Cycling demonstration towns- monitoring results

[jonesy]

At its launch, Cycling England established six Cycling Demonstration Towns (CDTs) where innovative projects were implemented to make it more attractive for people to cycle, both to school and work, and in their leisure time. The towns we selected all had a strong commitment to increase cycling.

Prior to the start of the programme, each town had different levels of people cycling and different local circumstances. As such, Cycling England worked with each individual CDT to establish a tailor made programme to encourage cycling. Cycling England also established a consistent monitoring programme to measure progress across all six towns. For the past three years, Cycling England has been gathering extensive and robust quantitative data from the original six CDTs in order to measure progress and evaluate the impact of their cycling strategies.

The results are very positive, with all towns seeing an increase in cycling levels in the first three years. On average, across all towns, cycling has increased by 27%. This demonstrates a decisive break from the generally downward trend in cycling levels in the UK outside London over the last 30 years.

This is the result of good investment decisions – from significant infrastructure developments to training, marketing and promotional campaigns to encourage people to get on their bikes.

It takes time to create fantastic cycling towns. The most successful European towns and cities have been investing consistently in cycling for 30 years. But our evidence suggests that specific and targeted measures can have a significant impact in increasing cycling levels. The results give us confidence that the specific cycling strategies implemented by both the original six CDTs and the new wave of eleven Cycling Towns together with Greater Bristol as a Cycling City will – given time - make a real difference to the travel culture of the UK.

http://www.dft.gov.uk/cyclingengland/cycling-cities-towns/results/

Now, I'm sure there will still be plenty of 'cycle farcility of the month' entries in all the demonstration towns, but the overall results seem very promising and hopefully will encourage other LAs that it really is possible to get more people cycling and that there are good economic, societal and health benefits from doing so.

The above link takes you to the monitoring reports, with lots of useful stuff on the health benefits of cycling, how to calculate the economic benefits etc. 'Making a cycling town' discusses in detail what each town did and how it worked. One very good message that is made repeatedly is:

The most valuable lesson from the CDTs is that increasing cycling requires a coherent plan, focused on an understanding of three things:
• People – who can be persuaded to take up cycling?
• Place – where do they go?
• Purpose – why do they go there?

It may seem obvious, but schemes that begin with a decision to install or improve cycle infrastructure without considering who will use it, or where it will usefully go, do not work.

I was at a conference yesterday at which this was being presented, it was music to my ears!

 

[rusky]

If anyone wants to know about how Brighton & Hove have been spending our money...http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/full_audit_of_expenditure_for_cy#incoming-71157

 

[chap]

If anyone wants to know about how Brighton & Hove have been spending our money...http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/full_audit_of_expenditure_for_cy#incoming-71157

Interesting. Have you noticed an improvement in your local area?

 

[rusky]

In a word, no!

 

[summerdays]

Well I've now had a visit from one of the Cycle City advisors (role is to encourage cycling) - I was intrigued to see what they had to say so didn't send her away. She was very pleasant and told me about the free maintenance sessions, adult training, children's Bikeability, bike loan schemes, maps, route planning, local cycling clubs, Bike 2 work scheme, local websites for information and reporting problems (Better by bike and Bristol Streets) and listened to my moans about how they could encourage more cycling. And as she was leaving she even mentioned Cyclecraft (well she was having problems remembering the name so I helped her out).

I felt that she was very thorough despite the fact that she is more there to promote cycling to the non-cyclists rather than to the already converted.

I must find out from non cycling friends what they think of this - but it really could depend on which advisor turns up on your doorstep.

 

[marinyork]

Rusky, do you have any indication what some of this means?

For example it lists 2006/7 as cycle parking in schools $83,500 as "126 Cycle Stands, Four shelters. all in the CDT area."

If that was 126 stands + four shelters - even if small ones that could hold 8 bikes a piece that's not too bad.

It's hard to really judge. How many schools got them, how many schools were being rebuilt/renovated at the time?

Similarly on cycle parking it says 2006/7 68 sheffield stands installed in the CDT area. That's a very high number of sheffield stands if it was all done within one year.

P.S. I have no way of judging on that either. For some cities publicly installed cycle parking is so horrendously bad that 68 stands would be multiplying several times over what they already had.