Will Bristol spend its cycling city cash?

2 comments
By Richard Peace | Monday, Oct 20, 2008 1.28pm

Bristol was given £22.8 million after being chosen as the UK’s first 'cycling city' earlier this year. But there seems to be an air of nervousness developing around plans to spend the money.

The cycling developments need to happen over the next couple of years and, after some shaky forays into consultation and doubts over the usefulness of proposals, a plan will finally go before a cabinet meeting of Bristol City Council later this month.

At a meeting earlier this month, John Grimshaw, founder of Sustrans and now with Cycling England, the body which awarded the 'cyclingcity' status, said: “We chose Bristol because of the number of cyclists here but doubling that is going to be a huge challenge. I hope things have been going flat-out in Bristol.”

Comments such as “We have got to get on with this, otherwise 11.4 million pounds could be wasted” (from the council officer in charge of the project) do not inspire confidence.

Related articles

Related links

BikeRadar is not responsible for the content of external websites

Bristol architect and long-standing cycling activist / Sustrans patron George Ferguson has analysed some of the proposals and compared them to that icon of high-quality cycling, Groningen in the Netherlands. His findings imply that Bristol – awarded a similar amount of money as it took to make Groningen a success – has its work cut out.

However, if things have gone and continue to go flat-out, with plans approved and effectively implemented, Bristol could double the number of its cyclists from 30,000 to 60,000. Proposed measures include 20mph zones in three residential areas, up to 35 contra-flow cyclepaths to allow cyclists to ride in both directions along one-way roads, 9,200 cycling proficiency lessons a year for schoolchildren compared with 2,500 now and enhanced cycleways on four main routes.

Bristol’s “cycling champion”, Councillor Terry Cook, told the meeting:  “Within 10 years we should see most of the traffic in the city centre being cyclists and if we can get a critical mass of cyclists, then the attitude of motorists will have to change.” He is also on record as saying that Princess Street Bridge will be closed to motor traffic.

To express your views (before the end of October), click here and to find out more about the proposals, click here

You can follow BikeRadar on Twitter at twitter.com/bikeradar and on Facebook at facebook.com/BikeRadar.

You might also like...

User Comments

There are 2 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 2 of 2 comments

  • The council are incompetant dreamers. What Bristol needs to do is fix all the slapdash cycle paths\ways leading into the centre route them safely and keep them clean of glass and parked cars. Then they need to increase the amount of bike parking (preferably secure) in the centre, the new shopping centre seems to have gained only a handful of places to lock bikes which seems a massive missed opportunity..which basically sums up most of Bristol councils thinking.

  • in regards to this article it seems to me to sum up every council and cities ideas in regards to cyclists. how hard it is to stick a 3ft cylepath on major routes in to and around cities - we can use a mojority of the same roads as cars so why not just get on with it??

    "and if we can get a critical mass of cyclists, then the attitude of motorists will have to change"

    and this is such a stereotypical british view - oh lets just leave it until its affecting both parties so greatly we have no choice but to do the minimum effort to rectify it - and it''lL not work cos it'll simply be too little too late - but hell we'll have to live with it....aaaaarrrggghh!!!!!!!!!

Post a Comment:

You need to login or register to post comments.