July 2014 – Newcastle Cycling Campaign

Campaign Training Day

31st July 2014 Claire Uncategorized

CTC is currently running both the Space for Cycling and the Road Justice campaigns. This day will provide workshops on both these campaigns, boosting the voice, awareness and knowledge for safer cycling, better cities and justice systems. You will learn about how to champion and advocate improved cycling infrastructure and fight for a justice system that sends out fair and clear messages asking for a better deal for vulnerable road users including cyclists. In Newcastle, CTC have teamed up with us to deliver the training. The training day will take place at Jesmond Dene Conference Centre in Newcastle. It will[…]

SCR4 Jesmond – our proposal

30th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

As promised last week, we wanted to add some more specifics to our previous article which was setting the scene: we aren’t too happy with council’s current SCR4 plans. If Newcastle City Council were serious about making Brandling Park a Cycle Street, they would have build the case for a Cycle Street, bottom-up. That means gathering data. A Cycle Street starts to function effectively when there’s a cycle/car ratio of about 2:1 – that means cyclists outweighing drivers and creating a road environment where, for once, cyclists can command the street environment. The other option would be to completely remove[…]

Committee and Members Meeting Jul 14

29th July 2014 Claire Uncategorized

We’ll meet at the Trent House, a nice and friendly pub in Newcastle city centre. Find us upstairs in our dedicated area. Welcome to our new Committee & Members meeting: Committee 17:00-19:00 Members 19:00-21:00pm – come along, grab a drink, meet the committee and take part in the discussion Venue: The Trent House, 1-2 Leazes Lane, NE1 4QT Bike parking: straight outside, at the railings. Please click on the file below for the agenda. All members meetings this year: – 27 May 2014 – 29 July 2014 – 30 September 2014 – 25 November 2014 – 27 January 2015 So,[…]

Civic Cycle Ride

27th July 2014 Claire Uncategorized

Last updated 27 September 2014 PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF ROUTE DUE TO PERCY STREET CLOSED FOR EMERGENCY GAS WORKS After the very successful Big Toon Ride last May, we are calling on all cyclists, young and old, to show support for Space for Cycling by riding with us, once more on Saturday 27 September. This Civic Cycle Ride is a fun ride with a serious message; a message asking for safe dedicated space for cycling on our roads, city centres and neighbourhoods. We will be cycling across our iconic bridges, from Newcastle to Gateshead Old Town Hall and back. The[…]

North Jesmond – hustings

26th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

Did you know that North Jesmond has a by-election on 28 August 2014? What better reason could there be to quiz the candidates about their plans, knowledge and interests! You can now watch the event on video here Together with our Jesmond branch and our partners Living Streets Tyneside we are organising a pre-election hustings for the 14 August 2014 to be held at Jesmond Library to provide a space for exchange and engagement between the electorate and the politicians. Given the focus of the organising groups, the hustings will have a distinct transport theme. We believe transport touches on[…]

Political support mapped

26th July 2014 Katja Uncategorized

LATEST WARD MAP WILL BE POSTED HERE No doubt you remember Space for Cycling and our Big Toon Ride, so after all that… we thought we better give you a quick update. We previously reported via a press release that we did fantastically well nationally – Newcastle showing the highest support rate outside London. But how does it look locally, on ward level? We have crunched the numbers for you and here’s a quick visualisation too. At the time of writing (last updated 8 August 2014), we have 40 Councillors in support for Space for Cycling. This is 51% of[…]

SCR4 Gosforth – Brandling Park and Clayton Road

25th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

It’s great that Newcastle council wants to create Strategic Cycle Routes (SCRs). Safe space for cycling is much needed in our city. We now have to make sure the SCRs are designed well enough so that people will intuitively use them. SCR4 (Gosforth) is part of the seven planned routes and council have recently issued designs for Brandling Park and Clayton Road. • Post your thoughts and comments on Cyclescape, registration is free and easy • Read more about Newcastle’s general SCR plans But we’ve been overtaken by events again. This is a repeat of SCR1 (Newburn) where we also[…]

Cyclists slam road safety initiative by branding it a blame game

23rd July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

Newcycling, Newcastle’s cycling campaign, speaks out against a counterproductive road safety initiative, when a flyer from Road Safety GB Northeast fails to address real safety issues. Newcycling recently adopted Sustainable Safety as a campaign policy to counteract the prevailing negative approach to road safety. Traditional ‘awareness initiatives’ are typically lacking relevance and perspective: cyclists are usually asked to do all the work, whilst drivers are left to simply carry on unguarded with their rather dangerous activity. Yet the risk to cause harm, injure and even kill sits disproportionately with the driver. A flyer by Road Safety GB Northeast does exactly[…]

Road Safety GB NE & Cycling Safety – A metaphoric car crash

20th July 2014 Newcastle Cycling Campaign Uncategorized

We recently adopted Sustainable Safety as a campaign policy and said we would keep educating decision-makers on this positive approach to road safety. So when the traditional blame-gamers such as Road Safety GB Northeast have their destructive say again – we would like to remind these “safety advocates” that real safety comes from tackling root causes. In 2011 we spoke to council officers about their harmful approach to road safety (some of you may even remember Ghost Street) – but unfortunately the message hasn’t sunk in with the executive body, the council: this ineffective blaming approach now (again) appears on[…]

Data: one-way streets, contraflows and permeability

20th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

From my own experience, but also guidance documents and info sheets (see bottom), it’s pretty clear that opening up one-way streets to cycling is one of the most inexpensive and effective ways to quickly improve cycling experience. It of course works – no magic involved – by giving connectivity, reconnecting shortcuts where there previously was a detour and more generally by increasing permeability and route choice. I even ended last year’s youreport article, where members discussed good examples of cycling infrastructure from here and abroad, with this sentence: “The local cycle group in Braunschweig curates a spatial representation of contraflows[…]