How lockdown in York has transformed our views of cycling

QUOTE:
IMAGINE you could hop on your bike in the centre of the city and follow a safe cycle route all the way to the tranquillity of a national nature reserve, through the leafy shade of a beautiful forest, in less than an hour.

Imagine that you could cycle safely from your village into town without coughing in the pollution of a thousand cars and lorries.

Well, if we show ambition and finally sort out a broad cycling strategy for York we will be able to do just that.

As the city and the world at large reels under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, a much larger collective challenge has all but disappeared from view.

But climate change has not gone away and if we take our eye off the ball we will completely miss the chance that this pandemic is giving us to transform for the better how our city works.

Cities and nations are struggling with managing the transport of goods, maintaining functioning health care systems, supporting agriculture and harvesting foods, protecting jobs, delivering education, and preserving city centres where people can meet and engage in commercial and cultural activities. And with public transport severely constrained by social distancing, some are saying that private cars are the new PPE.

It does not have to be this way. Right now York residents are cycling all over the place, in our thousands. Lockdown has transformed attitudes and provided residents with the time and the opportunity to explore on pushbikes and on foot.

Over the past eight weeks, transport across York has been utterly transformed. Car travel has been slashed, as has pollution. We and our city are breathing more easily. Government figures suggest that across the country thousands of lives have been saved as a result.

In India, cities are seeing the Himalayas rising two hundred miles to the north for the first time in decades as the smog has lifted.

In York we are witnessing a city freed from the caterpillar chains of cars idling in traffic jams on every rush hour street. This transformation has been so abrupt and so dramatic that people have been shocked at the recent arrival of a traffic jam in Nunnery Lane. A few brave car lovers have protested the closure of Bishopthorpe Road, decrying the disruption caused by putting up barriers to protect cycling and walkers and to maintain social distancing.

How quickly we forget. Back in early March the long traffic jams on Nunnery Lane were found on every major road across our city every rush hour, every single day.

But people do not need or want to be punished out of our cars; what we all need are safe and viable alternatives. Let’s not waste this opportunity. Right now we can finally create a wider cycle network to connect the centre with all the villages to provide everyone with an attractive alternative to combustion engines.

A quality safe cycle route between, say, Heslington village and Wheldrake would enable village residents to access the city for work and leisure and, at the same time, provide city residents with a safe route out to visit Wheldrake Woods, the internationally renowned nature reserve at Wheldrake Ings, Elvington Airfield, the villages’ pubs and shops.

https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/184...views-cycling/

On 06/06/2020 11:40, Simon Mason wrote:
QUOTE: IMAGINE you could hop on your bike in the centre of the city
and follow a safe cycle route all the way to the tranquillity of a
national nature reserve, through the leafy shade of a beautiful
forest, in less than an hour.

Imagine that you could cycle safely from your village into town
without coughing in the pollution of a thousand cars and lorries.

Well, if we show ambition and finally sort out a broad cycling
strategy for York we will be able to do just that.

The centre of York was already pretty decent before the lockdown. If
drivers feel their "rights" have been / are being taken away, then it's
clear nobody misses them if they stay away.