Tag: Living Streets

Come on the streets with active travel

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Last weekend’s door-knocking in Shipley about active travel was very successful – many people were in and grateful for being pointed to the current consultation to stop rat-running and encourage walking and cycling. Around 60 signed up to keep in touch with Living Streets and with BSTA. Thanks for all who took part and especially Will’s organisation from Living Streets. We made good use of the new BSTA flyer.

To make the most of the consultation on Saltaire and Shipley which ends on 17th August, can you join us to do some door-knocking this coming weekend on Saturday 14th between 1 and 4 and Sunday 15th also between 1 and 4?

On Saturday we’ll meet in the car park on Saltaire Road/Exhibition Road, BD18 3JN. If you come later than 1pm then ring Ludi on 07747 565273 to find out where we are. The area Bradford Council are looking at includes Wycliffe so we’ll visit Park Street, Elliot Street and Wycliffe Road and Belmont Terrace which are used as short cuts for through traffic.

On Sunday we’ll knock on doors in Frizinghall. Although the consultation on the Active Travel Neighbourhood in Frizinghall is just finished, it will be good to raise awareness about the issues and begin to sign people up there who are concerned about car-dominance in travel. We’ll meet at 1pm at the top of Shipley Fields Road, BD18 3BL. Again, if you are later than 1pm, ring Ludi on 07747 565273 to find out where we are.

All welcome.

Thank you! If you haven’t commented on the Shipley Active Travel network you can do so here until 17th August: https://activetravelbradford.commonplace.is/proposals/have-your-say

Best wishes, Ludi

Is car ownership another pandemic?

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Will Sanderson contributes this blog from Shipley and Saltaire Living Streets

Reports of another pandemic are starting to buzz on the news wires. It is more insidious than the one we’ve just lived through, and we’re already losing the race to find a solution. As it travels invisibly through the air causing respiratory disease and excess deaths, people get scared. Tragically, this one also kills kids. Social interactions are curtailed, communities feel the strain, mental health suffers. The poorest are hit hardest, but we all start to feel powerless and disenfranchised. The next pandemic is car-owner virus.

Car dominance, and the entitlement it engenders in drivers, has a lot to answer for: contributing to climate change, polluting the air we breathe, making conversation in the street difficult and unpleasant, isolating the elderly and disabled, disturbing our sleep, contributing to roadside litter, and resulting directly in avoidable injury and deaths.

According to the Council’s own reports, cars are the biggest contributor to air pollution in Bradford, causing 1 in 20 early deaths in the region, and costing local NHS Trusts around £3million per year. Around 200 people are killed or seriously injured on Bradford’s roads every year. And still, millions of pounds are being spent adding capacity to the road network, while too little is done to provide the infrastructure and incentives for alternative modes of transport. This is why 40% of journeys under 2 miles are currently made by car. Now is the time to enable and encourage active travel: a simple lifestyle change that has such enormous health and social benefits.

Shipley & Saltaire Living Streets, in support of the excellent campaigning done by the Bradford Shipley Travel Alliance, Clean Air Bradford, and Friends of the Earth, are calling for an end to car-centric thinking in planning and transport (avoid), more joined-up cycling and walking routes (shift), and measures to prevent antisocial driving, parking and rat-running (improve). We need your help! Commit to leaving the car at home whenever possible, or get in touch to join our team. We especially need some help from parents of primary-aged children (to start a walking/cycling bus and play streets), young adults with a flair for social media (to run our accounts), and artistic folk (to do some tactical urbanism).

We have a choice, now, between a cleaner future for people, places and our planet, or continuing with activities which damage our health and environment. Walk with us.