Written evidence from Chicycle (CYS 055)

ChiCycle is a campaign group in Chichester.

Chichester is a small city with lots of gyratories and large roundabouts put in the last century and with the increase of traffic, these junctions are very scary and off-putting to even seasoned cyclists.  You literally take your life in your hands when you cycle around our city.

Chichester’s cycling infrastructure has not been improved/maintained since we started our campaign in 2010.

There are plans to improve 2 of the junctions with LSTF monies but progress is very slow and the proposals adopted have not been approved by the Cycling Embassy of GB or the Dutch Cycling Embassy, or discussed and approved by the local Cycle Forum in their current form.

There are no plans to improve any of our other junctions, only two of our main roads have any provision for cyclists and one of these puts cyclists onto a very narrow pavement which creates conflict between pedestrians and cyclists.

We would propose that proper, segregated cycle routes/paths are urgently required on our major arterials to improve cycling safety.

We need proper enforcement of our new 20mph limits by the police to make sure our residential streets are safe for cyclists and the new limits are being kept to. The police are very reluctant to enforce our new limits due to limited resources.

We would also like to draw attention to Network Rail who were remarkably unconcerned when it was pointed out that a bridge, replacing a level crossing, would likely result in cyclists taking a fast moving main road which is more dangerous than the crossing they were hoping to close (the bridge is also believed to be non compliant with government Local Transport Notes in several respects: notably not catering for mounted cyclists, expected number of users, and over tight bends which fail to properly accommodate tandems and cargo bikes). Therefore when the crossing closes, cyclists will likely be diverted away from NCR 2 onto a fast flowing dual carriageway. 

November 2013