2016 AGM Notes, Minutes, Actions

Safaris

Various people have produced pictures and blogs from the Infrastructure Safaris we went on.

Pictures are available from Mark Treasure, Alex Ingram, Shaun McDonald and Tim Lennon.

Blog posts so far, from Ranty Highwayman and also from Solihull Cyclist. Shaun also has a mapillary feed which links the photos to their location.

AGM business

The accounts were signed off without dissent. Copies of the report are available from the Embassy.

Board positions were all approved:

• Chair: Mark Treasure

• Secretary: Tim Lennon

• Treasurer: Geoff Rone

Noted that there are enough funds to support ambassadors undertaking activities which support the Embassy’s goals. This could include study trips, which we could consider partially funding on a case by case basis.

Opening

We heard from local MP Daniel Zeichner. Tim’s general notes (not very complete, tbh)

Cycling is a bit like Brexit - major cultural issues

We learnt that Zeichner wants DfT to set aside a cycle budget, and he is for national standards to be drawn up - we are glad to hear, as this is something we campaign/lobby for as well

Q: How can we support his work in APPCG.

Thinks cycling groups are actually quite effective at getting the message, to some extent.

Zeichner said is a complete convert to his electric bike.

Q: we know cycling provides value for money, but when councils spend money on it, they don't see the value themselves, as compared to other projects / ways of spending the money.

DA - Cambridge used to be rubbish, ages ago, but despite the multiple layers of organisation, they seem to have made a difference.

Councils can't ask for (e.g) cycle budget if they have no one who can build it.

Need to give money out only when people are prepared to spend it to the right standards.

Infrastructure Library

We discussed the creation of an Infrastructure Library. A brief summary of the key outputs is here.

Discussion in the room

Plenty of information out there on infrastructure, but not easy to find. Needs to be made accessible and user-friendly. Cycle campaigners themselves often don’t know technical issues/what works/what exists in other towns and cities.

Idea that this site should work for different potential users. Not just campaigners, but also for councillors, and ordinary members of the public. Perhaps the same back-end content, but with ability to arrive at it in different ways.

Visual/simple elements. For instance, before and after transformations of streets/roads/junctions. (e.g. the removal of the Belgrave flyover in Leicester, showing the world didn’t end).

Positively framed. For instance, focusing on the benefits (for all users) of different kinds of infrastructure.

Will it tie into CEAT? (Cycling Environment Assessment Tool)

Aidan van der Weyer – A10 Campaign

Aidan spoke about the campaign to make the A10 cyclable - you can see a summary on Camcycle’s site: Summary of A10 campaign here on Camcycle site

We Walk, We Cycle, We Vote

Sally gave a very useful overview of how this was set up, and it fed into our discussion about organisations.

There appeared to be general agreement that we liked the premise of ‘We Walk, We Cycle, We Vote’, where everyone signed up to a common, clear policy, and then campaigned on it.

We seemed to coalesce around the view that the Embassy should try to assemble such a policy statement, and ask others to sign up to it. The resulting campaign would be (probably) distinct from this …

Discussion of what that might might look like - a clear policy document, that as many organisations as possible sign up to.

Clear statement on investment levels for active travel - there was consensus for this level to be: 10% of the total transport budget to be spent on active travel.

Clear statement on cycling design standards (based on Space4Cycling policy? Could link with CEAT and drive creation of a revised or new Making Space for Cycling guide)

Perhaps some distinction on points that are negotiable and non-negotiable.

(NB: British Cycling has just launched Choose Cycling, which chimes very well with this discussion …)

Campaign Landscape

We identified a long list of organisations, and their potential interest and links to cycling. This is being written up and should be available soon.

Dealing with Other Organisations

We talked about how there are a lot of other organisations which influence what we want to do and achieve, and how many are outside the world of cycling. Key examples were Guide Dogs for the Blind, and the St. Thomas’ Hospital fiasco. (Though the recent RNID / quietway row also figured). We talked about how we would generally like someone to have a compelling, simple, clear manifesto we could take to these groups, and how we wanted to be someone they called when problems like this came up.

We know this is a big thing, and no-one wanted to commit to setting it up initially, although there was definite consensus of interest.

Other Items

We discussed affiliation again. There is interest in this, but it needs to be set up by the Embassy. No-one is immediately planning to take this on. (Southampton and others have expressed an interest over email and verbally, so it is something we need to at least consider.)

We discussed how the Embassy disseminates information, and agreed that we could do better. The infrequent newsletter was mentioned - this should really be once a month, ideally, and the weekly blog round up was noted as an excellent resource.

Slack

One immediate action we agreed was the creation of a ‘Slack’ account. Slack is in use by a number of staff and sympathisers at present, and was felt to be worth a try. The Embassy now has a Slack account - you can find out more at http://slack.com/ - and you will need to email secretary@cycling-embassy.org.uk to request an invitation. (AGM attendees will hopefully already have an invitation.)

If you want to get involved in any of the activities we’ve talked about above, or even want to follow it, please contact us and we’ll add you.