Cycling UK Forum

Dear T (and others),
I was a Stakeholder on the Cycling City project, together with other colleagues from CTC Right to Ride, Bristol Cycling Campaign, Sustrans and other groups. Even having a Stakeholder Group was a big step forward for Bristol City Council, and although our power was limited and our impact relatively small, we did achieve a number of changes and improvements to the project.
I am nout sure of your intention in raising this topic - Bike Radar, BBC Bristol (CC fails to double cycling numbers") and Bristol Evening Post, for example, have already had a pop at the project and asked "Where has the money gone?". There is actually a lot of information on BetterByBike http://www.betterbybike.info/cycling-city and numerous reports have been produced listing what has been done. These reports show that Cycling City has been a success and this has satisfied the purse-holders and put Bristol in good stead for getting further funding eg the initial £5m of Local Sustainable Transport Funding.
The question might better be - "Could the money have been better spent?" - and this is where the Stakeholders were not able to have sufficient impact.
If you would like to work with us to look further into how the money was spent and how future funding could best be applied and gain a better unerstanding of what was done and why then please get in touch.
Useful information that we would still welcome would be a comparison of what the project initially said it would deliver (with forecast costs) and what was actually delivered (with actual costs) - any help in obtaining this information would be appreciated.
We do have a lot of unpublished information too, but it takes time to sort it all out - again any help would be appreciated.
One major point that you seem to have missed, is that the project was "match-funded" - so you should be asking where the £22m went!!
If you are serious about taking this forward, do get in touch.
regards,
Martin McD
CTC Right to Ride Representative
secretary@bristolcyclingcampaign.org.uk