Showing posts with label FoI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FoI. Show all posts

Saturday, 29 December 2012

ASLs - A Failure of Policing

We've all seen them - the people driving motor vehicles who ignore the advance stop lines which are meant to give people on bicycles some chance of getting away safely at traffic lights.

In fact in Manchester you see them almost every day.











Well thanks to a recent Freedom of Information request by Tom Jeffs we now know why so many drivers feel free to ignore them...

It turns out that between 1/1/2011 and 1/1/2012 Greater Manchester Police issued no fixed penalties or summons for driving into an ASL when the lights were red. None whatsoever!



At this point one also starts to wonder if the same is true for red light running and blocking box junctions.....

Monday, 21 May 2012

Where all the money went on cycling... FoI request

In response to the following request:-

1. In the current financial year, how much money is the city council planning on spending on cycling and issues related to cycling, including capital spending on projects and buildings?

2. Of that total expenditure, how much will be spent on each of the following areas:- cycling as transport - e.g. cycle lanes & road safety schemes cycling as leisure - e.g. recreational cycle routes cycling as sport - e.g. expenditure on sports facilities anything else

3. Please list all the major projects

I received the following from Manchester City Council:

The Council’s capital expenditure in 2011/12 on cycling as transport - e.g. cycle lanes & road safety schemes is as follows:

£111,000 on cycle paths and measures to reduce cycling casualties which include:
Hyde Road cycle lane: Highway alterations between Pottery Lane and Reddish Lane;
Ashton New Road: Installation of cycle lane;
Safety improvements along Oxford Road;
Princess Road Cycle Path: Providing a shared pedestrian / cycle footway on the western footpath of Princess Road, between Whitchurch Road and Mauldeth Road West and also between its junction with Great Western Street and Moss Lane East; This scheme was funded by a DfT grant which Manchester City Council successfully bid for as part of its congestion performance initiative.

The Council’s capital expenditure in 2011/12 on cycling as leisure - e.g. recreational cycle routes is as follows:

£90,000 on Rochdale Canal Towpath Cycle way: Improvements to the stretch of the Rochdale Canal Towpath from the Oldham boundary to New Islington, linking to the City Centre and Piccadilly Station approach. This included approximately 1000 metres of surface improvements to the canal towpath over 3.5 km. The funding has targeted the worst affected sections. This scheme was funded by a DfT grant which Manchester City Council successfully bid for as part of its congestion performance initiative.
Manchester City Council have also bid, through the Government’s Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF), for £500,000 to fund Regional Centre Cycle Routes.
If the bid is successful, this scheme will introduce a number of on-street measures designed to encourage and promote cycling. These will include cycle lanes and improvements at junctions. The scheme will link existing cycle routes that terminate at the edge of the City Centre with cycle hub facilities that are to be provided within the City Centre. The outcome of this bid will not be known until June 2012.

The Council's revenue expenditure in 2011/12 for cycling sport is as follows:

The Velodrome Trust - £26,000
Cycling Development - £38,000
Cycling Events - £112,040
Grants to Cycling Groups - £13,830
In addition, Sport England and the Council also received funding from the Stadium Rental Agreement (Manchester City Football Club) and agreed to spend the following on Cycling projects:
The Velodrome Trust - £328,000
Cycling Development - £20,000

The Council's Capital expenditure in 2011/12 for cycling sport is as follows:
BMX Centre - £5,200,000
This is the 2011/12 spend out of a total of £21,000,000 since 2009/10.
Velodrome maintenance - £54,000

So that's over £5.5M of spend on cycle sport, whilst cycle routes get a pitance...

Saturday, 3 March 2012

BCF, "the voice of cycling" in Manchester, for ten years...

One of the vital pieces of information missing from the version of the Memorandum of Understanding between Manchester City Council and British Cycling released under my FoI request was the length of the agreement.

However, the City Council have now agreed that it isn't a secret after all. You see the information was made public back in September 2010 on the British Cycling Web Site.

The reply from the Council gives the full deleted text:-


I have made further enquiries and found that the deletion of the length of the agreement from the Memorandum of Understanding that I sent with my message of 15 February was a mistake as this information is not commercially sensitive and is already in the public domain.
I apologise for this error.

The relevant paragraph in the document is:

8. Duration
8.1 The duration of this Agreement shall be 10 (ten) years from the date of this Agreement.


This means that Manchester is stuck with having the BCF acting as the "voice of cycling" in Manchester until 28th September 2020!

So what are we going to be landed with as a result of this agreement? Well apart from the £28 motorway cycling tax being tried out in June this year, you might like to take a look at item 7.3 below...



It seems that Manchester City Council will be prioritising issues such as cycle racing on the public highway.

Which leaves me to wonder whether the council spends more money on cycle sport in this city than it does on providing for cycling on the streets. It's time for another FoI enquiry...