Manchester Sky Ride August 2015 - CYCLISTS DISMOUNT

I have never been a fan of the Sky Rides. They have a corporate branding that makes the ride setup sterile and soulless with no real connection to Manchester. This is in contrast to the Manchester Day Parade which has a great community spirit.

However, the worst thing in my mind about the Sky rides is that they have nothing to do with everyday cycling and fail to see cycling from the point of view of people who cycle. The irony of the route going through zones with CYCLISTS DISMOUNT zones is clearly lost on the organisers.



I spent the morning helping out on the Love Your Bike stall with these two chaps.



Then went out to ride the course in the afternoon with some music.

What is really striking is the overpowering emphasis placed on hi-viz and helmets by the organisers. It is almost as if they want to discourage cycling by making it seem far more dangerous than it really is.



There were a few professional sound systems out on the ride, but far fewer than in previous years. It felt like a cut-price ride this year. I understand that the Sky deal runs out next year, so this is possibly the last Sky Ride Manchester.



I feel it is time to overhaul the whole ride, rather than just look for another sponsor. The current ride fails to have much of a sense of place, instead going through anonymous back streets to reach the velodrome and stadium, rather than touring the parts of the city you might like to visit by bike.



There is also far too much emphasis on cycling as a sport.



This rather sad looking "Sprint Zone" was beyond parody.



Also the route includes some of the worst potholes in the area. This section of Riverpark Road is just dreadful, with some of the holes several centimeters in depth.



So how about a proper Manchester Community Bike Festival with a ride route, a cycle parade and pedal powered events? Above all, lets have an event which atracts people to cycle into the city centre, take part in events and then park up the bikes and enjoy Manchester in the way people flock to the city for the Manchester Day Parade, Dig the City and the Jazz Festival.

Manchester Cycle Forum

The next Manchester Cycle Forum will be this Tuesday 11th March 2014 at 17:30. It will be in Committee Room 9 (Room 1006) which is in the Town Hall Extension.

These can be quite important meetings where you can challenge the council officers directly on cycle route design etc.



Up for discussion this quarter are the Police's recent Cycle Safety activities in Manchester, Cycle Lane Parking Enforcement, Local Sustainable Transport Fund applications, Velocity 2025, Oxford Road Cycle and Bus Priority, Bike Month Manchester and Festival of Cycling, Greater Manchester Cycling Strategy and something about tracking consultations.

The more people that can come along and get involved the better.

Cycle Forum meetings for the rest of the year will be on:-

Tuesday 10th June

Tuesday 9th September

Tuesday 9th December

Cycle Parking at the National Cycling Centre

The Bike Creche Cycle Jumble was held at the Manchester Velodrome today. Whilst the vast majority of visitors were clearly turning up by car, a few of us actually cycled to the place. The result was chaos outside the front entrance, bikes locked up the stair rails,



and bicycles locked to the trees.



The one, badly designed cycle pod, was crammed full.



Quite why the Home of British Cycling can't install proper Sheffield Stands is beyond satire. This design is just hopeless for any bike fitted with a back carrier. British Cycling, and Manchester City Council really should sort this out. Perhaps if they charged for car parking they could afford it.



To be fair, if you accidentally found your way to the back entrance there were a further two of these pods, and there was a bit more space.



However, it wasn't just the bike parking that was chaotic, there were cars all over the pavements too!

Bring on the Clowns - Sky Ride 2012

It has taken me a long time to come to terms with writing this post. The Sky Ride event is such a dreadful display of corporate advertising and dangerism that I've prevaricated over this for several months. This sign best describes the attitude...



The sign marked the entrance to the Castlefield arena where there were a number of stalls and an awful lot of sand.



This year I thought I'd have a go at diluting the corporate spin with some loud music and a four wheeled pedal cycle...



...and a trailer carrying a message about Critical Mass.



However, it took me some time to realise that all the other sound systems I saw were rather similar and somehow artificial. Not the kind of hardcore setups that turn out for Critical Mass and political demos.









They were in fact all being paid for their services. They were all clowns riding Circus Zapparelli’s fleet of sound bikes. When I stopped for a chat I was even told they might be able to get me some work with the Brox.

To add to the disneyesque nature of the day a Jessica Rabbit look-alike on a bike was hired in to do the naff publicity photos.



At least the 105th Manchester Scout Group turned out in their own pedal cars.



The ride itself was fairly boring; an out and back from Castlefield to the Commonwealth Games Stadium with two way bikes on both sides of the road, making it pretty cramped. Only if you ventured out from the stadium up to the extra loop to the velodrome did you then get a lovely little ride on quiet roads back to the stadium.



Sadly Sky Ride is one of those events where lots of drivers strap bikes onto their cars and drive into Manchester so they can have a few hours cycling in the city centre, dressed up in helmets and ugly yellow advertising bibs before driving home again to their car-dominated suburbs. Far from improving the image of cycling, it promotes the idea that cycling is dangerous and strange. It would be far better to close the city centre to traffic every Sunday and encourage people to cycle into the city.

Vole O'Speed has posted a pretty good damnation of this kind of event.

I've been to enough of those Sky Ride type events. They are horrible. They amount to a kind of unique torture for cyclists, cramming us together like sardines in a tin on a few niggardly-handed out kilometres of closed roads in central London, for which privilege we have to suffer a bombardment of unwelcome music, moronically-cheery "motivational" announcements over PA systems, the advertising of sponsors forced down our throats, a sea of stupid yellow tabards, the promotion of helmets, and the presence of boring cyclesport celebrities. Like everything else to do with the official treatment of transport cycling in the UK, it's just another insult.

Sky ride is a sad example of Manchester's lack of transport focus when it comes to spending on cycling. The council channelled over 8 times more money on funding sports facilities for British Cycling (funded by Sky and car firm Fiat) than it has spent over the past five years on making the streets of Manchester attractive for cycling.

Where all the money went on cycling - part 2

I know I've ranted about this before, but if you want to know where priorities lie you only have to follow the money.

I've just been shown the latest version of the "Interim Strategy for Cycling in Manchester 2012/2013". It is a council report all dressed up in cycle racing colours, so a strong clue to priorities there. It isn't yet on line yet so I'll have to link to the draft version which is available on the council web site.
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Update: I've just found the new colour version had made it onto the council web site here.

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Page 5 of the new report (4 & 5 on the old version) clearly states

Manchester City Council, British Cycling and other funding partners, have invested significantly in cycling over the last five years. Headline figures include:

· Over £3.2 million on infrastructure through the LTP Highways Capital Programme
· £549,000 on child cycle training and over £45k on adult cycle training.
· £56,000 promoting Bike Week
· £24 million on expanding the National Cycling Centre to include the Indoor BMX Arena and British Cycling’s headquarters.
· Over £12,000 in small grants to community groups through the Working Neighbourhood Fund
· £2.5 million on promoting and supporting sport and club cycling and hosting major cycling events.

So whilst the vast majority of cycling in Manchester takes place on the city streets only £3.2m has been spent on infrastructure in the past 5 years. In that same time period cycle sport in Manchester has received £26.5m of funding.



Just imagine how much better a place Manchester could be now, if those figures were the other way around....

The fight to make Manchester a World-Class Cycling City with world class streets for cycling starts here.

Are You A "Regular Cyclist"?

What a silly question you might say..., well first ask yourself what you would consider a regular cyclist.



Would you call someone a "Regular Cyclist" if they cycled:-

• 12 times a day,

• 12 times a week,

• 12 times a month,

• or 12 times a year?

Well 12 times a day is the sort of punishing regime you would expect of someone like Chris Hoy or Victoria Pembleton, so that's a bit beyond us mere mortals.

12 times a week is a bit more reasonable. That includes people who commute to work 5 days a week and get out on a bike at weekends too, say a couple of shopping trips, or visiting friends. That's the category I belong to and it feels about right to me.

12 times a month would include people who potter out on a bike 3 or 4 times a week. Regular cyclists, possibly, particulally if they have restricted opportunities to cycle, like they have to take the train to get to work.

12 times a year on the other hand is a bit of a joke. You only have to get on a bike every day for a couple of weeks once a year, or ride round your local park once a month to fall into this category. Nobody could take such a measure of activity seriously, could they?



Well, you've possibly guessed by now that the joker in this particular pack is Sky/British Cycling.

They claim that:-

A ‘regular cyclist’ is a cyclist who has cycled at least 12 times in the past year.

 Why on earth would anyone use such a weak level of activity? In order to make wildly inflated claims of course! Sky are making the claim that they have created a million more "regular cyclists" with their Sky Rides.

This would be a joke if they didn't have undue influence over cycling policy in the City of Manchester. Indeed, Manchester City Council has adopted the same weak measure, phrased as once a month, for its own target of getting "20,000 more cyclists" by 2017.

Besides, James Murdoch, who was personally responsible for Sky's funding of British Cycling, the Sky racing team and other events, is a personal friend of Jeremy Clarkson, and he wouldn't want to get people out cycling too often as they might get in the way of Clarkson's Range Rover.....

Manchester Sky Ride 2012

Manchester Sky Ride is unfortunately becoming an annual reason for drivers and shoppers in Manchester to resent cycling. On the 15th July lots of roads in the city will be closed off so that News International can plaster the city centre with banners advertising for their UK TV wing, BSkyB.



The route is extensively barriered too, so shoppers have to walk miles to get to their destination and drivers have someone, other than themselves, to blame for the traffic jams in town. There is nothing interesting to look at most of the time. It is not as if the city is hosting the finish of a bike race or a bike parade like the rather wonderful Manchester Day.



Sky Ride is one of those events where lots of drivers strap bikes onto their cars and drive into Manchester so they can have a few hours cycling in the city centre, dressed up in helmets and ugly yellow advertising bibs before driving home again to their car-dominated suburbs where they hardly ever cycle. Far from improving the image of cycling, it promotes the idea that cycling is dangerous and strange.



Sky ride is a fine example of transport tokenism as the council spends ten times more money on funding sports facilities for British Cycling (funded by Sky and car firm Fiat) than it does on making the streets of Manchester attractive for cycling. After all this Labour council would not dare risk being seen as anti-motorist. I am waiting to find out just how much this event will cost the City Council. UPDATE: FoI request sets the city council's costs at £72,000.



Last year it was a relief to see that a few people struck out against the corporate crap and got to the point with banners pointing out the problem. Let's hope the message gets out more strongly this year.

As well as these one off events, why can't the council close Deansgate to motor vehicles every weekend? It would make the place come alive with people rather than being a weekend-long traffic jam.

How Manchester plans to have "20,000 more cyclists" by 2017

If you listen carefully to this piece on Radio 4's You and Yours, you can start to unpick the figures and find out how Manchester City Council and British Cycling have chosen a measure of cycling that fits the aims of British Cycling whilst leave the general cyclist out in the cold.



The measure they have chosen is Sport England's Active People Survey. It is a measure of sports participation not transport choice.

The survey currently puts Manchester 8th in the country for levels of cycling with 43,000 people getting onto a bicycle once a month. Yes, that's right, the survey counts the number of people who cycle at least once a month and has nothing to do with the proportion of journeys by bicycle.

In other words Manchester City Council can meet its chosen target of 20,000 more cyclists even if the level of cycling on Manchester's streets falls significantly.

All it needs to do is get more people driving to parks and cycle trails and cycling round and round a track for an hour to reach its target. Stand by for massive amounts of council money being spent on facilities for British Cycling and the Sky Ride whilst on-road conditions get even worse...

.......

There is no sign of a press notice containing these figures, and no sign of the Cycling Strategy document on the cycling section of the council's web site. There is no mention on the Leader's Blog either.

If you know what you are looking for you can find the full thing here, and it is rather less of a headline grabber...

.......

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...

87 pages of tokenism called "Cycling Issues in Manchester"

Which of these two cycle facilities is correct?



Answer, neither - both are examples of Manchester City Council's tokenism and bad design for cycling. Both are examples of public money being wasted.

The one on the right is one of the most dangerous cycle facilities in central Manchester, and almost all cyclists ignore it and cycle on the road.

And yet they are featured on page 12 in the latest 87 page document from Manchester City Council, entitled "Cycling Issues in Manchester" which will be discussed at the Manchester City Council Communities and Neighbourhoods Overview and Scrutiny Committee at 2pm on Tuesday 6th March.

Lets just say that the City Council needs to stop wasting money on sports events and start getting real about getting people out of their cars and onto bikes in the city. Discussing ways of forcing bikes onto pavements will just make matters worse.

Hat tip to the LYB email for this one.

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...

The Great Manchester Cycle Charging Trial

The Great Manchester Cycle will take place on Monday 4 June 2012. It looks like a trial of a new innovative congestion charging scheme for bicycles in Greater Manchester. On the day cyclists will be charged a whopping £28 each to cycle a fixed route around Manchester, Trafford and Salford.

All cyclists using the route will be also required to wear wear a cycle helmet that is Snell, CE or ANSI approved and must keep above minimum speeds of 7mph, 13mph or 18mph depending on how many laps they ride.


The web site however doesn't say whether the entire route, including access points such as the MediaCity footbridge will be closed to non-paying cyclists. Something that would seriously inconvenience cycle commuters in the area.

Looks like another bad idea from the BCF and MCC.

Just imagine the outcry if Manchester City Council proposed charging drivers £28 per day to use the Mancunian way...

BCF, "the voice of cycling" in Manchester, but for how long?

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 is the length of the agreement.

It seems that the length of the agreement is top secret!

Is the BCF going to be "the voice of cycling" in Manchester for the next two or three years? Or will it be as long as five years?

That would be bad enough. Five years is long enough to screw up cycling policy in Manchester for the next decade.

However, just imagine how dreadful it would be if this agreement were to last for ten years....

Still I'm sure the council leader was fully aware of the impact of his actions when he signed the document!

British Cycling Federation, "the voice of cycling" in Manchester?

I have just received the reply to my FoI request for the Memorandum of Understanding between Manchester City Council and British Cycling. Much of the document has been covered in black ink on the usual excuse that "the requested information is exempt from disclosure under the following qualified exemption - section 43: Commercial Interests."

There are very strong "commercial interests" in this agreement, not least because, as far as I know, Manchester City Council own the Velodrome, so British Cycling are their tenants. One can only assume that Manchester City Council would like to ensure a stable income from the rent paid and so it is in their interest to keep British Cycling here as long as possible, otherwise we will all be paying more council tax.

However, the one small section which was of greatest interest to me has come through unscathed, "7. Transport, Environment, Health Education and Social Cohesion."



The really worrying thing is the way in which the BCF, an organisation concerned with cycle racing, and maximising income for sports training is somehow given pride of place in the city of Manchester as "the voice of cycling" within the relevant policy forums.

This is a real problem for cycling in Manchester, because the BCF are advocates of the dangerism view of cycling. For example they strongly promote the wearing of helmets, even for closed road events like the Sky rides.

The biggest challenge facing Manchester City Council in increasing the level of cycling in the City is the need to significantly reduce the level of traffic in the city. British Cycling is hardly likely to support such moves when it receives a significant amount of money from a car manufacturer!

Still with the ConLibDem government squeezing the council's finances they need every penny they can get...

"Memorandum of Understanding with British Cycling"

Is the Memorandum of Understanding between Manchester City Council and British Cycling, signed by the council leader back in September 2010 really a secret?

An email exchange with the officer drafting the council's cycling strategy hasn't provided the contents of the document, so I have submitted an FoI request.

Is the contents of an agreement between our council and British Cycling (funded by Sky and Fiat) so controvertial that we can't see it? We shall see.

From the British Cycling web site:-

British Cycling and Manchester City Council marked the occasion by signing a Memorandum of Understanding, a ten year agreement outlining the city's continued commitment to cycling with the aims of developing a joint strategy for performance, participation, events, facilities and grass-roots projects across all cycling disciplines.

Ian Drake, Chief Executive of British Cycling, said:

"British Cycling and its elite success are a perfect example of what Olympic legacy is all about. Our dominance on the world's performance stage at Olympic level has attracted new public and private sector funding, enabling us to build an organisation that can effectively drive participation in its sport. Since we moved to Manchester in 1994, the city has played a vital part in the transformation of our sport.

"Today's signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Manchester City Council shows our long-term commitment to the city and both the Velodrome and the new Indoor BMX Arena will be the training base for the GB Cycling Team in the build up to London 2012 and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow."

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council said:

"The phenomenal success of the Great Britain Cycling Team demonstrates exactly what can be achieved when you combine the vision, foresight and ambition of a city like Manchester. I am proud to reaffirm the city's commitment to the sport and am confident that it will continue to provide opportunities for many local people and our elite athletes of the future."

Manchester Cycling Strategy - consultation drafts

Update: The second document was indeed an earlier draft with a different name and FoE have since deleted it from their Scribd pages.

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These are two consultation documents that you won't find on the City Council's web site. They have been posted online by Manchester FoE .

The first is called an "Interim Strategy for Cycling in Manchester" and dated December 2011 and the second is called "A Strategy for Cycling in Manchester 2011-2015" and dated November 2011.



As far as I can work out they are two different attempts at the same document, and the council has just changed the working title. The documents appear to have been circulated to people who manage to attend the council's cycle forum.

Either way round, at a first glance the story seems to be yet more timid measures that won't have any real impact. This document is being produced because of a Memorandum of Understanding between British Cycling and the City Council. Unfortunately this means that it is big on events that promote British Cycling's main sponsor and not so good on the things that really matter like removing the many barriers to cycling in this city.

We may well see more of this because the council doesn't want to upset motorists by giving too much road space over to bicycles, and the Lib Dem opposition are falling over themselves to curry favor with drivers who clog up and pollute the City Centre. So much for the LibDems being environmentally friendly.



And it is in the interest of British Cycling for us all to ride round Manchester advertising Sky.



Manchester FoE say that you should send your comments to Dave Whyte via d.whyte(at)manchester.gov.uk by the end of January.