Last night I attended a packed Black Box for the Belfast Cycle City: Visions For The Future conference, where speakers from the Northern Ireland Department for Regional Development, Cycling England, Dublin City Council, Sustrans and Friends of the Earth talked about the successes and problems they’ve had with promoting cycling and discussed how these could be applied to Belfast.
Conor Murphy MLA MP, Minister for Regional Development
Conor Murphy MLA MP, the Northern Ireland Minister for Regional Development, spoke first about his Department’s desire to rethink the transport strategy for the region, and the necessity for planning and action at a local level to back up and implement the strategies sent down from on high. He did however issue a warning about the economic climate, saying that due to budget reductions across government it will prove difficult to justify increases in spending on sustainable transport for the next few years, but that this is no reason not to be thinking ahead and setting goals for brighter times to come. He also remarked on the packed venue, saying it was good to see such a large (200+) turnout of interested parties.
Finally, Mr. Murphy announced that following the publication of a Bikes In Belfast report, the DRD is now actively investigating the feasibility of a bike hire scheme for Belfast. It’s a small first step, but excellent news nonetheless.
The Minister has to leave quickly and was unable to take questions from the audience, much to the disappointment of a few vocal individuals.
Phillip Darnton, CEO of Cycling England
Phillip Darnton, CEO of Cycling England, spoke next about how his organisation has successfully promoted cycling on the mainland through the creation of a number of Cycling Cities and the thinking that went into their planning. He stressed that any city hoping to increase the number of journeys undertaken by bike has to consider the people, the places and the purpose of those journeys and plan them end-to-end in order for the scheme to be a success. Every city is unique, and needs to consider these factors in its own context.
Harking back to the statement about funding by Mr. Murphy, Mr. Darton stated that modelling carried out by the Department for Transport in England on behalf of Cycling England indicated that investment in cycling (as a form of sustainable transport) paid back in a ratio of 3 or even 5 to one, with half of the benefits coming from health savings and the remainder from a wide range of sources.
Ciaran Fallon, Dublin City Council
Ciaran Fallon, a senior engineer with Dublin City Council and their Cycling Office, presented next on the topic of the Dublin Bike hire scheme. Launched only recently, the scheme has been a huge success with over 700,000 trips made on the hire bikes in the first six months. Even better, a significant proportion – 42% – of these trips were made by people who had never considered cycling before. Speed and convenience were the major factors people quoted for using the bikes, which shows how the scheme has been designed specifically for Dublin and the people, places and purposes it has.
Stephen Patterson and Andrew McMurray
Steven Patterson, Director of Sustrans in Northern Ireland, and Andrew McMurray, Belfast Friends of the Earth Co-ordinator, were the final speakers of the evening. They described some of the projects their respective organisations had been running to promote cycling and some of the problems with the current cycling provision in and around Belfast.
The need for an holistic approach to sustainable transport planning was underlined; building an effective cycle infrastructure requires the input and cooperation of many different government departments. The Streets Ahead regeneration project in Belfast City Centre was quoted as a bad example, as the fallout from it will be an effective ban on cycling in parts of the city centre and forcing many cyclists to take a much longer and busier route. With joined-up planning from the start this could have been easily avoided and city cycle infrastructure could have been improved for no extra cost.
Q&A Panel
The evening ended with a quick Q&A session. Questions covered the value and threats to the greenway projects in East Belfast, transport plans for Queen’s University and the expansion of the University of Ulster campus in the city, and (again) the need for a joined-up, strategic review of transport in the province.
I took a number of photographs at the conference and they are now available online.
It was great to see such a good turnout of people passionate about cycling in Belfast city. The visiting speakers’ experiences are overwhelmingly useful and positive, and I would hope local government and campaign groups will be able to learn from them. The – mostly – positive noises from sitting government and civil service officials were also encouraging.
Here’s to the future, here’s to Belfast being one the top 10 cycling cities in the UK by 2020.
Were you at the Belfast Cycle City: Visions For The Future conference? Let me know what you thought.
