Reclaiming our streets

Inspired by campaigns such as Sustrans "Free Range Kids" and The Times Cycle Campaign I decided that 20mph speed limits were the answer for my own village of Stoke Golding. However as I started to dig around and talk to people the answer became less clear to me. I took a step back and thought about what I was trying to achieve. The answer to this was easier - I wanted streets where people could live, play and socialise rather than it being just a thoroughfare for cars. In short I wanted to hand back streets to the people who live there - but how to do it?

Traffic speeds are critical, but streets also need to look and feel like a "place" rather than a highway. This can become a virtuous circle as research shows that drivers will naturally slow when there are people about and when the street "tells" them they need to go slow. This is generally talked about as "natural" or "psychological" calming. Designed correctly you should not need lots of hard calming measures such as speed bumps. This is all very well for a new development, but harder to achieve for existing streets.

I took a trip out to have a proper look at the neighbouring village of Higham on the Hill which is a "home zone". This has been done very nicely - not too many signs, no speed bumps, but subtle changes in road colour and texture, narrowing of roads. Planters, benches and attractive bollards. All great, but a whooping price tag of £400,000!!

This set me talking to the DIY Streets team at Sustrans. Their premise is that there are effective changes that can be made to streets

at low cost. A build out here and there, some changes in road texture or colour or a planter or two. The key here is that some of these can be done by the community themselves. This keeps costs low and builds ownership. They passed on some very useful resources that give some principles for street design, and also some ideas for how you can enliven streets - a temporary or moveable street cafe or a street side art gallery for example. Anything that will bring the community out and allow them to reclaim their streets.

So whilst I haven't given up on 20mph limits, I now believe that they are not enough on their own. At best they will achieve a marginal reduction in speed, but that alone will not be enough to reclaim the streets.

So where do I go from here? Well I have a slot at the Annual Parish Meeting in late April where I am hoping that I can achieve buy in to the vision and get support from the Parish Council and community. What I would then like to do is:

- start properly campaigning for reduced speed limits in the village;

- pick a particular problem and get some changes implemented on the ground; I think this is key to building momentum and credibility

- get an streets design for the village identifying affordable changes (Sustrans DIY Streets team can do this)

As ever funding will be a challenge, but we can but try. I will keep you posted through the blog as this develops.

I have unearthed quite a few good resources during my research - get in touch if you are interested and I may be able to point you in the right direction. Equally if anybody out there has been there / done it I would love to hear from you.

Leicestershire Cycle Training

Leicestershire County Council are running adult cycle training courses again this year. There are courses in our patch at Hinckley, Barwell and Coalville. We are looking at how we can support the newly trained cyclists. More details here http://www.leics.gov.uk/adult_cycling_leaflet.pdf

National Cycle Network – Route 52 Signing Ride

Hi all, on 2^nd January 2012, I took a trip out to Nuneaton, to attend to the signing of a part of NCN52, under my care. My partner Jean dropped me off, with my step son, George and our bikes, near the junction of the Coventry Canal and Midland Road.

We had a lot of signing to take care of around the ramp linking the Coventry Canal to Midland Road, especially following the route in a South-West direction. There was no sign directing cyclists off of Midland Road, and the addition of a sign with a “↙” arrow was needed to clarify “doubling back” onto the tow path, at the bottom of the ramp, in order to follow the route.

The signs exiting the canal (travelling NE) were a little clearer, but I placed the arrow pointing up the ramp, for clarification. Again there was no signing at the top of the ramp, indicating a left turn onto Midland Road.

This may seem like a dense placement of signage in a small area, but at the same time, much needed to avoid confusion and ambiguity. Yes over-signing can lead to confusion, but it is far better than undersigning or non-signing which leaves everyone lost. The first time I rode this route, even armed with a map, I gave up at this point. I was back at home looking on google satellite & street view, before I discovered where the route went.

My advice – Imagine you are directing a stranger (to the area) along your route. If you have ridden for a while and there has been no sign, place a confirmation sign. It is reassuring that you are still on the right track. There is nothing worse than the feeling “Have I taken a wrong turn?”

Our next area of concern was Stoney Road. Exiting right onto Midland Road needed a replacement sign, for a damaged one. Further along Network Rail are doing some track alterations and demolishing a bridge, new signs were required to follow the now diverted course of Stoney Road.

We then set off along our off-road travels, along the Weddington Country Walk, pausing to place a 52 sticker that was missing. George and I erected a couple of Safety Signs where our route crossed the main A444, Weddington Road.

The last 3 signs were placed in Higham-on-the-Hill, to help allay confusion, or to confirm the route. My other half then collected us at a farm entrance, off Stoke Road, helping us hang our bikes on the back of the car, before setting off home.

A cold but pleasant way to spend the first bank holiday of the year; we have made a photo diary of our efforts, just to keep a record. There are no “before” shots, as a blank fence or post would present you with little interest.

Kev Regester – Ranger NCN52 (Weddington Country Walk)

NCN 524 Nuneaton / Tamworth - we have a route

I went out with Sustrans area manager Ed Healey yesterday and we rode the proposed route for NCN 524 from Nuneaton to Tamworth and its looking good. The proposed route is here http://ridewithgps.com/routes/818820.

It took us a while to figure out the best way out of Nuneaton station but in the end we settled on the south of the ringway heading clockwise. Marginally long than the anticlockwise route, but cycle paths and crossings are good and there are plenty of places to hang signs.

Once off the ring road, the minor roads worked pretty well. A little disappointing that the bridge where we cross NCN52 does not have good access to the towpath (quite a few steps). However there are reasonable links to the next bridge where access is better. Whittleford Park (pictured) worked OK although surface was not great in places and we still have to find the best exit place from the park near Bucks Hill. Places to stick signs also look a little limited.

Once on the North Warwickshire cycle way its all pretty straightforward although we are planning to deviate from it for a short while as we think we have found a better route. After the bridleway at the end of Ridge Lane we propose to take the first left which gets us off the fast B4116 Coleshill Road sooner. We rejoin the North Warwickshire cycleway just west of Baxterley.

From here the route through Wood End is fine (a bit hilly) and the lanes through Whateley are very pretty. Once we are in Tamworth its cycle paths all the way - all with good road crossings. We choose a route to the west through Dosthill, the river and along Peelers Way. This seems to give a good balance of speed, ease of signing and safety.

So there are a few details left to iron out. Ed needs to get sign on from the councils. We then need to to a detailed signing survey (what signs do we need, where can we stick them?) before finding some willing volunteers to do the signing.

East Midlands Region Group Coordinator Meeting

On Sat 22nd Oct ,Group Coordinators from the East Midlands met up in Derby. Les Sims who hosted the meeting has produced some notes, but there were a few other points I thought it would be useful to feedback.

Derby Cycling.
Derby has some great cycle routes. Coming from the south it was an easy (albeit quite long) ride to get to our meeting place at Derby station. Signing was very good with lots of traffic free routes right into the town centre. For a pre-meeting ride we cycled out to Etwell along NCN 54 much along an old railway track. At Etwell the route joins NCN 68 the Pennine Cycleway which will take you a hilly 355 miles to Berwick! It was only fairly recently that I became fully aware of the extent of this route. A well kept secret.

Meeting Points

CycleNation
Simon Geller who is the secretary for CycleNation gave some feedback on their recent annual conference in Sheffield. I must admit I had not heard of them before. They are an umbrella organisation for regional campaigning groups. You might want to check them out http://www.cyclenation.org.uk/index.php

Freshairmiles rides
I think there is a general problem in recruiting people onto rides - particularly novice riders. The key learning points from the discussion seemed to be:
- do something other than just a cycle ride - e.g a historical tour
- talk about time rather than mileage
- aa series of rides rather than a one off

FreeRange Kids
Dave Stevens from Sustrans outlined this campaign. It brings together a number of initiatives Sustrans has been doing for a while - "safe routes to schools", "diy streets", "bike it". There was a discussion about how ranger groups can support the campaign. There seemed to be a mixture of top down actions (e.g. policy and campaigning) and bottom up - lobby for a particular local issue (e.g. a cycle path to a local school).

As much as I like Coalville

If you are travelling north on NCN 52 (as I was) and you want to go to Melbourne or Derby and beyond then NCN 52 will work for you taking you from Ravenstone through Coalville, Whitwick and Grace Dieu to meet NCN 6 at Osgathorpe.

Thats fine, but not great if you are in a hurry - there are a number of off road sections and it is slow. Using NCN 52 /6 to get from Ravenstone to Worthington (the start of the Cloud Trail) on NCN 6 measures 9 miles. Use minor roads through Sinope, Coleorton and Newbold and the distance come down to just over 5 miles!! Yes there are a couple of quite busy roads to cross, but mostly they are quiet country lanes.

Heres a link to the route in more detail http://ridewithgps.com/routes/783263/ choose the map background to be "OSM Cycle" to see the NCN at the same times.

I'm not suggesting a reroute, but it might be useful to establish this as a route in its own right. What do others think - particularly Joe, Keith

Audax first timer

I had an aim this year to do 100 miles in a day - not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea. I knew I didn't want to do it on my own so I started looking around for local events. I found a number of organised Sportive and Audax rides. I struggled to find the difference, but as far as I could establish Sportives were more serious - riding hard and fast and not stopping much and Audaxs more relaxed - plenty of tea and cake stops. So it was an Audax for me.

My son Kevin and I found a convenient 150km Audax starting out of Derby (where he lives) on a gloriously sunny day at the beginning of October. Registration was simple and easy (and cheap) and we were sent a route cue sheet and also a link to a downloadable GPS route. Kevin spent many happy hours with his smartphone / GPS and failed. I went low tech and found a plastic bag, a piece of hardboard, a cable tie and a couple of bulldog clips - fantastic.

We set out from Derby about 8:30 after a welcome tea and biscuits. Just 31 riders - I had expected more. There were 5o for the 100km ride which started a little latter. First stop the cafe at Moira 50km away which we arrived at without mishap about 2 hours later. We stopped here for tea and cakes - very nice.

Replenished we carried on west through Staffordshire and some very pretty lanes and villages to our next stop and check point another 50Km away at Bramshall. All was going well and we were nearly there when Kevin got a "snake bike" puncture on a fast downhill. Spare tube out we thought we would have it changed in 5 mins. Not so - Kevin had deep profile rims and we had short valve stems. After much faffing about we were rescued by a fellow rider who had a spare with longer valve stems - 45 minutes wasted though. We were glad of the next checkpoint to clean up, get some sandwiches and to recount our tail of woe.

Refreshed we set off on the final 50km now heading broadly east back towards Derby. A bit of tricky navigation for a while but well described on the route cards. Then onto Long Lane which was a 10km slog. After this a final few kms back into Derby where we were welcomed with a lavish spread of tea, sandwiches and cakes.

A great day out and one which we will certainly repeat. Everbody was very friendly and very helpful and we were made to feel welcome. Sometimes we rode on our own, sometimes we joined up with other groups, but we did not feel pressured to go any particular pace. At the end of the day we had been in the saddle for almost exactly 6 hours and had taken about 8.5 hours (would have been less without the puncture stop). Because of the cafe stops it felt more like 3 50km rides rather than a 100 mile ride and was easier than I had anticipated. That said we weren't fit to do much afterwards than collapse to the nearest pub for a welcome drink and more food.

If you want to try it out the Audax UK website has a list of events and a map view will show you what is going on near you. http://www.aukweb.net/events/ and here is our 150km route http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=300955