Dear ChiCycle Supporter,

We have three news items this October.

Have your say in the Future of Walking and Cycling in Chichester

Chichester District Council have revealed their draft Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) and would like your comments on it. They have two categories where they suggest interventions that are either “Do Minimum” or “Do More” approaches. It is a lot to read through but a very welcomes sign that walking and cycling may be taken more seriously in the future in allocation of resources and in town planning decisions.

The District Council is inviting everyone to have a say, so please take the opportunity to participate in the CDC on-line LCWIP survey that runs between the 18th September and 19th October 2020, and complete whichever sections are of interest to you.

Cycling Without Age, comes of age in Chichester

Richard Turnbul of BrightRide contacted ChiCycle on 28th September with some very positive news.

BrightRide are starting a Cycling Without Age “chapter” in Chichester. Cycling Without Age (CWA) is an initiative that started 8 years ago in Denmark and has now grown across the world. Essentially, using a specially designed bike called a trishaw, volunteer pilots take elderly and isolated members of the community out for bike rides to get fresh air, a break from their care home or residence and a chance to reconnect with the community.

Richard explained, “Back in the summer I applied to the Chichester City Council for funding for the project through the New Homes Bonus Scheme. This was approved, but required further approval from the District Council which didn’t meet until last week. I’m delighted to say that they have also approved the full funding for the trishaw and the first years’ insurance!  This is great news, and we can finally bring the project to reality.”

The BrightRide trishaw is now on special order and will most likely take six to eight weeks to arrive, but in the meantime, Richard will be focussing his efforts on the volunteer recruitment and management, plus a solution to matching volunteers to passengers through the website.  He has a lot of work to do on various policies to ensure everything runs smoothly and safely for all involved – COVID obviously adds an additional dimension to this, but Richard believes it could be possible to offer COVID secure rides, and he will be researching this further.  Other Cycling Without Age (CWA) chapters are running across the country, but of course safety is a priority for everyone at this time.

Richard wants to update us all and give thanks for everyone’s support for the project so far.  Hopefully BrightRide should be out there bringing smiles to people’s faces in time for Christmas! If anyone has any thoughts or questions for Richard, please drop him a line on email:- admin@brightride.org.uk or phone:- 07821 810552

Don’t Let the Pandemic Restrictions stop you enjoying Chichester’s Pop-Up Cycle-way. Who will join our fancy dress charity sponsored relay bike ride on Sat the 10th of October?

Paula Chatfield and Liz McCallum have come up with an inspired idea to make more of our pop-up cycle lanes so people can raise money for a charity of their choice. Our new cycle lanes are often loudly criticised by motorists who fail to understand the need to transition towards more sustainable (and healthier) modes of transport. Raising money by cycling around the pop-up cycle lanes is a chance to create positive publicity for the cycle scheme which will be necessary to raise support for further walking and cycling interventions in our city. This is a particularly valuable idea now that concerns over the Covid pandemic have made it difficult for us to organise our Friday after work cycle-rides because of the current limit of only six people meeting.

We have clearly been told that we have to use these cycle lanes or we will lose them, so please get in touch if you are interested in participating in a charity fundraising sponsored relay bike ride on our Pop-Up Cycleway. This initiative could be a great way to use this asset constructively, to raise money for good causes, to keep people fit and keep people involved with the community. Covid is keeping us apart but we can still have some fun fundraising for charities like the Mayor’s Hardship Fund, the Air Ambulance, Stone Pillow or whichever charity you prefer to support.

Our current thinking is that it would be best to kick this off as a relay event where we have a number of charity riders (preferably in fancy dress) taking it in turns. The idea being to see how many laps of the cycle scheme riders can make safely in a one hour slot. Please let us know if you can join us to raise money for a charity of your choice on the morning Sat the 10th of October. We can’t have more than six people riding at once so we will aim to split people into three separate one hour slots starting at 9, 10 and 11 AM. A sponsorship form is available on this link.

Wishing everyone safe, confident (and convenient) cycling.

Mark Record (on behalf of ChiCycle)