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.