The Summer of Cycling

9.22.20pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 2nd Aug 2008

The Tameside Lib Dems have been doing a lot of cycling into central Manchester recently, sometimes using the Ashton canal towpath and sometimes Ashton Old Road. The weather has been a bit hit and miss but the British summer has been almost kind (well, at least the temperature has been hovering around 20). Overall though, it has shown how easy it is to cycle into Manchester but at the same time opened our eyes to the badly designed junctions (try crossing 3 lanes of busy traffic on a bike just so you can turn right) , terrible road/towpath surfaces and just how many drains there are to avoid when you are cycling in the gutters!! Canal towpaths are pushed by the council as a way to travel around by bike but the Ashton one would need a much better surface if it was used by more than a few bikes every day. At the moment it is more like an off road mountain bike track with deep puddles and ruts. The canal looks a bit too close for comfort on some of those bends! With a little bit of investment more people could be encouraged to use the bicycle as a way to get into the city. Cycling is maybe not something you want to do every day but if 10% of car journeys were replaced by cycle ones it would make a huge difference to congestion, the environment and your health. It will be interesting to see if anything comes out of Tameside's cycling review, at the moment the cycling strategy is nowhere to be seen.