obstacles

Just met up with Alison Conder from East Cambs Council who's in charge of the country park in Ely. The main reason was to look at the best place to put cycle parking but also to put in some ideas on usage, signage and publicity for the park. My main contribution was my idea of getting schools to design bike racks but the funding isn't there and they already have a number of stands they have been given 'for free' that I think came from a council depot somewhere so free ones are always good. We agreed it would be ideal to put them next to the play equipment so hopefully some time soon, when I go there with the kids there's somewhere to leave our bikes. The project has been a money pit with many errors and areas where money wasn't well spent so there's no more money for my sand pit idea either. The paths around the park weren't built wide enough so now there is an issue as to whether to allow bikes into the park and as they already use the park, it's more a case of how they can be used without upsetting or injuring people in the park on foot. I suggested a cycle sign saying give way to pedestrians, so as to encourage consideration. I hope that next year we can hold a family cycle day organised with the Cycle campaign which should be within what the council would like to hold events which publicise the park. I rang my Dad just now, just to say hello and mentioned what I've been up to and tell him about the blog. He believes that there is no way that the UK with it's car based economy will ever be the cycle friendly place I envisage - it would put too many people out of work. I'm not sure how - we own a car and will continue to do so - we have a family and there are many excuses for using our car that don't involve under 5 mile journeys that the bike is mainly used for and the main way that we want to encourage people leaving their cars at home. It will still need servicing etc. Anyone who's seen "Who killed the Electric Car?" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/ will know that the electric car was swiftly scrapped when they realised that it put the entire car related industry out of work. Oil has the world on it's knees and will continue to do so for at least a few more decades, that doesn't mean we can't have our town centres be places for people rather than cars. It made me think that there is alot of resignation out there and it will take something pretty huge to change things. Huge things come in small bits sometimes, like water and every drop makes up an ocean. There are many sides and view points to protect and I am well aware that there are still 20% if not more residents in the Netherlands who never get on a bike and who will always leave their house by car. I know there are - my Mum is one of them. Still, she is proud to live in a country with a fully integrated public transport and cycling system. She drives every day to work, about 25 miles and I guess it's not a journey she could easily make any other way, especially with a book full of school stuff. The point is that those that can do. The fact that they can means that employers also are thinking about where they locate their places of work as the majority would prefer to get to work by bike, or at least a proportion of their work by bike. I've always stipulated, even in the UK I want to be able to cycle to work. This has been pretty much impossible since moving to Ely and having kids as I wanted a short journey which is why I've taken up childminding. Working in Cambridge would leech a good proportion of my income on train fare and if I ran a car it would leech a larger proportion of my income running a car. It doesn't add up. I am not getting a job to feed a car. So, there are many obstacles to getting this place to live in where there is truly a choice to leave the car at home for short journeys and as far as I can see today, they include people misconceptions that we don't want anyone to own a car, local authorities wasting money paying consultants to advise then ignoring their advice because they didn't give them a budget or the budget was slashed, thus wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds, and now the lack of money available leaves us with a transport infrastructure that revolves around badly maintained roads which has led the population to all go out and buy 4x4s. Then they have to have well paid jobs miles from where they live to afford to run their 4x4s so they can get to work. Now what?