January saw the release of more 2011 Census data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Several cycling blogs and newspapers have commented on the decline of car ownership in London and corresponding increases in the proportion of journeys to work being made by bicycle.
For example, the Cyclists in the City blog highlights the increase in the number of "car-free" households between 2001 and 2011. "In 2001 in Southwark, 51% of households had no car or van. By 2011, that
number was up to 58%. In Hackney, the story is even more dramatic - 65%
of households are now car-free, up from 56% in 2001. [See the KS404EW Car or van availability].
The Method of travel to work (QS701EW dataset) highlights, that in London, the proportion of
people cycling to work has grown to 4.3%. But just as the number of car-free households varies across London Boroughs, the so do the cycle to work figures. For example, the Cyclists in the City blog estimates that in Hackney, more
people who travel to work use a bike (15.4%) than use a car.
So what do the Census figures tell is about household car ownership in Greater Manchester?
The table on the left shows the percentage of households in the 10 GM local authorities that reported that they had "no availability to a car or van".
I
n
contrast to London, the number of "car-free" households across Greater
Manchester has declined in the period between 2001 and 2011. Or put another way, 2.2% more GM households reported that they owned (or had access to) one (or more) cars in 2011 compared to 2001.
This trend was reported in all ten local authority areas. Some commentators and politicians will welcome this trend as representing economic progress and a rebalancing of the north and south economic divide. But such growth in car ownership will increase the challenges facing Greater Manchester councils as they attempt to meet air pollution, congestion, CO2 emissions and obesity targets.
The 2011 census Travel to Work unadjusted data shows the following percentage figures for each GM local authority:
Bolton (0.6%), Bury (0.9%), Manchester (2.3%), Oldham (0.6%), Rochdale (0.6%), Salford (1.5%), Stockport (1.4%), Tameside (0.9%), Trafford (2.1%), Wigan (1.0%).
Future blogs will examine the cycling figures in more detail. Meanwhile, the Guardian have created a great datablog with the Census travel to work data which allows people to easily look at the cycling data for where they live (or anywhere else for that matter).
But back to the challenge of reducing the number of cars in Manchester. One barrier many people raise to the idea of going "car-free" is what to do on those ocassions when they need a car. Well a really practical solution is to join a Car Club.
Those lovely people at Manchester Friends of the Earth have teamed up with City car Club and all MFoE members can get a years City Car club membership for just £1 - and save £59.
Why own a car in Manchester when you can hire a locally parked City
Car by the hour? City Car Club gives you all the benefits of owning a
car without any of the hassles or expenses. City Cars are located in designated parking bays
across the city and are available to hire for as little as 30 minutes,
an hour, a day, or as long as you need. As a member you can book the
cars online or by phone any time of the day or night, and access them
with your very own smart-enabled Manchester’s low emission car sharing
scheme.
- All the convenience of car ownership without the carbon, costs and hassle.
- First year membership for £1 (normally £60) to Manchester FoE
members for the remainder of 2013. [Manchester FoE members please
contact office@manchesterfoe.org.uk for the offer code].
- Bookings can be made minutes or up to a year in advance for as
little as 30 minutes to a few hours or several days. Bookings can be
cancelled up to 5 hours in advance at no charge.
- Over 40 vehicles already available across Manchester City Centre,
Salford Quays, Hulme, Chorlton, Didsbury, and Wythenshawe. Pay by the
hour vans also available in the City Centre.
- Service available to residents and businesses membership card. Book, jump in, drive away – it’s as simple as that!
Manchester Friends of the Earth membership costs £6 (unwaged), £12 (low waged) and £24 (waged) per year. You can join the City Car club online or by phone 0845 330 1234.
and remember, less cars on the roads (or pavements!) is good for everyone.
If we want people to integrate cycling into their everyday activities there are some clear changes that we need to make. Top priorities include creating safe, continuous, high quality cycle routes that go to destinations that people want to travel to; re-allocating roadspace to encourage people to walk and cycle more and reducing traffic speeds in residential areas (20s Plenty).
In addition we also need to ensure that they have somewhere secure to park/store their bicycles where they live, work and in the public realm. If people do not have anywhere to safely store or lock their bicycles - why would they cycle.
Recently came across an interesting Transport for London (TfL) scheme that provides "free" cycle parking stands for businesses in London. There are a number of conditions that the company needs to sign up to and these include:
- Your organisation must have a minimum of five employees at the location.
- The number of stands available (up to 20) depends on the number of employees at the location, and is at our discretion
- Stands must be installed on privately owned land. The land owner
must have given permission and any planning regulations must be
followed
- Your organisation must sign up to the "Businesscycle" scheme
- Your organisation can choose from three designs: Sheffield, toast racks and vertical
- Your organisation has to pay for installation and ongoing maintenance
- Your organisation must agree to send us photographic evidence of installation within three months of delivery
- Your organisation must not have an undischarged planning
obligation or Section 106 agreement for cycle parking relating to the
site
These conditions seem reasonable and companies can (depending on number of employees) order up to 20 stands.
It will be interesting to see how effective this scheme is at encouraging businesses to install more cycle parking.
So what is on offer in Greater Manchester? It is reported that Transport for Greater Manchester is offering businesses grants for "cycling facilities" but unless you already knew this the TfGM website is a little opaque.
The Grants paragraph states that:
"As part of the LSTF Project Transport for Greater Manchester can
provide grants and match funding towards the cost of providing cycling
facilities at your workplace. Organisations receiving financial assistance will be required to
commit to furthering cycling at their workplace by nominating a member
of staff to act in a cycle liaison role as well as taking part in other
relevant activities."
Which is all good.... but would be even better if some more specific details were available. Just a thought !
Any companies wanting more details of the TfGM grant assistance should contact the cycling team at cycling@tfgm.com
The Big Pedal is a massive cycle and scoot to school event. How
massive? In the Big Pedal 2012 over 890,000 journeys were made by bike
and scooter, by pupils at nearly 1,000 schools, representing a combined
roll of over 310,000 pupils. And that was just to school!
How does it work?
The format is simple. The more pupils who cycle, the quicker your
school races round a “virtual” course – and it’s all weighted so schools
of any size have an equal chance to win.
Superheroes Fundraising Day
Kick off your Big Pedal on 28 February with our Superheroes
fundraising day! Join thousands of children dressing up as superheroes
for £1 to help Sustrans make the school journey safer, healthier and
more fun across the UK. We’ll give you info, resources and fun stuff to help and there’s
even a prize for the best photos uploaded – for full details, see our Superheroes fundraising page.
In 2013 we could pedal past one million journeys if we get over 1,000 schools to take part. Will you be there? As ever, there will be some fantastic prizes to be won, a fun
theme and an exciting course to race around, plus schools will receive
free resources to help with their entry.
Register your school.
Bikes are allowed on ALL Metrolink train cars.... How great that statement would be if it applied to the Metrolink service in Greater Manchester.
Unfortunately, the "Bike on Board. The New Way to Commute" promotion is for the Metrolink services in Southern California, USA. The public transit provider has added Bike Cars to accommodate more bikes on select trains a
s part of Metrolink's green initiatives program.
According to the guidelines the lower levels of the
new Bike Cars are equipped with stalls that are designed to hold three
bikes each. Bike Cars are identified by a yellow “Bike Car” decal on the
side of the train or bike train wrap. Each train car is designed to hold three bikes. The special Bike Cars are designed to hold 18 bikes on the lower level.
Contrast the progressive US policy with the current Metrolink guidance on the Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) website.
Despite ongoing campaigning, Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) remains ambivalent (at best) and hostile (at worst) to integrating cycle carriage into the public transport network. Previous blog posts provide some of the detail of earlier (unsuccessful) lobbying campaigns.
So far, Greater Manchester's politicians and transport planners have demonstrated a striking lack of imagination with regards to integrating bicycles and public transport. TfGM Committee members (local councillors) and officers
really do need to catch up with the growing number of European and North
American cities who have successfully promoted the (less than
revolutionary concept) of enabling people to travel with their bicycles and not just providing bike parking at bus, tram or train stations. What are people supposed to do when they get to their final stop or station and still have one (or more) miles to travel to their final destination ? Combining bikes and public transport is a really effective solution to the "problem of the last mile."
Other cities are leading the way...... Manchester needs to catch up, fast !
In the open letter (see below), Transport & Environment, EUROCITIES, EEB
and HEAL call on European Parliament Members to support a quieter, healthier Europe and
vote in favour of the ENVI committee’s report on February 5th 2013.
You can find contact details for your MEP on the Write to Them website.
MEPs: Vote YES for a Quieter Europe
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
Traffic
noise is the second biggest environmental factor affecting Europe’s
health after air pollution. Almost half of EU citizens are regularly
exposed to road traffic noise over the level that the World Health
Organisation (WHO) considers to pose a serious risk to health.(1) Noise
pollution has been linked to 50,000 fatal heart attacks every year in
Europe. (2) According to a recent Eurobarometer, close to half of us
believe noise affects our health "to a large extent". (3)
There’s an easy and cost-effective solution to tackling urban
noise – making vehicles quieter. (4) Achieving the limits recommended by
the Environment Committee would only cost around €500 per truck. (5) For
cars, many measures required to make cars more efficient and lower their
CO2 emissions also make them quieter. (6) Around a quarter of cars and a
third of trucks tested over the past five years already meet the levels
proposed by the Committee. (7)
Cutting vehicle noise levels by just 3 decibels has an equivalent
noise-reduction effect to halving the level of traffic on the road; and
the benefits to health and quality of life are more than 30 times their
costs. (8) Making vehicles quieter is also the most cost-effective way of
reducing urban noise. Stricter vehicle noise standards will cost just
€15 per person/year compared to €1,800 per person affected/year for
building noise barriers. (9)
With next week’s vote on the first update of EU vehicle noise
standards in 20 years, Members of the European Parliament have a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only significantly improve our
quality of life, but also decrease the strain on the budgets of our
local authorities, who have to pay for costly noise management measures.
The Environment Committee has delayed the introduction of new noise
limits for vehicles and in some areas weakened the European Commission’s
proposal. Whilst this is unfortunate, the Committee’s report does
reflect a true political compromise.
We urge you to reject any further weakening amendments to Annex
III, proposed by the Rapporteur (MEP Ouzky). We call on you to support a
quieter, healthier Europe and vote in favour of the ENVI committee’s
report next Tuesday, February 5th.
Signed by:
Jos Dings, Director, Transport & Environment (T&E)
Henk Wolfert, City of Rotterdam, chair of EUROCITIES Working Group Noise
Jeremy Wates, Secretary General, European Environmental Bureau (EEB)
Génon K. Jensen, Executive Director, Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL)
(1) WHO (2011): http://www.euro.who.int/en/what-we-publish/abstracts/burden-of-disease-f...
(2) T&E Report (2008): http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/can-you-hear-us-why-it-...
(3) Eurobarometer survey (2010): http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_347_en.pdf
(4) T&E Position paper (2012): http://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/media/2012%2004_TE%20...
(5) TNO (2012) Reduction of vehicle noise emission – Technological potential and impacts: http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/reduction-vehicle-noise...
(6) TNO (2012): http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/road-vehicle-noise-vers...
(7) Venoliva
(8) TNO (2012) Reduction of vehicle noise emission – Technological potential and impacts: http://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/reduction-vehicle-noise...
(9) CEDR report
Some great news from those lovely people at Transportation Alternatives in New York who report that a "landslide of support just shook Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn, far outsizing the tiny car-parking-space-turned-bike-parking-lot it was endorsing."
A bike corral (a smart idea to swap one car parking
space with four bike racks) in Crown Heights got an outpouring of local
affection. It all started when a local business, Little Zelda Coffee, saw how many customers were biking in.
In December, with the help of the Department of Transportation and the
unanimous support of Community Board 8, a parking spot outside Little
Zelda Coffee was transformed into a bike corral, complete with planters
and space for the bicycles of eight Franklin Avenue shoppers. Then, a
small opposition started to make a lot of noise.
A petition, protesting the lost car parking spot, hit 300 signatures in January. But a counter petition, more than 500 signatures strong,
showed up in support of the new bike corral. The community board agreed
to revisit the issue. The result, hashed out at a meeting of the
transportation committee last week, was unanimous, again, in support of a
bike-friendly Franklin Avenue.
From Columbus Avenue to Prospect Park West to Grand Street to
Kent Avenue, this is a story that’s been told before. The people of New
York City want streets built for bicycling. Now, Franklin
Avenue and its little bike corral are added to the growing list of
streets double endorsed for being bike-friendly. If there’s a spot in your neighborhood that could be better for bicycling, you can change it.
The Love Your Bike campaign would love to hear from any local businesses in Greater Manchester that would like to to introduce similar on-street bike parking.
The table on the left shows the percentage of households in the 10 GM local authorities that reported that they had "no availability to a car or van".
This trend was reported in all ten local authority areas. Some commentators and politicians will welcome this trend as representing economic progress and a rebalancing of the north and south economic divide. But such growth in car ownership will increase the challenges facing Greater Manchester councils as they attempt to meet air pollution, congestion, CO2 emissions and obesity targets.
