Too much Cycle City Ambition… and not enough cash

Bristol, Bath & NE Somerset and South Gloucestershire's bid is in the link below. The remaining West of England Partnership local authority, North Somerset, didn't join the bid, for reasons which remain unclear but may be related to a discernable lack of enthusiasm for cycling (or cyclists) within the Council's leadership team.

http://backwellstag.blogspot.com/2013/06/no-cycling-ambition-for-north-s...

sadly part of the outcome from this will be the majority of the plans will get shelved because they won't win the funding - local authorities need to look at their priorities on what gets funded in road programs - but taking money away from road "improvements" that mainly encourage driving by reducing peak period congestion is political suicide so the small proportion of the total spend that went directly to cycle schemes and pedestrian safety will get even smaller and councils will simply point the blame at lack of central government funding for schemes rather than taking a leap of faith and changing spending priorities

I've read the Leeds/Bradford documents. They're a massive improvement on the current baseline - but then, that doesn't say very much. The minimum lane sizes are too small for stronger cyclists to overtake and it seems silly that, because value is calculated per minute used, the slower you design the lanes to be, the more they seem to be worth. That said, you're dealing with retrofitting infrastructure, and you have to work with what you have.

The Manchester bid documents I can find look a lot snazzier and potentially more ambitious, but I'm inclined to think they're spreading the money too thinly - one badly designed junction is all it's going to take to stop people using the network. In the absence of any coherent national design framework, councils need to ensure they're developing examples of good practice.

Interesting. I've not read the bid as I can't see it coming to fruition, I probably should give it some time though, even though if they win the funding, it wont even resemble the original plans once they have done it on the cheap and squandered the money.

You couldn't trust TfGM with a box of crayons let alone that sort of cash.

farrell, if you read the bid on the tfgm website, the Bridgewater Canal is one of the main schemes within the bid!

Sorry to be the eternal pesimist but I can't imagine this money being put to much use.

The problem with our town and city roads is that it is all-but impossible to incorporate meaningful cycle infrastructure into the existing road network. I did a jouney through town yesterday where segregated infrastructure may have benefited me (1yr old daughter on the back and traveling much more slowly than usual, particurly at junctions). There are a couple of multi-lane junctions on the route which are not very cycle freindly, particually at slower speeds, and I started to think, hypothetically, about how the route could be improved. I concluded that you would have to knock down a good number of houses and construct a series of bridges or tunnels in order to create a segregated network that would work effectivly. I don't think it's going to happen. The local authority has obviously considered at least one of these junctions as there are cycle lanes painted on the footway but without any thought as to how you enter or leave them (no drop kerbs etc.) and which force you to act as a pedestrian (you cannot turn right if using the cycle lane and have to dismount and cross a number of roads on foot instead). Unfortunately the answer to the 'problem' of cyclists for many local authorities is simply to get them off of the roads and on to the pavements, even if this undermines the bicycle's usefulness as a vehicle.

Under what criteria would the many loosing bids NOT deserve to win? It is ridiculous to say that major cities and towns across the whole country are going to loose out and have to wait, meanwhile no change happens and the roads get worse.

I'll be surprised if Liverpool do anything meaningful. . The mayor Joe Anderson is maximising his press coverage for the Boris bikes he's getting in (free with a ring fenced £2.5m) for a city with a centre that mainly pedestrianised with no bikes allowed and that takes 15 minutes to walk across.

Meanwhile cycle commuters are still struggling on half thought out piss poor cycle routes. There was a death last week. Admittedly it was a poor guy in a wheelchair run down at the entrance to the docks but with no drop kerbs on one side of the junction and a derelict path it was bound to happen to someone. Meanwhile Peel Holdings ( who own Salford Quays and both Pinewood and Shepperton Studios) are going ahead with major builds with no proper consultation about cycle.

Cycling just has no voice or lobby power in many cities. Cycling is still a nuisance to highways department and only considered if they are forced to do so. It's so blinkered it makes me weep with frustration.

Oxford's bid: http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cms/content/cycle-city-ambition-grant-appl...

Some of Cambridge's plans are OK, but frankly fail at the word "ambition". 2.5m bi-directional paths? 2m shared use paths? Not exactly "ambitious".

Even though I live in Manchester, I really hope TfGM don't get a penny of it.

They'll have a load of half-baked, overpriced ideas, they'll build them on the cheap, and in 2 years time the stuff they've built will be falling apart.

Give the dosh to a council with a better history of sanity/road upkeep.

As I said in the forum thread

"I am against the government giving more money out to paint some marks on the road and "make cycling safer" until a proper NATIONAL plan is in place, not just region by region. It needs to be a nation wide plan, so that EVERYONE is singing from the same sheet, else we will have huge differences in what local area's put in place."

So by a national plan, I mean, if you want funding, you stick to the rules laid out by a decent selection of bodies that put something together. So cycle paths, crossing sections....etc and ALL places submitting bids would be had to stick to these rules.

A shame this article doesn't include any links to any bid documents.

According to a Newcastle presentation here:
http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/sites/drupalncc.newcastle.gov.uk/files/wwwfi...

...there are First Wave cities (Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham) and smaller Second Wave cities.

And it states "The Government expects to support one First Wave and two Second Wave cities.".

Of course I don't know if this is correct.

And I'm biased, but Go Manchester!

Portsmouth and Southampton have put in a joint bid, totalling about £5 million.