Category: News

FAQs – a reply to a reply

News

Newcastle City Council have released a FAQ document (pdf, external link) in response to the public outburst on the Northern Access Corridor (Blue House to Haddrick’s Mill) proposals. We had a quick look and have some comments: The structure Why were these questions chosen? Are they the ones most often asked? How was that determined? Is this list of 20 questions exhaustive? The public will not be able to check so we just went with the listing the council provided. But a lingering doubt remains, which is not an excellent start to reading a document that’s supposed to instil competence[…]

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Newcastle, we have a problem – let’s tackle it together

News, Press

We call on the council to act in accordance with their own policy for land use and transport planning: the Local Plan. For links and relevant excerpts see below. The Local Plan describes and defines the problem as well as gives solutions. We also include map overlays showing the scale of Newcastle City Council’s plans for Blue House in relation to well-known local sites. Katja Leyendecker, chair newcycling.org, says “Taking account of the Local Plan, it is to our greatest surprise that the council wants to build a motor highway slicing through the neighbourhoods of Newcastle. We ask the Cabinet[…]

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Gross Greenwash on Blue House roundabout

News, Politics, Press

This is a swift response to the Blue House roundabout plans, which we deem unacceptable. A longer, technical, response will follow. UPDATE 3 August 2016 detailed response published here. INITIAL RESPONSE The plans for this junction are fundamentally wrong. Only with real transport planning, tackling the real problems, can we see Newcastle’s policies of mode shift and transport transition realised. Only then, can council spatially prioritise walking and cycling and create the ground conditions for mass cycling. Newcastle has a primary ring road system A1/A19, and first of all its local road network must be assessed for its space, whilst keeping[…]

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Cllr Bell’s reply – what does it mean for a Cycle City?

News, Politics

I am hopeful in noting that Cllr Ged Bell, Cabinet member of Newcastle council, kindly started his reply by thanking Sally for the sentiment and professionalism of her address to Full Council. By extension Cllr Bell thanks the newcycling Committee and our membership for the positive and constructive engagement our campaign group engages in. He then continues to congratulate us for staying on our stalwart course, pushing cycling up the agenda in Newcastle, and bringing rationale to the transport debate in our city. You can watch Cllr Ged Bell’s reply here (external link, youtube) We, together with our patron Christian[…]

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Newcastle Cllr survey – Space 4 Cycling

News

Following our Councillors’ surveys in 2010, 2011  and 2012, we contacted all Newcastle Councillors on 30 December 2015 and asked them for their Space for Cycling thoughts and priorities. At the end of 2014, Newcastle celebrated being the top English Core City for Space for Cycling political support: 67% of local councillors supported space for cycling (we are now at 65% since the local elections in 2015). This is great and we said a big thank you at the Space for Cycling ride in September 2014. What does this mean and what’s next? We asked Councillors to select the top[…]

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Grow your Tenner 2015 – NewCycling call for donations

News

UPDATE – 23 OCTOBER 2015: GYT 2015 IS NOW CLOSED – NEWCYCLING WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL THE MEMBERS WHO DONATED. WE RAISED AN AMAZING £620 IN JUST 11 DAYS. THANK YOU ALL It’s Grow Your Tenner time again! The scheme opens at 10am on Tuesday 13 October and runs until Wednesday 18 November 2015, or until the funding pot runs out – whichever comes first. Last year we raised an impressive £680 and this year, with your help, we are hoping to raise even more! To give simply go to https://localgiving.com/charity/newcycling How does it work? GYT will match up to £10[…]

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Five years and counting

News

Our chair writes: In our normal daily lives, we often forget that power is in the equation. It’s through its absence (rather than its presence) that we feel it the most. We formed the Newcastle Cycling Campaign five years ago to address an imbalance in power, and with that the imbalance in our spatial attribution and acknowledgement of day-to-day cycling in our city. We want to see its ‘needs and musts’ debated. We wish it to flourish and mature. After five years, surely it’s time to ask ourselves: what have we achieved? What did we want to achieve? Have we achieved[…]

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Structuring the campaign

News

Under this year’s motto “Shifting Up A Gear” we started growing the Campaign as well as started looking at the growing demands of the Campaign. It’s fantastic to see us steadily expanding – after all, it means we have a louder and more concerted voice that can be translated into more influence. However this also means that we have to keep an eye on our organisational needs and make sure our structures support this as best as can. The Committee meeting held on 4 November 2014 formally approved an aspirational Committee structure. We also said that we want to be an active committee – never a “talking shop” – with its members taking on roles and tasks.[…]

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3/5 Sustainable Safety principle – Predictability

News

In June 2014 we adopted Sustainable Safety as our first policy. Here we will describe the five principles of Sustainable Safety. This article will talk about Predictability and what it means. We have previously discussed Functionality and Homogeneity. We explained the need for clear classification of roads and how the difference in speed and mass of vehicles creates a need for different types of cycle provision depending on the function of the road. In Advancing Sustainable Safety by SWOV (http://www.swov.nl/rapport/DMDV/Advancing_Sustainable_Safety.pdf page 13) Predictability is described: “road environment and road user behaviour that support road user expectations through consistency and continuity in road[…]

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