How to get things done: Chris Boardman

[squeaker]

Well worth 49 minutes of your time, IMHO. (I'd forgotten all about his 'non-zebra crossings.)

[reohn2]

Thanks for that well worth the listen .
What a breath of fresh air Chris Boardman is in such a stale and backward society hell bent(upto now)on driving everywhere we go.As he so rightly says now could,due to the current C19 crisis,be the right time for change to a more active travel based society.
The legality surrounding the crossings situation illustrates just how far the Uk is behind the rest of Europe and indeed the world in the way it treats anyone outside the protective box on four wheels.
IMHO Boardman stands head and shoulders above almost all politicians in his wisdom and drive to make the UK a better place to move and live safely free from being in fear of the motor car culture that's so detremental to us all?

[atlas_shrugged]

+1 about Chris Boardman - he walks on water.

[The utility cyclist]

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen.

+1 about Chris Boardman - he walks on water.

He often misses the better solution regards increasing cycling and making cycling safer with his continual push/backing for segregated lanes, I've read a few times people criticising the plans that he is directly involved in for Manchester.

He's an excellent ambassador but he like most others are too fixated in the segregated cycle lane mantra that he can't see that this will fail to increase modal share in any meaningful fashion. Repeating what Netherlands did 50 years ago is not the solution for this country, in fact copying what they did in the 70s would IMO not have worked here in any case nor indeed have been accepted nor implemented.

The principle of what we want is the same, however how the interested parties and those with weight go about it is lead by flawed thinking and doesn't remotely go far enough, and spending a huge sum of money on something I truly believe will not work to increase modal share except for small fractions/percentage points will ultimately be more than financially costly.
'We've built you this and spent x and yet hardly anyone uses it', 'why are the cyclists using the road and not the infra', 'why are cyclists still on the pavement' and so on, will still be heard long after the segregated is built and all the money spent.

Getting things done is fine but doing the things that are hindering the cause and diverts away from the better solutions isn't my idea of good leadership/ambassadorship.

[squeaker]

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen

Just click on the link then click on the play button
IIRC, he does say later on in the podcast that if you need to resort to segregation then you have failed, but context is all

[The utility cyclist]

I wasn't looking at the bottom of the screen where no-one ever puts their 'play' button

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen

Just click on the link then click on the play button
IIRC, he does say later on in the podcast that if you need to resort to segregation then you have failed, but context is all

[Pete Owens]

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen

Just click on the link then click on the play button
IIRC, he does say later on in the podcast that if you need to resort to segregation then you have failed, but context is all

The context is following several times the interviewers had probed him about segregated cycle lanes during the interview and several times he had responded ever so gently that this was not what he was about (at least not at the present) and skilfully moved the discussion on in the way he would if the subject of polystyrene hats had come up. By the time he made that comment he had obviously realised that he needed to be a bit more blunt.

[Bmblbzzz]

I interpreted his context to that as being that if you need special infrastructure, it's because your overall environment is not conducive to living ; it's not human-centred.

[reohn2]

I interpreted his context to that as being that if you need special infrastructure, it's because your overall environment is not conducive to living ; it's not human-centred.

Yes that's how I interpreted it too.

[PH]

Well worth 49 minutes of your time, IMHO. (I'd forgotten all about his 'non-zebra crossings.)

Hadn't come across that, thanks for the link. Just listened to the Chris Boardman one, will go back and listen to the others at some point. I'm glad the point was made about the importance of walking, it's sometimes forgotten by those who consider themselves cyclists.

[mjr]

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen.

The direct download link is https://feeds.acast.com/public/streams/ ... 274bca.mp3

[The utility cyclist]

How does one listen to the podcast, I'm not downloading an app or signing up just to listen.

The direct download link is https://feeds.acast.com/public/streams/ ... 274bca.mp3

thanks

[Pete Owens]

He often misses the better solution regards increasing cycling and making cycling safer with his continual push/backing for segregated lanes, I've read a few times people criticising the plans that he is directly involved in for Manchester.

He's an excellent ambassador but he like most others are too fixated in the segregated cycle lane mantra that he can't see that this will fail to increase modal share in any meaningful fashion.

Actually, if you manage to listen to the podcast this is very much not his fixation - and nor was it when he first started at Manchester. Listen to the bits where he argues against separate treatment for cyclists - on the grounds that cyclists will naturally benefit from measures to making the roads safer for pedestrians - ie the better solution you refer to. This was also true in the initial stages of the project where the focus was on overcoming barriers rather than providing routes. Unfortunately the Beeways project does seem to have more recently been captured by segregation enthusiasts.

He is absolutely brilliant at PR and providing a positive image of walking and cycling and bringing everyone on board with the overall vision. Unfortunately he brings everyone on board by being vague about the details - this minimises opposition by not giving anyone anything concrete to oppose but it allows everyone to project their own views of what to do onto him (even to the extent of posters on this thread not even accepting his rather blunt description of segregated infrastructure as "failure" is even the slightest hint that perhaps that is not what he is about)

A telling piece in the interview is when he described his "secret squirrel" activities for competitive cycling - and how he had to bring the athletes on board by actively involving them in the research - letting them see the figures in real time as they adopted different positions in a wind tunnel, rather than handing down recommendations from his observations. He explained how he was using the same approach to bring people on board in Manchester. What he forgets is that with British Cycling everybody genuinely, overwhelmingly and obsessively had one and only one objective - to ride faster. The various authorities in Greater Manchester may pay lip service to walking and cycling to access his pot of money - they may be genuinely like to see more active travel in their boroughs - but the one thing they really really care about is motor vehicle capacity: See this blog post from
http://www.happycyclist.org/?p=2292.

[pga]

We are at a crossroad in more ways than one. The Coronavirus has given us an opportunity to reshape what kind of society we want. When we get through the present situation do we want to carry on as before or do we want to make the radical change that climate crisis, a far bigger challenge than the present one, demands. Riding on the road or on segregated cycle ways has always been an argument going back before the War and effectively dividing the cycling community. This is an issue but it is not the main one. Car dominance has to be challenged head on. I am sure we all understand the reasons.

The difficulty we have is that the Government is making up Coronavirus policy as it goes along trying to satisfy all shades of public opinion. Hence we have the current situation where it wants to support walking and cycling yet at the same time it is telling our four wheel friends they can drive as far as they like for leisure.

I have very much cycling the last few weeks given the arrival of Spring and the wonderful weather that has come along with it. The roads were initially very free of motor traffic and I was able to use roads not cycled on for thirty years or more. On the other hand the local cycle ways,usually much underused, were packed with great numbers, cyclists and non-cyclists, making the two metres distance difficult to keep on three metres wide cycle ways. The number of cars on the roads has risen, gradually at first but faster more recently. With the Government latest edict these numbers will soon return to previous high levels making cycling on roads as often unpleasant as before. Then we had the cycle ways to help us avoid the busiest roads. Now they are as busy as the roads with cyclists in a minority of users and with a threat of e scooters to be able to legally use them.

The situation is very fluid. Local cyclists fought a campaign to keep the right to cycle for the over 70s.
This reached the highest level and we like to think that we were successful. The good news about walking and cycling was the icing on the cake. Within days,however, the freedom to drive for leisure has taken the gloss off. Will we be at a different crossroad in a week's time?

[PH]

This was also true in the initial stages of the project where the focus was on overcoming barriers rather than providing routes. Unfortunately the Beeways project does seem to have more recently been captured by segregation enthusiasts.
...................(even to the extent of posters on this thread not even accepting his rather blunt description of segregated infrastructure as "failure" is even the slightest hint that perhaps that is not what he is about)

What he actually says is that infrastructure is a symptom that the system has failed. You can interpret that any way you want, but I doubt it was meant as quite the blunt message you'd like it to mean.
Have you read the Made to Move plan for Manchester? You seem to pick out the bits you like and deny the existence of those you don't, then accuse posters of not accepting something. The anti segregation folk always end up arguing about it not being the solution to everything, I don't know who they're arguing with, I've never heard anyone say it is. Here's what Chris Boardman has to say in that plan, and a link to the entire thing for anyone who thinks I've cherry picked

One of the keys to unlocking walking and cycling’s potential across Greater Manchester will be building major, fully segregated cycle ways on key routes. These must be safe, attractive spaces alongside high quality footways. But they are not the only requirement and not even the first.
We can unlock the potential of our local roads and communities by providing easy crossing points, thereby unlocking opportunities to walk and cycle. These strategically-placed crossing points will feed local bike traffic into the more costly, fully-segregated routes, enabling even longer journeys to be made actively.

And another important takaway from it is who it's intended for, there are some cyclists on here who argue it ought to be for them and won't accept anything that compromises their travel or pleasure, here's what the report says

Crucially, the proposed network is not for people who already cycle or walk for the majority of their journeys. Its focus is to enable the two thirds of people who currently use their car as their main mode of transport, to walk or cycle.

https://tfgm.com/made-to-move