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National and regional press releases in reverse order with the most
recent first ..
2012
(for 2011 - 2006 articles please click on Archived Items)
Advice for riding off road in snow and ice ..
Special Offer National Standard (Cycling) Instructor and Assistant Instructor's Training Course in the New Year
Summer of Cycling is also summer of love between bike organisations
This summer could be a breakthrough for the cycling world, not least because it has seen an outbreak of co-operation - Monday 9 January 2012
A couple cycling in Bewl, Kent. Photograph: British Tourist Authority
The world of organisational cycling is famously fractious, riven with splits, some of them with amazingly ancient roots. Trying to get bicycle organisations to agree on something, on anything, is like herding proverbial cats.
Which makes a meeting last November all the more amazing: twenty three cycle organisations agreed on something. In 2012, these organisations will go into a digital huddle to promote the Summer of Cycling. Details for exactly what this promotion will entail are still being worked out, but to get such a consensus is big news. And, unlike previous attempts at joint promotions, all the major organisations were present.
Among those present were executives from British Cycling, CTC, Sustrans, London Cycling Campaign, Cycling Scotland, the Bicycle Association, Bike Week, Transport for London, the Association of Cycle Traders, Halfords, the Tour of Britain and Cyclenation. Chairing the meeting was Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP and co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group, a cross-party bunch of bicycling MPs and peers.
The group has no axe to grind, it's neutral. It could therefore bang heads together – gently – to call for the meeting to discuss a joint promotion for the Olympic year. What was anticipated to be a heated meeting, with cycling factions splitting along the usual party lines, turned out to being a session of nodding heads. Instead of objections, there were offers of help, and from all quarters.
It helped that the promotion won't be location-based: Cycling Scotland could flag-wave for the Summer of Cycling just as easily as Transport for London could for the Olympics. The promotion is cheap, it requires the organisations to submit their events to a database and then link to this central database via their own websites. Link farming, but for a good cause.
By linking together, cycling becomes bigger and stronger. This would pique the interest of ministers, said Huppert. He added it would also be a good hook for the media. With sport cycling expected to do well at the Olympics – with a potential gold medal winner at the Games' opening event, Mark Cavendish in the road race – 2012 could be the year when cycling goes "top of mind", said Huppert.
Phillip Darnton, executive director of the Bicycle Association, agreed:
"2012 ought to be year we sell more bikes than ever before. It ought to be the year more kids get cycle trained than ever before. More children should be cycling to school than ever before. And after the Olympics, more people than ever before should be lining the roads to watch the Tour of Britain."
The execs from the wide variety of cycling groups agreed to agree that the Summer of Cycling had great potential, and importantly, didn't conflict with any existing or planned promotions.
In March, Sustrans' Big Pedal will aim to get children in 1,000 schools cycling for one million bike-to-school miles. This would be the curtain-raiser for the Summer of Cycling, with summer being a loose term.
The idea that most galvanised the meeting was the +1 concept: those taking part in events would be encouraged to bring one other person along. A proselytising pledge campaign could get new people to try cycling to work for the first time, or riding the wooden banks of a velodrome for the first time, or taking part in a long-distance challenge ride for the first time.
So feel free to join in. And bring a friend.
• Carlton Reid is the executive editor of BikeBiz.com and the editor of levy website BikeHub.co.uk
Friday January 6, 2012
New System Uses Radar to Detect Bicyclists at Intersections
Intersections in Pleasanton, California, have been outfitted with radar that not only detect bicycle traffic to trigger green lights, but differentiate between bicycles and cars.
The devices, called Intersectors, have been installed at eight intersections across the city alongside bike lane and pavement projects. They use a combination of microwave and presence sensors to detect a vehicle, and offer enough precision to determine whether a vehicle has two, four or more wheels. Because it can detect what kind of vehicle is about to cross, it will adjust signal timing accordingly (as seen in the video).
“To the city of Pleasanton, this is the best of both worlds — providing additional green timing and green extension timing only when bicycles are present, while utilizing more efficient traffic signal timing more appropriate for vehicle traffic the remaining times,” Pleasanton’s senior transportation engineer Joshua Pack told the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.
ITS America liked the new intersections so much that they recognized the city’s bike detection project with a Smart Solution Spotlight award.
If existing intersections feature any accommodations for cyclists, it’s usually in the form of an induction coil beneath pavement and sometimes a digital camera trained on a certain spot. Colloquially known as a “bike box,” it’s usually marked with an icon or “wait here for green” sign, like the one shown above.
Normally, the induction coil detects a vehicle and triggers a light when it senses metal. Unfortunately, the latest, lightest bikes have very little metal in them and therefore cyclists can end up stranded or choose to run a light. Even when they work, a bike box usually triggers the same green cycle that a car would use.
Intersectors, which cost between $4,000 and $5,000 each, can be installed without digging up pavement and are relatively easily retrofitted to existing intersections. They’re unaffected by inclement weather. If the pilot project in Pleasanton is a success, the city’s traffic office expects similar detectors to appear at bike-friendly intersections across the country.
One article and a couple of other links, just
confirming the resurgence in cycling is not only good for the environment
and your health .. It is good for pain relief and education as well ..
How cycling set deprived Indian girls on a life-long journey
One simple initiative in Bihar state not only solved an everyday problem for schoolgirls, but also expanded their horizons - 24th November 2011
More than 870,000 schoolgirls have benefited from the bike subsidies. In Bihar, one of India's poorest and most populous states, half of the women and a quarter of the men are illiterate, and about 90% of its 104 million inhabitants live in rural areas. Life here is particularly difficult for girls, and one of the greatest hindrances to their development is the simple journey to school. For many, the trip is long, expensive and dangerous. But here, in rural Bihar, we recently saw that a two-wheeled solution to the problem has been found.
Three years ago the state's new chief minister Nitish Kumar adopted a "gender agenda" and set about redressing his state's endemic gender imbalances in an attempt to boost development in one of India's most backward states. His vision was to bring a sense of independence and purpose to his state's young women, and the flagship initiative of this agenda is the Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojna, a project that gives schoolgirls 2,000 rupees (about £25) to purchase a bicycle.
The project's results so far have been extremely promising: in those three years in Bihar alone, 871,000 schoolgirls have taken to the saddle as a result of the scheme. The number of girls dropping out of school has fallen and the number of girls enrolling has risen from 160,000 in 2006-2007 to 490,000 now.
Girls like Pinki Kumari (15), a student from the high school in Desari, previously had 14km round trip each day. When she got back home, she would have to help her mother with daily chores. "At the end of the day, it became tiring and attending school became a ritual. I hardly got any time to study," Pinki said. Her father, Anil Sharma, a local electrician, had wanted her to get married early. He had to give up the plan in the face of his daughter's determination to study after she got a free bicycle from the government. Pinki now reaches school in 15 minutes, and is full of hope for her and her family's future.
The school we recently visited in the Bihar village of Bumbuar, where we were encircled by a fleet of ambitious young girls on bikes, was also full of success stories, and since the scheme began, regular school attendance among girls has shot up to 90%.
In these girls' families, and for the rest of Bihar's rural poor, bicycles used to be reserved either for parents in their daily life, or for older brothers. But now, as many of Bumbuar's girls are attending school more regularly, not only is their knowledge of academic subjects improving, but their hunger for knowledge and a professional future is also increasing. One keen young cyclist we met echoed the opinion and aspirations of many of her schoolmates, saying: "Every morning I look forward to going to school. When I'm older I want to go to university." This leap in the village girls' education and aspirations represents a quantum leap from their parents' era: just four of the 70 schoolgirls we met have mothers who made it to the tenth grade.
And on a wider scale, Bihar is not alone in this initiative. In at least four other Indian states, from Punjab to Tamil Nadu, Kumar's vision is becoming a shared reality. Kumar succinctly sums up the initiative's aim and all it stands for: "Nothing gives me a greater sense of fulfilment of a work well done than seeing a procession of school-bound, bicycle-riding girls. It is a statement for social forward movement, of social equality and of social empowerment."
• Eddie Wright is communications and outreach officer for the European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development
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Webmaster's comments:
In the west we give reasons like fun, the sociable aspect, health, pain relief because of the endorphins it produces, cost and of course the environment as good reasons for cycling - yet in India it is a lifeline to education. Personally I love it and feel 'good for the girls., may they all achieve their dreams'!
Together with some of the awards that All Ability and Inclusive Cycling in the UK have been nominated for or won in the past 12 months, it just goes to prove that it is of benefit not to just those capable of riding on 2 wheels but to those who for a long time, may well have thought that cycling was not an option at all. Check out some of these links which only serve to further confirm that cycling is beneficial to anyone and EVERYONE without exception!
Cornwall Sports Partnership Awards 2011
A celebration of achievement and recognition of
sport's unsung heros
Saturday 12th November 2011
Cycleability would like to congratulate Mark
Stevens, their Student Rep. who won
the Young Leader of the Year
award.
Mark was not only nominated and short-listed for
the Young Leader of the Year award but went on to win the category outright
and rightly so, even if we are slightly biased!
The Award Ceremony was held at the Atlantic
Hotel in Newquay last night. Acting as MC on behalf of the Cornwall
Sports Partnership was Neil Caddy, Pirate FM's Drivetime presenter.
Guest speakers included Phil de Glanville who works with Sport England and
is a former England Rugby Union International capped 38 times and Mark
Lewarne, a triathlete and former International Surf Lifesaver.
A double amputee Mark still lives life to the
full and is involved with surfing, wheelchair basketball and Cycleability.
Having studied at Truro College for the past two years, he is now in his
first year at Worcester University studying for his Sport Development and
Coaching degree and enjoying every moment. One
never hears him complaining, only getting involved and leading by example.
This is a truly inspirational young man who will go far and Cycleability is
proud to have him on the committee as their student representative.
Mark was also asked to close the proceedings,
which he did by thanking everyone who had worked so hard and made the night
both thoroughly enjoyable and very special, particularly the Cornwall Sports
Partnership staff.
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