GoBike members have been heartbroken and dismayed by the recent untimely passing of someone cycling on Glasgow’s roads. We would like to send our condolences and love to the family and friends of Emma Newman. We cannot imagine how deeply her loss will be felt – we know the grief of those who knew her will reverberate with everyone who cycles in our city and would have shared the same streets. It could have been any of us.
In light of this incident, GoBike have sent a communication to the council in a spirit of mutual understanding and in the hope that we can safeguard vision zero as a shared priority in our city, for Emma and for all those like her. We will update you when we receive a response.
Are you ever tempted to cycle the wrong way up a one-way street? Do you wonder why it’s allowed on a handful of Glasgow streets but not on others which would offer convenient short-cuts? Committee member Brenda examines the ins and outs of contraflow cycling for GoBike and asks you, our members, to feed in to us on the final questions.
We are beginning to see with a sinking heart that the University of Glasgow would perhaps not pass their own entrance exams when it comes to vocabulary relating to safer cycling. While they are clearly running a tight press campaign on their plans for University Avenue, and undertaking a great deal of copying and pasting within their communications, they do appear to have a rather poor grasp of the meaning of certain words. That, or perhaps they are being deliberately disingenuously mendacious. So over at GoBike we have brought our dictionaries out and hope to help.
Time flies when you’re having fun! It’s been more than a week already since #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17 and after such a phenomenal response it has mostly spent reading and re-reading Tweets, whilst staring at a spreadsheet, trying to figure out how best to put them together in to the story of Glasgow’s cycling infrastructure.
As you might expect, most of the submissions were negative. If you’re familiar with cycling in Glasgow you can probably imagine them; pictures of potholes and flooding, of cars parked in cycle lanes, of busy roads with no infrastructure and of barriers blocking access.
Perhaps more surprising was that around one in eight of the Tweets were positive. With so few examples of truly segregated cycling infrastructure in Glasgow, you sought them out and held them up as examples of what you need.
Unfortunately it’s not all good news. Poor maintenance, flooding, and in some cases bad design decisions all meant that the negative feedback for segregated infrastructure outweighed the positive more than 2-to-1.
First up, there will be another blog post here shortly focusing on the details of some of the worst examples from #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17 and how they relate to Glasgow’s Strategic Plan for Cycling 2016-2025.
A similar approach will be taken when communicating this year’s submissions to Glasgow City Council, tying them in to the Strategic Plan for Cycling to help to identify areas which need increased focus.
Finally (for now), where specific safety issues were identified, these will be raised directly, and individually, with the Council to ensure that they are rectified.
Whilst all this is happening, the Tweets for #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17 have (so far as possible) all now been added to the CycleStreets.net. Have a browse; seeing them mapped across the city really highlights how much work people put in on the day to cover as much of the city as possible. So thanks again to everybody who took part.
Yes, the day has finally arrived for us to take to the streets of Glasgow and show the world exactly what our cycling infrastructure is like. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad, and we need to see it all so we can show it to the Council and help to make ours a true Cycling City.
Keep your camera with you today and when you spot any cycling infrastructure that you want to highlight (good or bad) – or if you spot somewhere that’s crying out for infrastructure it doesn’t have yet – take a picture and Tweet it with the hashtag #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17. Don’t worry if you don’t have Twitter, you can still take part by emailing your pictures to us at CycleInfraDay@gmail.com.
You’ll be able to watch the gallery build throughout the day by keeping an eye on the hashtag on Twitter (you don’t need an account for this – just click this link), or by following the Twitter account (@CycleInfraDay).
Remember, this is supposed to be an easy way of documenting a day in the life of Glasgow’s cycling infrastructure. So please be sensible; don’t go dashing across busy roads to get an ‘action shot’, or exploring the collapsed section of the cycle lane along the Clyde to show the damage after the weir jammed last week.
With the Scottish Government this week announcing their commitment to double the budget for Active Travel in 2018/19, making sure your voice is heard when that money gets spent has never been more important. Tomorrow you can shout it out loud.
It’s as easy as snapping a photograph of Glasgow’s cycling infrastructure and posting it on Twitter with the hashtag #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17.
Take pictures of the good stuff, what we want more of, as well as the not so good stuff.
Don’t worry if you don’t have a Twitter account; just email your pictures to us at CycleInfraDay@gmail.com and we’ll upload them for you.
So, get your cameras ready, charge your batteries and load up your memory cards… for tomorrow we shape the future of cycling in Glasgow!
The first GlasgowCycleInfraDay, back in 2015, was the brainchild of Magnatom (a.k.a. David). Shocked at the state of Glasgow’s cycle lanes he put the call out on his blog one Tuesday night. With a little over 24-hours notice, the response from across Glasgow (and beyond) was phenomenal.
This year’s campaign, #GlasgowCycleInfraDay17, is nearly here. Next Friday, September 8th, it will be time once again to fill Twitter with the best and the worst of Glasgow’s cycling infrastructure.
Taking part on the day will be easy. All you need is the desire to make Glasgow a better city for cycling… and a camera. You don’t need a fancy camera, the one in your phone will do the job. Just take a picture of any cycling infrastructure you see on Friday that you think is worth recording (or a place where you think it’s needed) and Tweet it with where you took it and the hashtag #GlasgowCyclieInfraDay17. Don’t have a Twitter account? No problem, just email it to CycleInfraDay@gmail.com and we’ll Tweet it for you.
It couldn’t be easier to help shape the future of cycling in Glasgow for everybody.
But we need your help before then too.
The more people who take part, the better the picture of Glasgow’s infrastructure we’ll end up with and the harder it will be to ignore us. So please, spread the word. Tell your friends. Tweet about it. Every single photograph is important so shout it from the rooftops: #GlasgowCycleInfra17 is coming! Get involved!!
We have a few more interesting project ideas ranging from engaging local communities, French traffic lights rules and how to investigate road accidents. Come to the workshop to find out more!
Lunch and tea breaks are provided, but a £5 donation will help cover costs.
Directions for parking and registrations on the day:
Between 10:30 and 11:00am we will have someone outside letting attendees on bicycles through the barriers at the road entrance of City Park, and round the back of the building to the underground carpark. There are bike racks and another helpful person will direct you upstairs to the registration desk on the ground floor.
If you are coming by car or by foot, car parking is next to the building at the front and you will find the registration desk straight on through the main door entrance on the ground floor. We will direct you to the workshop from there.
Yellow: Wheeled entrance. Red: Cars park here. Green: Bikes cycle to underground parking. Blue: Walk to Registration. (B) = Barriers (R) = Registration (P) = Bicycle parking (L) = Latecomer’s bicycle parking
#GlasgowCycleInfraDay2: A short concentrated twitter campaign to highlight the good and bad examples of cycling infrastructure in Glasgow. #GlasgowCycleInfraDay last ran in 2015 and we hope to repeat it’s success for the new GCC administration. Looking for people to help with scope, time, promotion, collation methods and of course participation.
Quick, Simple and Cheap: Get people cycling in Glasgow city centre by giving them ad hoc infrastructure to try-out. Real world, quick response cycle infrastructure built with simple, cheap segregation would soon show what the real demand was, highlight problems and justify a permanent solution; or could be easily be removed. This could dramatically speed up the present long winded process for establishing cycleways.
Directions for parking and registrations on the day:
Between 10:30 and 11:00am we will have someone outside letting attendees on bicycles through the barriers at the road entrance of City Park, and round the back of the building to the underground carpark. There are bike racks and another helpful person will direct you upstairs to the registration desk on the ground floor.
If you are coming by car or by foot, car parking is next to the building at the front and you will find the registration desk straight on through the main door entrance on the ground floor. We will direct you to the workshop from there.
Yellow: Wheeled entrance. Red: Cars park here. Green: Bikes cycle to underground parking. Blue: Walk to Registration. (B) = Barriers (R) = Registration (P) = Bicycle parking (L) = Latecomer’s bicycle parking
Cycle Desire Network map: Using local knowledge and cycling data we can highlight the missing gaps and most important direct routes that need to be made safe for all. Using QGIS mapping software people can help contribute to a configurable digital map which can be shown to councillors and decision makers; this has been well revived in other cities. Having a laptop will be useful for using the open source software.
Friends of South City Way: With a new protected bike path from Queens Park to the city centre, we anticipate a bike lash. By setting-up Friends of South City Way the hope is to minimise misinformation and increase local support. Looking for people to be involved in setting-up a website, social media, organising local events and of course joining our campaign!
