Newcastle Cycling Campaign

Council comes under fire for scrapping plans to boost cycling in Newcastle

Evening Chronicle – 10 January 2019 Newcastle Cycling Campaign members say they are ‘disappointed’ after the plans were scrapped. Sally Watson said: “”The most recent of these is Barras Bridge, where cycling has been quietly removed from plans. We recently wrote to Coun Arlene Ainsley, cabinet member for transport and air quality, to express our concerns. We are still awaiting a response to this letter.” https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/council-comes-under-fire-scrapping-15652798

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Launched at AGM – city4kids manifesto

Background: the city4kids manifesto was launched at the AGM on the 25 March 2018. It will form the cornerstone to our campaigning activities over the next year. A pdf version can be found here: city4kids_manifesto. Watch out in the coming weeks for further information, action items and more. If you would like to support the city4kids manifesto do get in touch to discuss your involvement and collaboration. We are especially interested, of course, in working with Newcastle Councillors and fellow civic society groups. city4kids manifesto So that children and parents can travel in safety and comfort Newcastle Council policy highlights[…]

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AGM 2018

Our 2018 AGM will be held on Sunday 25 March, 2:00-5:00pm Venue: Jesmond Library, St George’s Terrace, NE2 2DL Newcastle upon Tyne We’d love families to come and participate – There will be craft activities for kids in a separate room, so please let us know if you’re bringing kids as we need to have an idea about numbers. Thanks! As usual, we’ll deal with the formal AGM business first, i.e. review the minutes of 2017 AGM, present our annual reports including finances, and form the management committee for 2018/19. It’s political With the all-out local elections on 3 May, we[…]

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Streets for People or Streets for Cars? Newcastle, it’s time to choose

A whole-day event took place in the Civic Centre, on Saturday 11 March, bringing together groups from the three areas Newcastle Council has selected for its ‘Streets for People’ project. Residents and councillors from Jesmond, Heaton & Ouseburn, Fenham & Arthur’s Hill came to hear talks from Cllr Ged Bell (cabinet member for Investment and Development), Graham Grant (Head of Transport), Jon Little and John Dales (consultants from Phil Jones Associates). The presentations were inspiring and if these words can be translated into action we could achieve some great stuff with the £3 million set aside for this project. There[…]

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Newcastle Cllr survey – Space 4 Cycling

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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Our call to the newly elected Newcastle Councillors

We have written to these newly elected Newcastle Councillors, see bottom of the article, and ask them to support Space for Cycling: Cllr Brian Hunter, Castle Cllr Melissa Davis, Denton Cllr Ian Tokell, Fenham Cllr Kim McGuinness, Lemington Cllr Mick Bowman, North Heaton Cllr Dan Perry, North Jesmond Cllr Kerry Allibhai, South Jesmond Cllr Pat Hillicks, Westerhope Do you live in one of these wards? If so please write to your new Councillor and ask them to support Space for Cycling too, using the letter below as template. And let us know about the outcome. As always consider copying the campaign in contact@newcycling.org[…]

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Campaign Meeting – let’s talk about space for cycling!!

Our September meeting saw Katja Leyendecker and Scott Dawson (who are they?) talk about the Strategic Cycle Routes (SCR), “how to move the shakers” (presentation slides below) and what it means on the ground by showing examples of road space re-allocation. The SCR concept is not new. It was Bill Dodds, then on the Newcycling management committee, who put the idea on the agenda two years ago: a network of seven radial routes connecting different parts of Newcastle to the city centre. These would be direct, convenient and safe cycle routes serving a range of destinations on their way: shops,[…]

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Statistically speaking – visualised

Newcastle is less dependent on the car than Councillors and civil servants would like you to believe. We had a look behind the scenes… at the statistics. It started with Neil Murphy putting the Census 2011 data into context for us here and Claire Prospert summarising and explaining further here. Whilst cycle to work numbers (this is the data the Census collects) are generally pitifully low compared to our European brothers and sisters who enjoy 10, 20 even 50 and 60% of bike-commute modal share, in Newcastle it’s the wards North-Northeast of the city centre that cycle more. The highest[…]

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