Share your experiences on a bike!
Here at Bike Worcester HQ we love travelling round the city of Worcester by cycle and are big on enabling and encouraging others to do the same, and for individuals and the city to collectively reap the benefits this would bring. It is clear the most effective way of increasing rates of cycling for short urban journeys is to make changes to the urban environment and provide high quality infrastructure and routes; build it and they will come. Unfortunately this costs money and takes time, and even simple changes (removal of barriers, dropped kerbs, removal of signs) can be surprisingly contentious.
An easy way to contribute to the discourse is to document your experiences while cycling, and share these with Bike Worcester via social media, and the easiest way to do this is sharing photos or videos taken on phone or cycle camera. If you want to be more ambitious and have ideas for short edited films or other artistic endeavours, please get in touch! It's a great way to help us communicate with residents, councillors, and officers, and to share the perspective of people who are already using a bike as a mode of transport.
Here are a few examples of social media accounts and threads you can contribute to with a couple of clicks on your phone:
1. Infrastructure
We love seeing photos and videos of cycling infrastructure both locally and further afield; the good, the bad and the ugly. It's a great way to demonstrate how good it can be, and how bad it often is
2. Most Excellent Overtakes
If you use a camera when cycling, we strongly recommend that any footage of dangerous and illegal driving is sent to West Mercia as part of Operation Snap (Bike Worcester advice here). However why not also take the opportunity to share videos of exemplary driving? If you post a video on social media make sure you include the phrase Most Excellent Overtake #MEO and it will be added to search results of similar videos. If it's a commercial vehicle and you tag the business this acts a positive reinforcement, and we've got examples of drivers receiving a pat on the back from their employers. A win win.
3. Dangerous parking
Antisocial / illegal parking makes life difficult for pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers alike (I guess that's why it's illegal). Sharing photos of illegal parking helps raise awareness of this serious problem, and is a clear statement that it is unacceptable, and requires action. Visit @badparkingworcs on Twitter to see an abundance of examples and tag them in with your photos.
4. Overtaking cars
If you find yourself (as is often the case) overtaking queues of cars as you're travelling in Worcester why not take a snippet of video and add it to the thread 'Why Worcester needs more bike lanes' on Twitter. With a growing thread of videos it's a great example how much quicker journeys can be by bike compared to car, and how more bike lanes would enable more trips by bike, and reduce congestion for everyone.
5. Dead stuff in the road
So this one is not for everyone, but it's common for people choosing to travel by bike to encounter dead animals in the road, most likely killed by motor vehicles. @stuffdead on Twitter is a gruesome collection of photographs of such encounters, posted in an attempt to raise awareness of the impact cars have on our wildlife, which is easy to ignore when sat in the comfort of an air conditioned vehicle.
