News – Page 4 – Newcastle Cycling Campaign

Cycling in Nantes, France

29th August 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

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,[…]

Our Infrastructure Safari ride through Heaton

27th August 2014 Claire Uncategorized

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[…]

Warning over Great North Road plans

18th August 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

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[…]

The value of current cyclists revealed

4th August 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

Calculations carried out by Newcycling, Newcastle’s cycling campaign, using HEAT, an internationally acclaimed economic assessment tool for walking and cycling, show that the contribution that current city commuter cyclists make is worth over £3 million to the city of Newcastle every year. Using the latest Census 2011 data and feeding it into the economic assessment tool, the campaign group calculates that Newcastle’s 3,300 commuter cyclists save the city over £3.3 million in costs simply by living healthier and more productive lives. Last year’s Get Britain Cycling report states that at least £10 per head per year is needed – that[…]

News clipping – BBC Look North: skyride

2nd August 2014 NewCycling Press

BBC Look North (2 August 2014) BBC reporter Martin Forster “But some cycling campaigners say there’s little point getting us to fall in love with cycling if, come Monday, our roads are once again dangerous for cyclists.” Katja (chair) says “Once you close down roads and you take off fairly hostile traffic, you take out cars and drivers out of the equation, people actually do come out. It’s almost like a carnival kind of atmosphere. You know, people come to enjoy themselves. It’s fun. It’s great. Problem being – this is here for four hours. And, really, what we want[…]

SCR4 Jesmond – our proposal

30th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

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[…]

Political support mapped

26th July 2014 Katja Uncategorized

LATEST WARD MAP WILL BE POSTED HERE No doubt you remember Space for Cycling and our Big Toon Ride, so after all that… we thought we better give you a quick update. We previously reported via a press release that we did fantastically well nationally – Newcastle showing the highest support rate outside London. But how does it look locally, on ward level? We have crunched the numbers for you and here’s a quick visualisation too. At the time of writing (last updated 8 August 2014), we have 40 Councillors in support for Space for Cycling. This is 51% of[…]

SCR4 Gosforth – Brandling Park and Clayton Road

25th July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

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[…]

Cyclists slam road safety initiative by branding it a blame game

23rd July 2014 NewCycling Uncategorized

Newcycling, Newcastle’s cycling campaign, speaks out against a counterproductive road safety initiative, when a flyer from Road Safety GB Northeast fails to address real safety issues. Newcycling recently adopted Sustainable Safety as a campaign policy to counteract the prevailing negative approach to road safety. Traditional ‘awareness initiatives’ are typically lacking relevance and perspective: cyclists are usually asked to do all the work, whilst drivers are left to simply carry on unguarded with their rather dangerous activity. Yet the risk to cause harm, injure and even kill sits disproportionately with the driver. A flyer by Road Safety GB Northeast does exactly[…]