Blogs

Well if there's been one feature of the past month it's been snow!

Rather sensibly most people have stayed off the road in the snowy, icy, slushy conditions. I tried to ride this week, but after a few wobbles abandoned when I made it back to Bingley.

There were some brave souls out though, some people had fun on the tow path, and others found that the road, on a bike was perhaps the safest place as pedestrians slipped and fell on icy pavements and cars were crashing on black ice.

There's still a long way to go until winter is out, but maybe next week, we'll be riding again...

For the second year running Santa took the opportunity to cycle to work on what is traditionally his 'busiest week of the year'.

Riding the full route, from Keighley to Bradford, Santa, and his two little helpers, joined the other commuters in the Aire Valley as they also made their to work in the wintery conditions.

Santa said "I'd like to thank all the big girls and boys that made extra room for cyclists in the difficult cycling and driving conditions", before (predictably) adding, "Ho Ho Ho! Merry Christmas".

For the record, Santa test rides all 'christmas' bicycles, to make sure they all arrive in tip top condition for those lucky people getting a new bike on the 25th. "The Cycle to Work schemes have been great in helping us keep costs down at the grotto over the last 10 years. Hopefully, by next Christmas Bradford Council Employees will also be able to take advantage"

Looks as though Bike Bus regular, Andy, is all set to hit his target of riding 5,000 miles in the year. You gotta say 'Well done!'

It puts him about 1000 miles ahead of the Bike Bus over it's lifetime. We've racked up over 3,000 miles between us in the mornings and we're approaching 1,000 in the evening.

The big question (for me at least) is: When will we have circumnavigated the globe?

Answers in the comments please!

In other news, really good to see Angela on the return ride again. Hiya!

Next week, cycling santas!

Spent a lovely evening in the company of people that like cycling yesterday.

Ginny, from the CTC Cycle Champions project, called together the group of people that is loosely called the Bradford Cycling Development group, for mince pies and sherry. The group has met perhaps 3 or 4 times in the last couple of years and draws representatives from clubs, groups, organisations and, individual cyclists together, mainly just to talk and meet.

http://www.bikebradford.org was partly an attempt to reflect the diversity of the real cycling scene around Bradford, and a good selection of the projects gathered there were represented.

Heart warmingly, about 7 regular bike busers also came, so it was good to see people in a non-fluorescent yellow environment.

So turns out there will be a lot happening in the coming year...so watch this space. In particular keep an eye on http://rideairevalley.wordpress.com for a selection of beginner and improver rides in the new year.

There may not appear to be many rewards for getting up at 6am, and cycling in the dark on a November morning, but for some reason I'm still amazed at the joys cycling can bring - even in what would seem to be unpleasant conditions.

As ever, the weather was good today, with the overnight rain clearing up, but leaving the surfaces damp. There was just a little bit of fog in the valley, and as we came into Bingley the light was just breaking through leaving us with a spectacular view of the lights of Bingley emerging through the fog. A train on our left was heading off to Keighley, and for some reason that was the 'yeah, this is good' moment of the day.

Always a good way to start the day! 

So, I got busy over the last couple of weekends answering the question: "Cycling in Bradford - where is it on the Web?"

There's loads of stuff going on, but unless you know about it, it can be hard to find. So thanks to a great bit of PHP from  Steph Gray at the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, and the social bookmarking site, delicious.com, within a couple of hours

www.bikebradford.org.uk

was born.

Simply a collection of links to cycling related stuff that should be of interest to people withing the district, the great thing is that the 'tags' allow the links to be indexed, and searched. 'Cos it uses delicious, it also means other people can contribute directly without going through a gatekeeper.

The next challenge then is to bring the sites within Bradford up to scratch - not an easy task, but as always, best to start near to home - with the Hammsters! Again, a little bit of work and with the help of wordpress.com, flickr, and Google Calendar...

http://hammsters.wordpress.com

My key themes at the moment are 'keep the data close to the people that care about the data - but make sure it's made available to share!"

You know we love our stats here on the Aire Valley Bike Bus, but I've often wondered how many cyclists there are commuting in Bradford. The Council does regular traffic monitoring, and thanks to Neil Moore, they have passed on this information to me. Neil writes:

"In the Bradford district we have 3 main ways of collecting information about the number of cyclists.

1. On behalf of the Department of Transport we undertake 12 hour counts (between 7.00am and 7.00pm) at various sites (determined by the DfT) on all traffic using the roads. We extract the number of cyclists at 25 of these sites (data in the document below under ltp2 monitoring) to get an idea of cycling trends.
2. Each spring we count the number of people travelling inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening peak periods across a virtual cordon around the Bradford city centre. Again this gives us an idea of cycling trends and allows us to compare cycling with other modes of transport (in the document below).
3. Every year we count the number of people using the Leeds / Bradford canal towpath (counts alternate between March and July - information in the document below).

In addition we count traffic at various junctions (including cyclists) when requested to do so.

We do monitor traffic on a 24 hour basis using automatic counters - unfortunately the equipment is not sensitive enough to register the number of cyclists. We are going to trial an automatic cycle counter on Manchester Road once the new SUSTRANS / National Lottery funded bridge is constructed.

The document below contains a summary of cycling in Bradford (it's a little out of date in areas). I am quite happy to provide information at site specific locations - should you require it.

Let me know if you need anymore information."

The monitoring is all done Monday to Friday, except the specific cycle monitoring on the canal towpath which is monitored on a Wednesday and a Sunday. In addition, this year they are also monitoring the number of cyclists / pedestrians on Croscombe Walk (the living street in Little Horton) and Manchester Road (footbridge area) on behalf of SUSTRANS - these are being undertaken on a Thursday and a Saturday.

Download the document below.

Transport for London is promoting 'Cycling Fridays', "free group commuter rides, for a healthy and fun route to the office"

Sounds familiar!

There was a feature on the Radio 4 Today program this morning. For some pictures see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8222000/8222523.stm

For the 5 min audio report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8223000/8223912.stm

It's interesting to see how the presenter relaxes into it, enjoys the ride, and (to me at least) the social aspect is the where the real enjoyment for the cyclists comes from...but we know that already!

Today it rained.

That's very rare. For one rider it's the first time they have got wet since they started riding with the bike bus back in November last year.

..but, it was wet. Those riding a few miles in didn't suffer too badly, in fact with good clothing, the rain would have been a mild inconvenience, AND there's actually something quite nice about a bit of rain.

For those riding from Keighley though, there's no way to spin it! Shoes, gloves and raincoat now hanging over the radiator. Should be only mildly damp by home time. Looking forward to that shower! 

Turns out that some of the Aire Valley Bike Bus riders don't mind a bit of a challenge every now and again.

Recently, Maurice did the London to Brighton bike ride, raising money for the British Heart Foundation, (see the evidence, Margaret rode from Manchester to Blackpool, for The Christie,  David Domestique did 80 miles around the Dales for the Candlelighters, and Angela is gearing up for the Wessex 100, to raise money for the Antony Nolan Trust.

If you fancy a challenge, then Bradford Disability Sport and Leisure has made tentative announcements that it's going to organise a ride to Hamm (from Bradford) in 2010 - contact  BDSL via their website if you want in.

If you can't wait until 2010 and are concerned about climate change then, what about riding from Bradford to London to join The Wave. The group riding from Bradford has it's own site at: http://climatechains.blogspot.com/