Dear RCC members
Several threads seem to have come together recently which have focused my attention on a problem I feel needs much wider publicity and discussion. These all congregate around the issue of how we make the best use of the limited resources which are available for the promotion of cycling and other sustainable forms of transport.
I have been having discussions with Dr Emma Street of Reading University about whether we could request a research project to look at how cycling infrastructure projects are developed and implemented by local authorities, and what advocacy groups like our Campaign can do to ensure better outcomes. This conversation is still in its early stages and will depend on getting sufficient funding to employ a researcher to carry out the work.
It will also depend on getting buy-in from our local authorities so we can get access to the people who were involved in previous projects, and also to the records of decisions and the evidence which was used to support them.
Dr Street is well known to us, as she was involved in the discussions with RBC over the Cycle Hub project and was able to get funding from the university to produce a paper which looked at many of the issues around developing and implementing a cycle hub. She is also a keen cyclist and a member of the Winchester cycle campaign.
The cycle hub project is a significant case in point, in that over £100K was allocated to it from central government and as we know it never even opened. I have asked RBC to confirm what has happened to all this money and share any reports which have been made which account for these funds. Privately I have been told that some monies were left over and have been ‘repurposed’ but I have no more details.
The third thread was an article in the February/March issue of Cycle from Cycling UK. Laura Laker, who is a transport journalist, has written an article headed ‘Some Blue Signs’ which describes the UK’s cycling networks as ‘some patchy good bits and lots of blue signs’.
There was very little in the article which would come as a surprise to anyone who cycles around our towns, but there were two sidebars alongside the article which caught my attention.
The first was headed ‘If you build it’ which described some successful new cycle paths and how they have encouraged people to use them. The second was a comment piece from Duncan Dollimore, who is head of Campaigns at Cycling UK, in which he criticises ‘the lack of sufficient, sustained, long term funding for cycling’.
Both these may be true, but to me there is a much more important point which was missed. If you build the right infrastructure in the right places and maintain it properly, yes, people will come and use it.
If you build the wrong things in the wrong places not only will people not use it but the rest of the community will, with some justification, ask why waste money on cycle lanes no-one uses when there are so many other calls on public funds. You don’t have to look very far in Reading to find examples like this.
All the above should point to the very important role the Campaign should and does play. As the voice of cyclists in the area, we should be involved from the earliest stages in all such projects. How best to achieve this is not always clear, but keeping our lines of communication open with the authorities is obviously very important.
Two instances of this have come about recently. Olivia Bailey, the MP for Reading West, responded to our comments on the bad accident that Kieran Beale had at the Theale Green roundabout, and has asked for a meeting with us.
We have also had a detailed response from the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner after I wrote asking for a statement of police policy on e-bikes and the safety of cyclists. If nothing else comes from these contacts, they serve to keep the Campaign involved and the more we can do this, the more our voice will be listened to.
Joe Edwards
RCC Chairman
(chair@readingcyclecampaign.org.uk)
