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February 2012

Minutes of Meeting of Lewisham Cyclists

held at the Dog and Bell Public House, Deptford, London

Wednesday 15th February 2012

Present; Katie Collis, John Phillips, Ian Welsby, Lee Roach, Roy Volume, Jane Davis, Tim Collingridge

1.Apologies: Roger Stocker

2. Minutes of last meeting.  Read and agreed.

3. Matters arising.

3.1 Events gazebo has been purchased by John

4.Wish list for Lewisham Council spend on cycling.

4.1 Committee have drawn up a draft list and asked meeting for input to list.

4.2 Lee suggested that vertical tramlines  on cyclepath at various points are dangerous in the wet, as they trap wheels and cause slipping.  Standards, apparently, dictate this design is necessary but the meeting decided to check the standard and then follow up if possible.

4.2   Viability of segregated cycle paths on one side of road with parking shifted to other.  This was agreed as an addition to our already extensive list, which includes suggestions made by Lewisham Cyclists on the e list.

4.3 Katie and Lee will finalise the draft document and present it at the next monthly meeting for a final review, before presenting it to the Council.

5. Parliament Square Flashride

5.1 The meeting agreed to support this initiative and encourage other Lewisham Cyclists to take part.

6. LCC and Involving More Women in Cycling.

6.1 Jane Davis reported on an email from LCC requesting opinions and suggestions that a meeting of the LCC board could consider.  The meeting was to be held the following day at 12.30.  Some background statistics that they were considering were:                               “LCC doesn’t have a bad split at 60% men 40% women, in comparison to the cycling stats of London where 64% of cyclists are men but they make 72% of cycle journeys. However nationwide the split is worse 28% of journeys are made by women. CTC’s split is 75% men 25% women. Is it  down to a perception of lack of safety or vanity?”

6.2 The meeting discussed the issue briefly.  Our consensus  was that while there might be different barriers to cycling for different groups of women (women  are not just one homogenous group who all think, look and behave in the same way.  There are old women, younger women, women from all kinds of different ethnic and cultural groups, single women, others with tons of family responsibilities etc etc etc) the one thing that would get the largest numbers of women from all different groups on a bike would be safer roads, with less motor traffic moving around at slower speeds. The majority at our meeting thought that the LCC’s Go Dutch campaign was the kind of approach that would be the most successful. Build the safe and pleasant cycleways and they will come, women, children, babies on the backs of bikes, as well as a few more men!

6.3. Jane Davis undertook to feed this back to LCC

6.4  A point of information relating to this issue.  Only one woman, Anne Kenrick, was elected to the board last year. Since then, LCC have co opted two more women to rectify this deficit.

7.  AOB

7.1 John Phillips raised the matter of the invitation we received to be part of Grove Park Station Area redevelopment local consultation,  sent by the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment.

7.2 Whilst the meeting thought it was a great initiative to involve groups like ours, who represent local stakeholders in such projects, unfortunately the  invitation was received only a couple of days before the consultation and project development meetings, which were almost exclusively during office hours. This made it impossible for us to organise anyone to attend.  Katie had contacted the Prince’s Foundation to make this known and to make it clear that our non attendance was not an indication of our unwillingness to be part of the project.

7.3 The meeting expressed regret that more care was not taken by the  consultants in charge of this project to ensure that local groups, whose members have extensive commitments outside the group, are given adequate time to negotiate attendance at these important consultations.  The meeting felt that sending out letters at the last minute inviting participation in the process in no way fulfils a commitment to involving the local community and we should make this known to the organisations involved wherever it occurs.

The meeting ended at 8.15pm