Our kidical mass ride on Monday 8th May is part of an international weekend of rides in support of “space for the next generation”. It is a campaigning ride with a focus on demanding safe streets for children to cycle.
The international movement’s key asks are:
- Aim for Vision Zero, with a particular focus on child deaths and serious injuries
- Enable children’s independent and safe mobility, to school, to friends, to sports clubs, to the playground
- Separate, safe cycles lanes and protected crossings (based on the Dutch model)
- 20mph (30 kmh) limit on urban roads
- School streets and traffic-free zones
- Cycle lanes as a comprehensive, safe network of routes to school
- Traffic-free streets in residential areas
These measures will enable safer streets for children and their families to get around by cycle and will support the shift to active travel for regular, everyday trips. This in turn has the potential to enable improvements in air quality and to contribute to the achievement of Net Zero and wider action on climate change. Increases in everyday cycling also support the nurturing of local communities and the value of local economies.
We echo these collective asks and call for North Tyneside Council, Transport North East, local MPs, and other local decision-makers to commit to the following:
- Prioritising routes to schools in the local cycling and walking infrastructure plan (LCWIP) and committing to delivering safe routes to all schools by September 2024;
- Establishing school streets outside every primary school in the borough by September 2025 (or introducing other extensive safety measures where a school street simply isn’t possible);
- Creating 4 low-traffic neighbourhoods in 2023 and 2024 and 10 by the end of 2025, with an initial focus on those neighbourhoods where pedestrian and cyclist KSIs are highest and those that would enable genuinely quiet routes to and through our towns.
With the local elections taking place just before our Kidical Mass ride, we call on all candidates to support these asks and for those elected on 4th May to commit to them with a renewed mandate.