Bike Birmingham Strategy 2011
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upsidedown
Waiting for the great leap forward
- Location
- The middle bit
Added my 2p for what it's worth.
Some worthy ambitions there, but will be interesting to see what they can manage with very little money.
Some worthy ambitions there, but will be interesting to see what they can manage with very little money.
Hilldodger
Guru
- Location
- sunny Leicester
Perfect timing!
We're trying to write a similar strategy for Leicester
We're trying to write a similar strategy for Leicester
I've held off reading this until now, because these documents are invariably the same...and, sad to say, Birmingham's is no different from any London borough's.
It's wishful thinking. That isn't to say that there's no chance that cycling will become more popular in Birmingham, but the report is really about people of like mind, some with experience and others not, sitting in a room and talking about it. Cycling is portrayed as a series of committees, rather than people cycling.
It's wishful thinking (part 2) in that it's a list of measures and initiatives which will have a local or limited effect (some kids will doubtless be inspired by the BMX champs, and some will benefit from training), but there's no general appreciation or even inquiry in to what flicks the switch to cycle commuting from car, bus or rail commuting.
There's little on the form of Birmingham, and no study of the form of Birmingham. The city, both at 'zone 1' level and the wider level has gone for 'traffic smoothing' to a degree that I haven't seen replicated elsewhere, except in a few smallish towns like Swindon and Hemel Hempstead. An aerial photograph of Birmingham shows concentric ring roads with 'retail parks' and Tescos clinging to those ring roads like snot. Roundabouts, some of them huge, deter both cyclists, pedestrians and bus passengers. The city has been planned around the car-as-cocoon, and no city council in Birmingham is ever going to challenge that, because, to do so, they'd have to close or narrow roads like the A34, the A41, the A456, the A435 and the A38, turning them in to high streets. They'd have to cut out roundabouts, and close car parks. That's not about cycling - that's about restoring civilisation. Every advantage enjoyed by London - radial routes, medieval street patterns, density of population and business - is denied Birmingham. It is, in a word, f*cked. There is no hope other than £3 a litre petrol, and even that would simply hand the streets over to the uber-motorist.
ps - the usual meaningless blather from David Cox. That alone makes me happy that I've save the extra twenty five quid.....
It's wishful thinking. That isn't to say that there's no chance that cycling will become more popular in Birmingham, but the report is really about people of like mind, some with experience and others not, sitting in a room and talking about it. Cycling is portrayed as a series of committees, rather than people cycling.
It's wishful thinking (part 2) in that it's a list of measures and initiatives which will have a local or limited effect (some kids will doubtless be inspired by the BMX champs, and some will benefit from training), but there's no general appreciation or even inquiry in to what flicks the switch to cycle commuting from car, bus or rail commuting.
There's little on the form of Birmingham, and no study of the form of Birmingham. The city, both at 'zone 1' level and the wider level has gone for 'traffic smoothing' to a degree that I haven't seen replicated elsewhere, except in a few smallish towns like Swindon and Hemel Hempstead. An aerial photograph of Birmingham shows concentric ring roads with 'retail parks' and Tescos clinging to those ring roads like snot. Roundabouts, some of them huge, deter both cyclists, pedestrians and bus passengers. The city has been planned around the car-as-cocoon, and no city council in Birmingham is ever going to challenge that, because, to do so, they'd have to close or narrow roads like the A34, the A41, the A456, the A435 and the A38, turning them in to high streets. They'd have to cut out roundabouts, and close car parks. That's not about cycling - that's about restoring civilisation. Every advantage enjoyed by London - radial routes, medieval street patterns, density of population and business - is denied Birmingham. It is, in a word, f*cked. There is no hope other than £3 a litre petrol, and even that would simply hand the streets over to the uber-motorist.
ps - the usual meaningless blather from David Cox. That alone makes me happy that I've save the extra twenty five quid.....
