Worse still, a substantial amount of the money is being spent on schemes that are primarily intended to benefit other road users than cyclists and where it is debatable whether their is any net benefit to cyclists at all.

On the ground there is very little in the way of new infrastructure to see except for a lot of cycle parking racks. There’s a handful of upgraded (or very rarely, new) links around the periphery of the central area but virtually nothing in the central area itself where most cycling is focussed.

The bike hire scheme you feature has proved a resounding failure, in part at least because it has only four ‘hubs’ in central Bristol which do not even include the main railway station, Temple Meads.

The main target of cycling City is to double the number of cyclists in Bristol, but it’s hard to see what aspects of Cycling City could possibly provoke such an increase over and above the background growth in cycling that would occur anyway.

In short Cycling City is failing to even come close to meeting it’s main targets. The danger is that the failure of Cycling City may be seen as a failure of cycling itself and result in cycling never being taken seriously as a transport option in Bristol.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3626/3447171838_97dbeb2f5d.jpg

That hill is ridiculously steep!

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg106/truCido1/20738_371035460507_553540507_104302.jpg

Next time you visit you really should take a ride along the Bristol to Bath railway path. It’s a flat and traffic free ride for at least 12 miles. For a relatively narrow pathway through an urban area there’s a surprising amount of wild life, lot’s a squirrels and I saw a badger trundling along one early morning.

There’s a lot of concern about where the cycle city money is going. There are improvements being made but not as many as you’d think for the money. Overall I think it’s gotten people thinking about cycling which is a good thing.