Councillors talk to Cyclists, Money to be spent - Rejoice

Via twitter I got in touch with councillor Jim Clark about the total lack of consultation by North Yorkshire County Council over the money to be spent on cycling infrastructure over the next two years in Harrogate (LSTF). He put me in touch with Rebecca Burnett who works for Andrew Jones MP, she  has been a BIG HELP moving things forward. We had been trying to get a response from Council Officers in transport for over six months and we got platitudes and commitments that were never kept.

Rebbeca has now put me and local cycle activists in touch with Councillor Richard Cooper who is chair of the LSTF steering committee and he has let us have a look at the proposals for the spending. The proposals look good we have one or two comments and we will be feeding this back in a day or two. I will not bore you with specifics right now, but I will bore you at some length over the next couple of years in future posts I'm sure.

The committee meets for the first time on Thursday and it is nice to feel that we have been included in the process and hopefully can contribute to infrastructure developement for all bike riders in Harrogate. More importantly I hope we can build on the relationships we have built with local government so that cycle infrastructure in Harrogate meets the needs of Harrogate cyclists going forward.

Skipton Road slow, slow. Slow slow slow

There was a news story recently that named Skipton Road in Harrogate was one of the most congested roads in the UK outside London. If you use the road you will know that it is pretty busy in rush hour to say the least. Chris Lee from RAM tracking who carried out the study got in touch recently. Here in a guest post he explains how they did the study and he also includes some resources you might find useful.

I recently worked with RAM Tracking to help put together a study that Cycle Harrogate tweeted about recently. The study looked at the most congested non-motorway roads in the UK during rush hour in February this year, and the findings are shown on the interactive map at the bottom:

Since being carried out, this study has attracted media attention from several news outlets, from local publications like the Yorkshire Post and Harrogate News, to nationwide publications like LBC, ITV, and the Daily Mail. I thought I’d write a little bit about how it was carried out, to contextualise the findings.
The large data set of all GPS records from vehicles using RAM’s trackers was compiled for February this year. That was around half a million data points.
A filter was applied so that only records collected between 8 and 9am were shown. This was the rush hour data.
Another filter was applied that added records collected between 11 and 12 noon to be shown as well. This was the comparison data.
The data was then sorted by road, and the roads were calculated which suffered the greatest reduction in speed during rush hour.
The 10 roads found in the final step were added to the map above, along with information about their average speeds. This obviously generated interest – some people attempted to discredit the findings, others found the locations of the roads very interesting (especially in places like Harrogate!). Personally, the study reaffirmed my decision to be a cycling commuter! It’s a nice feeling being able to dodge the traffic jams, although it does annoy me when I see other cyclists jump red lights as if the rules don’t apply to them.
I thought I’d finish with a few resources that can be helpful for planning a cycling commute:
MapMyRide: A website which allows you to record and track the rides you’ve done. You can either enter them manually, or use the MapMyRide app to record them for you via GPS. It’s nice to be able to look over the amount of distance you’ve covered!
 
The Cycle to Work Scheme: this is a scheme offered by many employers, which allows you to purchase a tax free bike and pay it back from your wages over an agreed period of time. It’s great for people who want to cycle but are put off by the initial investment
And possibly my favourite: this one has saved my skin numerous times!

Here is Ram Tracking's map

and here is the original on the RAM Tracking website

If we build it they will come - Traffic free to Spofforth

The Tour is still coming, the roads are going to be fixed so Cav and Wiggo can ride across them. Thing is, after that cars are going to use them mainly, which will be nice when I'm in a car but won't make me cycle anymore often.

LEGACY I keep hearing lots about LEGACY but its all talk. Here is a concrete idea for some legacy that we could all get behind.

The Nidderdale Greenway is already being loved by the people of Harrogate, be they cyclists, horse riders or walkers. I blogged about it a month ago and put a rough map online. 4500 people viewed my post, that is  viral for Cycle Harrogate. We need more of this kind of provision people want it and are using it it, this is a very good thing.

Here's is an idea that could make our town a better place and a more prosperous one too. I was sat with Harrogate Cycle Action on Monday evening being my usual stroppy self. Ginny Leonard from the CTC had come along to tell us how to try and get people interested in cycling when we realised they already are. They are mad for the Greenway in Harrogate, but not enough people from out of town know about it, yet.

Harrogate has no traffic free connection to Sustran's National Cycle Network. The nearest place you  can get on it is Spofforth. From there you can get yourself to Wetherby and on to York with barely the sniff of a car. To get to Spoforth at the moment though is back roads and a scary crossing of the main road.  Harrogate to its East is an island surrounded by a sea of cars. So kids and families don't ride to Spofforth and on to Wetherby and nobody really comes that way into town by bike.

What if the Tour's legacy was to link the excellent and much loved Nidderdale Greenway to the national cycle network at Spofforth? Then a family would have a choice of places to ride from Harrogate, west to the Dales, East to York. Bettter still folk could ride their bikes into Harrogate, stay a bit wander round the town, spend some money, maybe stop for the night (cyclists are hungry and thirsty and need places to sleep.) and then on to Ripley, eat ice cream  and on into the Dales. This is eco tourism gold and we have a winning ticket in the shape of the tour with which to make it happen.

Lets take the vision a step further. What if we got it open for next July? Folk could cycle in for the tour. How cool and bike friendly would Harrogate look? We would have shown that not only can we stage a major international cycling event but that we can get everyone in and out too.

What if whilst we were at it, we linked in the showground and put some cycle hire places in Wetherby and in town? We could help sort out the congestion problem for Yorkshire Show week. We could park some of them in Wetherby at the race course. Offer them a few quid off the ticket price and let them ride down the Tour De France cycle route into Harrogate.

We need some people to get behind this idea. We need councillors and the press to champion this. We could show Harrogate in the best possible light and build a Legacy that we can all be proud of and can all benefit from, but if we don't all want it. If we don't all make it happen. We just get Cav and Wiggo for a couple of hours and memories of when the circus came to town.

Family cycling in Grizedale forest

We camped over in Hawkshead in the Lakes at the weekend and we took the bikes. On Saturday we went to the cycle hire place at Grizedale forest and hired a tag-a-long to get our youngest mobile.

We picked a nice easy route of maybe 9 miles and set off. We rode the purple dots on the map on the left. The cycling was on forest tracks and the first climb up for maybe half an hour or so was steep in places. Steeper if you were towing a four year old who worked out pretty quickly that his dad couldn't see if he was peddling or not.

We were with another family and it was their first time on mountain bikes off road I suspect. There was some swearing, some muttering at "gears" and some glum, pale, grim faces. By the time we stopped for sweets there was that "leave me with the gun you go on" look from Mr Other Family.

The sweets worked and by lunch we were well up the side of the valley at Moor Top. Its was cold in the thin cloud but with some cheese butties inside we were all a bit more perky, so we zoomed round the fun blue loop in half an hour or so. It was all little hills and little descents if you kept the bike moving it was more roller-coaster than road.

The afternoon was spend whizzing down the other side of the valley getting rid of all the height we had put on in the morning. You got views down to the valley floor in between gaps in the trees and a deer lept across our path to add a touch of the exotic to the day.

The two older boys had a ball, there were many grins and behind me all I could hear from my youngest was "Faster, faster." I was trying to provide the best high quality adrenaline experience, without dropping the bike and turning him off cycling for life. It worked and my wrists will stop aching soon.

Mrs Cycle Harrogate was all grins too and having just got rid of her last mountain bike for her current city bike, she is now shopping for a replacement once more. Mrs Other Family was secretly having the time of her life but was finding the saddle on her bike a little unfriendly. We zoomed on finally descending steeply to Bogle Crag were we picked the road up and followed it back to the start.

We were back at the visitors centre in about 3 hours from setting off, after as good a days cycling as I have had since I got to blast some trails in California,  long before children were even a vague idea.

So if you are looking for some family friendly cycling and you find your self that side of the Pennines you could do much worse. We are going to have a look at Dalby Forest next and I'm hoping for as good a day.

Show me the money

I put a freedom of information request into North Yorkshire County Council about the 143 grand of Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) money that should have been spent in the year to this April.

Here is what they came back with...

This is what should have been spent and on what

Project	Programme 12/13 (£k)
Area 3 – Harrogate Town Centre	60
Radial 2 – A661 Wetherby Road Corridor	33
Cross Cutting Measures	50
Total	143

Here is what I got back as a statement of what was spent

Project	Project Element	Total Expenditure (£k)
Area 3 – Harrogate Town Centre	Cycling Infrastructure	19.988
	Cycle Storage	1.995
	Pedestrian Links	5.005
	Visitor Information	11.364
Radial 2 – A661 Wetherby Road Corridor	Cycle links to the Great Yorkshire Showground	13.004
	Travel Information for exhibition venues	19.184
Cross Cutting Measures	Bus pre-emption at traffic signals	48.950
	Cycle map	0.100
Deferral agreed with Department for Transport		22.474
Total		142.064

So your County Council transport department has money to spend on your behalf and hasn't bothered to do this. Out of 140k they were supposed to spend they failed to spend 22k. Should you be worried? Well thats 15% of what is available. If you want better cycling infrastructure and you are being told there is no money you should be. I have raised this issue with a few councillors but so far nobody seems interested. 

How should you vote tomorrow? Well that is entirely up to you but the current administration would claim to support sustainable transport but in practice they don't always. Lets see how they do in this financial year when there is much more money to spend.