Bike Club Revived

ChangingPace has helped to revive a bike club in South Edinburgh.

The Mansion in Gracemount has had a bike club (on and off) for over 10 years. At the back of the house is a (neglected) BMX track.

As part of a wider project  for SEHLI (with funding from Cycling Scotland) ChangingPace has offered advice, run a ‘fix your own bike’ session and created a web site for the club – themansionbikeclub.wordpress.com.

Now It Can Be Revealed

More than 18 months ago ChangingPace suggested, at a Sustainable Transport seminar, that Edinburgh could do with its own version of the impressive Cambridge Cycle Journey Planner. This was a section of the, equally impressive, Cambridge Cycle Campaign web site.

The CCJP was the creation of two cycle campaigners and computer programmers – Simon and Martin. It was a complex (but simple to use) on-line tool for journey planning in and around Cambridge full of local knowledge and packed with photos that magically appeared as a slide show along a planned route.

Just over a year ago the Scottish Government’s Sustainable Transport section awarded ChangingPace (via Cycling Scotland) a tiny amount of money (in computer project terms!) to develop an Edinburgh Cycle Journey Planner. The Cambridge duo soon realised that the opportunity was there for a UK wide CJP and began developing CycleStreets.net.

One reason that this became a viable project was the rapid development of Open Street Map which is a free to use (copyright – creative commons-attribution-share alike) on-line map which anyone can update and improve.

CycleStreets.net has been “beta” since earlier this year, this means that the public has been able to try it out but improvements (large and small) are still being made. Last week the Photos-en-route (PER) function was switched on which will be a great bonus once there are more photos (for Edinburgh) in the database.

Almost every town and city in the UK now has a sub-domain – e.g.edinburgh.cyclestreets.net (though most don’t have their own logo). Work is in progress to allow schools and workplaces (etc.) to have a customised start page for planning journeys (walking or cycling) to the chosen destination.

One challenge not yet resolved is the issue of hills. Cambridge is flat so a journey takes roughly the same time in both directions. At present the suggested journeys are impressively sensible (with a choice of direct or scenic) but estimated times are less reliable.

Working with SEHLI

ChangingPace is helping the South Edinburgh Healthy Living Initiative (SEHLI) to get more people cycling. Using money from Cycling Scotland CP is working with children and parents in nurseries and schools in South Edinburgh.

CP is providing wooden bikes (without pedals) for nursery classes and good quality Raleigh ‘hybrids’ from the CP ‘fleet’ of useful machines (bicycles and tricycles).

The project is even discovering budding bike mechanics!

ChangingPace Short-listed TWICE

 Two of ChangingPace’s recent projects were chosen for the short-list of Cycling Scotland’s Innovation Award 2008 yesterday in Perth.

The wonderful Bingham 50+ Cycle Club was one: Not wonderful because we did it, but because of the happiness of those who re-discovered cycling.

The other was BikeBase, a new project in the early stages of development. This offers basic tools (e.g. track pumps) and information to schools and employers. It is being piloted in Edinburgh, but will be offered more widely, (partnership agreements are being negotiated), soon.

Neither project actually won. That honour went to Recyke-a-bike in Fallin. ChangingPace will have more innovations in time for next year’s award!

Banner Seen at TreeFest

ChangingPace has a big new banner for taking to events.

It was delivered to Filmhouse a few days ago where CP was running the Bike Week Film Festival, but it had its first outing at the information stall and bike skills course at TreeFest in Inverleith Park.

The image was taken by Chris Hill at the Fun Four Days event at Easter and the banner’s artwork produced by David Gardiner.

Helping Sciennes to Encourage Cycling

Sciennes Primary School offers Cycle Training to ALL P6 pupils in school time, it even has a stock of spares bikes for any child who doesn’t have their own.

Schools still rely heavily on volunteers to actually deliver CT, which is why a lot of schools still don’t have it on the curriculum. ChangingPace did a basic safety check on all the bikes (nearly 90!). ChangingPace people have Enhanced Disclosure and are also covered by £2m worth of public liability insurance.

ChangingPace has also produced an Active Travel web site for Sciennes (as part of a city wide project).

Helping PwC to Cycle to Work

The wonders of Google Maps mean that it’s fairly straightforward to create on-line maps. Of course it helps to have detailed knowledge of Edinburgh’s off-road network and quieter on-road routes!

This one was created for PricewaterhouseCoopers, (which has a Cycle Friendly Employer Award), by ChangingPace.

Filmhouse Photo Exhibition

A Photographic Exhibition for the 2007 Edinburgh Bike Week Film Festival is now on show in the Filmhouse Cafe. It will run until the end of the month.

Photos from six photographers have been selected from submissions to the ‘Cycling in Edinburgh’ group on Flickr.com. The exhibition and EBWFF are organised by ChangingPace

Encouraging Cycling to Work

ChangingPace organised a day to encourage PricewaterhouseCoopers staff to cycle. The firm’s Edinburgh office was recently given a Cycle Friendly Employer Award by Cycling Scotland.

A wide range of information, leaflets and maps were available for staff. A display of bikes and accessories was assembled by Bike Trax

PwC has made a short video about the experiences of staff who already cycle to the Queen Street offices – available on You Tube.

L-R, Simon and Rob from Bike Trax, Darren and Maggie from ChangingPace.