Month: August 2014

Campaign quits Newcastle Cycling Forum

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Newcycling, Newcastle’s cycling campaign, resigns from Newcastle City Council’s cycling forum. This comes after the group attended numerous fruitless meetings with bad governance of the forum overall. Katja, chair of Newcycling, says “Cycling deserves much better. We’ve tried to work with the council through the forum, but in its current form its not possible; it’s too frustrating banging your head against a brick wall all the time. “Involved and active citizenship deserves much better. We knew we had to cut our ties, after we assessed the achievements of the meetings compared to the time we spent on preparing for the[…]

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We say So Long to the Newcastle Cycling Forum

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As a matter of routine, we regularly assess our communication channels with the decision-makers at Newcastle council. We want to use and direct our volunteer time and resources where we can make a difference and where it has the best effect. As a consequence we have pulled out of the Newcastle Cycling Forum. In a recent Campaign Management Committee we focussed on discussing the achievements of the council’s Cycling Forum and the unshifting relationship between the forum and the campaign. As a community group with a good track record of reliability, transparency, consistency in our message, high degree of professionalism and[…]

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1/5 Sustainable Safety principle – Functionality

News

In June 2014 we adopted Sustainable Safety as our first policy. Here we will describe the five principles of Sustainable Safety. We’ll start with Sustainable Safety’s core principle: functionality. Functionality is described in the Dutch SWOV’s fact sheet as “a hierarchically structured road network” – but what does this mean? The Functionality element of Sustainable Safety looks at the full road network and determines traffic management by categorising our roads. Typically three road types are used for this classification, attempting to describe the function and purpose of the road (to determine the design parameters). All roads must have a designation.[…]

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Journalist request – pavement cycling

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We received a request for our position on pavement cycling by Jesmond Local. We obliged. Here’s the full reply: REPLIES TO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS Q1 : What’s the law on riding on pavements? (I understand it’s strictly prohibited in law with a £50 fine, but that there are common-sense exemptions) A: it’s muddled. It’s not legal by the Highway Code rule 64, but is legalised by ministerial decree, more below in position statement (draft) Q2 : What’s the NCC policy on people riding on pavements? ) A: we are developing a position statement (draft, see link below) – in essence: We’d[…]

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Cycling in Nantes, France

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Our member Armelle, who lives with her young family in Jesmond, has contacted us again. She previously reported back from Copenhagen, home of urbanist Jan Gehl, now she’s sending inspiring stuff from Nantes in France telling the story and journey of the VeloCity 2015 host. Nantes is ranking in 5th place in the prestigious Copenhagnize index: So you’re talking the talk, Nantes. You’re also starting to walk the walk but what will define the liveability of the city is how far you’re willing to go. Your goal of 15% modal share is great and you’re on your way. Dear friends,[…]

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Position statement – Newcastle Cycling Forum

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Since Newcycling’s inception in 2010* we have been involved with Newcastle’s Cycling Forum. We have sought to contribute to it meaningfully and methodically, staying true to our organisational aims, policies and membership view: always with the focus to improve cycling conditions in and around Newcastle. Over the years we also commented on the forum’s effectiveness (governance, decision-making process, information flow, community engagement tool, wider role and general administration). It is our disappointment with that aspect that led us to the decision to cancel our regular forum attendance. In the meantime we will use other – more successful and less frustrated[…]

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Our Infrastructure Safari ride through Heaton

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This is a short account of our infrastructure safari through Heaton, code name: SCR6 Benfield. The concept of Strategic Cycle Routes (SCR) in Newcastle is well established and monies from the Cycling City Ambition Fund (CCAF) have been earmarked to build part of them. So, earlier on in the year we came up with a plan – we thought it would be useful to ride them and assess how much needs to be done to make them safe, convenient, direct and attractive while connecting places of interest such as schools, shops and employment centres. The SCR network is the backbone[…]

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Motion proposal

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(proposed text) We, today, affirm that we fully support the principles of Space for Cycling and that 1. We will increase Newcastle’s cycle share from the current 2% of all travel to 15% by 2025 and to collate the data to measure progress towards that target 2. We will prepare a map of Newcastle’s cycle network covering the Newcastle City Council area showing current provision and required improvements using the five Dutch criteria of cohesion, directness, safety, comfort and attractiveness 3. We will identify where this network falls short of best practice in engineering design and city transport planning (UK[…]

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