Active Travel – Walking in May, Cycling in June

With a special summer of sport on its way, with the European Nations’ football tournament, the Olympics, and the Paralympics, plus the regular Wimbledon and Tour de France, we could spend the whole summer on the sofa, watching all this activity? Fortunately there’s lots going on locally to encourage and support us, if we want to get active ourselves; stepping out with walking in May, and cycling in June.

We’re now into National Walking Month, and Colchester Travel Plan Club is booting-up for WALK TO WORK WEEK, 14-18 MAY. Some Colchester Travel Plan Club member organisations have signed up for this, and office teams have been invited to take part in a little friendly competition.

Here’s the link for the national event http://www.livingstreets.org.uk/walk-with-us/events/walk-to-work-week Over the next few days your CTPC workplace co-ordinator should sign up your company. If you’re not in the CTPC you can still join in the fun, by registering your company yourself. And for individuals where the company has chosen not to take part, you can still join in by signing -up as an individual. We believe there are already some small businesses and individuals in Colchester that have done that, but we won’t know for sure until the Walk to Work Week’s starting gates open on the 14th May.

“WALK TO WORK” (no, it’s not just about the walk to work) was one of the topics discussed at the CTPC Active Travel event, held on 25 April 2012 at Colchester General Hospital. The other main topic for ACTIVE TRAVEL was CYCLING.

Caroline Bates, fundraiser for Colchester Hospital Charity (CoHoC), spoke about their BIKE TO WORK CHALLENGE at the Hospital, and CTPC members agreed to join in. Caroline’s great idea is that all Colchester workplaces join in with the Bike to Work Challenge, and the individuals donate their bus fares or petrol money to the hospital charity. Bike Week will be 16-24 June, with more information about Caroline’s event at    http://www.bikeweek.org.uk/event_search.php?pagemode=display&event_id=186&postcode=co3&distance=10&category=-1&county=-1&fee=any&child=any 

Find us at “Colchester Travel Plan Club” on Facebook, and @travelplanclub on Twitter.

Summer of cycling?? Yes, really!

Here at Travel Plan Club Towers we were pondering what we could do to promote cycling in Colchester, this summer. Do we need to set up some events? Who are our target groups? When and where might they be? Who will do all this work? Then we looked at what’s already happening in Colchester, liked it, and decided to back those events.

This morning  we helped run a session for Cycle Colchester Comms Group. To emphasise the point that it’s not the local authorities’ event, it’s the collective “ours”, we met at The Castle Inn. There was no set agenda, and no finger-wagging about what has and hasn’t been done. It was about information sharing, and thinking through how we can continue the Cycle Colchester project, working with the goodwill of the local volunteers and the authorities.

Meanwhile, the Cycle Colchester website has disappeared, like the last christmas card behind the radiator. The firm that were running it have ceased trading, and a temporary fix is that some of the site is hosted at Colchester Borough Council. However, the feeling of the meeting was that an independent website is needed, restoring the project branding, with lots of links to all the events , news and activities of the local clubs, interests and organisations.

So what’s happening in Colchester’s summer of cycling? Here’s a taster:

• Alley Cat ride 28 April, and more dates ….
• Tour Series professional cycling in town centre, 7 June
• Bike to Work Week for CoHoC (Colchester Hospital Charity, all welcome to join in) 16-24 June
• Colchester Carnival 30 June – look out for Keep Colchester Cycling display, and join in if you have decorated your bike?
• Olympic Flame in Colchester 6 July – Fred Slattern’s Bike Book Club
• Colchester Free Festival 25 August – lookout for the bike themed elements…..
• Young Explorers Ride 26 August, from Gosbecks, 7 miles off-road, for families, 4 mile short cut option
• “5 Mile to Fabulous” women’s ride to Wivenhoe – date to be confirmed
• CTC rides for new and returning cyclists – big programme of short rides led by the infamous Richard Monk
• plus lots of charity ride challenges, and local cycle sports club events through the summer

Look out for the new Cycle Colchester website, and follow the links to all these events.  Meanwhile put them on your diary.

Double cycling – bring a friend.

According to studies from the University of Made-Up Stuff, 30% of the population will “never” cycle, 59% “might”, 10% will “sometimes” and 1%  will “often”.

 The 1% “often” are cycling enthusiasts, who have a very different outlook to the 89% non-cyclists, “never” and “might”. The ethos of Cycle Colchester is “more people cycling, more often”.  To make a difference, we need to focus on the 59% “might” and the 10% “sometimes”.

Theme One: Who are we, and what are we doing here? (names have been removed) CTC, Sustrans volunteer, CCC, Sustrans “Bike It”, cycling officer ECC, KeepColchesterCycling, ECC road safety, Colchester Travel Plan Club and more interests……

who should be here? CTC cycle champion, theatre and arts sector,  “cycle and seek”, Tendring representative, University of Essex, cycle trade representative,  Colchester Chronicle, cycletech bike mechanic, bike guru, cycle café proprietor, local bookshop who could sell maps and guides, Colchester Garrison, Keep Colchester Cool, General Practitioners/ Anglia Community Enterprise (working for PCT)/ Health Champions and Trainers network, commuter cyclists to Colchester vworkplaces, Colchester stations commuter cyclists/ Station Travel Plan reps, businesses, cafe owners, VisitColchester, UofE academics specialising in sustainability and community building, ECC highways technical staff, Colchester BC, Healthy Living Solutions, local schools, Cycle Sport – local clubs, plus local poets, health workers, celebrities and movers and shakers…..

Theme One Summary:

Everyone’s busy. We don’t expect everyone who can influence Colchester people to get more cycling, to commit to a half-day meeting, all in a room, at the same time.

We want to build a successful and effective network, with full shared access to information about promoting cycling in Colchester.

The public, and the cycling supporters, need to be well informed on what’s on offer in Colchester, looking at the wider demographic of our population.

We all need to understand that each sector of the community has different requirements, if we are to see more cycling.

Whether we are public sector, private sector or voluntary, we need to understand what we can deliver, looking at human resources and funds, and what we will have to leave aside.

Theme Two, 2012 Projects and Events: (some will happen, others are just ideas)

Tour Series pro bike race, 7 June. “Summer of cycling” – instead of national bike week, a summer of cycling is being run, linked with the Olympics. Colchester Carnival, 30 June (will include all day festival). Mountain bike chariot racing????. Wivenhoe May Fair – Saturday 26 May, King George V playing fields. Cycle training for families/ all, held over FOUR Sundays, at High Woods Country Park. Young Children’s Festival –  Saturday 16 June, Castle Park. Colchester Free Festival – Saturday 25 August, Castle Park

Fred Slattern’s Bike Book Club, starting from St John’s Green, Young Explorer ride (seven mile ride, aimed at families, from St John’s Green to Friday Woods and back).  Treasure trail, available all year, possibility in High Woods. Geocaching project. “Hub” project (open in Harlow) a bike recycling scheme engaging with young people not in mainstream education. Greenstead community event. Cultural festival. “5 miles to fabulous” event targeted at women. “singles” bike ride. “Keep Colchester Cycling”.

A suggestion. The cyclists themselves need to get people cycling, on a one-to-one basis. If every local cyclist persuaded one person to take up cycling, we would double the number of cyclists inColchester.

Target Groups. Who? and Why?

WHO? Everyone. Primary school pupils (and parents and siblings). Secondary school pupils (ditto). Young adults. Older students. Family Groups. Business. Women (all ages needed, separate marketing for different sectors). Older people. Inactive people referred by GPs. “Mind” project, using green exercise to help with depression or mental illness

WHY? Fun, Fashion, Health, Green, Cheap, Transport. A matrix could be produced, making an assessment of which reasons for cycling would most appeal to each group. When looking at a cycling promotion we need to think about who the target group are, and why our event might appeal to them. We ignore this at our peril…… 

WHAT HAVE WE GOT?  An Audit for January 2012 

Infrastructure and Assets: a recognised brand with a good reputation, the goodwill of the volunteers and the authorities, a small amount of funding, route maps and equipment (trailers, displays, “pulp friction”), www.cyclecolchester.co.uk website (Colchester Travel Plan Club will update this) (Post meeting note: the company that ran it have ceased trading, updating not possible at present.),  Salary Brook and UofE Knowledge Gateway cycle route works in 2012. Freebies in store. Maps (Good stock of most CC maps, money available for reprints). Lower Castle Park cycle route opening 20 March 2012. Lexden route (includes Crouch St completion 2012), Cyclists database – collected over the last two years, through events, pledges.

Training: Getting adults to take part in cycle training has proven difficult. There will be more opportunities in 2012.

Current promotional projects:  Cycle Champion’s led rides (the best fit to our target audiences?),            VIth Form College, The Gilberd School, Uof E – develop Bike It for older young people,  Tiptree – CTC rides plus public health sector links?, Eco Race – at primary and secondary schools (currently 12), Keep Colchester Cycling – free hire bikes, launching in spring 2012, Feedback forms needed from all events (KCC are already planning this)

NEXT SESSION: Wednesday 18 April 10:00am. Venue to be confirmed. 

Loveurcarcolchester

And now for something completely different. Our keen followers may have heard rumblings about an exciting new project, working on new themes in very different ways. And we can’t keep our secret any longer. Coming to you, and the whole of Colchester, next week, is the LOVEURCARCOLCHESTER project.

At Loveurcarcolchester we recognise that car use is very important in Colchester, and that for many local trips we need to use our cars.
So how do we make our town a better place by playing our part in reducing traffic congestion, as we all accept that it’s sometimes a problem?
Loveurcarcolchester is here to have fun, and support transport change.
We’re here to celebrate what’s good about local driving, and also to encourage smarter driving, looking at car sharing, fuel economy and much more……
And, maybe sometimes, we can try something else?

Thank you to government department Defra for supporting this project in Colchester. The project partners are the Colchester Borough Council Air Quality team, Colchester Travel Plan Club, and local mediamakers and style gurus V102.

So what can we expect? Get ready to meet Bald Baz, Perfect Purdy, Frankie Two-Toes and Bob Noxious, our video heroes. From next week, visit our website www.loveurcarcolchester.co.uk and maybe win an i-Pad2.

Weather alert! Business as usual?

See snow as an opportunity! Many of us will struggle on, in our attempts to carry on our working day with business as usual. And we salute those who have made great efforts to arrive at their workplace, to maintain a service to customers during challenging weather. But for some of us, maybe this is the great opportunity to try new working methods? Do we need to travel to do our job? Can we work from home, at least some of the time? There’s never a better chance to give it  try, when some of the roads are closed from snowfall or ice.

Maybe winter’s nearly over, but the kipper nailed to my door frame tells me there will be more snow before summer’s here. So lay ahead, and think how you can best plan working from home when nature decides that it’s out turn again to have lots of snow.

And many thanks to those who still have to forge a way to their usual workplace. Hopefully your passage is eased by lower volumes of traffic on the roads.

Money for cycling – your ideas wanted.

Calling all dreamers! There is some funding available for cycling in Colchester. Rosemary Wilkins, Essex County Council Cycling Officer, has tirelessly shared information about this over the last three months, and the deadline for applications is drawing near.

The Travel Plan Club has been gathering ideas, and has bid for schemes such as :

• Funds for Colchester Cycling Campaign for saddle cover freebies and event reservations, to help their volunteers when attending local events.
• Fred Slattern’s Bike Book Club – bringing in new people to cycling in Colchester
• Cycle Challenge web based competitive event for local employers to get their employees cycling
• Young Explorers’ Ride – a family event to Friday Woods
• Bikeability – cycle training for adults
• “double our cyclists” campaign for local cyclists to sign up a non-cycling friend
• treasure trail for the summer
• new cyclepaths at North Colchester Business Parks
• “summer of cycling” local leaflet of events, also linked with Bike Week and to complement the Olympics.

Health, Work and Wellbeing – event 8 Feb 2012

A healthy workforce is good for your employees, for the wider community, and for your business. There’s a Health, Work and Wellbeing event at Eight Ash Green, run by the “Business in the Community” organisation, and “NHS northeast Essex”. It will be in the morning of 8 February, and will include lunch. Please follow the link for details, and book your FREE place. There will be a series of interesting presentations, some market stalls, and opportunities to network. See you there…..

http://www.bitc.org.uk/events/health_work_.html

Full set of spanners at CTPC workshop!

Not many schools can boast that cycling is an integral part of their curriculum. The Gilberd School teaches mountain biking and Bikeability within timetabled lessons, holds bike races as part of sports day, and has a weekly bike club. And the headliner is an impressive bike maintenance workshop which is run as a small business and where students can learn bike maintenance as part of a qualification.  With  bikes that don’t work, being one of the main reasons kids don’t cycle to school, The Gilberd’s bike maintenance workshop is about to go mobile and help out at other schools.  Thanks to Roger Springett for hosting January’s CTPC event, and for the tour afterwards which included the bike workshop and facilities plus the impressive shiny new trailer which will soon be transformed into a mobile workshop.

So back to club news:

CTPC Governance: With the winding-down of Colchester2020, Jeremy Lucas (ECC) and Paul Wilkinson (CBC) talked about future governance of the club and member involvement in determining the direction the club goes in and priorities.  Emily and Andrew have always responded and evolved to the needs of the TPC members and are happy to continue doing this. Paul will be organising a workshop for members to discuss governance issues/priorities etc. All agreed that any opportunity to bid for funding should be taken advantage of to help ongoing funding of the CTPC and new projects.

Summer Cycling Promotions: Get your costed ideas for promotions within your workplace into Andrew and Emily by the beginning of February. Funding may be available from ECC for training, events, Dr Bike etc and any new ideas you have. We all liked the Cycle Challenge as a cross CTPC promotion but the cost is an issue, could we develop our own online logging system? One for Andrew and Emily to explore…..

STEPS – Active Travel:  Legs Eleven walking project is still happening, and is expected to be launched in the spring. A decision on ERDF funding is imminent, which will put more funding into this and other NCBP projects.

2012 Events:  We are happy to support you in any events where you are promoting sustainable transport. One highlight in this year’s calender is the  ACTTravelwise’s spring conference  which is being hosted by Charlotte at UofE and has an exciting line up showcasing Transport in the 21st Century. There is a pre-conference event on the 29th March with the main conference on the 30th.  Use the link above to see the full programme and to book your place.

Drive Colchester: £5000 is available to CTPC members to promote car sharing and smarter driving in 2012! A second grant from DEFR has given us this great opportunity for some more bespoke promotions over and above the central project we are currently working on. So please let us have your ideas…. whether it be advanced driving lessons, an on site mechanic, car share matching events, Love Your Car promotions, bespoke publicity material, dedicated car share bays or something else…

The central campaign will run over a couple of months starting around mid February, with a short funky film on carsharing and another on smarter driving.  Radio (Heart, Dream, Uni, Garrison, Hospital?-  are there others we can approach??) and billboard campaigns will promote the films and Drive Colchester website, plus publicity in TPC member organisations… watch this space for more info…

Travel Plan Accreditation scheme: Many of our members have achieved a silver and want to go for gold. Survey response rates are the main barrier and Rachel gave us ideas for maximising response rates by offering attractive inventives, offering a paper version, timing the survey to coincide with a change in parking arrangements etc.

Survey time is here again:  We do a full survey across all members every two years, usually in May to measure our progress. Survey results have been good with a year on year 3% decrease in people driving to work and big increases in people mixing their modes.  The challenge this year is to get the high response rate to help our members hit gold, as well as get some robust stats to measure our progress  by.  So we will be talking to members over the next few months on how best to tackle this for their organisation and noted that if we can put the month long survey back or forward a week it will help out the Uni as May clashes with exam time.

Abellio and public transport: Good news that Abellio want to focus on customer service in their 2 year franchise, with their eye keenly set on achieving the franchise in the longer term. This means new dedicated customer service desks at key stations (including Colchester) interest in integrated transport, more user-friendly timetables, marketing of under capacity trains (apparently there are very few that are overcrowded) We have had positive sounds about continuing our discount and hopefully they will be keen to work on some joint marketing of train travel with us. (Conversation today with our current contact at NXEA, Tanya, indicates business as usual from 5th Feb when Abellio take over – she is 99% certain existing discounts will continue.

CTPC public transport promotional material is all set to go, but ticket stock is still awaited from Network Colchester. Tony Mears has gone (Emily met new Regional General Manager Martin Evans after our meeting, hopefully the ticket stock will be appearing very soon so we can get on with our promotions).

ACTTravelwise: The CTPC pays for membership of ACTTravelwise  , who represent and lobbies for sustainable travel and travel planning nationally. Full CTPC members have access via their own log in.  It is a good resource for case studies, events, jobs and includes a forum for posting questions.  Emily will sort out current log ins and passwords.  Another good free resource to sign up to is Ways2Work funded by DfT and focused more on the private sector, with lots of good case studies, advice and best practice.

Helena encouraged us all to sign up  for a Free Business in the Community & ACE conference masterclass promoting health in the workplace, 8th February 09:30 – 13:30, lunch included, at the Holiday Inn in Eight Ash Green.

Thanks, and if you want to know more please get in touch.

2011? Where did that go?

It’s an exciting time right now at the Travel Plan Club. We’ve just won funding from Defra for an air quality project in Colchester, which we hope will go massive from January to March 2012. Then there’s a bid for European Regional Development Fund to support our work on Active Travel, particularly with SMEs in North Colchester Business Parks, again we hope to announce this in the New Year.

But, best of all, our current members are continuing their support for the Club. Many of our local businesses and organisations have gone through major changes in 2011, and budget cuts, so it is particularly pleasing that members have chosen to carry on their good Travel Planning work in partnership with Colchester Travel Plan Club.

So we’re here again in 2012, but it won’t be business as usual. The Club exists only to serve its members, and what our members wanted in 2011, isn’t what our members will want in 2012. That’s cool; your co-ordinators like new challenges. And the two newly funded projects will stretch us. But what do our loyal members want from the Club in 2012? Please get in touch, or take part in our next Meeting on Wednesday morning, 25 January 2012, when we will plan next year’s work.

Looking back on the year 2011, for all of us at our workplaces, it’s sometimes possible for us to focus too much on what we haven’t done, and overlook our achievements.  Thanks to receiving a random e-mail about our past work, Emily found some notes about our Active Travel themed session last 20 April, held at the University of Essex, showing some of the work we have done with our members. (These notes haven’t appeared on this website before, as we went live from June.) Here’s a selection of the original notes, and our end-of-the-year update:

ACE Health Trainer Service. Sue Felgate gave us an overview to reinforce our knowledge about the growing obesity epidemic due to our increasingly sedentary lifestyles and over consumption of food. The car and office based working plays a big part in this and workplaces have an important role in encouraging and supporting people to be more active.ACE offer a wealth of resources from their resource centre including range of leaflets and personal walking plan booklets etc. Contact Sue for more information tel: 01206 288616/07717 130 473,  email sue.felgate@aceic.nhs.uk

Update:  The TPC have presented at subsequent training sessions for workplace champions during 2011

Cycle Tech Colchester. Ben Paton offers a mobile cycle maintenance service and can come to your work place and offer a range of on site services including Dr Bike safety checks, bike fleet management, private maintenance work, emergency response service, bike maintenance lessons for staff. Ring 07909 280 125,  visit www.cycletechuk.com/colchester.html   email ben.paton@sky.com

Update: Ben was in Culver St West every Friday through summer and autumn, offering a free Dr Bike 15 minute check. The TPC helped spread the word, and this offer was taken up by hundreds of Colchester people. 

Cycle to Work Scheme. Michelle Lay-Flurrie from Colchester Borough Council gave us a useful overview of the Cycle to Work scheme and its success at CBC (an HMRC initiative to help people buy a decent bike and accessories at a discounted price through salary sacrifice).

Update: The Travel Plan Club recommends Cyclescheme as a Cycle to Work scheme provider. The government’s rules on how to implement the scheme changed during the year, and Emily kept members informed on how best to deal with the latest conditions.

Pedometer challenges to promote walking. Charlotte Humphries from the University of Essex, told us about her successful pedometer challenge held last year, and her stepping-out plans for this year.

Update: Promoting walking is key to many of the TPC objectives. Look out for “Legs Eleven” in spring 2012!

Pool Bikes. Harvey Panrucker from Essex County Council talked about the growth of their pool bike scheme, and how they have rolled this out to other organisations as part of an overall Travel Plan package.

Update: Pool bikes from ECC are now available for staff at DSG, Colchester Institute and Colchester Borough Council, linked with ECC’s Business Travel Plan accreditation scheme.

 Walk Colchester and Jane’s Walk Weekend. Rowena Macaulay from Walk Colchester www.walkcolchester.org.uk talked about her community based project “to promote and facilitate safe and enjoyable pedestrianism”. Walk Colchester is holding the UK’s first Jane’s Walk weekend over 7^th and 8^th May, two days of local walks led by local people, taking place simultaneously around the world, celebrating the ideas and legacy of urbanist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006).

Update: This weekend was an outstanding success. Well done Walk Colchester. The TPC were glad to share details of your event with our members.

Living Streets Walking Calculator. The national charity promoting walking has a free online calculator that will be available for logging walking undertaken in Walk to Work week 9^th – 13^th May as part of a national walking challenge.

Update: The Living Streets’ online walking calculator didn’t work as well as we had hoped, and take up in Colchester was limited.

Bike Week 2011. Pam Nelson of many hats, here representing Colchester Cycling Campaign and Cycle Colchester, talked about the history of the celebration of Bike Week in Colchester. There are a number of community lead Bike Week events happening, more on this later.

Update: Cycle Colchester had another good year, with the project continuing even though the government had stopped funding it. Many thanks to the local authorities and voluntary sector for keeping the flag flying.

(Thanks to “One Simple Act” from Alberta, Canada for the “idle” sign.)

Business Awards – Our Winners!

Glamour, glitter and fireworks were all part of the excitement of the NQE Business Awards Ceremony on Friday 25th November. After a champagne reception, meal and speeches the award presentations got underway.

Rachelle Ruston from ECC, Simon New from Inntel and Emily Harrup from the Travel Plan Club went on stage to present our three winners, who were…..

Defence Support Group, Colchester Borough Council and Colchester Football Stadium.

Congratulations in winning the award and look out for our write up on what most impressed the judges about our winners, in the Essex County Standard on Friday 2nd December.

Well done also to all of our finalists. We know you will be disappointed that you didn’t win.  However we would like you to know that your good work made our job of choosing three winners very difficult, and making it to the final nine is also a great achievement.

The Colchester Business Awards are a great way to raise the profile of sustainable travel within the business community as well as reward organisations that are already doing good work. We hope our involvement with the awards will lead to us welcoming new members on board in the coming months.