Leicester has been attracting the attention of cycling campaigners because the city council is getting on with the job of building proper cycling infrastructure. It has done so without any Cycling Ambition Grant funding, and the city council has shown itself willing to take space away from motor vehicles. They have already used techniques most commonly seen in the Netherlands to make the city centre people-centric, and now they are extending that good practice outwards, where it is connected with whatever was built in the past.
Diglis Bridge is a shared use bridge over the river Severn in Worcester, built to increase connectivity for pedestrians and cycle users in the south of Worcester. There was a rumour I heard that Diglis Bridge was the one piece of cycle infrastructure in the West Midlands to go forward for an award for high quality cycle infrastructure this year (2015), I decided to head over and have a look at it.
There are some British cities that are moving ahead and have built infrastructure that is of good quality. As Push Bikes members travel around the UK, we'll report on the good examples here, and if you have any examples of your own, please do let us know.
I've just returned from a week's holiday near Dordrecht, in the Netherlands. While staying there I did a lot of cycling, enjoying being able to relax and not worry about road positioning to keep myself safe.
I recently got hold of a copy of Push Bikes member Roy Watson's new Birmingham Greenways map. Whilst looking at it I noticed there is a way of eliminating a tedious on-road section of a ride I make from time to time through the Netherton tunnel. Additionally, it makes it circular without going via my house, so it could be used by other people. So one beautiful sunny afternoon I set off with Roy's map in the spring clip of my pannier rack.
There is a noticeable increase in the number of people cycling in Birmingham, and of course most of them opt for routes that don't involve mixing with motor vehicles. The canals make for a pleasant environment, and the resurfacing of the tow paths carried out using Cycling Ambition Grant money is an improvement over the previous mud bath, but the tow paths are too narrow for use as heavily used shared-use paths.
John Bennett and I attended this workshop run by MADE on behalf of Push Bikes. There were approx twenty other delegates – three from Birmingham City Council, one from Centro, eight from Bristol City Council, a few from other local councils, together with a couple of students. At the introductions it was disappointing that several were not regular commuting cyclists and most had only passing involvement with cycling infrastructure design.
