manchester is to get anywhere near its own cycling targets. I would like to see TfGM prove me wrong, but I don't hold out much hope.

GMCC News 3 - Autumn 2013

This is the third GMCC newsletter I have put together, and the content is definitely getting better with a wider range of writers and photographers and lots going on in Greater Manchester to write about. Unfortunately, at the moment, it isn't getting any easier and I could do with some help with the diary section in particular *.





This is a packed newsletter, the last 3 months have been very busy, and I ended up dropping some content to avoid going up to 16 pages.

There are several contributions by new writers and photographers, a couple of community projects, two bike arts pieces, and three different views of the Velocity 2025 money and what it means for Manchester.

   GMCC News 3 - Autumn 2013

If you like this newsletter, then join GMCC - it's currently free for the first year, so there is no reason not to and you can receive a full resolution copy of the newsletter in the post.


------------------------------------
Update: * Love Your Bike have just started a new Greater Manchester Cycling Events Calendar which will sort out most of the problems I have been having getting this information out of the GMCC web site.

GMCC News - Summer 2013

Another GMCC Newsletter hits Manchester, this version had to be expanded to 12 pages to cope with all the news of Oxford Road, Velocity 2025, and Bike Month Manchester.



I've put it on Scribid again because the last one still hasn't been posted to the GMCC web site, so I'm not waiting for that to happen when there is so much news to get out there.

One correction to make, the photo at the top of page two is by Agnieszka Jaroszewicz, sorry it all got put together in a bit of a rush.

GMCC News Summer 2013 by Mike Armstrong

The formatting is a bit messed up and the quality isn't brilliant on Scribid, so to make sure you get your own printed copy of the GMCC Newsletter then join us now...

The Daisyfield Greenway

Quite an odd little rail-path this one, small but perfectly formed one might say...I came across it as part of NCN6, taking me from Manchester to Bury, more of which another time.

As you join it from the south you are greeted with this grand stone telling you about the project.



Turn right towards Bury and a wonderful wide, well lit railway path awaits.



With the exception of the broken glass it is by far the best maintained part of the route from Manchester to Bury.



The Wellington Street Viaduct even has pavements for pedestrians.



However this is where the path ends, as the rest of the rail route has been built on by the local school.



If you try going in the other direction you soon reach the end of the path.



I didn't venture beyond this point.



Bury do have ambitions to extend the path...

The problem seems to be round here that really good paths like this are short and don't go anywhere, whilst longer, more useful routes are pretty poor...


View Daisyfield Greenway in a larger map