Friday 7 June 2019

BOARDMAN'S £1.5bn BEE CYCLE NETWORK CREATING A BUZZ


(pictures: A shared cycling and walking bridge spanning a  major road in Stockholm)



Work begins on Wigan scheme

MIGHT we one day look back and say that Wigan is where the Greater Manchester cycling revolution began in 2019? 

I don’t want to get carried away, not after so many false dawns in the  UK, but as I type this there are shovels at work on the Wigan canal towpath.  Work has begun on Olympic champion Chris Boardman’s blue print for Greater Manchester, the first major city wide cycling and walking network in the UK.

It’s called the Bee Network and it will run to 1000 miles across 10 boroughs at an estimated cost of £1.5bn, serving 2.7 million people.

Today, about 250 million car journeys a year, of less than one kilometre each, are made by people in Manchester.  Those trips could be a 15-minute walk or a five-minute bike ride.

Many are for the school run.  In the Netherlands, 50 per cent of school children cycle to school, compared to less than 2 per cent in Manchester.

The Bee Network aims to address this by providing a safe alternative choice to always driving.



Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham,  who appointed Boardman as Cycling and Walking Commissioner, says.-   “Greater Manchester has a long history of doing innovative things and our approach to the Bee Network is no different.”

 “If we’re to cut congestion and clean up our air, decisive action is needed. I want to make Greater Manchester one of the top 10 places in the world to live and its action of this sort which will help to deliver that promise.”

This first section being constructed now is known locally as the “Muddy Mile”, along a stretch of waterway in Astley. It will run from Wigan Pier, through Leigh and across the Salford boundary to Monton and Patricroft. And presumably the mud will be a goner.

The £212,000 project is being funded by the Mayor’s Cycling and Walking Challenge Fund, The Bridgewater Canal Company and Wigan Council.

We shouldn’t be surprised if Boardman’s grand plan succeeds. As an athlete he earned the moniker of professor for his dedicated application of sports science to deliver his goals. Principal among them his famous Barcelona Olympic gold in 1992, which launched British cycling on its trajectory to greatness. And boosted Manchester’s bid to build Britain’s first indoor velodrome.

If Manchester sets the cycling trend, will other towns and cities follow?

So can Boardman bring the same clear eyed perspective in his sporting achievements to his latest desire to make cycling safer across the nation? And so enable the humble bike at last to be a major player in the integrated transport system so urgently needed to help reduce the carbon burning which otherwise promises to be the death of us.

Boardman’s is an ambitious project and it has wide public support.

Currently there are 42 schemes in the plans for the Bee network of cycling and walking routes across Greater Manchester. 

They include 319 new and upgraded crossings and junctions and 70 miles of segregated new cycling routes.

Some of these schemes are still to be approved by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Burnham has pledged £115m of the £160m received from the government’s Transforming Cities Fund for local transport improvements while £88m will come from local contributions.

So far they’ve got 204 million in committed spend across 42 projects and they are seeking additional funding. 



Plans include a cycling and walking corridor in Rochdale; a route between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria stations; a cycling and walking bridge to link Stockport railway station with a proposed new interchange;   a continuous cycling and walking corridor between Salford Quays and Manchester city centre; and a ‘Mini Holland’ scheme in Levenshulme.  As the name implies, “Mini Holland” aims to emulate the street layouts in Holland prioritising cycling and walking over motor traffic.

All the schemes are due to be completed by 2023, said a Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) spokeswoman. Investment in the schemes will represent around £18 per head per year on cycling and walking for the next four years, a massive increase on central government’s pathetic investment in cycling which has dropped to less than a £1 per head!

Mayor Burnham has risen to the challenge

You may recall Boardman’s bitter disappointment a couple of years ago at former prime minister David Cameron’s decision not  to provide Cabinet backing for the Get Britain Cycling Report, by far the most comprehensive transport blueprint for cycling across England.

Cameron, like a host of leading politicians before him, said cycling development should be left to the Local Authorities, knowing full well they don’t have the funding and in many cases nor do they have the political will.

Burnham has risen to the challenge in Manchester and who better than Boardman to realise them.  Their work has inspired two other Local Authorities to appoint their own cycling Czars.

They are the former BMX international and world track cycling champion Shanaze Reade in the West Midlands and Paralympic swimming and cycling Olympic champion Dame Sarah Storey in Sheffield.

As CYCLING UK said in their bi-monthly  Cycle, “if the new cycling czars inspire the public, politicians “may show us the money".