The Great AGM Week Round-up

The big news this week has been the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain AGM weekend which was held in Bath and Bristol. Both our Chair Jim and Estudio27 have written in advance of the Cycling Embassy's AGM during the week, no doubt we will be hearing more in next week's round-up. 

Once again Addison Lee featured in the news this week after it emerged that its chairman, John Griffin might end up facing prosecution for instructing his drivers to break the law and use London's bus lanes, even offering to pay the fines incurred. Cycling MP Mary Creagh even had the misfortune of being bumped from behind by one of their drivers for stopping at a red light.

Also from London, it appears that Boris Johnson might not be taking his commitment to 'Go Dutch' all that seriously, with dangerous  junctions flagged for review passing without any improvements for cyclists being recommended at all. Boris has also irritated cyclists this week by apparently making up statistics about the cyclist KSI figures, claiming that two-thirds of cyclists killed or seriously injured in London are due to law-breaking on the cyclists part. This is certainly at odds with existing figures showing motorists are entirely at fault in up to 75% of incidents.

On to happier news, Lovely Bicycle may have left the British isles but she has written about her rather successful explorations by a combination of Brompton and public transport. The Middle Age Cyclist finally returns to blogging after his five-week (yes, that's five weeks) holiday absence and Naturally Cycling welcomes the start of summer, even if we all know it will be over by next week. Even if summer doesn't live up to our lofty expectations, we can at least take solace that the city of Nice lives up to its name if you happen to be a person on a bike.

It's not all rosy though, as The Vole notes when the local council have the opportunity to provide a useful bit of cycling infrastructure on the cheap and still manage to make a dog's dinner of it and As Easy As Riding A Bike looks at  pinch points at home and in The Netherlands and shows that they don't have to be death-traps for cyclists after all. Also in The Netherlands, Bicycle Dutch takes a look at how our neighbours across the North Sea do service roads without causing problems for those on bikes. The Cycling Lawyer tries to make our roads safer by challenging malicious driving but is told pursuing this is apparently not in the public interest, while Mad Cycle Lanes of Manchester uses Freedom of Information to track down where the public money for cycling in Manchester was actually spent with results which may annoy some.

Magnatom tries to follow up the success of POP28 with an MSP who doesn't seem to get the problems faced by cyclists in rural areas, and seeming to suggest that all cyclists need to display perfect behaviour before they can expect their fir share of transport funding. If only it worked that way with drivers.

Meanwhile, Copenhagenize notes that New York, despite making some gains with recent investment in cycle infrastructure is still very much in the habit of ignoring the bull, while David Hembrow deals with misinterpretations of the Dutch Fietsberaad press releases before the happen. Sometimes it seems like we really are going round in circles.