Boris in Lincoln - on hire bikes and tourism

I'm just heading home from a city break in Lincoln. I whisked @rachaelprince off for the weekend with no clue if it was a good idea or grounds for divorce.

The news was good, Lincoln has spent its civic money wisely and it's a great place to wander round. The steep hill up to the cathedral which is called Steep Hill, is full of chaotic medieval buildings which are now cafés and high end boutiques or are still pubs. The cathedral itself is worth a look. Even this confirmed atheisist spent a happy hour marvelling at a splendid piece of architecture and it's free on a Sunday god was on our side, oh me of little (well no) faith. 

The museum come art gallery called the Collection. is in a new piece of superb design that would have fitted in well in LA or Barcelona. All acute angles, oak and copper. With a stone cladding to make it fit in nicely with the old buildings. There was loads of stuff and lots of Saxon metalwork which you don't often see. They also had one room with some interesting contemporary artworks on the availability of data in the modern world. I liked the reconstruction of the five day journey of a stolen iPhone recreated from google maps stills running as a film. It covers some ground.

There were loads of great restaurants and cafés and bits of public art dotted about here and there. All in all it reminded me of York, Prague or even Edinburgh. 

I got to thinking what a good job Lincoln did of marketing itself to tourists as a destination. It had spent its money on infrastructure and then there was a really good map tying it all together, everything was on a human scale you could walk across the city in 15 minutes. As a result the streets were buzzing.

Harrogate and Knaresborough where tourism is also a big deal hasn't done as good a job of selling itself I think. If you sold these two towns as a package, Did one big map showing some routes for a day out. I think the weekend break and staycation  market which shows no sign of declining would come running. There is more to Harrogate than Betty's and a winter gardens that's now a pub. We don't seem to sell the package, we sell the parts.

This morning we had an hour before our train so we had a go on Lincoln's version of the Boris bike, which is new to the town. We saw some of the distinctive orange bikes at the station as we arrived and there were some down by the water front where we were staying. Getting two hired was a bit of a faff. Websites and two phone calls and then we were in. They are fairly robust machines with no chain but one rear chain stay holds a shaft drive. In all the faffing with the fairly clunky un-locking interface I didn't do any-more than give mine a once over before I got on it. I realised my mistake as the front tire was pretty soft and it was like pedalling through a soft mud eleven on Tarmac.

Anyway we headed off down the Sustran's route beside the Fossdyke and all was well. Two miles in my left pedal was doing something funky under my foot. I had a look and it had worked loose and the crank thread was on the way out. With no tools to sort it I tried to tighten it by hand,  but it was no good. It all but fell off so I took it off before it got any worse. so I peddled back one footed which was memorable and really hard work. There was also some roughness from the shaft drive which again seemed a bad sign on a nearly new bike. I was missing my own bike and it's lightweight zoomyness.

What of the scheme then? In principle it's great. Bikes you can use day or night for £4 a day. They are heavy though and I want to know who if anyone maintains them? I checked over the other bikes at the station as we left they all seemed in good nick maybe I was just unlucky? Thing is if these bikes are aimed at people who don't ride bikes that much they need to work and despite the efforts of the design to be maintenance free if I'd had a pump and a spanner with me things would have been better. I know there is a theft issue there but there must be a way?

So would I like to see something similar in Harrogate? Well if the teething problems can be ironed out yes. I think they are great for small journeys and you don't have to try and get your bike on the train. Given that our train from Retford to Lincoln was a bus I am glad we didn't try. Sustainable transport still has a way to go in England but at least we seem to be trying. Oh and if you have a partner that needs whisking away you could do worse than whisk towards Lincoln.

Electricity comes to Harrogate - Corcoach Bikes

So when someone got in-touch with me and said would I like to work with them to get more people cycling in Harrogate. As you can imagine I was interested.

Cor Coach bikes have been selling electric bikes down on Waterloo St near the fire station for a year now. On monday I went over for a chat, a coffee and a play on the merchandise.

Two local brothers  Andy and Richard Crawley, who are both keen cyclists and keen on cycling as transport, wanted to start a business selling bikes in Harrogate. Thing is Harrogate has lots of good bikes shops so they looked for a niche and Electric bikes is where they ended up.

I had a chat about with them about what Cycle Harrogate is about  and the local cycling scene and it seems like we have a common interest in getting people moving on two wheels. We may have come up with some ideas on how we could work together more on that later

So what were the bikes like? Well I had a go on two. One a sort of city-bike sit up and beg style number at just under the £1000 mark (so would work on the cycle to work scheme). Firstly they are not as heavy as you imagine despite the battery and the motor in the rear hub, barely different to a "normal" bike. Secondly they don't replace pedalling they assist you, so as you pedal the motor kicks in and without to much drama you are going faster and pedalling with less effort than normal. It was fun and it was easy. I was pleasantly surprised

The Ghost Bike

Range reckons to be  30 to 50 miles it depends how hard you pedal and how many hills there are. Recharge time is three to five hours and 1500 recharges from a battery. With an equivalent cost to a petrol car of roughly 1000 miles to the gallon. If you have a slightly longer commute or you are not the fittest cyclist in the world. One of these could be a way to get on your bike and save yourself lots of money over the running cost of a car, or more likely a second car.

Finally I had a go on £1800 pounds worth of Ghost bike a mountain bike with a motor and a drinks bottle shaped battery. It was lighter with a battery than my own bike is without and it was a real blast you could have some serious fun on one of these.

All in all an interesting trip and food for thought.

Rejoice - A new overcoat for Beryl Burton

I'm halfway through painting my utility room this afternoon when my phone starts pinging up twitter messages.

It's Rossett Conservatives @RossetCons letting me know the delightful and very welcome news that the Harrogate Knaresborough Beryl Burton Cycleway will be resurfaced in full as we all originally wanted.

Here is a post from Andrew Jones MP's blog with a bit of background to what happened. What he doesn't mention is the input from Councillor Richard Cooper who I think was a key player in getting this moving and Rebbeca Burnett who I  expect did her share of the heavy lifting too.

Best of all its become a joint project between Harrogate Borough Council and North Yorkshire County Council. So a win for the democratic process and I don't have to go and shovel tarmac myself in a blatant media stunt a few days before the Tour De France comes. This was where my thinking was headed if we didn't get a happy outcome.

I have to say that our elected representatives have done the business on this issue. I also need to thank Gavin Rutter  @Gav_Yorks from Stray FM for picking this up and the Harrogate Advertiser for running with it, even if the picture of me made me look a little disturbing.

I look forward to riding down the Beryl Burton on my moutain bike soon, but I'm going to treat myself to some slick tyres for speed and pretend I'm Beryl Burton. It will make a change from pretending I'm Mark Cavendish.

Some sense being talked by Politicians

Parliament debated cycling last night. As ever there were many warm words. Trouble is the overall road budget is 15 billion quid per year and cycling is getting 159 million over two years. I wonder why cycling only makes up 2% of all journey's?

However this speech from Angela Eagle shadow transport secretary contains some specific proposals something that despite the government's  support of cycling has not been matched by funding. If we want more people cycling, we need more cash, simples. I'm not suggesting this is really a party political issue, but you can't support something and then fail to fund it and not expect to be held to account by grumpy folk like me.

First, we must end the stop-start approach to supporting cycling, which means that we need long-term funding of the infrastructure needed for dedicated separate safe cycling routes. Ministers recently set out annual budgets for rail and road investment up to 2020-21, but they failed to do so for cycling infrastructure, which means that while there is a £28 billion commitment for roads, we have only a one-off £114 million from central Government for cycling, and that is spread across three years. It is time for a serious rethink of priorities within the roads budget with a proportion reallocated to deliver a long-term funding settlement for cycling infrastructure. 

The priority for investment to support cycling must be dedicated separated infrastructure to create safe routes. The focus has too often been on painting a thin section at the side of the road a different colour. Genuinely separated cycle routes are vital not only to improve safety but, as we have heard from many hon. Members, to build confidence and to encourage those who are not used to cycling to make the switch to two wheels. It is also important that a commitment to new infrastructure does not become an excuse not to improve the safety of cyclists on roads where there is no separation. The priority should be redesigning dangerous junctions where almost two thirds of cyclist deaths and serious injuries due to collisions take place. We need a much greater use of traffic light phasing to give cyclists a head start. 

Secondly, we need to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, so I propose a cycle safety assessment before new transport schemes are given the green light. In the same way in which Departments have to carry out regulatory impact assessments and equality impact assessments, there should be an obligation to cycle-proof new policies and projects. We need new enforceable design standards and measures to ensure compliance. 

Thirdly, we need national targets to cut deaths and serious injuries to be restored, but they should sit alongside a new target to increase levels of cycling. The number of cyclist deaths is tragically at a five-year high. Of course, targets alone are not the only answer, but they help to focus minds and efforts, so Ministers are wrong to reject them. However, it is vital to ensure that targets do not perversely lead to local authorities and others seeing the way to cut deaths and injuries as discouraging cycling. In fact, cycling becomes safer when more cyclists are on the road, so we should learn from the success that has been achieved in European countries that have set clear goals to increase levels of cycling alongside the policies necessary to achieve that. 

Fourthly, we should learn from Wales and extend to England its active travel legislation, which sets out clear duties on local authorities to support cycling. Local authorities are central to devising, prioritising and delivering measures to support cycling, so it is important that additional support from central Government is matched by clear obligations. To assist councils, we should provide them with a best-practice toolkit to boost cycling numbers that is based on what we learned from the cycling city and towns programme and evidence from abroad. Councils should be supported to deliver 20 mph zones, which should increasingly become an effective default in most residential areas. 

Fifthly, we must ensure that children and young people have every opportunity to cycle and to do so safely. The Government should not have ended long-term funding certainty for the Bikeability scheme, nor axed the requirement for school travel plans. Those decisions can and should be reversed. 

Sixthly, we need to make it easier for cycling to become part of the journey to work, even when the commute is too far to do by bike alone. Employers can play an important role in providing access to showers, changing facilities and lockers. However, our public transport providers need to step up and do much more too. Instead of the Government’s approach, which has been to propose a weakening of franchise obligations, we should toughen up the requirement to provide station facilities and on-train space for bikes in rail contracts. 

Seventhly, we need to ensure that justice is done and seen to be done in cases where collisions lead to the death of cyclists and serious injuries. I welcome the recent commitment from Ministers to initiate a review of sentencing guidelines. It is vital that this is a comprehensive review of the justice system and how it protects vulnerable road users, and it should be concluded without delay in this Parliament. We are certainly willing to work with Government to implement sensible changes that may be proposed. 

Finally, we need tough new rules and requirements on heavy goods vehicles that are involved in about a fifth of all cycling fatalities, despite the fact that HGVs make up just 6% of road traffic—there is clearly an issue there. We should look at the case for taking HGVs out of our cities at the busiest times, as has happened elsewhere in Europe, including in Paris and Dublin. As a minimum, we should require safety measures on all HGVs, including sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars, as well as better training and awareness. I have previously suggested to Ministers that the £23 million that is expected to be raised annually from the new HGV road-charging scheme could be used to support the road haulage industry to achieve that. I hope that that idea will be taken seriously and considered by Ministers, along with all those clear proposals. Taken together, I believe that that would be a significant improvement in the Government’s current approach, and it is something that all parties could support across the House.