Background When I first became involved in cycle campaigning in the early 2010s, there was nowhere in Greater Manchester that showcased best practice in cycling infrastructure design – you’d have to travel to somewhere like the Netherlands (or London at a...
It was with a very heavy heart earlier this week that I broke the news to the WalkRide GM steering group, and even more painfully to the members of my local WalkRide Prestwich & Whitefield activists’ group, that I would be...
Ever since the unfortunate demise of Mobike in 2018 after just a year of operation, Greater Manchester has been devoid of a workable bike-hire scheme, with much speculation around what would replace the briefly iconic brushed-steel and orange cycles from China....
It’s fair to say that Bury Council hasn’t traditionally been a leader when it comes to providing quality infrastructure for active travel – especially not cycling. Remember for example the manifold frustrations of trying to convince them to cycle-proof Prestwich High...
One of the few positives to have emerged from the coronavirus lockdown has been a veritable boom in cycling. People have turned to the bicycle not only for daily exercise, but perhaps more importantly for commuting to avoid the risk of...
Yesterday (9 May 2020) the government announced a comprehensive package of measures to boost walking and cycling (“active travel”) as we emerge from phase one of lockdown. These include: £2 billion investment in active travel including £250 million for immediate pop-up...
One of the hazards of taking an interest in active travel is that novel or innovative infrastructure projects become niche tourist attractions and bike-lane geekery informs how you perceive the places you visit. Just as my first visit to Copenhagen was...
[This is an extended version of an article commissioned by The Meteor in their series on Manchester City Council’s calls for greater community engagement: that piece can be viewed here] In June 2019, Manchester City Council (“MCC”) announced that it was...
Over recent weeks there’s been a lot of activity around Manchester City Council’s plans for a “green transformation” of Great Ancoats Street, which propose to change it from a dual carriageway into a dual carriageway with exactly the same amount of...
Background In early February 2019 I received a phone call from a BBC producer explaining that she was looking to do an item for the BBC’s Crossing Divides season, which seeks to get people on opposite sides of an argument to...
