The Times has launched a "Cities Fit for Cycling campaign" based around 8 points.
Trucks entering a city centre should be required by law to fit censors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.
The 500 most dangerous road junctions must be identified, redesigned or fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors that allow lorry drivers to see cyclists on their near-side.
A national audit of cycling to find out how many people cycle in Britain and how cyclists are killed or injured should be held to underpin effective cycle safety.
Two per cent of the Highways Agency budget should be earmarked for next generation cycle routes, providing £100 million a year towards world-class cycling infrastructure. Each year cities should be graded on the quality of cycling provision.
The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.
20mph should become the default speed limit in residential areas where there are no cycle lanes.
Businesses should be invited to sponsor cycleways and cycling super-highways, mirroring the Barclays-backed bicycle hire scheme in London.
Every city, even those without an elected mayor, should appoint a cycling commissioner to push home reforms.
Well, this is all very well-intentioned but much of it rather clueless. It's unfocused and clearly based on very little experience of cycle campaigning. A number of points are of course very sensible, such as the call for 20mph, but where it comes to effective HGV measures they'd have been better advised to check out http://www.nomorelethallorries.org.uk/, which has a much better set of recommendations.
Point 2 is totally confused; much too specific in its recommendations and failing to identify what really needs doing at junctions, e.g. pre-signals and Trixi mirrors are just very small parts of the toolkit and not by any stretch of the imagination of any central importance.
Point 3 is correct in calling for good underlying data of cycle traffic flows, but that should be part of standard data-gathering routines and not a separate exercise. Whatever happens, such information is usually just rough approximation and less valuable than people might think, but as the number of people cycling is often underestimated, it could be useful.
The HA budget, point 4, isn't really the budget that needs to be influenced; there are loads of other budgets which are much more important, such as TfL's. At the end of the day, it's not that crucial where the money comes from, but a much better call would have been to reinstate Cycling England, axed by the current Government, and give it a proper budget.
Point 5 is OK but could be made so much sharper, e.g. include cycle training in the driving test, as per http://www.bikeaware.org.uk/.
Point 6 is OK, we support 20mph very strongly, but the reference to 'cycle lanes' smacks of the usual ignorance that you need some sort of dedicated facility to ride a bike. Lots could be said about that here, but it's fairly involved, and you can't expect well-meaning journalists to understand that very well without experience.
As for point 7, there isn't any particular need to get businesses to back up public funding, particularly not for the sort of projects they envisage, which are just about the least effective conceivable.
About point 8, again there isn't a huge need to separate cycling out from other modes. Proper consideration for cycling must be built into all traffic schemes, and all officers must work on that sort of thing. In my experience, where you have specific cycling personnel, their advice is often sidelined, and I can't imagine that such a person, even if fairly senior, would really be able to exercise their powers, but I suppose it would depend on what sort of person you'd get.
All in all, like many people who are new to campaigning, they greatly overstress the risk of collisions and make cycling appear like a high-risk activity. It is not (as was said further up).
I completely understand the journalists' distress at their colleague's horrible crash, but unfortunately you can't just draw up a programme from scratch without doing more research.
Still, good luck to them. Quite often, the actual content of such a programme doesn't matter as much as one might think.
Well, this is all very well-intentioned but much of it rather clueless. It's unfocused and clearly based on very little experience of cycle campaigning. A number of points are of course very sensible, such as the call for 20mph, but where it comes to effective HGV measures they'd have been better advised to check out http://www.nomorelethallorries.org.uk/, which has a much better set of recommendations.
Point 2 is totally confused; much too specific in its recommendations and failing to identify what really needs doing at junctions, e.g. pre-signals and Trixi mirrors are just very small parts of the toolkit and not by any stretch of the imagination of any central importance.
Point 3 is correct in calling for good underlying data of cycle traffic flows, but that should be part of standard data-gathering routines and not a separate exercise. Whatever happens, such information is usually just rough approximation and less valuable than people might think, but as the number of people cycling is often underestimated, it could be useful.
The HA budget, point 4, isn't really the budget that needs to be influenced; there are loads of other budgets which are much more important, such as TfL's. At the end of the day, it's not that crucial where the money comes from, but a much better call would have been to reinstate Cycling England, axed by the current Government, and give it a proper budget.
Point 5 is OK but could be made so much sharper, e.g. include cycle training in the driving test, as per http://www.bikeaware.org.uk/.
Point 6 is OK, we support 20mph very strongly, but the reference to 'cycle lanes' smacks of the usual ignorance that you need some sort of dedicated facility to ride a bike. Lots could be said about that here, but it's fairly involved, and you can't expect well-meaning journalists to understand that very well without experience.
As for point 7, there isn't any particular need to get businesses to back up public funding, particularly not for the sort of projects they envisage, which are just about the least effective conceivable.
About point 8, again there isn't a huge need to separate cycling out from other modes. Proper consideration for cycling must be built into all traffic schemes, and all officers must work on that sort of thing. In my experience, where you have specific cycling personnel, their advice is often sidelined, and I can't imagine that such a person, even if fairly senior, would really be able to exercise their powers, but I suppose it would depend on what sort of person you'd get.
All in all, like many people who are new to campaigning, they greatly overstress the risk of collisions and make cycling appear like a high-risk activity. It is not (as was said further up).
I completely understand the journalists' distress at their colleague's horrible crash, but unfortunately you can't just draw up a programme from scratch without doing more research.
Still, good luck to them. Quite often, the actual content of such a programme doesn't matter as much as one might think.