25 March highlights
Fingers crossed the weather is going to improve in time for our spring promotions. This isn’t a photo from this year!
If you didn’t make it to the recent CTPC meeting, here are the highlights.
May is walking month and kicks off with the internationally renowned Jane’s Walk, more in a blog from David coming soon. For the first time the CTPC will be running its own walk, so please join us. Please share the full programme with your colleagues and encourage them to come along.
Loveurcarcolchester launches it’s ‘Short Trip – Take the Pavement’ campaign in May, you may see billboards around town. There is a £100 shoe voucher prize draw for anyone pledging to swap one of their short car journeys for their feet instead.
Walk to Work week is 13 – 17th May and the University, ECC and CBC will be holding their own walking challenges.
Check out the link, if you want a free fun walking online challenge to get your workmates competing.
On the cycling front the CTPC is planning to develop a local online Bike Challenge this year using funding obtained from ECC last year. Collaboration with the University on this project is being explored.
Cycle Colchester e-newsletters, put together by the CTPC have been revamped to include much more including infrastructure developments, monthly profile on a local cyclist, useful information, educational content as well as local events. We will send CTPC members future e-newsletters which we hope you can share with colleagues.
We still have funding to run some cycle confidence training sessions, so if you would like to do some but can’t fund it yourself, get in touch.
A ‘See Me’ campaign is planned for autumn.
We promote cycling all year round but if you want to focus on one specific week, make it Bike Week, June 15 – 23.
Buses! We haven’t done much to promote buses in recent years, we want to do more this year but first we feel we need to get more in touch with how existing bus users find the services they use.
We are putting together a bus users survey to get feedback. If you would like to send it to your bus users and we haven’t yet been in touch, please get in contact.
Results will be used to establish a better dialogue with the bus operators and to tailor our marketing approach.
Survey results and ECC accreditation Several of our members took part in our two yearly travel survey last year. We are still doing the write up, but response rates were significantly higher than in previous years and results were positive. Congratulations to seven of our members, who have gained Essex County Council business Travel Plan accreditation this year. A blog specifically on the survey results and accreditation will be coming soon.
New ideas to pursue Finally, we discussed developing an online sustainable travel challenge which wasn’t just confined to cycling that could be used by CTPC members to encourage travel change. We will be looking for funding sources to pursue this, but will also see how it could be integrated on the back of the Cycle Challenge.