Nice to see you, to see you NICE

We repeatedly lobbied Harrogate hospital this year to ask them to encourage cycling for their staff. We offered our help. They did nothing. In fact they never really answered our letters at all. Indifference would be a fair description of the response we got.

North Yorkshire County Council have no plan in place to develop cycle infrastructure, have no cycle officer, spend no money on adult cycle training and have refused all the offers we have made to work with them to address these issues. They have just removed the only forum for consulting with local cyclists.

Wouldn't it be ironic if a respected and influential national body issued guidance that said the NHS and Local authorities should actively work to promote cycling? That these kinds of exercise are some of the best ways of reducing heart disease. Imagine if they said not exercising enough is as bad for you as smoking? Try and think how it would be if they said that transport planners and health promoters at local level should always consider cycling and walking in the decisions they make?

Just think how it would be if they said that a multi agency integrated approach is required?

...requires action on many fronts – and by many different sectors. A range of issues have to be addressed, including environmental, social, financial and personal factors.

What if they specifically said that better cycling infrastructure is part of the solution?

...measures to reduce road dangers and to reallocate road space to create a more supportive environment.

How would it be If they said that this was urgent and should happen now? That if we reached cycling levels like Denmark and the Netherlands we would save the NHS billions?

Finally if your mind can hold the idea, what if they said that they have multiple pieces of data that show that this action will work and that is why they are making this recommendation?

Well that just happened and a whole lot more. The NICE people who make evidence based recommendations about the safety and effectiveness of drugs and vaccinations, have now issued guidance that says this and more. They have said that we can save lives by getting people to walk and cycle. That 2/3 of the UK adult population are so inactive their health is at risk and that many people die because of their inactivity.

This is dynamite, Local government needs to do more to promote cycling. the NHS needs to do more to promote cycling, people like cycle Harrogate need to do more do promote cycling.

Well look we are trying to do our bit for free and with vigour but we are keen amateurs  We are a few people who speak for a few hundred more. We are asking for change. We are asking to work with local government and local agencies, we want to help, not to spend our time whinging at you, but we need dialogue and discussion not the door slamming in our face. Thus far we have been treated like the disease rather than part of the cure.

Are you doing all you should to promote and make simple daily cycling North Yorkshire County Council transport department? Could we help?

Are you doing all you should to promote and encourage cycling Harrogate District Hospital? Could we Help?

Here is a link to the nice guidance
this is the press release
here is the supporting evidence

What's occurin'?

Its been quiet from us recently here is a mini news round up of what's been going on.

Firstly a plug. If you are near a radio at 2.15 tomorrow put radio 4 on and catch the radio play about local hero Beryl Burton or catch it on the Iplayer afterwards. Its her cycleway we have asked to be repaired over the last year to no avail, beginning to think this might be a DIY job and why not?

Next up is where cycling in Harrogate is at. Firstly the good news. There is about half a million quid to be spent on cycling. At the moment its not clear how, or where that will be spent or even who will decide. I would love to say what and where but nobody knows at the moment, it does look like somebody at the council has been given the job of spending it at least so that's good.

Now the other stuff. The head of transportation at North Yorkshire County Council has now formally said no to a Cycle officer for North Yorkshire. I think he was tired of being asked, his letter that I saw was a "final definitive position". On a more positive note they have changed the way they deal with cycling in the county so that it will be considered in the same structured way as car and pedestrian transport. That won't mean any more infrastructure necessarily but it may be a subtle shift in the right direction or even an acknowledgement that people ride bikes.

Disappointingly and I think wrongly NYCC have decided to stop consulting with the Harrogate Cycling Group on the grounds of cost and they are unwilling to run a forum themselves. This at a stroke removes the main conduit for trying to steer local infrastructure development, this is a bad thing as NYCC don't have a plan.

Related to this we and other local activists have been lobbying Andrew Jones about how NYCC  deal with cycling specifically in Harrogate. It seems he shares some of our concerns, namely that without dialogue progress will be even harder than it has been recently. It looks like he will be meeting with North Yorkshire Council chief Exec Richard Flinton to see if we can get some channels open again.

So in summary the picture is mixed. For what its worth I think North Yorkshire still aren't really that   interested and money is a convenient excuse. They seem keen to trumpet "their" past achievements even though most of these were lobbied for by activists, rather than look forward to a more cycle friendly future. It would be very refreshing to be proved wrong.

Guest post from Simon Williams - Cycling in Harrogate

Harrogate is a lovely place to work and live, it’s not too big, it’s not too small, and it’s virtually crime
free. The citizens of the town are pleasant and law abiding, but put them in a car, and the world
seems to change.

I’ve lived and worked in Harrogate over the last 22 years and for the last few years I’ve taken
advantage of a cycle to work scheme through the company I work for. A fantastic scheme, that I
encourage anyone who has the option, to use it.

Obviously the main aim of the scheme is to encourage people to leave the car at home and use the
bike to get to and from work, and for me a journey of 3.5miles is an easy choice, as long as I can get
organised and have work clothes, towel and shower gel to hand at work once I get there!

You would think that travelling 3.5miles through this lovely town would be stress free, pleasant and
leave me full of life when I get to work, but this is not always the case. On the roads of Harrogate,
and I am sure most towns around the country, car users have changed over the years, and quite
frankly made the journey far from safe.

On my own blog site, I recently posted an article about car drivers and the lack of road sense, mainly
around the fact that traffic lights during rush hour times seem to have become meaningless, with
more and more cars not just jumping an amber/red light but actually choosing to follow two or three
other cars through a red light. Add to this, mounting kerbs to get round stationary traffic and parking
on double yellow lines on the corners of roads near schools, and you can see that it’s not the safest
place to be.

Now put yourself on two wheels, with your only protection being a helmet – something I think
should be made a legal requirement for cyclists, but that is another debate!

I lose count of the number of times on my journey, a car will get impatient, revving the engine
before flying past very close, or as you come to go past a junction and you can see a car edging to
get out before you reach it, wondering if this is the one who will knock you off. The relief when I get
to work or back home is immense some days.

The council have tried to make things a bit easier, you can now cycle legally on the stray paths,
though not all of them, of the cycle routes takes you onto Stray Reign and up to a busy roundabout
instead of across another path, but the cycle lanes don’t seem to be a priority, they aren’t in great
numbers or ideal, take the one on Oatlands Drive, which is used for people to park cars so they can
walk their dogs or fly kites!

In summary, I do think the council should look at its cycling provisions and see if anymore can be
done, and car drivers, please don’t rush, set off earlier, take a bit of time, think about cyclists, but I
encourage everyone to get on their bikes and get out in the fresh air, it has health benefits. But be
careful!!

About the Author

Simon Williams is 44 years old, Married with 4 kids, he has lived in Harrogate for 13 years and worked in IT in Harrogate for nearly 22 years. A Former Triathlon, marathon and Ultra marathon participant, now a regular park runner and not regular enough cyclist.

You can catch up with Simon on his blog swcoachblog.wordpress.com

Why Cycling is less risky than not Cycling

Cycle accidents have been in the news this week. Bradley Wiggins had a lucky escape and so did Shane Sutton. The question for me that follows these high profile accidents has to be is cycling dangerous? Turns out the answer is ermm, no not really, and the benefits of the exercise far outweigh the risks of riding the bike. So that's not what we hear is it?

This is an interesting table   if you like me, like data of course, it shows relative risks of death of a few sports and pastimes. Now its a bit out of date (1986) but I'll bet it hasn't changed that much.

	Climbing	137
	Motor sports	81
	Fishing	41
	Horse riding	29
	Swimming	7.0
	Athletics	5.7
	Football	4.9
	Tennis	4.2
	Cycling	1.0
Safer	Golf	0.83
	Rambling	0.06

I'm a climber. I climb about as often as I cycle and I have done both regularly for over 25 years. To be honest I feel safer when I climb than on a bike. Turns out I'm on average 137 times less safe climbing as I am on a bike. I do a few things to minimise the risks when climbing, I generally wear a helmet and I don't free solo many big routes any more, nor do I go on many glaciers but still. I bet I still run way more risks climbing than when cycling.

Here is another table that tries to quantify the risks of death against the benefits of the exercise. This is a bit more of a difficult one. If you are fit already and exercise regularly riding a bike is not going to make you live longer. You will of course do your bit to ease congestion and you may have fun and save on petrol. However if you are sedentary so you  take little or no exercise and you start riding a bike now we are in most definitely in business. The second table shows that the benefits of cycling massively outweigh the risks by somewhere between 13:1 and 35:1 it depends on the data set and I have ignored the report that claims a benefit of 415:1 as that seems plainly daft.

Now to get these benefits it's not enough to own a bike you have to ride it. If you can do half an hour three times a week or ideally five or more you are getting the benefits that the studies above claim. So a 15 minute commute of say a couple of miles would be perfect. You don't by the way need to ride like Wiggins we are talking gentle exercise here. Incidentally being overweight isn't really the problem as long as you exercise regularly. See this marvellous video for a good summary of the studies on the positive effects of exercise.

So the people who have most to gain from riding bikes are people who could ride them to work regularly, who are currently not doing much exercise. There are lots of people like this in the UK maybe as much as two thirds of the adult population and many in Harrogate. Harrogate lends itself to bikes, it is small and many people's commutes are relatively short. The good thing is once people become bike riders they tend to keep doing it. So how to get them to start? Well one of the reasons that comes up again and again is fear of the road network. Now as we have seen, oddly its safer than you think but how to remove the fear?

Well a start is to get more people doing it. Its bad enough doing something you think is dangerous it's much worse if you are on your own. Creating a cycle culture where it not seen as weird is a start, we are on to a winner here in Harrogate there are a fair few of cyclists already and not just leisure riders, you do see people using bikes to commute. So hopefully pointing out that you are better cycling than sitting down might be a start.

Employers and I mean large ones should do more. I think the Hospital in Harrogate should do more They could offer incentives, free breakfasts have worked in a few places and better safe cycle parking. It would help their terrible parking problem and impact positively on their sickness rates too. We have repeatedly asked them about this, the silence is deafening.

Next  better infrastructure this is the "build it and they will come" argument and that is where we will continue to lobby local government. Actively promoting the routes that exist would be a good start. Adult cycle training could be prescribed in the same way that GP's now prescribe trips to the gym and why not throw in a bike from one of the excellent recycling schemes that are springing up? Oh and try and finish the integrated network in Harrogate that is currently patchy and piecemeal. If people felt catered for and their mates were doing it people would feel more inclined to save themselves a bit of petrol money.

So if you have a bike but don't ride it because you think it dangerous and you don't get two and a half hours of exercise a week you would be safer on a bike.

Support from a legend - record breaker Mike Hall talks to Cycle Harrogate

Mike Hall is quite an individual. Not only did he break the record for cycling round the world earlier this year but he supports our Cycle Officer campaign. 91 days to cycle round the world unsupported, some 18,000 and something miles that is pretty extraordinary. Oh and Mike is a Harrogate chap so he is a local legend to boot.

Somebody tipped me off that Mike had signed our petition and I got in touch in a hurry. Mike was good enough to answer a few questions and also publicly give his support to our campaign. Wow we have a celebrity endorsement, better keep going hard at it then then Mike would.

Here is what Mike had to say

Cycle Harrogate Mike you Broke the world record for cycling round the world which is an incredible achievement. Which person from your past or present influenced you the most whilst you were riding, or does all your strength come from within?

Mike Hall I suppose initially I was influenced by guys in mountain bike racing - particularly the guys that were racing 24 hour races solo, not stopping for any more than a couple of minutes at a time and lapping the circuit as fast as many of the relay teams. I'm now lucky enough to call most of those guys my friends and from there my horizons widened when I learned more about the big unsupported mountain bike races like the Tour Divide - a 2745 mile off-road race down the continental divide from Canada to Mexico and guys like Matthew Lee, 5 time winner would complete the journey in around 17 days with no outside support and carrying all their equipment. When I did the race in 2011 it taught me how to pack my bike superlight, do with out all but the essentials that I could ride long miles day after day over big mountain passes. It was those skills and knowledge I took to the World Cycle Race. When I was speculating on what could be achieved I thought of the achievements of Tommy Godwin. He showed that mileages of over 200 miles a day were humanly possible over a much longer period. I already knew I could do big distances for 2-3 weeks but it was what he and a few other pioneering others had done all those years ago, that gave me the confidence to keep it up for much longer. Another rider I often thought of on the ride was Tom Simpson who, despite the tragedy of his story, will always be an inspiration. 

CH Mike you signed our petition for a cycle officer for North Yorkshire and thank you very much, but why do you think a North Yorkshire County Council Cycling officer is important for cyclists in Harrogate and the county?

MH The recent summer of sporting success, particularly in cycling, along with the general trend and incentives for people to adopt more sustainable transport methods nationally mean that more and more people are either picking up bikes these days or thinking about it. That's a great thing for peoples health, reducing congestion and meeting environmental targets. Without appropriate representation, planning and infrastructure for the increased number of cyclists on the road, however, we risk this being a short term thing and we also fail to protect their safety whilst they are attempting to use a road system which is designed predominantly around motor vehicles. 

CH Elite cycling has been in the news a lot recently with the the Tour de France, the Olympics and your epic ride. What single thing could UK government do to improve the cycling experience for everyday cyclists?

MH I'm not sure I know what the biggest thing that would benefit the most cyclists is but I think the biggest thing the UK Government can do for me personally as a cyclist and probably many others is tackle the social issues of conflict among road users in an increasingly congested traffic system which is experiencing a surge in the population of cyclists. Cyclists are vulnerable road users yet there appears to be an increasing amount of animosity directed towards them in the media and on the roads, by motorists wishing harm to them. I fear that a 'them and us' culture is being fostered on the roads and in the press, between motorists and cyclists, rather than one of co-operation, mutual respect and sharing the road. As a cyclist it makes me worry that my safety could be willfully disregarded by other road users.

If you want to know more about Mike's ride this is a pretty nice article

or you can visit his website normallyaspiratedhuman.com

and this is another cycle based cause he supports Cycle a Difference

Impact, Fracture, Inflammatory comment - Bradley Wiggins is hit by a van

Bradley Wiggins is hit by a white van, you couldn't make it up. Only the fact that it was a woman not a man driving, stops the story being perfect. Wiggo it seems will be fine, but a broken rib really hurts, he is lucky and I am delighted it wasn't more serious, I wish him a swift recovery. I'm going to say something inflammatory now. In a way this is one of the best things that could have happened. Not because I want anyone hit by a car but because when it's Wiggo, who is a now a national treasure, it makes the news and cycle provision is back where it should be in the public eye.

Wouldn't it have been a tragedy had the outcome been worse. A nation that can produce a world beating champion could then allow him to perish on the poorly designed roads that he trains on due to poor public policy and under-investment?

Radio two ran a mature debate this morning that went beyond the standard mandatory helmet debate thank goodness, and talked about provision and then mentioned the Times campaign that got me interested in cycle provision. That was a direct result of Wiggos crash and so is me writing this and you are reading it too. I hope one man's heroics in France this summer and his broken body can actually bring about some real change on the nation's roads, that would be genius.

Shane Sutton head coach of team GB was hit yesterday too, he is in hospital under observation and I wish him health and luck too. How come we don't hear more about people being knocked off their bikes? The answer is simple, we do but only if you look really hard. Most people don't have a national or international profile and until this year cyclists where "other" and even when the cycle community runs the stories the mainstream media often don't.

Thing is Wiggo is one of all of us now and even the best rider in the world is no match for a ton of metal that hits him. I'm not suggesting it was the van drivers fault for all I know Wiggo may have been just as much to blame. Unlike a car on car incident though their is no guarantee that all that needs to happen after a bit of a scrape is an exchange of phone numbers and ring your insurance company.

Pedestrians are vulnerable road users we make special provision for them. Cyclists are equally vulnerable road users we make little or no provision for them. That can't be right, that has to change. We need better educated motorists, we need better provision and we need more people riding bikes.

Its important to remember that even when these stories are in the news. If you ride a bike you are likely to live longer than if you don't. The benefits of the exercise outweigh the risks of being killed on your bike. That doesn't mean I think we have a road environment that is correct, but sitting still is more of a risk then sitting on a bike.

Come on Government, implement Strict Liability that presumes cars are at fault when bikes are hit unless proved otherwise. That assumes bikes are at fault when pedestrians are hit unless proved otherwise. You could do that this parliament and it would give some protection in proportion to the risks different road users run. This law seems to be working well in the Netherlands, they do bikes.

Come on North Yorkshire County Council your failure to take the needs of cyclists in your county seriously is just plain wrong, do more do it now.

Falling on deaf ears, 25% there and creating an NYCC Cycling Policy

I went and spoke at the council area committee meeting at the Cairn Hotel on Thursday morning. That was a first from a lifetime experience point of view. I had asked to talk about our cycle officer campaign, you get allocated 3 minutes and told to speak up and use the microphone as some of the councillors are hard of hearing (I'm not making this up).

Before I had my go Gia Margolis spoke with eloquence and passion about the impending car crash (pun intended) that appears to be the planned junction re-design for the new M & S store on Leeds Rd. With fairly customary vigour and massive sustainable indifference, North Yorkshire Highways seem to have ignored the needs of cyclists and pedestrians almost totally. The existing busy junction will be replaced by three lanes of traffic heading into town making life for anyone not in a car essentially worse. Pavements will be narrowed in places, verges removed. Another opportunity to add cycle provision squandered on the altar of "congestion management". Although it does seem that this one may be a work in progress, a few councillors seemed really unhappy about how the cards have been dealt, we shall have to wait and see.

Anyway my three minutes arrived. I mentioned the huge support from the local cycle community. I mentioned the fiasco over Knaresborough Rd and the fact we had complained about the process and our complaint had been upheld. Oh I forgot to mention that the council's complaints people found the way it dealt with us over Knaresborough road was wrong. At least the complaints procedure seems fit for purpose, not really the effect we were hoping for though. Finally I talked about Beryl Burton, five times world champion and inspiration for a cycleway in her name form Knaresborough to Harrogate that is now steadily falling to ruin as nobody in local government can be bothered to spend a day and a few thousand quid fixing it. I said we should be proud of our great local sports people and her memory deserved better treatment.

Now it wasn't my best three minutes of public speaking but I'm told I was pretty clear. Then I got a prepared response from a council wonk which I will now summarise. "No cycling officer"

So there you go 400 people want a Cycle Officer to help work for sustainable transport in Harrogate and North Yorkshire and the transport department don't. Except we don't feel like giving in just yet, at 1600 signatures we get a debate on a cycle officer. I think its time to up the pressure and get more people to sign, this one is still winnable  I also think  after doing my homework that their are reasons why its easy for North Yorkshire Council to say no to a cycle officer, allow me to explain without hopefully boring you to death. Hold tight I may use statistics in the next section.

Transport policy in North Yorkshire is governed by what is called the Local Transport Plan (LTP) we currently have one that is running from 2011 to 2016. In it cycling is mentioned 21 times but then it is a 177 page document, so not exactly a pivotal role in the plan.

It talks about encouraging cycling but only once is there a specific mention of making any physical infrastructure improvements for cyclists and then it is behind other provision for pedestrians in a hierarchy of action. However there is a great deal about spending money and improving major A roads.  Basically I think the Council's transport department have no effective policy obligation to do anything to provide for cyclists and that is why we are hitting a brick wall when we ask. I don't buy the money argument though, if there is enough for making some roads for cars you could spend a bit on bikes.

In my view Harrogate and Knaresborugh appear to be a special case within North Yorkshire. The population of Knaresborough and Harrogate is about 91,000, the population of the whole of North Yorkshire  about 600,000. We may be geographically insignificant, but we are very dense from a people point of view. With the possible exception of Scarborough, Harrogate and Knaresborough are the two places in North Yorkshire where large scale urban cycle provision makes sense. Now if you are still with me and not glazing over.

Harrogate especially has a large urban population and is relatively small as towns go. Its a great place to cycle round in principle. Trouble is NYCC have a transport policy aimed for most part at the sparsely populated county as a whole, where car use and provision of  car friendly roads makes good sense for daily travel. Even when they accept that 62% of their population live in towns these towns are at best half the size of Harrogate and most way smaller. Harrogate is the elephant in the room. We need a policy for Harrogate that actively champions bikes, buses and traffic calming rather than seeing it as an unattainable ideal or as an irrelevance. Sorry I know this is dull, keep going your doing well.

So time I think to set about getting NYCC to take a fresh and critical look at its current transport plan. It is poorly serving the needs of the residents of Harrogate from a congestion, health and quality of life point of view. We need a local transport plan that contains commitments to do rather more than "promote" cycling. It needs to see the development of urban cycling in its congested town to be a crucial tool to ease the congestion and pollution that it admits is a big problem.  A problem that the improving, widening and sometimes silly re-lining of its current road network has so far failed to do, things are still getting worse not better at the moment. Build roads better suited to car use and you get more car use wow, what a surprise that is. This has been known for years, but it still seems to form the basis of North Yorkshire's transport policy. I know, I know will he never finish this post?

I think the next developments for Cycle Harrogate are to keep the pressure up for a cycle officer but even if and when one is appointed they will only carry out current car-centric policy more effectively. What we need is to work top down to try and change the policy and for that we need some people with real clout batting for us. Any Ideas?  I have a couple, more soon.