Post by Bracken Van Ryssen on Oct 16, 2013 8:12:09 GMT
After attending the bike forum last night, here are my thoughts (re-posted from the B'ham cycle forums).
Attending this forum has reinforced my concerns that the bid is not ambitious enough by far and lacks vision.
The statistics shown were pretty damning: A quarter of all 10-11 year olds are obese, 40% are either overweight or obese and 80% of the population of Birmingham don't undertake regular exercise. The conservative estimate for how much this costs the health service was said to be £20 million pounds (I didn't catch whether this was per year, but interesting how it is pretty near the funding for 3 years of cycle revolution).
However the council still seem to be bent on catering to those few that do cycle, and possibly the extra two or so percent that can easily be convinced into cycling, rather than aiming the goals at the other 96%. The entire bid is one long list of compromises. The message appears to be that new cyclists are to be pushed onto the indirect and complicated back-roads, while the more 'confident' cyclists can go ahead and mix with the general traffic. And once the new cyclists have had enough practice dodging cars and rat-running drivers, they too can jump onto the main road and 'share' with the lorries, buses and speeding cars.
The whole premise that there are two 'types' of cyclists to cater for is flawed: less confident cyclists value direct routes just as much, and some of us 'confident' cyclists would also like to get from A to B on safe routes.
The bid talks about a 5% modal split over ten years, rising to levels “of comparable European cities such as Munich and Copenhagen at over 10% by 2033”. Last time I looked, the city wide split for Copenhagen was 37% and Munich at 20%, who knows what levels they will attain in 20 years! I doubt I am the only one who thinks that a 10% share over 20 years is a pitifully small increase.
However if Birmingham city council continues to perpetuate their plans for network of substandard and/or dangerous routes, even the 10% split could be unobtainable. To get the majority of people on their bikes nothing less than a high quality network of safe, continuous and direct cycle routes is required. When people drive they very rarely have to make the choice between a route that is safe and time consuming, and a route that is direct and dangerous. Cyclists should not have to make this choice either! Cycling needs to be taken seriously as a highly beneficial mode of transport and not as a political toy that is either relegated to the back-alleys or tossed into the general traffic.
There are a lot of things that I could say this bid is! But it is certainly not a 'cycle revolution'....
The statistics shown were pretty damning: A quarter of all 10-11 year olds are obese, 40% are either overweight or obese and 80% of the population of Birmingham don't undertake regular exercise. The conservative estimate for how much this costs the health service was said to be £20 million pounds (I didn't catch whether this was per year, but interesting how it is pretty near the funding for 3 years of cycle revolution).
However the council still seem to be bent on catering to those few that do cycle, and possibly the extra two or so percent that can easily be convinced into cycling, rather than aiming the goals at the other 96%. The entire bid is one long list of compromises. The message appears to be that new cyclists are to be pushed onto the indirect and complicated back-roads, while the more 'confident' cyclists can go ahead and mix with the general traffic. And once the new cyclists have had enough practice dodging cars and rat-running drivers, they too can jump onto the main road and 'share' with the lorries, buses and speeding cars.
The whole premise that there are two 'types' of cyclists to cater for is flawed: less confident cyclists value direct routes just as much, and some of us 'confident' cyclists would also like to get from A to B on safe routes.
The bid talks about a 5% modal split over ten years, rising to levels “of comparable European cities such as Munich and Copenhagen at over 10% by 2033”. Last time I looked, the city wide split for Copenhagen was 37% and Munich at 20%, who knows what levels they will attain in 20 years! I doubt I am the only one who thinks that a 10% share over 20 years is a pitifully small increase.
However if Birmingham city council continues to perpetuate their plans for network of substandard and/or dangerous routes, even the 10% split could be unobtainable. To get the majority of people on their bikes nothing less than a high quality network of safe, continuous and direct cycle routes is required. When people drive they very rarely have to make the choice between a route that is safe and time consuming, and a route that is direct and dangerous. Cyclists should not have to make this choice either! Cycling needs to be taken seriously as a highly beneficial mode of transport and not as a political toy that is either relegated to the back-alleys or tossed into the general traffic.
There are a lot of things that I could say this bid is! But it is certainly not a 'cycle revolution'....