Exciting first meeting
The group was formed (actually reformed) on a freezing winter's evening
in 1991 on the eve of the Gulf war (!) with a public meeting which attracted dozens of
highly motivated cyclists who responded to leaflets left on bikes around the city. Also
present were a few sympathetic and rather surprised councillors and council officers.
This was at a time when you felt you could usually count cyclists in
Leeds on the fingers of one hand and there were about 20 meters of cycle lane in total and
a single part time council officer devoted to cycling out of a total of four hundred
highways engineers. Such was the feeling of cyclists at the meeting that the chair of
highways, who came along, was heard to say that it was better attended and more exciting
than most Labour Party meetings he went to and that he would personally make sure that a
much needed cycle route across Woodhouse Moor would happen within the year. Seven years
later this route seems about to come true.
Have we had any impact?
It is impossible to say how directly effective a group like ours has
been but it soon became apparent that increasing the membership would never be a problem.
Rather we concentrated on a close scrutiny of council policy and practice within the
context of national and occasionally international developments, mainly in urban cycling.
We did, and still do, a lot of letter writing and lobbying and sometimes attend enquiries.
The council soon initiated a bi-monthly consultation meeting open to all interested
cyclists and this developed from being a purely technical debate about traffic engineering
into a broader discussion about cycling policy involving guest speakers from various other
council departments such as leisure, access for the disabled, road safety, the police
etc.There are now several kilometres of cycle route and particularly good attention is
being paid to facilities at road junctions as they come up for improvement and
remodelling. There are now in effect two full time highway engineers doing excellent work
for cycling. So maybe you could say the group has been very effective by keeping up well
informed pressure.
'.....In spite of.......'
Leeds as a city is hell-bent on having a rich commercial centre with a
shop-till-you-drop mentality and lots of solicitors' offices etc. This works well for the
business interests and the four wheel drive brigade but causes a nightmare for the urban
cyclist. Two decades ago it called itself 'motorway city of the seventies' and since then
the council has refused to actively reduce the impact of private cars in case this scared
off inward investment. The main changes in traffic have been to do with the increased size
of the pedestrianised centre which was driven by demands from the major city centre shops.
This has pushed the traffic from the centre out to what is known as the 'dead ring' around
the centre where the high speed, multi-lane roads and roundabouts are plain scary for
cyclists. This is also why the air quality in Leeds is the third worst in the country; an
issue we have constantly campaigned on.
On the other hand Leeds has been caught in the contradiction of trying
to appear to be a sort of green, environmental oasis. The sort of place you might want to
re-locate your business from London. Hence Leeds' determination a few years ago to be
awarded 'environment city' status. Although there is virtually nothing about Leeds to
justify this tag it is something that LCAG has been able to use as a lever, cycling being
the archetypal form of green transport.
So when something good has happened for cycling it has been in spite of
rather than because of the prevailing attitude.
Has it all been meetings?
Well actually rather a lot of it has but unfortunately that seems to be
how most decision making gets influenced. Although we are firstly a campaigning group we
have also organised annual open meetings with excellent guest speakers and we have also
kept up a small but steady program of easy-going social rides and attendance at green
fairs and other gatherings. A lot of members have also been active in allied events such
as National Bike Week, Critical Mass Ride and Sustrans although these are separate from
LCAG.
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