10 January 2018
Tower Hamlets Wheelers
Monthly Meeting Minutes
Wednesday, 10th January 2018 19:30
Held at the Cabin, St Margaret’s House, 21 Old Ford Road
Present: Christy, Keith, Alex, Julie, Helen, Owen, Mehdi, Heidi, Kate (CycleHoop)
Apologies: Terry, Owen
1. CycleHoop Talk by Kate
Current charging by Tower Hamlets council £60/year/space. Higher price than other borough but other boroughs are subsidising use, so potentially with further cuts to councils budgets may be better that Tower Hamlets keeps existing pricing strategy.
Current top 4 boroughs for cycle hangers are Hackney with 315, then Lambeth, Waltham Forest, and Southwark with 113. Newham has 83 with more scheduled to be installed, which is significantly more than Tower Hamlets which currently has 7 installed and another 4 pending installation. Of the 7 installed, all are full with no free spaces. There are currently two ways of requesting a cyclehanger, one via the council app FiFiLi and the second via the CycleHoop website. There is currently 169 people on the councils waiting list for a space, along with 194 on a waiting list with CycleHoop website. Kate stated that there is typically a 25% crossover in names on both lists which leaves approximately 272 people wanting a cyclehanger space in their street. Two cyclehangers are slightly bigger than a standard parking space (4cm over) but a good way of illustrating the space efficiency of bicycles compared to cars. Main problem that Kate encounters is that there isn’t enough manpower in councils to enact or do anything about these requests. Noted that in Westminster which may well be the case in Tower Hamlets, that each individual ward councillor has to sign off additions to street furniture in their ward. Could be an opportunity for a ward asks based campaign if the same in Tower Hamlets.
Actions – Heike to speak to Rob Morton regarding best method of requesting a cyclehanger with council prior to publicising this on Facebook/Twitter.
Alex to look at application form for Hackney/Waltham Forest just to see what type of questions asked.
Workshop
Next workshop is on Saturday 21st January, Keith states all OK for volunteers.
Cycling Manifesto
Heike and Julie to update and spruce up. Aiming for early March publication. Alex to write press release for local news.
Hustings
Helen to conduct doodle poll amongst candidates regarding best date for hustings.
Cable Street Consultation
Alex to write about Cable Street which can then be emailed out by LCC.
Action – Everyone to look over on Cyclescape
Meeting with Council
Alex, Julie and David T to meet with borough officers on Wednesday 24th January.
Rides
Christmas Day Ride – A Tour of the City of London on Christmas day. Keith led feeder ride in from Tower Hamlets. In all 60 people started, 4 people attended via seeing advertised in Timeout.
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