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Push Bikes, the Birmingham cycling campaign group, has recently received a lottery grant to organise a series of meetings over the next year, to bring together groups and organisations interested in making Birmingham a more cycling and walking friendly city. Alison Millward Associates were appointed to facilitate meetings. It is hoped that by working together, such a loose but more coordinated coalition of interests might be better able to:
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An initial meeting to establish the level of interest in this initiative was held on Wednesday 24 November, at the Small Heath Health Centre, Birmingham. To ensure a balanced and representative spread of views, no more than two people from any one organisation were asked to attend. A list of attendees is attached.
The event was facilitated by an independent facilitator, Dr Alison Millward, from Alison Millward Associates, who has also written this report.
Report of Discussions
After three short presentations on Push Bike’s vision for a more cycling and walking friendly Birmingham, the health, well being and economic justifications for seeking to increase and speed up provision for cyclists and walkers, and how the cycle network in Sandwell had been designed and implemented, participants worked in two small groups to identify:
- Issues
- Barriers to be overcome
- Strategy development and its geographical coverage
- Demand for a coalition.
Issues
It was felt that current strategies emphasise the needs of commuter cyclists, but not leisure cyclists or those who would like to make more local trips around their neighbourhoods (especially young people getting to school). To engage these groups there is a need to:
Promote
the use of all quiet roads (not just designated cycle routes)
Provide accompanied guided journeys to familiarise cyclists with routes,
increase confidence and teach safe riding skills
- Provide cycle training
- Improve provision and safety at junctions
- Making cycling cool and actually do it – use of different role models for segments of society wish to target
- Run more fun events to raise profile of walking and cycling eg something equivalent BRMB’s walkathon for cycling
- The Push Bike vision of a healthy, friendly, safe, accessible and prosperous city for people to visit, live and work in, was widely supported (see web site for details of this contained Howard Boyd’s presentation slides).
Barriers
- The barriers that would need to be overcome to achieve these objectives included:
- Getting the authorities to change their priorities and include more revenue based projects, not just capital improvements to the cycle network.
- Overcoming the public’s dislike of lower speed zones (10-20 mph) and the emergency services’ dislike of traffic calming measures
- Engaging substantial sections of society not yet involved in cycling eg Asian community and women
- Lack of staff in transport organisations.
Further research was needed on the deep seated barriers that prevented even those who said they would like to cycle more form doing so. Perhaps this was the group – “on the cusp” for the coalition and others to focus on first.
Recent events in Birmingham that had proved successful included the Milk Race, Active Travel Day and the Cycle Bonanza, but these all focused on people who were cycling already. There is an expectation that the City Council and the Active Travel Group will be promoting more events in early 2005.
There was a need to engage more with business leaders, to encourage them to make better provision for employees wishing to cycle to work, but this was considered to be a lower priority than increasing levels of walking and cycling for leisure and local journeys.
The soon to be revised Local Transport Plan will cover the West Midlands and therefore perhaps the coalition should too. It is anticipated by Centro and others that few changes will be made to the existing version of the LTP (2003) - only an updating of costs against each of the proposals still to be implemented.
Participants were concerned at the lack of consultation that had occurred so far on the review of the LTP and appreciated the need to make their view known as soon as possible as responses were required in early January, 2005. It was known that an article had appeared in Birmingham’s VOICE paper, but none of the primary care trust representatives at the meeting had been consulted, nor some of the council cycling officers. It was also noted that government had yet to issue final guidance on the review of LTPs.
It was noted that Council leaders have been slow in deciding their priorities up to this point but that political will was critical to achieving change.
Strategy
development for the coalition
It was agreed that the embryonic coalition present at Meeting 1 should
meet again and very soon, given the pressure to respond quickly to the
LTP review. Additional invitations should be issued to cycling and walking
interests in all the West Midland boroughs.
Some Links
- Birmingham has a 1% cycling rate
- Sandwell has planned its cycle network, and we heard how this was done. The results were impressive, and it is planned the network will be semi-automatically extended on an on-going basis for the next 10 or more years, until a decent network is established.
- Very high cycling rates have been achieved in many European cities, and in others around the world. For example: Amsterdam (50%cycling), Ferrara, Copenhagen, Cambridge, and significant rates in Hull and central London .
- humps are frowned upon as a way to slow traffic down. A recent report was withdrawn as totally incorrect.
- London Cycle Network costed £30,000/km.
David Kinshucks presentation....cycling/walking savings
£500 million could be saved by creating a safe Cycling network & model in Birmingham, over 5 years. A comprehensive network in the city would cost £1-300m, if costed at the same price of the
- £60m/year…..fewer road accidents (50% reduction .. slower speeds, now £120m/year). This will help pedestrians (especially children and the elderly) considerably as well. See and here .
- £62m/year…..…..less obesity/diabetes (Health is £1b/year/city, obesity costs 25% =£250m, if 25% cycle there will be 25% less obesity) See and here and here .
- £8m/year………...improved mental health (mental health is £100m/year/city, if 25% cycle they will have 33% fewer problems and improved relationships…saving £8m/year) See and here and here.
- £25m/year……....less crime (crime is £1b/year/city, if 25% cycle they will commit 10% less crime) See and here and here .
- £25m/year…….….higher academic achievement (education is £1b/year/city, if 25% cycle they will have 10% greater academic achievement, a gain of £25m/year). See
- 10% less drug use and £100+m….new investments, as the city becomes more pleasant See .
- See this model (needs Flash player installed from Flash Web site here) .
- In other correspondence, it has been pointed out to me that 2005 particulate pollution targets (PM 2.5 & PM 10) will be exceeded, and this must be addressed in the LTP. See. These particulates, at Birmingham levels, will contribute to about 8-9% of the city's cardiovascular disease, such as strokes and heart attacks, and many other diseases, such as macular degeneration.