Cycling City Ambition grant – make your support visible!

news
release

Tomorrow (30th April) the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) will be submitting a bid to the Department for Transport’s Cycle City Ambition Grant.  To encourage people to support the bid and call for bold and ambitious targets Love Your Bike has set up an independent petition on Change.org [1].

The bid is for up to £20 million of government investment, to be spent over two years, to make cycling safer and easier. This would take the form of a series of more continental-style, largely segregated, cycle routes within the heart of the conurbation, together with the delivery of a number of cycle and ride stations.

Love Your Bike believes that a great city has to be a safe city for people who cycle and we urge people to support Greater Manchester’s Cycling City Ambition Grant bid.

Love Your Bike believes that the bid must include ambitious targets for increasing cycling levels in Greater Manchester. We support the target to more than double cycling levels to reach 5% share of trips under 5km by 2018, and then to double this again to 10% by 2025.

We also call on Manchester to match the ambition demonstrated in the All Party Parliamentary Cycling groups ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report and provide funding of at least £10 per person per year to achieve this level of cycling. [2]

Graeme Sherriff, from Manchester Friends of the Earth’s Love Your Bike campaign said:

“Love Your Bike welcomes the Cycling City Ambition bid. If we are serious about getting more people cycling in Greater Manchester we need to demonstrate our ambition. Our bid needs to at least match the national targets for cycling and commit the funding required to achieve this”.

ENDS

 

CONTACTS FOR COMMENTS

Pete Abel, Love Your Bike campaign. Mobile: 07951 642858

Dr Graeme Sherriff, Manchester Friends of the Earth Transport campaign co-ordinator. Mobile: 07948 405071

 

Notes to Editors:

[1] Petition: Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM): Commit to bold targets & sustained funding in Cycling City Ambition bid. https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/transport-for-greater-manchester-tfgm-commit-to-bold-targets-sustained-funding-in-cycling-city-ambition-bid

[2] The ‘Get Britain Cycling’ report recommended that “More of the transport budget should be spent on supporting cycling, at a rate initially set to at least £10 per person per year, and increasing as cycling levels increase” For a Summary and Recommendations. See http://allpartycycling.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/get-britain-cycling1.pdf

[3] Love Your Bike is an award-winning campaign co-ordinated by Manchester Friends of the Earth. Based in Manchester, we aim to promote cycling and to help make it an attractive, accessible and fun way to get around. www.loveyourbike.org