active transport

Thousands more parking places created at stations – but only for cyclists

The daily misery of hunting for a space in the railway station car park and being charged up to £20 for the privilege will soon be over for thousands of commuters — if they switch from petrol to pedal power.

The Government will announce today that it is creating 10,000 additional secure cycle spaces at stations as part of a commitment to “put cycling at the heart of transport policy”. Hundreds of stations will get cycle stands monitored by CCTV cameras or with cages accessible by swipe cards. Ministers have not yet ruled out reallocating spaces from cars to bikes.

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active transport
cycle parking
cycle hub

Are women cyclists in more danger than men?

Women cyclists make up a far higher proportion of deaths involving lorries than men. Why?

Many of the fatalities involving cyclists happen in collisions with a heavy goods vehicle (HGV). This year, seven of the eight people killed by lorries in London have been women.

Considering that women make only 28% of the UK's cycling journeys, this seems extremely high.

Tags: 
Commuting
cycling
active transport
cycle accidents

'Smarter choices' - so what's the evidence?

'Smarter choices' is a broad collection of different initiatives aimed at enabling people to choose improved standards of accessibility with less car use. Our 2004 report 'Smarter Choices: Changing the Way we Travel' was commissioned by the DfT to make an assessment of the evidence available on workplace and school travel plans, personalised travel planning, public transport information and marketing, travel awareness campaigns, car clubs and car sharing, teleworking, teleconferencing, and home shopping. The report is some 700 pages, in two volumes, of case studies, literature reviews, and synthesis. Since then there has been important newer work on residential and leisure travel plans, and initiatives on cycling and walking.
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active transport
transport
travel plans

RR380 "I Want To Ride My Bike"

Cycling as a travel option for school students has decreased significantly in the past 20 years.
Meanwhile, there is increasing evidence that the benefits of active transport, including cycling to school, are significant yet understated in transport planning. This suggests that there is a rationale for exploring how barriers to cycling to school might be overcome. The objective of this research was to identify the barriers to students cycling to school for six intermediate schools and recommend specific interventions for the schools, along with more general, national level recommendations.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 
Safety
cycling
active transport
school
travel
physical activity

Developing School-based Cycle Trains in New Zealand,

Working with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) and North Shore City Council on the ‘Travelwise to School’ pilot project on the North Shore in 2002, we surveyed the parent community to ascertain their interest in various alternative modes for their children’s travel to and from school. We found that 87 of the 184 families who responded would allow their children to cycle to school in a group with another adult supervising their ride. One-third of these families offered to supervise the children on a rostered basis. This suggested that there was a high, albeit latent, interest in the wider community in what we call the ‘cycle train’. Because of this interest, we undertook to implement cycle train networks in New Zealand schools. The cycle train is similar in approach to another alternative way of getting children to and from school, the ‘walking school bus’ (WSB), where adult ‘conductors’ walk along a set route to school, collecting children from designated ‘bus stops’. The cycle train is essentially a ‘walking school bus’ on bicycle wheels.
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cycling
New Zealand
active transport
children
cycle train
mode change
school
transport
travel