John Meudell - Please get your facts straight. I just can't accept the idea that Cycling England didn't work with existing cyclists. Most of the cycling towns applications were initiated by local cycling groups, many projects were delivered by local cyclists, other aspects such as the cycling to stations programme were delivered by local CTC and Sustrans volunteers working with operators. Leisure cycling study programmes were delivered by Sustrans Bike It and CTC Champions staff. A cycle campaign initiated the re-opening of the Monsal Tunnels in the Peak District which formed a part of a Cycling England project. Sustrans is running the Nottingham U-Cycle project which was started with Cycling England money. Many of the paid local authority staff were recruited from local cycle campaign groups. Many of the CE Board visits to towns were hosted by the local cycle campaign. A high proportion of Bikeability instructors is drawn from the cycle campaigning community and most of the people in the main commercial Bikeability providers such as Bike Right and Cycling Solutions are well known in the campaigning world. Most of the CE Board are known as campaigners or ex-campaigners and represent the main cycling organisations, and did a huge amount of work behind the scenes within government to open doors for cycling that wouldn't have been possible from the outside. The paid consultancy support team included staff from CTC and Sustrans and many long-time cycle campaigners who now work in consultancy. Every one of them was a regular cyclist.
Of course some things could have been done better as in any walk of life, but your suggestion that all existing cyclists became disillusioned and disengaged is way off the truth. If, as you suggest, Kevin Mayne really didn't want to share news about Cycling England with the CTC Council, you could always have viewed the Board meeting minutes on the CE website, read the annual reports or invited one of the other CE Board members to come and 'be accountable' to you.
Now an anecdote. In one town, the local cycle campaign ran events during the first year of funding. These events attracted lots of 'cyclists' (who all knew each other and had a great time socialising) but everybody (including the cycle campaign) agreed that they didn't reach 'new' people. In the second and subsequent years the events were re-focussed on schools and their local communities, used a little bit of professional 'branding, engagement and presentation' expertise and attracted lots of 'people', many of whom subsequently became 'cyclists'. Just because we are expert cyclists/engineers/campaigners or whatever doesn't necessarily give us all the skills and contacts to get more people involved in cycling.
Adrian Lord
Associate
Arup
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