My youngest son is a cyclist now, he is still a bit wobbly but he is sorted. The odd unsteady start where a pedals flips round and slams his shin. My hand in the small of his back easing him up the steeper hills, whilst I struggle to keep my bike under control. These techniques got him along the Nidderdale Greenway "All by myself." He has a ball when you let him ride round a campsite or somewhere else where there is traffic free provision, Centre Parcs was ace. I wonder if I will let him ride into town up Knaresborough Rd before he can drive up it on his own? I hope so, but not yet, currently its a few billion light years away from the mayor of Bogota's test. "A cycleway that cannot be ridden by an 8 year old is not a cycleway." Maybe he will just ignore me and get on with it when he is a a little older, you know what kids are like?
There were some wins for bike riders in Harrogate recently. The Beryl Burton is getting resurfaced. Even as I write the smell of fresh tarmacadam mixes with the the musty smell of autumn leaves and blows down from Forest Lane Head. It increasingly looks like Sustrans will be getting the Way of the Roses through Harrogate in a year or two. More news on this soon I hope. That would be fantastic for the cycle tourism economy in town. It would link us to Pateley in the north and Wetherby in the south. That's the traffic free to Spofforth route I was going on about a while ago and even more. People of Harrogate you should hold your arms aloft and let out a heartfelt collective "YES", rejoice we are all winning. These were Cycle Harrogate's original legacy aims and they look likely to be met.
Thanks to everyone involved in making these things happen or at least seem way more likely to happen than six months ago, when they were little more than dreams.
The list of the worthy includes a peleton of stars.
- Harrogate Cycle Action, Lobbying in quiet but from a position of knowledge and experience. A whole team of people here doing loads, local heroes all.
- Sustrans, The UK's preeminent sustainable transport policy working round here and keen to do more.
- Our local media, both the Advertiser and Stray fm Gavin Rutter at Stray Fm doing more than he needed to.
- Councillor Richard Cooper and Andrew Jones MP both doing their bit to help Beryl get her new overcoat and refusing to take no for an answer.
- North Yorkshire County Council Highways For working with Harrogate Borough Council to find a solution to the problems over the Beryl Burton and for starting to talk to activists upfront something they have not always done.
What about Harrogate really catering for local bikey types? Both these two legacy routes get you out of town but the actual day to day making it easy to get about town by bike stuff. To be honest its still done fairly badly. The cycle network that does exist is patchy and often poorly connected to itself. The routes are fairly randomly signed and currently not really promoted at all. Hopefully this will be changing soon.
There is money in the Local Sustainable Transport Fund pot at North Yorkshire County Council to address signing and mapping issues but we have been waiting an awfully long time for things to improve. I was hoping the tour would fix that. Mark Kibblewhite of NYCC who is dead keen but who's programme has yet to deliver, tells me signing can't all be done for July as the tour is coming and they are busy. I bet he is right, but that is a tragedy. I hope the remainder of his LSTF programme lives up to its promise too, I wish him well, he doesn't set the rules or the budgets. He just tries to make it happen. Whilst the LSTF programme will deliver some much needed "joining of the dots" for the network. It won't really deliver that much in the way of new cycle routes through or around town. For that to happen we need a change of culture from our Councils. They are now talking a good deal for cyclists but they need to put some meaty policy on the fragile bones of their words.
Where are now? Lets have a look at Harrogate's main transport policy currently and historically which is the use of the car. It relies on a road network that at rush hour can't cope with the car volumes it experiences and which leads to partial gridlock and high levels of pollution. This is because it was designed and built when cars were rare. No one not even the Department of Transport are arguing about this. Much of this traffic is local and at the moment there seems to be little strategic planning to effectively reduce this. This costs the town money, if your queuing you aren't spending or making money and indirectly it kills people. No one who puts data before faith is really arguing about these points either. Although they may argue about the levels of effect. Some people say it just the way it has to be.
Walking and cycling with their proven health benefits could reduce these car traffic volumes or maybe in the first instance just stabilise them, but currently there are no council policies that effectively promote these activities amongst commuters, children or the elderly. This despite NICE guidelines calling on local authorities to do just that. This strikes me as wrong and quite a few councillors agree, at least that's what they tell me. They do though tend to suggest that bikes and cars are two sides of an argument and that we can't please both parties. I disagree with that profoundly. I do both, I will always do both, so do most people who ever get on or near bikes. I'm no more anti-car than I am against freedom and the rule of law. I just think we favour cars habitually in urban areas without thinking creatively about how we can make our towns work better. At the moment out of habit I think we are failing cyclists and pedestrians. Oh and some of you people in cars are killing yourselves though ease and the luxury of afluenza.
If you want people other than experienced and skilled cyclists to get on their bikes you need to build a network where this can happen. Safety is the number one reason people give for not cycling, but when more people cycle, less people are hurt as a proportion, there is safety in numbers.
What could be done? Well for a start our councils needs to start debating these issues more often and taking them more seriously. In the past you just got puffing and blowing when you asked for cycling to be encouraged. You were other, you could be ignored, so you were. Recently the mood music is better but there seems to be no cultural shift, yet. A cycling champion on the council would be a start, there are rumours adrift of just such a hero in that sea of noise that is public discourse, watch this space.
Many people scream like Janet Leigh when there is a suggestion we build more houses near Skipton Road "It will make a busy road worse." What if as part of the development we built houses that were connected to town by cycleways? Does all development have to lead to more car traffic? If that's the problem design it out, build no garages, limit car parking spaces, connect it easily for walking and cycling to shops schools and rail links. Hell if you do a good job I will buy one and run my business thats needs a car out of a lockup somewhere else. Some other soul can then have my beautiful but road-locked, 3 bed semi if they would rather. Kevin McCloud has a business (HAB) that does cool, eco, in-keeping housing that people want to live in. Not the lowest common denominator tat we let mass market developers throw up at the moment. We are an affluent town we built world class buildings for our residents once, why no more?
Why not incentivise people to leave their cars at home through the council tax? You could track whether they are, or are not commuting as they claim through a phone app, simples, I have a mate who could code it in a week with one eye closed.
What if we looked at the New York Model of a bit of paint and some data modelling to reduce congestion and increase footfall in towns? They have energised their city and more bikes and walking haven't signalled a biblical apocalypse far from it. If you haven't seem the video invest a few minutes its time well spent.
All of this could be done for starters at little cost and you could impact on our congestion problem, improve public health and make this an even nicer place to live. Thing is, If you don't even debate the issues nothing really changes, other than more people making more car journey's because they see it as the easiest and safest option. I'm not blaming drivers for the choices they make. I would just like you to have some other choices. I want my kids and your kids to cycle round this town before they start driving round it. I want normal non-lycra clad slightly overweight people. People with ordinary non-vegetarian, xbox playing, Strictly watching, red wine drinking lives. To get on a bike because its easier than the other options and not because its part of a t-shirt wearing movement.
Harrogate's issue seems to be a desire to maintain a status quo in a world that has changed. Car Journey's have increased dramatically petrol won't be getting cheaper and the solutions currently proposed are about making better roads for cars, rather than giving people alternative choices. The word's big cities have already realised that you don't fix congestion by building roads. You sort it out by prioritising other types of travel. You make it easy and cheap and attractive and people use it. What works for New York and Berlin and Copenhagen, will work for Harrogate but you have to change the way you think about transport and stop solely modelling for car use in town centres.
We could do better. We should do better. We already are doing better, but not better enough, yet. We have a moment in the searing, monochrome light of the world's flashbulbs next summer to start the race. A many stage race I'm sure like Le tour, but then when the moment has passed we have a lifetime to try and make this town truly a bike town. That would be a legacy we could all be proud of. So I will rejoice with you now, for what we have done, but not too much, not just yet.
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