The Health & Safety Commission has published a discussion document entitled 'Preventing at work road traffic incidents'. You may wish to make comments about lorries and company car fleets! Tel 020 7717 6841/6340/6059. At www.open.gov.uk/hse/road. Comments in by 25 May.
Amazingly, neither of the two previous versions included road traffic victims. Nor does this draft! However, it does ask the question 'Should a new Charter include road traffic incidents which lead to death or serious injury?'
You may wish to reply (by 15 June). Details from Home Office, on 020 7273 4349, or www.homeoffice.gov.uk.
Tony Blair announced an extra £30 million for this concept on 24 April. Mind you, it was spread over three years, but he did say they 'give priority to walking and cycling over traffic'. 91
Good idea - why not develop it!
This report is due for completion at end of August. The person doing it said "most of my responses have come from local CTC reps - at least 30".
1 have been pressing the DETR on this. They now at last admit there is a problem - but they are powerless to act by themselves as any proposals for change now have to be EU-Wide.
In case any of you missed it, this allowed (para 268) that 'A local traffic authority may designate any road for which they are the traffic authority as a quiet lane or a home zone'.
The motorcycle lobby keep trying to invade bus lanes and advanced stop lines. Please persuade your local authority to keep them out.
This is being re-structured, to have a smaller, more purposeful Board and a part-time paid Chair.
The new Planning Policy Guidance on Transport is now out, and you will need to get your own copy of this. DETR website at www.planning.detr.gov.uk - or try the Stationery Office, your council, Government Regional Office, CTC, CCN, etc.
It has attracted some controversy because of weakening parking standards at out of town sites and allowing Park & Ride in greenbelt land. However, it has a lot of useful quotes e.g. 'in considering planning applications, local authorities should give priority to people over ease of traffic movement, and plan to provide more road space to pedestrians, cyclists and public transport in town centres, local neighbourhoods and other areas with a mixture of land user'.
There is a page and a half on cycling, mostly on interchange, parking and safe routes to schools, hospitals and the work-place. There is good stuff on 'giving priority at junctions and improving links, through the introduction of advanced stop lines, cycle bypasses, cycle gaps and contra-flow cycle lanes'.
Make certain all your Officers and your key Councillors know about all this.
Lastly, as many of you will know, the CTC has set up a Cyclists' Legal Defence Fund. This has attracted a huge amount of interest. Ideas for this should go to the CTC or defence(@,ctc.org.uk. Donations should be sent via cheques made payable to CTC Cyclists Defence Fund.
We each have a personal idea about what New Labour has achieved in Transport. Much of it seems a disappointment: the abandonment of national traffic reduction targets, the first two wasted years, the rail shambles, a partial return to road building. The mere fact that the government was too timid to produce a policy for pedestrians speaks volumes. It also highlights the fact that our timing and efforts to get a National Cycling Strategy under the previous administration were well justified.
Above all, the success in building a national consensus around the Transport White Paper which was a genuine turning point - was dissipated and lost in a really regrettable way.
On the positive side, Labour has continued to progress the National Cycle Strategy, made well-meaning attempts to improve road safety (mainly by the casualty reduction approach) and at least put speed on the policy agenda. We have not had compulsory helmets. We will have bells at the point of sale.
The five-year LTPs already seem a success, and at last there is more cash for local transport. On paper most transport and planning policies made numerous references to cycling. The Government may not really understand Sustainable Development, but at least it keeps talking about it.
Fundamentally, though, the ebbing of power away from the DETR to The Treasury and the Downing Street Policy Unit has made focused lobbying more difficult. Many other Departments still seem quite unconnected to modem Transport thinking. The Home Office and traffic law is a black hole of vast proportions.
Devolution in Scotland, Wales, N. Ireland and London does seem to have been successful in sparking off local initiatives. However, regionalism in England seems mostly to have created not only tedious bureaucracy but an obsession with major infrastructure projects in the name of G competitiveness'.
Firstly, a quick mention of Velo City. The invitation to register is being distributed. Early registration for voluntary groups is £225, early registration for others is £495 (and not the £1,750 as in CCN News!). Do encourage your officers and councillors to attend.
Secondly, the DETR will be developing a speed hierarchy for roads during the summer, which should produce benefits for us. Slower Speeds Initiative will be leading on this.
Third - and one we really want to watch - there is a forthcoming major change to local authority funding. Instead of separate Government grants for each topic, there will now be a Single Capital Pot. Thus Transport will be competing for cash alongside Housing and Education. The results of an earlier change to this system in Scotland have been most disappointing for Transport. This free-for-all also casts serious doubt on how forecasts of high levels of future LTP funding can be believed.
English local authorities will be making their first Capital Pot submission by 31 July. Ask your council how they think it is going to work. All submissions and the next round of LTPs will be scrutinised by Government Regional Offices: yet another reason to strengthen your input with them.
Looking ahead, what can we expect over the next four years and what do we want? Firstly, I would not be surprised to see compulsory helmets proposed for the under-12s and we need to consider our position on this. Secondly, the spread of 20 mph urban neighbourhoods should become widespread. Thirdly, changes in rural land use could offer huge opportunities for cycle tourism. Some of this could be linked to the creation of regional cycle routes. Next, hopefully the public health argument will really start to kick in. Finally, Government policies on urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal offer us chances we have not really taken up to now.
What do we want? To start with we must - working in partnership with others - make some legal changes that will offer us greater protection and punish wrong-doers either more severely or more effectively.
Second, we must work on the 'reallocation of road space issue'. We have been weak on this.
Thirdly, and to some extent related to the above, we must return to the issues of good design, both for facilities and for the road network in general.
Fourth - I suggest in my next section that we need a broader alliance of campaign groups, to spell out the safety, environment and neighbourhood benefits of the non-car options.
We need to re-examine this question again. On the one hand there is a wide range of issues where we are both benefiting - Home Zones, slower speeds, traffic management. On the other, measures being implemented to assist pedestrians - road narrowings, pedestrian refuges - are causing cyclists serious problems. Indeed, the CTC will be publishing a discussion paper on this shortly.
Meanwhile, there is a growing trend in local authorities - Bristol, Oxford, Cambridgeshire - to have cycle/pedestrian officers, cycle/pedestrian forums, cycle/pedestrian strategies.
The National Assembly for Wales recently initiated preliminary work for a joint Walking & Cycling Strategy. Out of about 40 responses, only the CTC and the Pedestrians Association had some concerns. Increasingly, it seems the outside world sees the two modes - often linked to public transport - as some kind of combined sustainable option.
Most of the issues are fairly well-known. Cyclists are vehicles. They move quite fast, on the highway, usually on their own well-defined desire lines. They have their own separate training, road-skills, needs and lobby groups. They have a National Cycling Strategy, and virtually every local authority has its own Cycling Strategy, Any dilution of the cycling focus could serve us ill.
Pedestrians, by contrast, often have more dispersed movement patterns. They use footways, footpaths, and pedestrian areas, and often have people with mobility problems included in their planning. They have no national strategy, and historically have been a weak lobby group. They feel particularly under threat from the now widespread illegal use of pedestrian territory by cyclists of all ages.
However, things are changing. The DETR will be revising its guidance on shared use facilities. The CTC has already done in-depth research on this, showing that such facilities tend to be disliked (though tolerated) by both user groups. Meanwhile the Pedestrians Association has become more dynamic, and by turning itself into 'Living Streets' has assumed a much broader remit. What is more, over half the users of the National Cycle Network turn out to be walkers.
There is also - it seems - a growing recognition that the two modes share both common problems and common solutions.
Among the former are:
Equally, many of the solutions appear to be in common. Among them are:
1. Reduce traffic speeds
2. Re-evaluate and re-design the urban and rural highway network
3. Traffic reduction/restraint/management
4. Put cyclists and pedestrians at the top (York-style) of a 'Road User Hierarchy'
5. Increase funding for non-motorised modes
6. Reform traffic law
7. Promote 'accessibility' and local facilities
8. A more robust approach to road safety
9. Maintain and extend route networks
10. Improve all aspects of linkage with public transport
All of this is given added urgency by other factors: the success of Safe Routes to School, the Prime Minister's interest in HomeZones and child safety, organisations as diverse as the PA, the Children's Play Council, Slower Speeds Initiative and Institute for Public Policy Research getting interested in the 'living street'.
Finally, much of the detail in this piece has been cribbed straight from the 1995 Joint Statement on Providing for Walking & Cycling as Transport and Travel, issued by the CTC and the PA. Is it time for a re-issue? Should we combine with others? Perhaps we should turn our attention to the design issues? Or is it best to let sleeping dogs lie?
Don Mathew