Following on from John's comment about CDTs (below), the Lancaster and
Morecambe district is interesting in this regard. As you probably know,
we're a cycling demo town, and although that status is district wide I think
it's fair to say that the project is centred on Lancaster much more than
Morecambe. Lancashire County Council is also engaged in a bit of a campaign
to label Lancaster as the north-west's cycling city. There are relatively
high hopes for getting 'good' levels of cycling here. But Lancaster is
hilly, Morecambe is flat. I don't have figures for the respective towns to
hand, and a great deal of local cycling is between them (the best used bit
of local cycling infrastructure is the disused rail line linking Morecambe
and Lancaster town centres), but my *guess* is there's more cycling in
Lancaster than in Morecambe. So this district might make a fascinating case
study, examining whether 'easy' topography (favouring Morecambe) or
favourable cultural sensibilities (favouring Lancaster) are of greatest
importance in producing cycling.
Dave
The issue of influence of gradients is something that a detailed examination
of the cycling demonstration towns might explore, Brighton being an obvious
candidate (with Guildford, a town with similar topography and (up to a
point) demography s a reference base). CTC would be interested in helping
out with that one.
Regards
John Meudell
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