Last weekend, I spent some time in Bristol, which has become a cycling city project. As a result, Bristol has £22.8 million to spend on making Bristol more cycle-friendly as part of the Cycling City project. It has until March 2011 to spend the money or risk losing it. It will be interesting to see what difference it makes. These are a few photos taken in the centre of Bristol Jan 2010
It’s hilly in Bristol. But, the hills don’t seem to deter cyclists. In fact there are quite a few hills which would make a great hill climb course if they closed off the traffic
However, I was surprised to see this guy ride a single speed bike
Single Speed in hilly Bristol? – wouldn’t be my choice, but looks nice bike
Bristol Cycle hire scheme
- A one-off registration fee of £10
- The first 30 minutes of bike hire are free. The charge is then £1 per hour or part hour.
- The bikes look decent Dawes hybrid bikes.
- There is a £1 surcharge if leave it in another location.
Cycling Facilities. Though like many cities these cycle lanes do have a habit of disappearing when you need them most
A rare segregated lane
Lot’s of red boxes for cyclists, though cars usually ignore these anyway.
Cycling on cobbles
Related Bristol Cycling Links
- Bristol Cycling Campaign – campaigning for better facilities and 20mph zone in residential area
- Bristol Cycling at City Council
- Bristol Traffic Blog – interesting blog about transport in Bristol
- Cycling Oxford pics
The amount of money available through Cycling City is much less than £22.8 million. Only half of that is ‘new’ money from the taxpayer (via Cycling England), the remainder being money that would be (or has been) spent anyway.
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.
Hi
lovely pics of Bristol!
Please add the website above to your links – we are a charity promoting all things “cyclely” in Bristol such as maintenance classes and National Standard Bikeability training for kids and adults.
speaking of hill climb course…
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3626/3447171838_97dbeb2f5d.jpg
i think it’s allegedly the steepest residential street in europe; vale street – totterdown.
Thanks for photos Pj!
That hill is ridiculously steep!
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1273/1313946806_a49c38ffcf.jpg
i ride fixed in bristol, and often even into the mendips. it’s great fun, next time you should try it – keeps you fit. 72″ is fine for park street.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg106/truCido1/20738_371035460507_553540507_104302.jpg
Great to see some photos from my home town well done for taking on park street.
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.
The two way lanes segregated lanes are positively deadly. Wrong way cycling’s bad enough, wrong way cycling away from the driver’s line of sight is a recipe for disaster.
I’ve ridden the one in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, Australia three times and every time I’ve had at least three drivers ignore my priority; more times than happens to me in a week of cycling on normal roads.