20mph Cycle Eye From the Council Cycling Partnership The Bristol Cycle Forum, held on Thu 16 Jan at City Hall, began by collectively wishing Councillor Mark Bradshaw the very best wishes for a quick recovery after being diagnosed with cancer. We hope to see him back at work at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile the Mayor and Councillor Daniella Radice will be picking up Mark’s responsibilities. 20mph Leading the 20mph rollout is Helen Wiggington who gave us an update on progress in advance of the first post-pilot rollout on 20 January. There will be a launch event with the Mayor at Colston’s Primary Junior School on Tuesday 21st, to which anyone is invited. The rollout will be in six phases, starting in the Centre/North area, progressively working northward, eastward and southward until completion in March 2015. In the pilot areas they found 82% of residents supported the scheme, there were significant increases in rates of walking and cycling and a 65% reduction in mean average speed of motor vehicles. This bodes well for future rollouts, though as Helen commented getting buy-in from drivers will be more challenging the further out they go. We can only hope that the arguments around the public health benefits of more people walking and cycling will help. The scheme is designed to be self-enforcing helped by changes in places to the ‘look and feel’ of the roads. Along with a social marketing campaign, driver education and community speed watch (organised via local neighbourhood forums) they hope that very little police enforcement will be required (though we at BCyC are working with the police to take enforcement seriously, amongst other measures as part of our Road Justice campaign).
