Month: February 2015

In the run up to the AGM we are again pulling together our campaign plan for the coming year. This is so we can organise our volunteer resources by agreeing, prioritising and tackling the important bits that need doing – keeping us transparent and our message clear. As before we will concentrate on the political and institutional barriers to building cycling into Newcastle. The campaign plan below is in a draft format. At the AGM its contents and rationale will be outlined and discussed with our members. We have identified four areas that need immediate attention: 1) Talking about the[…]

The ‘school run’ is a hot topic. It is a road traffic and safety problem and should be addressed as such. Newcastle has known that for years, if not decades; people find it hard to walk or cycle due to the dominance of motor traffic and lack of safe space. Putting this wider problem onto an individual’s doorstep, like parents, is not the answer. Newcycling looked at one location in Newcastle to highlight the wider problem. It’s the responsibility of the highway authority to address road safety and control traffic movements, and thereby enable people to walk and cycle (sustainable[…]

Recent national calls for a dedicated and consistent cycling budget have been made by high-level organisations like the Transport Select Committee and British Cycling, making only the government itself fall short of accepting new economies. But with the forthcoming Growth and Infrastructure Act even the government could soon enshrine a dedicated cycle budget in law. Until then the government’s transport department, DfT, is drip-feeding and that could leave councils in the lurch. Newcycling explains what the call for a cycle budget means for Newcastle. It is now near-universally accepted that a dedicated cycling budget is needed to build fit-for-purpose cycleways[…]