Cardiff Cycle City AGM 2023: Annual Report
With pandemic pandemonium firmly behind us Cardiff Cycle City (C=CC) have revelled in a busy period of public meetings and face-to-face engagement. Our last AGM was in August 2022. Many of our campaigning issues and activities this year were prioritised on the back of our well-attended October 2022 ‘What next for cycling in Cardiff?’ open meeting.
First, some statistics on our “reach”:
On Twitter/X and Facebook we’re up to 4283 and 1911 followers respectively; both marginally up from 2022.
On the C=CC website we had 862 single-user browsing sessions in the last 30 days. After the Home page, our most popular website pages were ‘Riding to school is not for everyone’, ‘The Cardiff Cycle City Cardiff Cycling Awards are back!’ and ‘10 Reasons to get Cardiff cycling’.
Our latest ‘Mailchimp’ e-mail to our subscribers ended this period with 955 recipients, down fractionally from 2022 levels.
As we routinely now run our events via EventBrite, our subscribers are up over 20% this year to 87.
New this year, we have a presence on Strava, with a modest 27 followers, and Instagram (99 followers).
In a busy 15 months or so, we’ve delivered a mix of public events, behind-the-scenes Committee meetings and cycle campaigning and advocacy activities. These included the following:
We enjoyed a range of public speakers and topics, including Cllr Rhys Taylor (Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrat Group on Cardiff Council), Transport for Wales, cycle camera use and Operation SNAP submissions, a “diversity” special discussion, Huw Thomas (Leader of Cardiff Council), Lee Waters (Deputy Minister for Climate Change), GoSafe Cymru, and a debate on Cardiff Council’s review of Road User Payment options.
In other activities C=CC supported Cardiff’s burgeoning Kidical Mass rides. We attended MS Julie Morgan’s “Active and sustainable travel event” in Llanishen and FORCardiff’s Cycle To Work day event in the city centre. We did a piece of investigation into Brighton and Cardiff University’s “More For Change” points scheme that awards walking, cycling and sustainable travel, and its possible wider merits. We visited TfW to look at the cycle provision on their new mainline and Metro trains. We supported the activities celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Active Travel Act, and celebrated and publicised the active travel improvements to Allensbank Road and Heath Hospital.
One of our stated aims for this year was to organise some rides with local Councillors, to showcase good and bad cycling provision in the city. We got this off the ground in Plasnewydd, and now have an approach we can reuse in other areas in 2024.
This year we asked you, our supporters, to tell us about missing links and pinch points in the cycling infrastructure across the city. Your responses were fed to Cardiff Council, and additionally we convened a public drop-in session with Council transport staff to further highlight network gaps and pinch points.
Since our last AGM we’ve met with Cardiff Bus. We had a very positive good-natured meeting with two of the Directors there, delving into topics such as traffic levels, lobbying and consultation responses, cycle stands at bus stops and driver training.
We’ve done some initial work looking at alternative funding options for C=CC; at present we’re wholly financed by supporter donations. Expect more investigation into charitable funding, corporate sponsorship and maybe paid membership in 2024.
Since the last AGM we’ve set up a Consultations subgroup, to scrutinise and feed back on plans that impact (positively or negatively) cycling in or around Cardiff. Since inception the group’s scrutiny has included the following plans: The Marl to Hamadryad active travel bridge in Cardiff Bay, TfW tram routes from Cardiff Central to Newport Road, Roath Park, Hailey Park, plus Cardiff’s Local Development Plan (LDP).
We are campaigning for the reworking of barriers in the Ely trail / Grangemoor Park area; we have a dialogue open with Cardiff Council Transport lead Dan De’Ath on this.
We got out and about, attending the Rhiwbina Eco Team’s “Eco Day” event and giving a talk to Rhiwbina (Civic) Society on the importance of getting Cardiff cycling.
We got a media Sub-Group off the ground this year, driven enthusiastically by Dan. This group looks after our Social Media, website and new Media Policy /Comms Plan. As a result our C=CC website has undergone major positive changes this year. We’ve rolled out a raft of new content, revamped the whole site with a much more modern look and feel, and are now publishing blogs more frequently. Special thanks to Dan, Julia and Paul for their penmanship and technical wizardry!
C=CC has continued to represent the interests of its followers at Cardiff Council’s rebadged Active Travel Liaison Group meetings and the Senedd’s Cross Party Group on the Active Travel Act. We continue to keep a watching brief on Local Development Plan changes.
C=CC Committee members remain regular attendees and occasional contributors at the weekly online UK-wide ‘Active Travel Cafe’ Active Travel forum.
In the Summer we met online with ‘CamCycle’ who are a large, staffed, well-funded cycle campaigning group in Cambridge. We had a great discussion with them, dipping into topics such as growth, funding, membership, local authority relationship, vision setting, activists, consultations and diversity; lots of food for thought!
Gwenda, one of our Committee stalwarts, is doing some good stuff with Cycling UK in parallel with our C=CC drive for greater gender, age, ethnicity and disability diversity on our Committee. We’re still aspiring to get a Sub-Group off the ground for this, and this drive will remain a focus into 2024.
C=CC have a burgeoning set of materials for delivering talks on the importance of cycling and provision for cycling in and around Cardiff; if you’re aware of any organisations who might like to hear our message then let us know.
Since our last AGM we co-opted Laura onto our Committee; welcome Laura! Also, a special mention to Rusne from our Consultations sub-group, who’s done sterling work on consultations and our CamCycle liaison!
If you’d like to get involved, either as a volunteer or Committee member, or are just curious to know more about Cardiff Cycle City, get in touch! Also, if you might be interested in becoming a sponsor or commercial partner of C=CC, let us know. Drop us a line at admin@cardiffcyclecity.org.
Happy cycling.
Cardiff Cycle City
