The latest Cycle Chat was held on the 6th November at MeCycle in Ainsdale. Once again we gave an overview of what we had been working on within Sefton since the last ‘chat’ in July. A number of issues were raised by the group, mainly with regard to maintenance issues, which have now been reported for appropriate remedial action.

Other issues discussed included Fisherman’s Path, facilities on the Formby Bypass and the speed of traffic on the country lanes across the ‘Moss’ in West Lancashire, these will be investigated and reported back to the next meeting. Following the open forum, the meeting continued with three brief presentations.

Amy from Merseytravel started with a presentation on the background and progress on the Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP) across the City Region. An LCWIP is a long term approach to developing comprehensive local cycling and walking networks, ideally over a 10 year period. The process aims to develop a strategic cycle route network across the city region together with improvements to the pedestrian environment and network, which will be focussed around town/city centres and public transport hubs. To date 31 corridors have been identified to be delivered over the lifetime of the LCWIP.

As part of the process an online survey has been launched which will run to the end of January 2019, to gather broad views about cycling and walking and the preferred type of paths routes. Further engagement on more specific issues and proposals is planned for the coming months.  The survey can be accessed here https://www.arrivehappy.org/our-cycling-and-walking-masterplan

This was followed by a demonstration of Collideoscope. The Collideoscope website allows you to report cycling collisions and near misses in the UK. At present injury accidents reported to the Police are recorded and available to Local authorities to help improve road safety. These can also be found on the website. Collideoscope collects the reports together and makes the data available to planners, researchers and campaigners with the aim of making our roads safer for all. It’s a joint project from mySociety and the Merseyside Road Safety Partnership. You can report actual collisions between a bicycle and another vehicle, or near misses where an incident was averted. Additionally you may report incidents where no other vehicle was involved, such as collisions or near misses with pedestrians, street furniture… or anything else. These will be sent to the Local Authority in which the incident occurred were it will help build up a picture of where cyclists are at danger.

The website can be found at www.collideoscope.org.uk Please start using the website to record any incidents you encounter and help inform in the planning of future cycle facilities and improvements.

Finally Merseyside Fire & Rescue gave an update of the close Pass initiative and an explanation of how they are using Virtual Reality headsets to demonstrate to motorists the experiences suffered by cyclists of vehicles passing too close to them. The meeting concluded with demonstrations of the software and headsets to attendees at the meeting.

The next chat is scheduled for Tuesday 5th March, 2019, 6.00pm – 8.00pm