A provocative breakfast at John Rylands !

As part of the University of Manchester's Knowledge Exchange Hub for Environmental Sustainability, I was recently invited to a Planes, Trains and Bicycles breakfast event at John Rylands Library on Deansgate. All the speakers were asked to look ahead to 2030 and with a whole 4.5 minutes consider what transport in Britain would look like in 2030 and what can current trends tell us about the way we’ll choose to move around in the future?

Through discussion and debate these events seek to highlight some of the key knowledge assets and research projects related to environmental sustainability and identify some innovative solutions to the key sustainability challenges faced by city partners and others. Not sure how well my provocation met those aims but thought I would pop it up on the blog in case any who wasn't there is interested.....

Provocation

I am not going to spend much time talking about the health, environmental, social and economic benefits of increasing cycling levels. For me they are a given – and I do not have the time in my 4 and half minute provocation to dwell on them – happy to debate afterwards.

Put simply – increasing the number of people cycling and the number of journeys made by bike is a NO BRAINER.

So – I am going to look forward to both 2015 and 2030.

Why 2015 ? Because I am going to outline how I hope – No today I am going to be Mr positive – and say I am going to outline how local authorities, public sector and private sector organisations in Manchester and Greater Manchester will have started to implement a number of key changes.

Changes that, in my opinion, are crucial to supporting and encouraging more people to cycle – not just for commute journeys, but also for utility trips to the shops and schools, leisure trips to the countryside or to visit friends or family and maybe even a little cycle tourism or sportives...

So now its 2030 and looking back it is now 15 years since Manchester got serious about encouraging and supporting people to choose active travel – cycling and walking.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester introduced 20 mph default speed limits in ALL residential areas. 20 mph where people live. Better for the environment, better for local communities and better for encouraging people to walk and cycle more. 7 times more likely to die if hit at 30mph than at 20mph.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester local authorities started to make planning decisions that ensured that communities could access employment, local services and shops within walking and cycling distances. Helped local shops survive and thrive by levelling the playing field for car parking charges – so that local shops did not have to pay business rates on parking spaces when out-of-town megastore car parks do not.

• 15 years since GM local authorities planning departments ensured that new developments – residential, business and public realm provided secure cycle parking and storage. If you want people to cycle you need to give them somewhere safe to park or store their bikes.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester started to re-allocate roadspace and created a coherent, consistent, continuous and safe network of cycle routes – routes that go to places people want to travel too and routes that are designed to encourage everybody to cycle. (A little hint – Go Dutch !)

• 15 years since Transport for Greater Manchester learnt from our European and North American sister cities about how to properly integrate cycle carriage into all forms of public transport.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester Combined Authority and GM NHS got together and agreed joined up long term funding to support and develop cycling. Average spend on cycling in Copenhagen £40 per head per year – equivalent figure in Manchester £1-2.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester got serious about reducing its CO2 emissions and air pollution emissions from the transport sector.

• 15 years since Greater Manchester appointed a Cycling Tsar to co-ordinate cycling development across the region to provide clear political leadership which is crucial.

So now its 2030.....

The policy changes outlined above have help make our communities more local, better connected and more social.

Local shops are thriving, air quality has increased, CO2 emissions from transport are massively reduced and our roads are less congested, safer and quieter, more children walk and cycle to school, more people cycle to the shops, the parks and to work. People are less stressed and are healthier.

Cycling levels are now well on the way to 2010 European levels – with 40% of all journeys being made by bicycle. However, our European cities are still well ahead of us – with some cities seeing 75% of all journeys being made by bicycle.....

So is this all just a lovely dream ?....

... well we don't have to to gaze into our crystal balls... we could just visit and learn from Freiburg (Germany), Copenhagen (Denmark), Gronigen (Netherlands), Portland (USA) all of whom have cycling levels an order of magnitude higher than Manchester.

Yes, they have had 50 years of implementing the sorts of policies I outlined briefly above – but none of this stuff is rocket science – we just need the political and social will to MAKE IT HAPPEN !

Thank you