The CTC - is it vulnerable?

[Simon L6]

But they're only 'must have' items in your view - some members probably don't want them, and others consider additional CTC services 'must have'.

If you really believe that to be the case, please let me know how (call me, PM me, e-mail me or post here) because I'd be interested to know how we can deliver the quality of services members want at a lower price. Based on what I heard of a discussion at the last Management Committee, the average interaction time between a member and the call centre is one or two orders of magnitude higher than the commercial average - because members want an in-depth interaction. That costs more than script-based processing run from a call centre in the subcontinent.

Goodbye to a fair portion of the membership....

I'm not too clever at the multiquote thing, so forgive the format

1. If you look at the list of things that the CTC members consider to be important they're not that expensive. The insurance, the mag, the website, the legal advice.

2. I've stood in the membership service office and watched the way they work. Give it a go. It's an eye-opener.

Having said that, if you were setting up you simply wouldn't bother with telephone or postal applications. Consider this - of the 350 people of all ages and all kinds of cycling proficiencey (including none) who signed up for the Martlets ride only six needed communication by post. Of all the FNRttC riders over the last five years only one has not had an e-mail address. The CTC is lumbered with an outdated system, not helped by the failure to collect e-mail addresses (and the failure to collect the correct e-mail addresses he says with some feeling). A new rival just wouldn't bother doing it any other way than electronically.

3. Yes. Some people join cycling organisations because of the campaigning and the good works - but the good works didn't figure in the top ten reasons for joining offered by CTC members, and campaigning wasn't that high on the list.

So, to repeat. I think there's a market for a low-cost, low overhead membership organisation, and it wouldn't take much to improve on some of the CTC's offering - particularly Cyclists Welcome. You'd have to bolt on a sense of belonging with an e-mailed mag, a website, and maybe some rides, but, to be honest, a new organisation is probably just one commercial partner away from happening.

[simonconnell]

1. If you look at the list of things that the CTC members consider to be important they're not that expensive. The insurance, the mag, the website, the legal advice.

This is becoming a bit of a stuck record - all the survey data shows the membership as a whole values all the elements of the proposition. Are you suggesting people would jettison:

The campaigning?
The touring service?
Chris Juden / technical support?
The magazine?
Access to member groups ?
...?

A new rival just wouldn't bother doing it any other way than electronically.

Perversely, I almost agree with you. Just look at how an entirely 'virtual' group like LFGSS has grown up, and yet spawned weekly events, rides, bike polo etc. However, I think much of the value in what we offer is that CTC is not structured to 'crowdsource' - and as a result we are a respected stakeholder to represent the interests of cycling to government (locally and nationally) and other decision-making bodies. We have the resources to fund the required infrastructure to support the organisation, and the financial strength to offer things like legal aid support as mentioned before.

3. Yes. Some people join cycling organisations because of the campaigning and the good works - but the good works didn't figure in the top ten reasons for joining offered by CTC members, and campaigning wasn't that high on the list.

Please could you give a source for this assertion, because it doesn't square with my understanding.

[gaz]

3. Yes. Some people join cycling organisations because of the campaigning and the good works - but the good works didn't figure in the top ten reasons for joining offered by CTC members, and campaigning wasn't that high on the list.

Please could you give a source for this assertion, because it doesn't square with my understanding.

Interesting question. The 2005 membership survey lists Campaigning at number three in the reasons for joining and number one in funding priority.

However only 20% of the membership responded and of those I feel members riding with local groups may have been disproportionately likely to respond. A figure of nearly 25% joining to ride with their local group does not tally up with my own DA where it's around 20% riding once in a year, rising to 11% riding 5 times and just 6% riding 17 times or more.

On that basis I'd doubt that any new commercially motivated competitor would bother with club runs.

[Simon L6]

I think you're right about club runs - in a sense. The trick would be to sell a sense of belonging without them. I suspect that there is a kind of virtual consumerism of cycling as an activity - the real selling point of the club run is not the club run, but the idea of the club run, and, if I'm right, then it's the image purveyed by the club run that is important. It's a bit like the Rapha mailing list - people look at it, admire the snaps but don't actually buy the stuff. Tales of the open road, photographs of cyclists revelling in the freedoms that a bike grants you are not so much there to tempt people out, but to help them describe themselves. The LFGSS is the perfect example of that - the reach of the on-line community is vast, but the participation is small. What matters is that the rides define the members of the group to themselves.

As for Campaigning - it's the only non-benefit reason for joining in the top ten. The unanswerable question is how important it is in the sense of belonging stakes. Most cyclists are not actually touched by the stuff of campaigns - which are there more as an idea than a practical device for making cycling more popular or safer or whatever. It's an affinity thing.

As for technical help or touring information - those are there for free. Chris is undoubtedly the most respected individual in the field, but the answers to anything are to be found on-line.

To be completely cynical - if you can package something that offers a benefit - like third party insurance or discounts at shops, or legal advice - in the feelgood stuff then you've probably got a product that would sell.

Anyway - this is all theoretical. Time will tell if some bright spark comes up with a product that can be packaged to appeal.

[Simon L6]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gqJlWE3t8E

the sting is in the prices at the end. Oh, and there's a far greater sense of identity with volunteers (and we're failing to deliver a basic service to volunteers), and discounts at 100 bike shops. But the basic difference is that you have the same sort of service (using the same underwriters on the insurance) for less money.

[Edwards]

British Cycling at the moment do Everyday Cycling individual package for £24, their family package is more expensive.
This is billed as supporting the Olympic Cycling team and gives access to led rides. A sense of doing something useful, community and saving money.
I feel they could be hard to compete with at the price.

[Simon L6]

I'm not sure that the BC £24 package gives you everything that CTC members value - it would score zero on campaigning, for example.

[robgul]

British Cycling at the moment do Everyday Cycling individual package for £24, their family package is more expensive.
This is billed as supporting the Olympic Cycling team and gives access to led rides. A sense of doing something useful, community and saving money.
I feel they could be hard to compete with at the price.

I think if you poke around on the BC website you can get a £12 intro deal for Everyday Cycling for 12 months (I have one of those as well as CTC) - for a specific reason, not defection ..... yet

Rob

[thirdcrank]

In the context of BC vs CTC, I suppose quite a lot depends on how you picture cycling champions. I imagine that if you did some sort of survey to gauge attitudes to funding them, the great majority would approve and even among CTC members, I imagine that most people would be thinking of people such as Sir Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, and Mark Cavendish, with Rebecca Romero and Victoria Pendleton representing the ladies.

[Edwards]

As for Campaigning - it's the only non-benefit reason for joining in the top ten. The unanswerable question is how important it is in the sense of belonging stakes. Most cyclists are not actually touched by the stuff of campaigns - which are there more as an idea than a practical device for making cycling more popular or safer or whatever. It's an affinity thing.

BC have the supporting cycling in the Olympics, which is an obvious draw for membership.
CTC have campaigning that most of use do not know a lot of what is done as it is commercially sensitive information.
This in itself could make the CTC vulnerable to attracting new members, without even the price difference.

[David Cox]

The CTC is recruiting very well at the moment but that is no reason for complacency. I suspect that the exchanges on other parts of the Forum like Technical etc are more likely to be recruiting new members than this debate. The "affinity thing" is important I've been a CTC member since 1976 but have links to BC and am a Sustrans supporter. If Sustrans has any democratic structure its passed me by but some of their routes are a delight - how many car bound Brummie commuters hae seen a kingfisher on the way to work? Others are tedious, Route 5 out of Bromsgrove Station drove me insane but I was only there because I'd jumped on the wrong train so was in a bad mood to start with! Their Bike It programme in Birmingham schools is fabulous. Many friends are volunteers for British Cycling, we send delegates to their meetings and child protection training through the Local Sports Partnership (now threatened by cuts) is very good. The new road race circuit in local Solihull is great, I will welcome (but not use) the new BMX in Perry Barr. Cyclists are still a minority and need to work together.

But for all their connections in high places (- Sky, Times, Sun, Fox News) I can't see BC campaigning effectively and long term on behalf of commuting, touring, leisure or other road using cyclists.

[Simon L6]

I think you underestimate the selling power of the internet and the failure of the CTC to embed itself within the larger cycling world.

When it comes to mutual aid, advice and inspiration the CTC Forum (which was established, and then re-established despite resistance from the centre) reflects its membership rather than its potential membership. The boom in what I call 'pick-up' runs and charity rides has passed us by. The Trade despises us, and our discount offerings to our members are lamentable. We have an organisation with a very strong brand image which is based on two things - touring (both in the saddle and armchair) and press coverage. We're very good at selling cycling, or rather ourselves, as a feel-good thing, which isn't easy given the hostility of some of the mainstream press, some drivers, and the constant harping about safety from government and councils, but it's a feel-good thing of a particular character - generous, concerned with health, worthy.

That selling has to have a bit of momentum, a bit of looking to the future. That's where we come up short. Our membership is getting on in years, we don't have much of a track record with campaigns, we're not readily associated with the particular successes of cycling, either in urbanism or in sport. Sport may not be our thing, but, sadly, we're lightweights, actually no-weights in the urbanism stakes, and outflanked by what looks like a revivified Sustrans and a renascent LCC.

And, on the value for money and service fronts we're dire. Sorry. If our services were to improve we'd be less vulnerable, and if we cut back on the subs to reflect people's present anxiety about money we'd be less vulnerable, but my basic thesis, the one I started this thread with, is that we are one decent competitor away from getting thumped.

Scroll back up and look at the video again. Look at the faces.

[thirdcrank]

I'll suggest there is a different, wider vulnerability than just worrying whether somebody might do it cheaper.

We've mentioned before the charitable, campaigning arms of the RAC and AA. Even though they seem to campaign pretty effectively for motorists, they have still been outflanked by the 'military wing' of the driving lobby. Looking back over the last decade or so, no matter what has being going on at the RtoR local level, at the national level the CTC seems to me to have been rather subdued. A couple of examples: when the New Labour government realised that delivering policy actually meant doing something, the Notional Cycling Strategy was subtly dumped. Not by announcing it was being scrapped, but by multiplying the targets and shifting them a decade or two into the future. I've previously posted that the CTC rolled over to be tickled. Anybody who has done even the tiniest bit of local campaigning knows that with any highway 'improvement' it's necessary for cycling to be considered from the very outset or you just get a white line up the middle of the footway and a proliferation of CYCLISTS DISMOUNT signs. Along comes Cycle Audit and Review with all the clout of being published by the highly-regarded Institution of Highways and Transportation. I was so impressed I shelled out a pony - twenty five quid in folding money - to have my own copy. As I've also posted before, the big misters who plan for cars would have none of it and announced it would only apply to cycling provision (so the shabby shared-use and CYCLISTS DISMOUNT signs presumably benefit from a full audit. ) While I'm on about this, it's not just a couple of examples because I've remembered another. When the CTC had the Government by the throat - are as near as they ever will - they blinked first.

It seems to me that one side effect of all this is that cycling is getting its own military wing with increasing numbers of newcomers to cycling simply opting out of the legal framework. The line that some of us peddle that vulnerable road users have the most to gain from complying with road traffic law and its robust enforcement has become an embarrassment I'm not saying the CTC has done nothing in this time eg the Cyclists' Defence Fund gained a resounding victory at Telford, but there has been a failure to harness the anger and frustration of so many cyclists and then direct it to a more positive outcome. In academic terms it's called 'incorporation.'

[Yorkshireman]

Well said Simon L6.
I take the view that most of us who bother to post in threads such as these (CTC Merger etc) generally support the CTC (in its various guises) but some of us may take a slightly inward looking partisan view. There may be something to learn by looking at CTC from the 'outside'
http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.com/search/label/CTC
I stumbled on this site a couple of days ago and initially felt a little indignant at some of the views re CTC on there. On reflection perhaps it's a different (and valid) view of CTC compared to mine ...

[manybikes]

Yorkshireman.
Thank you for the link. I think I shall visit it again as it certainly helps to shift us out of our comfy (and complacent?) view of CTC. It certainly raises many issues.
Did anybody else mentally raise the question "So what are the CTC going to do about it?" when CTC reported in Cycle Clips that a seriously injured and paralysed cyclist was a victim because the CPS decided it wasn't "in the public interest" to prosecute the driver? It is no use just telling the converted (us) -perhaps they are considering using the Cyclist Defence Fund to force an official rethink?
If we are going to spend a high proportion of CTC income on campaigning then this is where I should like to see more of it spent.