Dear <<First Name>>,
Welcome to the April 2017 Portsmouth Cycle Forum newsletter. We have an Open Meeting on Thursday 27 April.
Portsmouth Cycle Forum is a volunteer group, always looking for new people to get involved. Remember we are an independent campaign group and depend entirely on our subscriptions to keep going.
You are receiving this email because you are up to date with membership. Thank you for renewing and please encourage others to join through our website. |
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Open Meeting - 27 April
We are pleased to announce Portsmouth South MP, Flick Drummond will be with us*. She will talk about the work of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling, of which she is a member. There will be time for questions after her talk.
PCC has a responsibility for providing safe infrastructure and promoting cycling in the city. But at a national level it is vital to raise the profile of cycling as far as increasing funding per head, improving road safety laws and showing there is demand from more people to cycle.
The meeting will take place on Thursday 27 April at 7.00pm in Lecture Theatre 2 of the Richmond Building of the University of Portsmouth. We start at 7.00pm, so please arrive 10-15 minutes earlier.
*correct at time of going to press!
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Quietways
We reported in our last newsletter the new city council plan for quieter routes. As the network includes the Eastern Road and Northern Parade, these are not as quiet as we had expected! And it will take some time for the routes to be marked on the ground – they will have coloured stickers on lampposts to identify them, as above.
But we think they are the start of a joined up cycle network of east-west and north south routes. There are more routes to be identified, but now we can say to PCC: e.g. this section of the route may be OK, but certain junctions need to be made safer.
There will be a new cycling map published shortly showing them with other cycle routes. You can find more information in weeks to come here.
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June Open Meeting
Our next open meeting will be on the 15 June. We'll let you know more about the agenda nearer the time, but this should include more from PCC on the quieter bike routes.
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Flood Defences
We’ve mentioned the work to improve Portsmouth’s flood defences before, and work is now complete across the eastern side of Hilsea Lines and Milton Common. The work on this may have been inconvenient to some local people, but the next stage is going to have a much greater impact.
Preliminary work has already started on the section between Mountbatten Centre and Portsbridge, but in coming weeks the southern section of the foreshore path will be closed. This means that cyclists and pedestrians will be re-routed along Northern Parade. We have asked what the marked cycle route will look like, and have offered suggestions. As well as faster moving traffic, this road has numerous sections of parked cars; so we’d like to know if any cycle lanes will be continuous or interrupted for parked cars.
We’ll keep you informed of progress but you can also find more information about the flood defence work here.
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AGM and Membership Dues
We had a successful AGM last month. Ian Saunders was unopposed re-standing as Chair, and we added a couple of new committee members. As ever, anyone interested in getting involved with PCF is welcome. Please contact us via this link.
We also had a ‘brainstorming’ session on locating places in the city members need to cycle to, and will be putting the analysis of this on the website shortly.
We try to keep costs to a minimum, and are grateful for those who give their time and other non-financial support. But to increase our influence we need to grow our membership base.
GREAT NEWS! We have had a great offer from Kevin Watkins, owner of Southsea Cycles in Highland Road. He has committed to paying the membership subs for anyone buying a new adult bike from his store.
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