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Showing posts with label local motion. Show all posts

Northern Echo: Transport seminar to discover project results

TRANSPORT, health and environmental professionals will hear how residents' travel habits have changed across Darlington during the past five years on Wednesday. A seminar has been organised to hear how the Local Motion project has changed how people travel across the town.

-Read the full story at The Northern Echo: Transport seminar to discover project results

A CONFERENCE is being held in Darlington to examine its flagship transport scheme, Local Motion, and help steer towns across the country in the right direction.

Darlington is the only highway authority in England to have secured funding worth about £4.75m to become a sustainable travel and cycling demonstration town.

The free day-long conference on Wednesday, April 2, at the Dolphin Leisure Centre will highlight the successful and failed projects.

- The Northern Echo: Flagship travel town leads the way (The comments are revealing.)

Darlington Cycling Festival, South Park, Sunday 17th June

Darlington Cycling Festival takes place on Sunday 17th June in South Park. People who are attending the festival to have a stall include Groundwork, Local Motion, Police, Surestart and Sustrans. The idea of the day is to put across a positive message about cycling and include all age groups so hopefully there will be something for everybody including some guided rides and displays from a mountain bike team and a BMX team.

The event runs from 11:00 to 4:00.

Darlington Cycling Campaign will have a stall so come along for a chat. If you've any particular praise or criticism of the cycling infrastructure that you'd like us to pass on, if's much easier to do so in person than by email.

One less bike. One more car.

The same day that I posted Tricky's views on cycling in Darlington, he decided he would return to commuting to work by car. I'll let his own words explain why:

After another close shave yesterday by an ignorant motorist who doesn't know his highway code I have decide to stop commuting by bike and use my considerably larger Ford Mondeo and add it to the ever increasing queues on Yarm Road. Life is far too short, and after 15 years of commuting up and down Yarm Road, DBC have only made things far more dangerous for cyclists. The biggest culprit being the new bus lanes that even the buses don't use. Add to that the numerous pedestrian refuges and parked cars, and all you have is a road unsafe for cycling on.

Here is a question for you. When is a cycle lane not a cycle lane?

When it's a bus lane apparently, just after been pushed out of the aforementioned lane by a Citreon Xsara Picasso, who, give him his dues, did have his indicator on at the time when he very nearly side swiped me. When I confronted him about driving in a bus lane his defense for nearly hitting me was "Well you don't look like a bus either."

Can someone from the council amend their statistics on decreased car use and increased bike use, please?

The irony here is that, I believe, Tricky has been riding to and from work since before the Local Motion campaign began and before the council started to make changes.

New Darlington Journey Planner

I just recieved the following email:

Dear Local Motion Supporter,

We are pleased to announce that the new Journey Planner is now online!

You can access this site by clicking here or alternatively click on this link http://journeys.darlington.gov.uk/

We hope you find this new facility extermely useful in helping you continue making sustainable travel choices.

BEST WISHES

TEAM LOCAL MOTION

Apparently, the only sustainable transport choices are walking and buses. I'm about to leave to meet with another campaign member at his house and the planner suggested various bus/walk combinations, but not once suggested I ride my bike there. There is a button to toggle bike routes on/off while using the map, and the blue lines are fairly helpful, but they suggest that there is no bike route by my house or my destination, yet looking outside I see the road is still.

Please, planner-creators, how about a link from the results page to a map of cyle routes and secure parking places, with the start and end points of the journeys indicated?

Update:

Here's my suggestion of what the planner could look like.

As you can see, the fastest option for this journey which I make every week day is by bike. Even walking the whole way is faster than the times given for the walk/bus/walk options, and walkers don't get stuck in unplanned traffic.

Update 2:

From the council:

We have worked with consultants engaged by Cycling England on the development of an online cycle planner - but are not yet in a position to launch this facility.

So, there is going to be a cycle planner, but it will be separate from the Journey Planner.

Another generation lost to car culture

A conversation my wife had with a mother at a child group:

Other mother: The traffic's terrible when I drive [child] to [Nursery X, 4 miles across town from home], so we've moved him to [Nursery Y, 2 miles from home (in a village outside town)]
Wife: Why not move [child] to [nursery Z, 0.7 miles from home]? We did that, so we could walk.
Other mother: Walk? I can't walk! I have things to do after dropping [child] off.

I'm afraid that this is what we (and the Local Motion campaign) are up against when trying to get people to consider alternatives to cars. The round trip walking to the closer nursery would take about 30 minutes, which wouldn't be too different to driving to the other nursery and back, but it just wasn't considered as an alternative. Another generation lost to car culture.