Sign up for CycleHack MCR

CycleHack MCR takes place next weekend, from 6pm on Friday 19th to 8pm on Sunday 21st June at SpaceportX, 24/26 Lever Street, Manchester,
M1 1DZ.



What is a CycleHack?

CycleHack focuses on bringing people and their places together to discuss and generate solutions to barriers that stop or inhibit people from cycling. A ‘Cyclehack’ is an idea that can be prototyped and tested in the city that addresses a barrier to cycling. Hacks can be physical products, digital apps, ideas for new campaigns or even influence policy and can consider local infrastructure and route maps.

CycleHack is part of a global movement and is taking place in 25 cities around the world.

CycleHack Short Edit from CycleHack on Vimeo.

There are two ways to participate:-

For those who have the time to be involved in the full weekend and take part in the CycleHack, Full Weekend tickets mean you have access to the whole of the CycleHack event.

For people who can only spare a few hours there are Show and Tell tickets which give you access to Friday and Sunday of the event to see the CycleHack Speakers on Friday evening and the CycleHack Presentations on Sunday afternoon.

The programme for the weekend is as follows








So, sign up now and get involved.

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.

Manchester Cycle Forum Dates

Manchester has posted the dates for this year's cycle forums on their web site.

This year the Cycle Forum meetings will be held on:

Tuesday 10th March
Tuesday 16th June
Tuesday 15th September
Tuesday 8th December

However, the time and venue will be confirmed by email. So contact Manchester Council by email to get the updates...

Email: cycle.forum@manchester.gov.uk

Last year has been a very mixed for the cycle forum in Manchester. It seemed to start out very positive, but the past couple of meeting have been quite depressing and the key Councillor for Velocity, Cllr Luthfur Rahman hasn't even bothered to attend. I have only met him once and his attitude towards cycling seemed pretty negative.

This year there will be a fight to restore the damage being done by Metrolink/TfGM in the city centre and the problems with all the substandard Velocity routes that are being pushed through at the last minute.

Next Salford Cycle Forum

The next meeting of the Salford Cycle Forum will be held on Thursday 5 February, 6pm in Committee Room 1, Salford Civic Centre, Chorley Road, Swinton, M27 5BY. Contact is lee.evans@salford.gov.uk

The Big Commute Result

This morning was the Love Your Bike/Bike Month Manchester Big Commuter Challenge.

Five people set off from the car park of Crumpsall Green Methodist Church at 8am to show how different forms of transport compare.

Manchester City Council's leader, Sir Richard Leese rode his bike, Pavol Gajdos of Manchester Cycle Deliveries pedaled his cargo bike, Helen Rimmer from Friends of the Earth caught the bus, Charlotte Cox Transport reporter for Manchester Evening News took the tram, and Rob Raikes went by car.



Photograph from Love Your Bike

There was, however, a bit of a problem with navigation at the start, and Richard ended up giving the other participants directions...

Not sure this is entirely fair. Think I'm the only " competitor " that lives in Crumpsall. Having to give them directions!
— Sir Richard Leese (@SirRichardLeese) June 20, 2014

Getting the low down on local bus routes, thanks @SirRichardLeese ! #Crumpsall #BikeMonthMcr pic.twitter.com/FYX80Km3kn
— Helen Rimmer (@HelenJqRimmer) June 20, 2014

Meantime, in Albert Square we were making preparations for the arrival of the participants.



We got somewhat caught out by the sudden arrival of Richard and Pavol only 14 minutes later.



Then the waiting began...



Meantime Pavol delivered his package to Cllr Chris Paul



and Richard took the opportunity to try out Pavol's cargo bike.



It was another 23 minutes before Charlotte appeared,



followed one minute later by Helen,



and Rob finally arrived a further 5 minutes later.



The final result.



There then followed lots of photos for the press



and one last chance to try out Pavol's cargo bike.



Sir Richard Leese has already written about his experience of taking part on The Leader's Blog, Love your Bike have a report on their web site and Charlotte Cox has covered the event in the Manchester Evening News.

There more information about Pavol and his cargo bike on his web site wagl.co.uk.

Some Cycling Resources Links

Cycle Friendly Infrastructure (1996) The CIHT, the Bicycle Association, the Cyclist's Touring Club and the Department of Transport worked together to produce the technical guidelines - "Cycle-Friendly Infrastructure: Guidelines for Planning and Design".

Local Transport Note 2/08 October 2008 Cycle Infrastructure Design

The Archive of the Cycling England site (RIP)

CILT The Hub "hosted by The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport - CILT(UK) - as a free source of carefully selected guidance for anyone working to get more people cycling"

CTC Cyclists' Library


CTC Briefings

Non UK Resources

CROW: Design manual for bicycle traffic from the Netherlands

Cycle Tracks: Concept and Design Practices from the USA

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...

City Centre Consultation - Respond Now!

Like the Oxford Road consultation, the City Centre Bus Priority consultation has the potential to have quite a big impact on cycling levels in the city.



The closing date is Friday 5 July 2013.

The main thrust of the plan is to block the current rat-run through Portland Street by Piccadilly Gardens, open up Oxford Street to two way traffic which is particularly good for cycle access from St Peter's Square to Oxford Road. However, there is no plan for a 20 mph speed limit for Portland Street, no decent provision for cycling and the overall quality of the design is very messy and disjointed.

The City Centre plans need to be completely redrawn to bring them in line with Oxford Road and provide convenient, and effective cycle infrastructure built to Dutch design standards. If we can get lots of responses from cyclists on this one too then the city might just wake up to the fact that they need to make the whole city cycle friendly, not just Oxford Road.

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

How to Respond.

Take a look at this video to see what is proposed, and notice how there is no decent cycle provision.



Notice how the video, this time concentrates on bus flow rather than cycling, ignores Oxford Street completely. Also notice how the proposed Portland Street cycle lanes are standard UK poor quality. If you want more detail you can download the leaflet.

Then compose your response in a text editor of some sort because there isn't space in the web form to see everything you have written.

Write as little or as much as you feel appropriate, but please remember to:-

1) Call for the plans for this whole area to be redesigned to make them fit for cycling, with infrastructure designed to Dutch standards.

2) Tell TfGM if you regularly cycle in the city centre and write about your current experience and how you want it to improve.

3) Support the removal of general traffic from the Picadilly Gardens end of Portland Street.

5) Call for a 20mph speed limit for the whole of this area.

6) Call for 2-way cycling on all the roads in this area.

7) Call for the cycle route design to be improved throughout the whole area - if necessary by employing experienced engineers from the Netherlands to finalise the design.

Once you have written your response, then visit the online form, fill in your name, full address, postcode and email address. It is important that our responses are seen to come from individuals who live in the area.

Then copy and paste your text into the box marked "Your views*", scroll through to check it's all there and hit the submit button.

Then tell every cyclist you know to do the same...

----------------------
You can also send your response by email to buspriority@tfgm.com or post it to

Transport for Greater Manchester bus priority,
FREEPOST RRHE-RKUU-KSJY,
Manchester,
M1 3BG
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Update: Thanks to Pete Abel's excelent suggestions I have simplified this post to encourage more people to respond.

Cycling's "C" word

C is for "Campaigning", the unglamourous, dirty word of cycling...

I have been actively involved in cycling campaigns for over 20 years, I vaguely remember an early London Cycling Campaign demo, back in the early 1980's, riding round and round Parliament Square in London in about 1983, so it may be as long as 30 years.

The cycle campaigning is one of those activities that can be utterly wonderful and reinforcing or utterly crap and demoralising.The high point for me have been the early Reclaim the Street parties in Bristol and the best of the Critical Mass bike rides where the people prepared to get out on the streets have supported and reinforced each other.



The low points are the people who hijack cycle campaigns to forward their personal agendas, seeking to gain personal status via other people's efforts. These people often earn their living building crap cycle facilities or offering cycle services that take the route of compromise rather than confrontation. They try and persuade the local campaign groups to justify their pathetic efforts when in truth they have simply wasted public money.



It is this sort of shit that inspired me to create blogs like this, and confront the waste of public money on token facilities.The time for cosy relationships with councils and government is over. We must scrutinise cycle facilities and demand that the cycling professionals deliver high impact facilities that enable far more people to cycle in out cities.

202020 Vision - make Manchester a City fit for Cycling

So what is the 202020 vision?

It is the view, expressed by Prof John Whitelegg, at the recent Go Dutch event, that there is no reason why Manchester could not achieve a 20% modal share for cycling by the year 2020.

You can read his presentation here.

Think about what Manchester would be like if cycling made up 20% of all journeys. It would transform this noisy, polluted city centre. Turning a city dominated by the motor car into a city which gave over space to people.



If you think this could never happen, then go and look at Oxford Road. It is one of the busiest roads for cycling and here you will already find during the rush-hour a 20% modal share by bike, and that is on one of this country's busiest bus routes.

The key message from Love Cycling Go Dutch Manchester was that the city needs political vision and leadership to drive through the necessary changes. However, don't expect that leadership to come from the council. The council leader may ride a bike, but he shows no sign of leading the city towards a cycling revolution. He's a political manager, not a leader.

If Manchester is to become a world class cycling city then we, those who care about our city, need to voice that vision and provide the leadership. We need to show the people who run this city just how much better Manchester could be, economically, structurally and environmentally if it were to truly provide streets fit for cycling.

Come along to PopupBikes in January and help start the process.

Irwell River Path - complaints work!

This morning my ride to work was interrupted by two pink & yellow vehicles in the cycle lane and on the pavement.



As soon as I got level with them I realised that there may have been progress on the path maintenance.



Sure enough, down under the bridge was a little pink street cleaning machine and several operatives dressed in yellow trying to remove the silt from the Irwell River Path.



By the time I returned in the evening the vast majority of the silt had been removed and the path was left with just a thin layer of sand...



There were patches that had been missed.





With piles of sand in the corners.



However, the vast majority of the silt had been removed.



And the look of the path has been considerably improved.



This has taken two emails and two blog posts with pictures, but it just goes to show that suitably targeted complaints do work, so get complaining about problems in your area!!