News from the CamCycle Campaign

School Streets expand across the county

School run traffic adds hundreds of thousands of motorised vehicles a day to our road networks and accounts for a quarter of cars on the road, so it’s been great to see support for School Streets across the region. Seven schools across the region implemented this scheme and six more schools have begun trialling the initiative this week in order to help local families choose active travel for their daily journeys.

To highlight this excellent work and inspire more schemes, we’ve partnered with South Cambridgeshire District Council to promote School Streets. Earlier this month, we hosted a webinar – Introduction to School Streets: a greener way to travel – as part of their Climate and Environment fortnight. Lyn Hesse, Senior Road Safety Officer at Cambridgeshire County Council, joined us to answer questions on how the initiative works in our county.

Sustainable Communities: our latest magazine

Cover of magazine 150

The Spring issue of our magazine is now online in pdf format with html versions of some of the key features. Get in touch if you would like a printed copy.

In this issue, we consider some of the building blocks needed for the sustainable communities of the future with member articles looking at topics including:

With the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Independent Commission on Climate report showing that surface transport is responsible for 44% of carbon emissions in our region, it’s time to put into action measures that will deliver sustainable and thriving communities of the future.

Newmarket Road underpass

First part of the Chisholm Trail on track to open later this year

We’re grateful to contractors for their hard work this week on the Newmarket Road underpass, a crucial link in the Chisholm Trail. Camcycle volunteers helped put up posters showing cycling diversions during the works and have been documenting progress through photos including this impressive aerial kite image (right). Following the tag #TheChisholmTrailIsComing on Twitter for more images.

LTN 1/20 must be followed to deliver cycling for all

We continue to campaign for inclusive cycling infrastructure across the county so that all those who choose to cycle can do so, whatever their age or ability. Together with the Swavesey & District Bridleway Association we continue to campaign against the exclusionary and dangerous barriers near the A14 bridges and Swavesey and Bar Hill which remain unusable for the time being by families using larger cycles as well as many disabled cyclists who use adapted cycles.

Despite updated plans being submitted for development near Cambridge Station (the ‘Devonshire Quarter’) we still have concerns that the new proposals fail to adequately protect the route of the Chisholm Trail, provide for expansion of cycle parking facilities and ensure safe cycling along the most obvious desire line to and through the station area.

We also want to see better links for walking and cycling at Netherhall Farm and St John’s Innovation Park.

If you haven’t watched the recording of the LTN 1/20 webinar for councillors we hosted with one of its authors, Phil Jones, we encourage you to do so – it gives a good overview of the new inclusive standards for cycle infrastructure design.

Camcycle’s annual election survey returns!

We hope that our 2021 election survey will be the biggest and best yet as we seek to encourage candidates to share their views and policies on cycling. If you are standing for election this year we encourage you to submit responses to the survey questions compiled for your area as soon as you receive the invitation to do so. All answers, as well as non-responses, will be shown on our website for the information of voters.

We also hosted a mayoral hustings last week which you can watch online

Other news

This week, the government announced a new Office for Health Promotion and said that post-Covid “it is more important than ever to support people in achieving healthier lives”. Meanwhile, a new study drawing on data from over 100 EU cities concluded that Covid-era cycling infrastructure provision has demonstrated a high return on investment, growing cycling rates by between 11 and 48% on average and generating between £1 billion and £7 billion in health benefits alone.