A Harrogate cycling year - 2013

It was quite a year for Harrogate cycling was 2013. Here is a run through of some of the highlights that I know of.

The year started with some joy. North Yorkshire County Council  gave a commitment to resurface the Knaresborough to Harrogate, Beryl Burton cycle route. A good start to the year we had been campaigning for this to happen for six months.

As spring comes The Nidderdale Greenway from Harrogate to Ripley clears the last of many legal challenges and opens to an unbelievable level of enthusiasm. On a sunny day it resembles Oxford Street Christmas Eve, not a rural traffic free route. Sustran's route is high quality and provides some much needed traffic free cycling in the Harrogate district. In the first weekend some idiot knocks down an old lady breaking her hip and then scarpers, nearly taking the shine right off the whole shebang. Thankfully people get the hang and slow down and everyone rubs along a bit better. Its still really busy and I think if its possible for tarmac, loved. Local bike god Malcolm Margolis takes a bow for this one good effort

As summer turns into autumn there comes the welcome news that the greenway will be extended to Hampsthwaite. This move only takes a public meeting not the traditional three public enquiries, a heated debate in the advertiser, loads of money and a few years of everyone lives.

Our local media become rather cycle loopy as the realisation that the world's greatest cycle race is coming to town. You can't move for cycling stories in the paper and I seem to be getting calls from journos on a weekly basis, this is a pleasant change from fighting for a hearing in 2012.

Our local politicians come up trumps on the Beryl Burton after NYCC do the dirty and renege on their promise to resurface the whole of the by now badly eroded Beryl Burton route. Tory boy Andrew Jones MP puts his name to a campaign to get the whole route done as promised. His office and county councillors Richard Cooper and Liberal Democrat Anne Jones both go above and beyond to secure funding. Good work by our elected representatives. Best of all there seems to be wide public support for this. Lots of people make their views known, there is after all a constituency of bike riders out there. The politicians get most of the required funding From NYCC with Harrogate Borough Council stumping up the remaining 10 grand. Everyone claims victory, everyone was right.

The Hospital Trust who a year ago were being openly critiqued by me for ignoring numerous requests to promote cycling despite having staff sickness and parking issues now come good. We jointly work on a leaflet to get staff informed and launch it over a lunchtime in the canteen. What comes out of the experience for me is what little knowledge of Harrogate's cycle network many ordinary cyclists have. We badly need more signs and a map.

Good Fettle cafe opens. We visit, eat great cake and blog about the visit, their takings go up. Maybe a thousand followers is worth having?

Starbeck school who in 2012 were trying to ban kids using bikes to get to school change their mind and cuddle the bike. In the last week before Christmas the bike racks go in. I look forward to them embracing the bike in Tour de France year.

The Nidderdale Greenway is such a success that Harrogate's Big Red Bike Co start renting bikes out to folk using it. Ripley castle and Ice cream parlour are rubbing their hands as takings are up as bike riders are hungry and thirsty, take note Rudding Park.

Boneshakers a Harrogate institution closes. Maybe there was too much choice in town, maybe the internet is an easy place to buy a bike?

As I'm Christmas shopping I see the shiny new bikes of the hourly hire scheme at the station for the first time. They snook them in whilst I wasn't looking. I can't wait to to have a go soon.

Jo Armstrong HBC's all round, lets get people moving, good egg organises a Cycle Festival up on Killinghall Moor. Its a chance to celebrate all things bike and for those of us who try and promote this kind of behaviour to meet up and have a chat. I remember the pump track best of all and it was my youngest son's first bike ride on his own, he loved it.

The Local Sustainable Transport Fund which sounds posh but means 6oo grand is being spent on biking over the next two years is getting under way at last. It has a mover Mark Kibblewhite, who is getting a few bits of infrastructure sorted, but more importantly looking at mapping and promoting cycling on the web and via an app. We are still waiting for the shakers to really get going, but this should bring some real benefit to town over the next 18 months.

As you move round Harrogate this year you can see ordinary people riding bikes and you are seeing more of them. Not lycra clad Chris Froome clones but ordinary people riding bikes to get around. Its not a deluge yet, but a steady trickle has become a stream and lets hope it builds into a river.

North Yorkshire Water play a blinder and build a mountain bike track near Swinsty Resevoir that is putting grins on to experienced and relative novice rider's faces. I need to get on it with my own young riders, it looks mint.

NYCC take careful aim and seem to shoot themselves in the foot. After great work over the LSTF programme and doing the right thing by the Beryl Burton they revert to type. Maybe a leopard can't change all of its spot in one go? Despite some expert evidence, much lobbying, a media campaign and councillors repeatedly raising the issue with them. They can't bring themselves to paint some Advanced Stop Lines onto the ground at the Leeds Road Junction to give bike riders a break at this busy junction. It seems that once you prioritise car use on your roads and in your officers minds you can't un-learn a way of thinking that feels increasingly outdated and at odds with the Zeitgeist.

UPDATE Monday evening 23/12/2013
The above paragraph was current as I wrote it half an hour ago. I have just heard that NYCC Highways will look at possible solutions to this issue in the New year, see the quote below. Seems I was wrong about NYCC. Hey if all I have to be is wrong that's great. Happy Christmas everyone.

However please note that there may be the possibility of amending the design of the pedestrian island and white lining on Hookstone Road in order to accommodate a lead-in lane and ASL. We are presently working on the design and will provide you with an update in the New Year.

I want to finish with the opening ceremony to the Beryl Burton. The great and the good all showed up and so did a fair few local bike riders and that was great. It was cold down by the river late in the afternoon in November but they turned out anyway.

The mental image I will take with me into next years genuinely exciting cycling year, will be Charlie Burton's face as he and Denise his daughter, cut the ribbon and re-opened Beryl's cycleway. Charlie was Beryl Burton's husband. He is an old guy now. He seemed to have got used over the decades to Beryl Burton not getting the recognition she deserved in our towns of Harrogate and Knaresborough.

He was in tears that afternoon down by the Nidd, because as a town we had shown him that we cared about cycling and that we cared about his wife's legend and that made all the campaigning, speaking and whining seem worth every single moment.

Have a peaceful Christmas, all the best to you and yours from this often cynical old git.  Lets all have a bloody great, cycle drenched, party style 2014. A year that will be talked about by our grand children when they are old.

Leeds Road - Curiouser and Curiouser

If your new to this campaign. This one is about North Yorkshire County Council's Highways department refusing to make sufficient provision for cyclists at the Leeds Road junction which is being updated as I write. This despite it would appear many local politicians and a few people who really know what they are talking about thinking they should. This is your local government doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, despite David Cameron saying they should do the opposite.

I have written about the background to all this here and here.

Sustrans got in touch today. They had shown Tim Coyne at NYCC's response to our concerns about the Leeds Road junction to somebody who works for Sustrans. Anyway let me quote from the email.

...is our Sustrans Transport Engineering Manager and his opinion should hold some weight due to his experience. He is a Chartered Engineer providing support on the traffic and highways aspects of Sustrans’ projects, including developing skills within both Sustrans and external organisations through professional training, direct support and Sustrans website. Over the past 16 years he has gained extensive experience of infrastructure design for cyclists and pedestrians in the UK and abroad and is regarded as one of the leading experts in this field. From 2005 to 2011 he coordinated a team of expert consultants providing technical support to local authorities on behalf of Cycling England, in particular the Cycling City and Towns programme for which he was also on the selection Panel and Programme Board. He has worked in the NGO, public and private sectors

Here is what Sustran's (rather well qualified) it would appear Engineer had to say. Remember NYCC's argument is that the junction is not wide enough for Advanced Stop Lanes, these give bike riders a head start at traffic lights.

1m is typically the dynamic width of a cyclist so it is reasonable to assume that cyclists would have difficulty getting through a narrower gap. However, even on approaches with very narrow lanes I am of the opinion that there are still benefits in having an ASL box as experience shows that cyclists still manage to get to the front of the queue and the ASL gives them a legal space to wait. Cars are appreciably narrower than lorries so where just light vehicles are queuing there will be more space to get through and on multilane approaches if traffic is queuing in only one lane then the cyclist can use the other lane to reach the ASL.

So we are left with one engineer who claims this can't be done and one engineer who has been making junctions better for cyclists for 16 years saying ASL's are a good idea. They appear to disagree about where we should be going. So the saga continues.

Update 19/12/2013  See Malcolm Margolis's comment below, but basically we could use your help. Here is what we need, Malcolm puts it better than I can:

...we say that's unacceptable and are asking people to write to their local councillor (preferably county as county run highways) and/or Tim Coyne at tim.coyne@northyorks.gov.uk Malcolm Margolis, Harrogate Cycle Action

Please email Tim or your councillor, remember they work for you. Say you want Advanced Stop Lanes on all four sides of the junction. We can stop this poor policy, if enough of use show we care. This should be making a splash in the Advertiser next week, victory by christmas would be good for Harrogate not just its bike riders.

NYCC say no to Advanced Stop Lines on Leeds Road

I never did hear back From Tim Coyne the transport planner at North Yorkshire County Council, but someone forwarded me his response.  NYCC have now reviewed their decision to put Advanced Stop Lines on only 1 of the four sides of the junction  and you will never guess what? It turns out they were right. Well blow me down with a local government body that claims to promote cycling but often can't put its money where it's mouth is.

TIM SAYS NO. He goes into some detail about why he can't spend a few quid on paint and make this busy junction suitable for bike riders, but in the end it comes down to the fact that he and NYCC don't want to. They don't think its important and so they won't. We have given them all sorts of options they have rejected them all  and so we and you dear cyclist, lose.

They can of course re-surface most of the Tour De France route so a couple of hundred pro-cyclists can ride over it for just one day. Just saying, I will be cheering with everyone else but Leeds Road will be a shocking junction for bike riders when NYCC Highways have finished with it, and for years, just saying.