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UK’s first Bicycle Mayor outlines plans to get Cumbria pedallingCumbria Bicycle Mayor Richard Ingham

UK’s first Bicycle Mayor outlines plans to get Cumbria pedalling

Richard Ingham was elected to new position in July
by Simon_MacMichael
Sun, Sep 01, 2019 13:14
4

The UK’s first Bicycle Mayor has been outlining his plans to get more people in the county cycling following his election to the position in July by members of the Bicycle Mayor of Cumbria Support Group.

The position is independent of public and private sector bodies and forms part of the global Bicycle Mayor network co-ordinated by Amsterdam-based community interest company BYCS, which aims for 50 per cent of all journeys to be made by bicycle by 2030.

Richard Ingham, who runs a transport planning consultancy specialising in cycling says that “joined up” infrastructure and support from employers are the two key steps towards encouraging people to use bikes for journeys of up to five miles, reports the News & Star.

“We need the cycling infrastructure joined up,” he said. “By that I mean you could get on your bike at Kingmoor Park and you could cycle all the way to Kingstown Road, into the centre of Carlisle and then out the other side to where you live.

“We only have bits at the moment, it is not joined up. We need a dedicated cycle lane on every throughway in and out of the city.”

Moving onto his second point, he continued: “We need employers to encourage people to travel to work by bike and on foot.

“Employers can benefit so much by doing this, first by not needing as many car parking spaces and the fact the workforce will be much more motivated and sickness and absence rates will drop because they will be healthier.”

He added: “They can make a difference. They can provide somewhere to put your kit, somewhere to put your bike.”

Since taking up the voluntary, unpaid position which runs for two years, Ingham has held meetings with local politicians including Stewart Young, the leader if Cumbria County Council and with management at the Sellafield nuclear power plant, one of the county’s biggest employers.

There are currently Bicycle Mayors in some 50 towns, cities and regions worldwide, with their work explained in the following video from BYCS.

 

Cumbria
Carlisle
Biccycle Mayor
BYCS
Simon MacMichael

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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4 comments

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StraelGuy | 5 years ago
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He'll have a job. On my recent Sellafield trip we had a roughly eight mile drive from the hotel each morning and there are a lot of windy narrow roads and the driving style of the locals can only be described as 'dangerously enthusiastic' !

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ktache | 5 years ago
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Good luck to the man.

Beautiful bit of the country.

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zero_trooper replied to ktache | 5 years ago
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ktache wrote:

Good luck to the man.

Beautiful bit of the country.

From the article you would think that Cumbria consists of Carlisle and Sellafield. He wants to get some of those dreadful 'cycle lanes' in the Lake District sorted out. That one between Ambleside and Skelwith Bridge is mostly awful. Get the tourists/visitors cycling and keep the cars out!

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Kendalred replied to zero_trooper | 5 years ago
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zero_trooper wrote:

ktache wrote:

Good luck to the man.

Beautiful bit of the country.

From the article you would think that Cumbria consists of Carlisle and Sellafield. He wants to get some of those dreadful 'cycle lanes' in the Lake District sorted out. That one between Ambleside and Skelwith Bridge is mostly awful. Get the tourists/visitors cycling and keep the cars out!

Quite - that route is the last/first part of my commute. An area of 6,768 km2 (Wiki) is bad enough, but a lot of the roads struggle to fit two cars side by side - even the A roads - let alone dedicated cycling infrastructure. Even relatively short commutes from outlying villages to the bigger centres of population (eg Carlisle, Penrith, Kendal, Workington etc) would involve using these roads. What's needed is more driver 'education' about how to share these narrow spaces with cyclists/horses/pedestrians.

The exception seems to be Barrow-in-Furness, which has the widest roads I have come across in a town of this size, and has more cycling infra than most other towns around here. I think it must be to do with the shipbuilding legacy.

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