Minutes of Camden Cycling Campaign Business Meeting on 11th December 2006
Present: Jane Boardman, Anne Boston, James Brander, Stefano Casalotti, John Chamberlain, Jean Dollimore, Richard Fletcher, Meade McCloughan (minutes) and Helen Vecht (chair).
LCC Borough Group Meeting 7th December
• There will be a training session one Saturday in February for borough groups on how to operate within LCC’s new charity status. James will probably need to go.
Green Fair/Bikefest
• Date now set for Sunday 3rd June 2007.
• Stefano is organizing a schools charity ride around the Inner Circle.
• TfL may provide up to £5,000. We might be able to use some of this to get some materials, e.g. leaflets, banners.
• There should be a Dr Bike as last time (funded by TfL).
College Crescent
• This is up for consideration again by the Council on the 16th January (by a scrutiny panel and we plan to send a deputation).
• We need to ensure that two-way cycling is maintained.
• Jean to notify Dave Stewart of the situation on the 20th December.
• We should review with the officers why they think a contraflow is not possible (mainly to do with the parking bays by the pub).
• Richard to arrange a site meeting with Simi Shah (Jean and Stefano to come along if they can).
• Stefano to arrange for a deputation to the Council on the 16th January.
• Jean to pass on relevant contact details to Richard.
Bloomsbury
• It was agreed that Jean should invite someone from the Terry Farrell Partnership to come and talk about its plans for the Bloomsbury area (around UCL and the British Museum).
• We should aim for March 2007; possibly see if this meeting could be held at the Marchmont Centre.
Routes for the Cross River Tram
• We should insist that the route goes on main roads and does not interfere with cycle routes, e.g. definitely not on Polygon Road/Chalton Road, but Euston Road would be best (although it is not on offer).
Minutes of Camden Cycling Campaign Main Meeting on 11th December 2006
Present: as above, plus Paul Braithwaite, George Colouris, Vivien Gambling, Mayer Hillman, Colleen Macaulay, Colin Murphy, Lionel Shapiro, Maya de Souza, Dominic Tinley, Jeremy Watson
LCC Cultural Campaign
• LCC is launching a campaign to get major cultural institutions in London to provide good cycle parking facilities and proper information about how to arrive by bike.
• There are many such institutions in Camden, and volunteers are needed to contact each of these.
Spring Rides
• Any suggestions/offers to lead rides should be forwarded to Richard.
Bikeoff Project
• Adam Thorpe, from the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, gave a presentation about the Bikeoff Project he has been working on.
• 80,000 bicycles were stolen last year in London alone. Studies have shown that of the 22% of all cyclists that experience bicycle theft, 17% stop cycling as a result and 66% cycled less often.
• Adam and his colleagues have analysed bike parking and security in the area outside Central Saint Martins College (Southampton Row/Theobald’s Road). They recorded 8,500 ‘locking events’. Of these, 19% involved locking the cross bar only and 53% involved locking just one wheel. 87% used one lock, 12% two and 1% three. Most new cyclists didn’t know the name or function of many components of their bikes, e.g. quick-release levers on wheels. There has been a theft rate of about 40%. CCTV is in place, but has had no apparent effect in preventing theft or catching thieves.
• The project has adopted a four-pronged strategy to improve matters:
1. Information Environment : methods of communicating security issues and user best practice to cyclists and other users of the space, e.g. stickers and leaflets – the former in particular have been proven to
2. Surveillance and Guardianship : schemes that will help cyclists look after our own bikes and/or work with existing services to do so. This includes looking at ways of linking sensors to mobile ‘phones and such like.
3. Cycle parking furniture : designing more secure user-friendly cycle parking furniture.
4. Lighting and Site Improvement : the design of more user-friendly, abuser unfriendly sites for cycle parking.
• As part of 3, Adam is shortly to be testing some prototypes for new bike stands, one for short-stay and one for long-stay. He would like to come back in the new year and show these to us and get our views on them.
• Adam was asked about the extent to which the police were involved and what they could do. He pointed out that bike theft was now a Home Office “comparative crime” and so was something police forces were getting more interested in. However, one of the problems is that when stolen bicycles are recovered, their owners are only infrequently identifiable. The ‘immobilize’ scheme goes someway to dealing with this, but not all police forces use it and in any case the markings can be removed.
• Paul insisted that one of the key things would be to stop the sale of stolen bicycles, also to target thieves, as with the use of decoy-bikes (as has been done in Camden).
• In response to a question about the quality of locks, Adam said that this was something which would be looked into in a future phase of Bikeoff. There currently is rating scheme – Sold Secure (http://www.soldsecure.com/main.htm) – but Adam felt that this was not ideal.
• Given the need for real surveillance (i.e. not CCTV) to ensure that bike parking is secure, could not supervised parking be introduced? Adam agreed that this was possible, and that cyclists would probably be happy to pay 50p a day towards this.
• More information can be got from http://www.bikeoff.org/ .
• Adam closed the meeting with a sequence of very entertaining short films about bike theft.
