Uh right I’ve there’s a lot happened because it’s it’s now been four months since I did one of these updates but um I’ve been tried to be very selective although there’s there’s a lot of really exciting interesting stuff uh that I do want to talk about so I
Will oh there we are I’ll start off with a bit of optimism and it’s not optimism about infrastructure it’s optimism about um the uh the the other side of it which is the um the road danger reduction side um I’ve um in in the Autumn not long
After the B Network buses started to operate in Bolton um I had C to make several um complaints and reports to the police about the driving of of drivers running B Network buses um and here are some examples I mean these buses are traveling at 30 miles hour plus and that
Is far too close to be passing a cyclist as anybody that Cycles will know um so I did make reports on all of these and and um to their credit the police actually did prosecute two of them or or took two of them forward for prosecution and sent
A letter of warning to the bus companies of the other ones um but I also uh put something via Twitter on into the B Network so it’s tfgm um and they were quite responsive and uh so that was quite pleasing so I did I did actually pass all the
Information through to them um and from the police yes they took these forward to the central ticket ticket office for the driver to be either prosecuted or to have to go on an awareness course why a professional bus driver should should give get the chance to go on an
Awareness course I’m not really sure um but um but so they acted and tfgm did act and it and it actually was not just uh because of me it’s probably because of other people as well who’ve uh had comp who’ve complained about this um there was a question asked in one of um
Andy Burnham’s question sessions about driver training and uh buses being safer for pedestrians and cyclists and uh he said yes they’re going to be it’s going to be a b Network bus driver training program which is great but the other good thing is that since then um
I’ve noticed all of the B Network buses have been giving plenty of space the the two top ones on that slide uh are almost at exactly the same place they’re on more Lane um just coming away from the junction with deansgate um and the one on the left was uh before I complained
And the one on the right is since and the same with the bottom one is actually those are two different locations but they’re just giving examples and I’m finding that all of these B Network bus drivers are giving me plenty of space now so um if you do something about
These things it actually can work and I I think bus drivers people see bus drivers as an example and maybe follow that example and I’ve actually had bus drivers P me like the one on the bottom right and car drivers follow suits which is great so that’s good it’s also good
To see that this particular intervention is actually working this is a picture that I took from one of my videos as I was going through uh the Rothwell Street thing slightly tonging cheek there that’s an illegal electric motorbike that’s coming through the um through the barriers there okay so interesting
Research and data well there’s Lads of stuff out at the moment um mostly during February I guess um the uh Institute for public public policy research has done a a superb report on um the way that um England um could actually become a leader in Walking wheeling and cycling
It isn’t at the moment and you’ll see from some of the statements on there um that that where they say England’s path from a lager to leader is not really talking about the past it’s talking about a potential future I think um and it says the UK government’s vision for
Active travel has been ambitious but failed to deliver um it talks about the uh one of the reasons for that is um just looking back at the cycling and walking investment strategy number one which ran from 2016 to 2021 .2% of the Total Transport budget was spent on active travel infrastructure
Capital projects not. 2% so that’s two pounds in every thousand pound which is why the Ambitions are not being met uh there’s a lot more interesting information uh um in in that report so I’d recommend you have a look at it and I did provide a link if you if uh if you
Look at the slideshow that picture on the right if you click on that you’ll get to the actual report itself um one of the questions that was asked in the survey that this is based on was on a typical day what is your main mode of transport and this survey was across the
Whole of Europe and by the main mode they mean the one that takes the longest time so walking actually has a big Advantage overdriving for example in relation to to getting into this graph and if you look at the UK it’s looking pretty pathetic to be honest um
The uh look at the Netherlands as you would expect it’s um it’s 40% say their main mode is cycling another good few percent say walking and Wheeling uh if you look at the UK we’re almost at the bottom and certainly on cycling we’re second from the bottom joint second with
Spain I guess and so on so so you know it’s inevitable that um that uh we were going to be so poor on all of this but they do go on to make some really good recommendations about what what can be done um they also talk about the case
For investing in active travel and this is probably one of the most interesting things from our point of view because if we’re going to justify spending on active travel then it’s important to have these figures um and I’m not going to go into all the detail on that that
Pie chart there uh but uh just have a look at it and it and it’s the case is so compelling and there’s so other things that I’m going to talk about we’ve talked about the fact that it’s so compelling before but we just have to keep making the case over and over
Again second thing I want to look at is the people and places study and a p paper that was published in the within the last month or so which looked into impacts of active travel interventions on travel behavior and health now this is good because it’s looked at uh the uh
Many Holland projects in out of London uh and they’ve got six years of data going across uh across a wide range of these um uh these mini Hollands which consist of onroad cycling and walking routes active neighborhoods which or low traffic neighborhoods which uh make the place much more friendly for walking
Wheeling and cycling because they eliminate a lot of through through traffic and you can see there are a lot of really good things and the one thing that really sticks out here and I think we really should be bearing in mind in uh in Bolton is low traffic neighborhoods which are active
Neighborhoods as we call them have been shown to have a very high value for money so uh return on investment are 50 to1 to 200 to one so that’s that’s just incredible I mean we if if we spend a pound and we get two pound 200 pound
Back in return for that it’s it’s just why not do it why not borrow the money and do it because it’s going to pay back uh dividends in Spades um there’s some interesting stuff about uh the impacts of active travel interventions in those uh those mini Holland projects and again I think it’s
It’s it’s interesting to see that um these are they they they divide the study into low dose and high does projects so lowd dose ones are where they’ve done a bit of tinkering around maybe put a few Crossings in that sort of thing hios ones are where they’ve
Made some really serious interven iions and attempted to to provide a proper robust active travel uh Network now in this paper they’ve divided those into hyos schemes that that just concentrate on on main roads and onroad facilities and hyos schemes that include ltns and you can see that where there
Are ltns or active neighborhoods the impact has been phenomenal compared to the ones where it’s just an onroad cycle route um you still need the onroad cycle routes but you really really do need to do the low traffic neighborhoods which basically means removing the rat runs from where people live and where people
Shop and so on so that people have to stick to the main rows that are designed for that purpose and not just rat run through small streets that aren’t designed for that purpose so again that sort of fits with the um with the high return on investment
Um there’s another um study which is looking specifically at low traffic neighborhoods now one of the criticisms of L traffic neighborhoods is the the accusation which is not is usually not backed up by uh evidence that it pushes traffic onto neighboring roads and neighboring main roads and actually
Makes matters worse for people who live around those main roads but the evidence from a huge amount of data coming from those low traffic neighborhoods in outou of London and in London um actually shows that they do result in a significant fall in motor traffic within the schemes but very little change on
Motor traffic on the low traffic neighborhood boundary roads um so again I would like to point out to somebody I’m not quite sure who uh if the active neighborhood project in alm’s estate were to be put in place it’s unlikely that it would put a lot of additional
Pressure on asbridge Junction which is what the one of the concerns has been okay so that’s all interesting stuff it’s worth looking at those those p and reports now the next one is sustrans yesterday uh the latest version of the edition of the Cy walking in cycling index was published uh so that’s
The one for 2023 the last one was for 2021 um it’s the thing that used to be called bike life survey but then they realized that it’s not just about cycling it’s about walking wheeling and cycling uh again if you click on that image in the slideshow on Google Drive
Then um uh you can uh go to the actual report itself uh but I want to just pick out a few things that they’ve put as highlights if you look at um this question percentage of residents who would like to use different types of transport more or less in the future the
It’s it’s is so compelling the case for active travel on the basis of popularity 49% compared to 5% would do it less for walking and Wheeling public transport 30% more say they would do more if they had better public transport 40% say they would cycle more if they had decent um
Um infrastructure they would they would like to do it now the other thing interesting thing is I I’ve highlighted it I’ve underlined it in red there 38% of residents in Greater Manchester have said that they often use a car because no other transport options are available because it’s too hostile to walk in
Cycle and the public transport isn’t good enough some more things there 35% of all residents think the level of safety for cycling in their local area is good so 30 so um 65% don’t think it’s good um 28% think the level of safety for children cycling is good and it isn’t I
Mean you wouldn’t put I wouldn’t let children ride on the the RADS nowadays in Bolton um 41% of all residents think their local area overall is a good place to cycle so that contrasts to the other 59% so similarly in terms of uh government spending the number of people that would
Like to see government spend more on walking Wheeling cycling and public transport far outweighs the number of people who would like the government to spend more on enabling people to drive so again it’s it’s just so compelling and one of the con the things that um
One of the problems we have in getting these uh these projects to to fly is the belief particularly among councelors that uh there’s a huge backlash and nobody wants these things well actually a large number of people do want them and the backlash is from a very small
Number and this is actual data on uh on perceptions and and what people would like or not like it’s the silent majority that we’re hearing from here and then finally uh among greater Manchester residents there are all these uh very interesting things that have been uh been quoted in there I won’t go
Through them one at a time but for example I’ll just pick one uh for people like me who tend to walk with the PRM now actually now with a a double push chair side by side push chair for two grandchildren um 60% support a Banning of vehicles parking on the pavement
Against 21% who oppose that that’s all across great to Manchester so if the government would just get its finger out and do something about the consultation that is now three years old and they’ve still not actually announced the the results then we might actually get something like the ban that now is in
Scotland and he’s actually making a big impact in Edinburgh okay moving on then government um DFT Etc uh only one thing to talk about here and that is I I try and attend every week as some others here perhaps too uh the active travel Cafe and um shortly after our first meeting
Of this year um I got to the active travel Cafe and it was was told there’s a there’s a surprise guest going to come and it turned out that it was Brian Degan and nobody is coming but uh he did a absolutely fantastic um Talk off the
Top of his head as he always does um I went into it feeling perhaps a little bit depressed about the way things are going on active travel around here and uh I came up came out fired up again and some key things that he mentioned was which I think are really important
Things and sort of fits with what I thought the direction of travel was anyway uh generally on active travel and how it’s seen and funded uh he said what’s changed at active travel is we are now looking at everything so if it’s crsts leveling up fund active travel
Fund major rods Network everything comes across our desk now when that active travel England first was set up it was only looking at things that were specifically active travel funding so the active travel fund basically now all projects that our government funded come across their desk and his statement is
There is no such thing as an active travel scheme but there’s no such thing as a scheme that isn’t active travel um he said a lot of this is coming from the uh the minister for roads and local transport guy opman who’s been very supportive and it was him that he that
Suggested uh to Brian that he push for this to get everything coming across their desk rather than just the active travel um uh ring fenc stuff maintenance he likes to see maintenance as Improvement of what’s there and that means maintenance could include anything it could include uh correcting the
Mistakes of the past not necessarily just dealing with uh with Decay and that sort of feeds into one of the discussions we had at the last meeting he said loads of good things are happening and actually um I if you click on Brian’s picture on the previous slide
You will go to the um to the YouTube uh video of the talk and I if you really want to be enthused about all of this stuff then I recommend you go and listen to that because it’s uh it it really is upbeat and um and he
Said a lot more than I’m actually talking about here and but he also mentioned this about modes and again I I particularly picked up on this because of a discussion we had in the in the previous meeting um he says that all all schemes now must cover all modes they
Must address all modes so you you if you want you can call your scheme or walking only scheme but if it doesn’t address all other mods including cycling we won’t approve it and the reason he gave for that was we know there is a huge pent-up demand for cycling and all the
Data suggests that so that’s that is the attitude that’s coming from um from active travel England so that was that was that was really great it um i’ I’d been thinking about just backing off from all this stuff and and giving up but uh he sort of fired me up toh to carry
On okay backlash and litigation in fact this isn’t so much about backlash it’s about litigation if you remember in a previous meeting back in probably the November meeting was it um uh I talked about the uh the this crazy war on the motorist thing that um that richy sunak
Put out and uh the legal challenge that the transportation network was um bringing forward to the cut in funding uh that had been announced earlier in the year had sort of not been announced that’s so much as just sneaked in on the back of something else um that’s
Actually still ongoing um the I said before the the permission was granted for that um judicial review to happen uh We’ve not had any news on whether that’s happening but a development a further development on that was in relation to the withdrawal of the statutory guidance
Because the very day that uh that Rishi sunak made that that did that interview um that appeared at the top left screen screenshot on there appeared this statutory guidance was withdrawn on the 2nd of October 2023 the that’s the statutory guidance under the traffic management Act of 2004 uh requiring
Local authorities and highways authorities to basically to reallocate Road space for walking and cycling um and um the that was replaced by the plan for drivers if you remember that I’m not going to go into detail because we’ve already covered that in a previous meeting you can look at
That um well that now there is a new legal action that’s been started which is about the withdrawal of the statutary gu and it’s actually being pushed by Dale Vince who’s the founder of ecotricity um I suppose you could call him a green capitalist he’s someone who
Who really gets all this um this stuff um but also knows how to make money um and he’s working with the green Britain campaign to bring a judicial review um against the government uh about their decision to to just cancel the guidance uh on um on active travel infrastructure
Implementation and so I’ve there’s a list there of all the grounds of that again I’m not going to go through it I’ve put a link to the uh the solicitors uh website or where the page is that that tells you all about this so uh that’s another one that I’m
Going to watch and and we’ll bring back in Future uh times now what I want to do this there’s a lot here and and I’m going to try and whis through it very quickly what are other councils doing I’ve said something about this a few times um in previous uh meeting meetings
But uh I want to look at what other people are doing in other countries and again I’m sort of picking up on something that that Dominic said about the need to do these things uh properly and that it takes a long time to do these things and I mentioned at the time
Um in the chat that well Seville has actually shown that it doesn’t have to take a long time to do these things now it just happened that a couple of weeks after that um i’ said that um an article came out from Mark venor who is uh who
Uh is in on social media as bicycle Dutch and he does some excellent articles on all this stuff and videos um and he actually had been to Seville uh and he wrote an article on how Seville achieved what it has achieved if you click on that picture you’ll actually go
To the article itself now the thing was that in 2006 when there was a change of the um the government of Seville um a commitment was put in place to complete an 80 kilometer cycling Network all in one go not a little bit at a time but
All in one go uh and the motto was build it fast don’t build it fancy and if you look at that example on the screen there that’s just using uh wands they’re not wand orkers they’re just wands uh but that’s to separate out the cycle way
From the um from the main Traffic Way the main carriageway a lot of the what they’ve done was done by removing car parking and replacing it with cycleways uh which has the additional advantage of moving people walking further away from the traffic uh from motor vehicles and uh
Guess what the sky didn’t fall in when that parking was removed um what they did was um they U if you look at this map the solid lines were implemented between 2006 and 2007 and I’ve put on that map um for scale an 8 kilometer Marker 8 kilometers is
Roughly the distance from Bolton Town Center to horic toown Center um so all those solid lines were done in two years the dash lines were done between 2007 and 2011 what I want to do is quickly look at the the effect of that so just looking at what they
Implemented um that diagram the thing on the right is the current cycle map of um of Seville um there’s actually a lot more to the left on the other side of the canal but that isn’t formly part of Seville um the whole thing is 12 and a
Half kilometers which is about the size of Bolton burough across from one end to the other um the um in 2006 they had 12 kilometers of protected cycleways by the end of the next year they had 80 kilometers in 2011 four years later they had 164 kilometers and now they’ve got
18 kilom and if you look at the impact of that in those first few years the first um not the first bit there but between 2007 and 2011 they had 5% of modes of trips made by bicycle 2009 6.6 2011 8.9 so in the space of four years they’ almost doubled
The amount of cycling public transport had gone up because uh with more people cycling and walking um the congestion was reduced so public transport became better motorbikes are listed there not much diff much change there cars down from 57.7% to 48.3% so that is you know in that kind
Of time scale that’s a really significant change um that’s what one of the uh the infrastructure looks like now I’ve just put that in for fun really so we can see what it looks like now um they’ve tended to do fairly cheap cheerful implementations and then upgrade them in
The future which is what most successful um active travel projects have done but if you look at this estimated trips using this infrastructure from 2006 I think it was 0.5 people uh percent of trips were cycled not .5% one uh I don’t know uh
Can’t I can’t do the math now but uh but if you look at the way that went up between then and 2011 in six years they’ gone up to that level so we’re talking about 70 other, trips that’s leveled off and um and sort of bumped up and down but now what’s
Happened is if you just forget about the covid period because there’s a bit of a dip for the covid period the introduction of E Scooters has meant that the fact they had this infrastructure in place meant that E Scooters could be used for for for travel and that’s brought the number of
Uh trips using this infrastructure up to about what’s that 110,000 trips a year so it’s a again it’s a phenomenal change in the first part for cycling but then other micromobility modes actually start to take advantage of that especially now that we have um decent batteries that
Can can store enough energy to get people from one place to another without dragging along a couple of tons of um of steel box around with them so what does that mean for infrastructure well I’m I’m going to make this point what I’m hearing from greater Manchester from tfgm is oh well these
Things must be done properly and they take an awfully long time in Seville it’s just do it get on with it don’t faf about and they they’re getting results we’re not really um let’s look at Paris I’ve talked about Paris before and lots of people know about the revolution
That’s happened in Paris over the last only four years um the pictures on the right are quite familiar that one on the bottom is um Ruda rivy which is next to the um Jan twery near the um twery near the the L uh that is actually the same place a few
Years ago that’s what it looks now that’s what it looked like at four years ago uh but that’s not the only thing they’ve not stopped doing this they’re putting in huge changes to allow people to to switch from Cars to active travel and in when mayor um when the mayor
Hialgo was elected um there was a there there was a a very clear commitment to the this plan to uh to introduce more active travel and in um not long ago for 54 and a half percent of parisians voted have voted recently to increase the price of parking passes for cars
Weighing more than 1.6 tons now one of the problems that we have on the roads is cars are getting bigger and bigger and heavier and more and more dangerous for people walking and cycling they’re trying to deal with that and they’re doing it by putting really quite prohibitive parking charges on people
With large heavy Vehicles so um a six-hour stay with an SUV will cost 225 pounds uh Euros 192 compared to 75 for smaller vehicles so that’s one thing that they’re doing they’re doing all sorts of other things they’ve actually switched their attention now they’ve done a lot of cycling and to
Some extent walking now they’re putting a lot of stuff in for walking as well as expanding the cycling infrastructure out as well but the one thing I want to focus on now is school streets because they’ve really gone to town on school streets and what they call a school
Street is unrecognizable compared to what we call a School Street and if you click on this uh this image in the slideshow um you’ll be taken to a fantastic video about the school streets of Paris so they did they were in the M Manifesto and people voted for it at
That stage the target is 300 School streets by 2026 and they already have 188 in place the benefits to the community are huge not just for the schools that’s been shown by lots of research and and polling of people uh the way the approach that they use with
This is use temporary measures first see how it goes Monitor and evaluate ask people what they think and then either remove it or make it permanent every single one of those the ones that have actually reached the end of the trial have been made permanent now properly permanent with Paving landscaping and so
On and there’s huge public support for this uh so here’s an example that’s one that was turned into a school street with temp it is into school street at that point but what they have now is that so that’s their idea of a school street it’s not some something where
People in hi’s vest go and put their hand up and say no you can’t come through uh at this time in the morning or this time in the afternoon they say this is a School Street this is a place for people not a place for Motor
Vehicles so again I’m be a bit a bit sarcastic here and perhaps a bit unkind but Bolton’s approach uh really putting it in a fairly cruel way is let’s just try one school for one day a week and make sure there’s car parking nearby so people don’t actually have to change
Their behaviors Paris just do it and it will work people get on board and they love it Santa Monica well they don’t hang about in in in Santa Monica because what they’re doing is they felt that they’re going to do this over the across the
Whole of the um of the city why don’t we invest in Machinery that makes it very efficient and this is a machine that extrudes protected cycle way and uh it’s not perfect there’s a little bit of concrete left there which somebody has to sweep up but basically this is just
Going along the road putting a huge concrete curve in uh to make a cycle way on this side um so it doesn’t have to take huge amounts of time uh to to do this stuff um if you click on this uh picture then you’ll be taken to a video
Showing that that machine actually working and you know if you’re really committed to doing this it’s worth putting the investment in to have the equipment that will make you do it that allow you to do it very efficiently and quickly okay finally on engagement uh yes Bolton critical mass is still on
Going um those are the figures we’ve had up to now um I’m hoping that uh that things might pick up a bit more in the not to distant future we we we were invited to come and talk to um a meeting of the Bolton Extinction rebellion in
The um in the library Cafe uh and it was a really good event there weren’t a huge number of people there but the people that were there were really excited about what we had to say about active travel uh and what could happen in Bolton um so I’ve had quite a few people
Ask now about joining this um through that and so that’s another bit of Engagement that’s happened uh and there are other people uh in this meeting who were there as well and contributed to the to the discussion so that was that was great and you know when you talk to
People about all of this stuff and you get them to try and get them to understand what it will be like if we can get the infrastructure in place then they really get on board and it’s uh so so let’s let’s just try and make it all happen