Do The Right Thing

If you were campaigning to improve the quality of local cycle infrastructure, is this the sort of thing that you’d be demanding?

1. Make my journey a pleasant experience and not a daily struggle for space.
2. Give me and other cyclists priority over motor traffic.
3. Include sections free of motor traffic.
4. Stop buses, lorries and cars passing too close and too fast.
5. Keep my path free of parked cars and the danger of opening car doors.
6. Enable me to cycle at the speed I prefer.
7. Don’t force me to cross lanes of fast-moving traffic.
8. Do away with hazardous or difficult one-way systems and roundabouts.
9. Are continuous and don’t stop and start.
10. Allow me to stop at red lights ahead of other traffic and move off first.

Yep - me too. And it’s the Superhighway Manifesto of the London Cycling Campaign .

I wonder if I can persuade North Tyneside Council to adopt this as their 20-year cycling strategy? All it seems to need is for the ten points above to be prefixed with some suitable vision thing phrase - something like

North Tyneside will have more people cycling than driving by 2030, through building cycling infrastructure that:

1. Makes cycling journey a pleasant experience and not a daily struggle for space.
2. Gives cyclists priority over motor traffic.
3. Includes sections free of motor traffic.
4. Stops buses, lorries and cars passing too close and too fast.
5. Keeps cyclists’ paths free of parked cars and the danger of opening car doors.
6. Enable people to cycle at the speeds they prefer, in safety.
7. Doesn’t force cyclists to cross lanes of fast-moving traffic.
8. Does away with hazardous or difficult one-way systems and roundabouts.
9. Is continuous from journey start to end, and don’t itself stop and start.
10. Allows people riding bikes to stop at red lights ahead of other traffic and move off first.

Filed under: Bike Culture, Community, Environment, Everyday People, Goals, London, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Road Safety, Tynemouth, Whitley Bay