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news
Cycle Parking in Cardiff Bay (picture via Visit Cardiff).jpgSouth Wales Police chief reveals how he plans to make Cardiff safer for cyclists
The Chief Constable of South Wales Police has outlined how he plans to make Cardiff safer for cyclists.
Matt Jukes, who was appointed to the top job in the force last month, told a meeting of Cardiff Cycle City on Wednesday: “If there’s a city that can make cycling work, it’s Cardiff.”
Speaking at the Ride My Bike Café on the Welsh capital’s Park Place, he revealed that South Wales Police plans to run a close pass operation during the spring, reports Wales Online.
Adding that he aims to “create a space where people can enjoy their cycling” in Cardiff, he also said that the force is using bikes equipped with GPS trackers in a bid to thwart bike thieves.
Chief Inspector Ian Randall told the meeting that efforts to reduce cycle theft were already bearing fruit.
“During October, we were averaging 50 thefts a month. Last year, we had 580 thefts. Now we’re averaging 30 a month in November and December.
“There was a small spike in January but we’re on track for February.”
He added: “We do have a problem in the city centre for bike thefts, but the chance of your bike being stolen in the city centre is low. There’s loads going on behind the scenes.”
Chief Constable Jukes, who arrived at the meeting by bike, said that he also wanted to see more of the force’s own officers cycle to help improve absenteeism.
“We’re a family whose kids walk to school and my wife cycles to work every day and I’ll do the same,” he said.
“But as an employer, we employ 5,500 people in South Wales Police. We have the worst long-term sick in the police forces from England and Wales.
“We run about £200 million in terms of staff budget and I lose about five to 10 per cent of that every year due to ill health. That’s £10 million that could be spent policing the streets.
“As an employer, if we can offer something that keeps staff active that’s a huge importance for us," he added.
“I’m really keen that we play our part as a police force, that it feels safe and we can create a space where people can enjoy their cycling. The starting point is a safe environment.”
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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11 comments
I hope that Cardiff (council and police) take a city-wide view of cycling and infrstructure. The more I cycle around town these days, the more piece-meal it looks - short stretches of segregated cycle paths which makes no sense, cycle lanes alongisde miles of parked cars risking a car-dooring, cycle paths to cycle lanes on-road which don't join-up. The only thing which truly seems joined-up is the Taff Trail - and to be honest we have the Victorians to thank for that....we need to do more of this http://www.copenhagenize.com
Just noticed that the picture demonstrates one of the problems, one which should have been avoided: the utterly awful corkscrew cycle parking. Impractical, poorly supports the bike, not secure and not popular with anyone except ignorant architects and planners. If they want to make a quick start, they could do a lot worse than rip out these idiotic contraptions and put in some decent cycle parking.
I've visited Cardiff quite a few times, and I can't recall seeing even a single bike locked to these monstrosities, so was this picture, with all those bikes, faked?
Not remotely. They're constantly full of bikes, normal bikes, crap cheap bikes, people using bikes to get around. Even late at night.
I'm amazed. Still, I suppose if you've ridden your bike somewhere then even these poor excuses for parking is slightly better than nothing. Proper bike stands would still infinitely preferable.
They appear to have been designed with some kind of aesthetic requirement. Same thing leads to bridges being designed with unnecessary bends in them which make them longer than necessary yet narrower than useful. Architects, better suited to hair dressing.
It all sounds good but experience tells us this rarely translates into actual results/changes. We also do not want quid pro quo, this should not be on the basis that people on bikes 'share the road' or have to modify what they do to receive the protection they are lawfully entitled to.
Let's wait and see what happens, one 'operation' over a limited period doesn't really change anything, how much manpower is put into it is also fundamental to its success.
I also don't like the mats with the distance from the kerb that a cyclist is somehow allowed.
And lastly if we go with the soft approach with no punishments then there's no real deterrent, backing things up after the operation is MORE important.
Is the chief constable also planning to make cycling safer in RCT, Bridgend, Merthyr, NPT, Vale of Glamorgan county boroughs and Swansea too? After all they also come under SWP force area.
“During October, we were averaging 50 thefts a month."
What I think he meant is that there were 50 bikes stolen in October, so I suppose he's right, the average for October is 50. Whatever.
Good to hear of another police force taking cycling seriously, and perhaps the local council might like to invest rather more than £4m, at least ten times that, to achieve the aims of the Welsh Active Travel Act? Just don't build any new roads for a few months, that'll fund it.
He's saying the right things but I'm reserving judgement until I see concrete action.
He's right about one thing though, Cardiff is, weather aside, an ideal city for cycling. Compact, flat and with a lot of routes already in place.
The council has just pledged 4m for cycling infrastructure so I'm quietly optimistic that things will get better.
On a more pessimistic note the WAG are spending 1.4bn (and counting) on a few miles of motorway just up the road in Newport, imagine what that could do for the nation's health if spent on cycle infrastructure.
It's also massively congested and getting worse every day, particularly with the new Plasdwr development. I used to meet the traffic jam around the BBC at 8 am. Now I meet it at the Radyr Roundabout but it's been back to Rhydlarfar some days. Cardiff has a car problem and it needs to get rid of 50% of them because, to be fair to the drivers, once we build cycling infrastructure there won't be anywhere for them to go.
That's fine by me, but this is a city in need of huge solutions. Improving the Taff Trail and building cycling lanes, even protected ones, isn't going to be enough. Something radical is needed.
But, I agree, it is ideal, there are already lots of routes, it could be great.