Bristol petition to campaign for more safe cycling for children

The lack of safe space for cycling - in particular for children - in Bristol has led to a petition to address the matter

Chris Marshall-Bell
By Chris Marshall-Bell
published

With only a finite pool of safe roads for children to cycle on in Bristol a strongly-backed online petition has been created to address the problem, and is gaining support.

Worried parents in the city say that there are too few traffic-free areas for families to cycle on in the area and are therefore proposing that local authorities temporarily close a three kilometre section of the Clifton Downs on four Sunday mornings across 2015.

Circular Road – which hosted the finale of stage four of this year’s Friends Life Tour of Britain - is the intended stretch of tarmac that is being suggested because of its “uniquely beautiful and flat parkland.”

The petition states that families have to drive outside of North Bristol at present to find safe spots for cycling and that by closing for Circular Road “it would also open up the Downs to people with disabilities who don’t feel safe cycling on the road alongside cars.”

Sustrans, The Bristol Cycling Campaign, Bristol City Council’s Health Department and various other organisations are backing the petition which would coincide with the Bristol Green Capital 2015 – an initiative set up in 2007 and now granted the title of European Green Capital next year.

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Chris Marshall-Bell
Chris Marshall-Bell

Chris first started writing for Cycling Weekly in 2013 on work experience and has since become a regular name in the magazine and on the website. Reporting from races, long interviews with riders from the peloton and riding features drive his love of writing about all things two wheels.


Probably a bit too obsessed with mountains, he was previously found playing and guiding in the Canadian Rockies, and now mostly lives in the Val d’Aran in the Spanish Pyrenees where he’s a ski instructor in the winter and cycling guide in the summer. He almost certainly holds the record for the most number of interviews conducted from snowy mountains.

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