Journal (18 August 2014) Newcastle cycling campaigners say city council’s safer Great North Road plans are being ‘done in a hurry’ http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-cycling-campaigners-say-city-7633406
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Tag: Gosforth SCR
Cycle advocacy group warns council about cyclists safety on Great North Road
Council plans for the Great North Road are flawed, an advocacy group, Newcycling, warns Newcastle City Council. The principle of the council plan to set aside dedicated space for cycling is sound but the detail of it will leave the cyclist stranded for safety when it’s most needed. Newcastle vows to become a Cycle City with 20% cycle modal share (currently 2%) by 2021. A year ago, the city was given nearly £6m by the DfT to upgrade their cycling infrastructure. However plans emerging from the council’s design desk contain mistakes putting cyclists at risk, and could deter new people[…]
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Warning over Great North Road plans
Our warning is about the details of Newcastle City Council’s plan for the section of the Great North Road from Hollywood Avenue junction to Broadway roundabout. As a cycle route is only as good as its weakest link, we are concerned about the council design, well meaning as it is, but it creates some new dangers and leaves them unaddressed. We hope that the illustrations we have now included will help to explain our concerns further. In the absence of functional communication channels, we’d still like to get to the bottom of council’s decision-making logic: we have requested to see[…]
Read moreSCR4 Jesmond – our proposal
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[…]
Read moreSCR4 Gosforth – Brandling Park and Clayton Road
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[…]
Read moreStrategic Cycle Routes – progress assessment
About a year ago Newcastle was granted £5.6m from DfT to make the city fit for cycling, or at least make a good start towards it. The City Cycling Ambition Fund (CCAF) was awarded to cities which demonstrated the ambition to build quality cycle infrastructure and re-allocate road space for bikes to enable new people to cycle and a positive modal shift away from the car. The funding has to be spent by March 2015 and four SCRs, at least in part, were to be built. Scott, and sometimes Kat, have attended the fortnightly Technical Advisory Group (TAG) meetings since[…]
Read moreGosforth High with real vision
Council are deliberating on the future for Gosforth High Street by looking at the hundreds of consultation responses they received. Here is what should have happened. You may recall, there were two options to pick from, and two options only. We understand that this was decided by the Cabinet member responsible, Cllr Ged Bell. Out of these we supported Option 2 – a two-way cycleway – A more innovative approach over the traditional share-the-road-with-buses proposal. Above all, we supported the principle of setting-aside of road-space for cycling. And we heavily caveated our response which you can read here. We do[…]
Read moreDesign and Planning – presentation to council
Katja presents at Newcastle City Council’s Cycle Forum. The presentation and its findings are based on our experience working with the Newcastle City Council’s councillors and officers since 2010. Good communication and a clear process are as important as leadership and technical expertise. Design and Planning, lessons learnt presentation to Newcastle City Council Cycle Forum from Katsdekker We outline six areas of improvement. 1. Political leadership (examples Sevilla, NYC) 2. Routes (approval pending) 3. Monitoring data (cycle use before and after, volume and speed of traffic to inform design) 4. Sustainable safety principles for road safety (user need, human psychology)[…]
Read moreSCR Infra Safari – SCR4 Gosforth
We are cycling the Strategic Cycle Routes (SCRs). This year’s dates are listed below. All dates have been set for Saturdays, and we hope you can join us. We will meet at Civic Centre, Ceremonial Way, at 10:00am. Each tour should not take longer than three hours. Join us for all or parts of it, or meet us afterwards for a coffee. Please email us newcastle.cycling.campaign@gmail.com if you are coming so that we get an idea about numbers before the ride. 14 June – SCR 4 – Gosforth 12 July – SCR 1 – Newburn 9 August – SCR 6[…]
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Gosforth High Street – a member’s action
A campaign member decided to take action and contacted us to discuss their idea. In the process a poster was designed and printed (attached below), and distributed to traders on Gosforth High Street. Here is a quick report from their experience and the data and feedback gathered. This is really useful information for us all and worth sharing! And looking at different parts of the plans separately seems a sensible thing to do too. The cycleway could be created whilst the Salters Road junction goes back to the drawing board and a “less 1960s motorway design” is found. I had[…]
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