Today Frank McAveety has been announced as a 'Cycling Czar' within Glasgow city council. Here is a letter I have e-mailed to Mr McAveety on my own behalf and behalf of Pedal on Parliament.
Dear Mr McAveety,
First of all, please let me congratulate you on your appointment as
'Cycling Czar' in Glasgow City Council. I was pleasantly surprised by
the news this morning that GCC had taken this step.
I myself am a Glasgow cyclist (from Torrance to my work in the south of Glasgow daily) and have been for a number of years a cycle safety
campaigner. I started off by videoing my commute and posting incidents
and things of interest on Youtube (
http://www.youtube.com/user/magnatom)
and also write a blog about cycling and cycle campaigning
(http://www.magnatom.net).
Most recently I came up with the idea, and jointly organised a protest
ride and movement called Pedal on Parliament (POP) which attracted 3000+
cyclists to attend in April (http://pedalonparliament.org/). It also
gained the support of well known cyclists such as Mark Beaumont, Graeme
Obree and Sir Chris Hoy. It is POP's aim to make Scotland a cycle
friendly nation which we believe can be achieved by following our 8
point manifesto (http://pedalonparliament.org/the-manifesto/). Most
importantly it is our belief to make cycling safe and increase numbers
of cyclists significantly that there needs to be significant investment
in cycle infrastructure. This will require funding streams not only from
local council but from central government as well.
Glasgow's roads are unfortunately far from being cycle friendly, despite
the suggestion of the fundamentally flawed Virgin money survey placing
Glasgow 6th in the UK for cycle friendliness. Had the survey actually
taken account of the numbers of cyclists, which is very low in Glasgow
in comparison to other areas, then Glasgow would have been found
somewhere close to the bottom of the table (see here for more details on
how flawed the calculations were
http://www.magnatom.net/2012/06/glasgows-fab-for-cycling-its-official.html).
Despite the reality, there has never been a better time to invest in
cycling in Glasgow. There is increased interest following our success at
the Olympics, Glasgow will receive a further boost from the opening of
the Velodrome, and Glasgow will be the proud host of the Commonwealth
Games in 2014. Hopefully your appointment is the first step on this
journey.
There is no doubt that investment at a time of financial strife is
difficult, however, spending on cycling is truly an investment. Cycling
brings about not only health benefits, something that is a very
important consideration in Glasgow, it also brings reductions in local
pollution and associated reductions in CO2 emissions, social benefits,
economic benefits and reductions in congestion. However, in the past
money has been spent badly, and nearly all of Glasgow's cyclists will
tell you that the majority of the cities cycle infrastructure is poor
and at times dangerous to use. For money to be well spent the
infrastructure needs to be fully FUNDED, properly DESIGNED, and properly
CONNECTED.
As well as posting a copy of this e-mail on my blog (as I normally do) I
have copied it to people from other interested campaigns (Go-Bike, CTC
Scotland, Sustrans, and Cycling Scotland) who I am sure along with
ourselves will be keen to offer advice on how best to take things
forward in Glasgow. Therefore, I ask on behalf of myself a concerned
Glasgow cyclist and and on behalf of POP for you to please invite us to
have discussions with you on how to make Glasgow a cycle friendly city.
With both central and local government buy in, with properly target
funding, and with the right advice, Glasgow can become a cycle friendly
city.
Having just returned a car and then cycled back along South Street, and a number of other locations might I suggest he gets those responsible for roads to deal with some of the lethal defects - and not just for cyclists. Evidence of very serious collapse of the supporting structure of the road surface here but a key solution would be to actually focus on repairing just enough width of this road to provide a single carriageway with generous 4.25m lanes or 3.0m lanes and 1.5-2m advisory cycle lanes. Narrowing this road would allow repairs to be focussed on a smaller area and thus done to a better standard, and reduce the road size and alignment that positively invites speeding.
ReplyDeleteThe joke of a very hazardous cycle route on the footway crossing access turnings to residential and commercial premises could then be dumped. To put cyclists doing up to 10 times the speed of pedestrians on a cramped footway is insanity in its lack of design sense - it compares with letting an electric milk float (8-10 mph) drive up the middle lane on a motorway (typically 80mph).
Far better to integrate cycle traffic in towns with motor traffic which will barely be going twice as fast, and often matching speeds with faster cyclists.
One purge which would be welcomed would be to have a campaign to stop and interview/educate those riding cycles along footways on major arterial routes like Great Western Road at totally inappropriate speeds, and find ways to put them on to the carriagway, or a separate route for cycling.
Hi there,
ReplyDeleteGreat letter. Did you ever get a response from McAveety?