P&R added to bus network map
We have recently updated our bus network map to include the Park and Ride. Our map shows the main frequent bus services that are suitable for commuting to work or regular travel.
There is also a separate map for North Colchester which gives more detail for people working at North Colchester Business Park and Colchester Hospital.
You can download the maps below.
Colchester’s frequent buses network map
North Colchester bus network map
*Please note, since we updated the map, First have withdrawn their 65 peak hour loop around the North Colchester Business Park, however it is currently still reflected on our map.
Walk the Talk in North Colchester Business Park
Walk the Talk, 12 local walks of differing lengths is now available to businesses working on the North Colchester Business Parks.
Each walk has its own name and includes details of its approximate length, number of steps, calories burned and time it will take.
So you might want try Love Your Heart, or the Crescent Loop, do the Tesco Hop or go for a longer Highwoods Country Ramble.
Whether you have twelve or fifty minutes to spare there is a walk for you. Get out for a breath of fresh air at lunchtime or take your team out for a walk to come up with some inspirational blue sky thinking while on the move.
Download the Walk The Talk poster.
Walk the Talk launches today
Walk the Talk our business community project launches today at North Colchester Business Park.
Working in partnership with Green Square Communications, Vacuumatic and Fisher Jones Greenwood and supported by numerous businesses on the park, our Walk the Talk guides have been distributed thoughout the area and our social media campaign starts today.
There will be competitions, challenges and prizes supplied by local businesses!
If you work on North Colchester Business Park please help us spread the word.
www.walkthetalk.today
Walk the Talk
We are very excited about Walk the Talk, our latest project to encourage getting out at lunchtime to walk and enjoy some fresh air and activity.
It’s also about encouraging people our of their cars and to walk instead of drive for short journeys.
We have worked in partnership with Vacuumatic, based in Brunel Way and Green Square Communications based on Severalls Lane to bring alive this local business community project.
Walk the Talk offers twelve different local walking routes, to help colleagues working on the business parks take steps in the right direction to improve their health, whether they have fifteen or forty minutes to spare.
Walk the Talk launches across North Colchester Business Parks in May with a social media campaign, competitions and prizes.
What we now looking for are North Colchester business supporters to help fund the rest of the project.
Become a Walk the Talk supporter and we can offer you:
- Your logo on a print run of up to 5000 maps
- Your logo on our walkthetalk.today website with hyperlink to your homepage
- WalkTheTalk supporter certifi cate to display at your workplace
- Exposure via Facebook and Twitter media campaign
- -nvitation to supporters’ debrief networking session in June 2014
To be a supporter and benefit from the above, all we ask is for a contribution of between £100 and £200. Alternatively, perhaps you could offer a prize for our competitions and receive in return social media coverage and an invite to our networking session in June 2014.
If you can contribute to this project, please email hello@walkthetalk.today by the 7th April 2014.
Whether you can support or not, please do join in. Check out the routes, then join us on facebook and twitter to find out more!
Get on your Bike! 15 – 23 June
It’s Bike Week next week and we have been busy working away with Cycle Colchester to produce a brilliant new leaflet highlighting all the regular cycle rides, cycle clubs and cycling activities for all levels, that go on locally. Print out your copy HERE or contact us for hard copies for your organisation.
Colchester Cycle Champions will be launching Bike Week at the Young Children’s Festival in Castle Park on 15 June. Dr Bike will be there offering FREE bike checks.
Several of our members have already got events and competitions planned to make this Bike Week a week to remember.
CBC is holding a cycle challenge throughout Bike Week. Participants will receive a free bike computer to log their rides and compete with colleagues. Also on the 13 of June CBC are hosting a ‘Come Spin With Me’ challenge for staff to see who can create the loveliest, most tastiest and smoothest smoothie!
Re-cycle, at North Colchester Business Park are offering free bike MOT’s on the 18 and 20 June. Drop your bike in between 08:30 and 14:00 for a free health check and pick up our new leaflet and other useful info re cycling.
Mini Bike Festivals are being hosted by Colchester Institute on the 18 June and by CHUFT at Colchester General Hospital on the 21 June and at Essex County Hospital on the 25 June.
Both events will feature the highly popular Pulp Friction and Dr Bike so you can have a smoothie while your bike has a free MOT.
The University of Essex will be running Cycle Sleuth, offering Cycle Watch (bike security tagging) and Bike Maintenance, plus a Cyclist’s breakfast!
We have also worked in partnership with Culver Square to organise an ECOmmunity event on the 22 June. Loveurcarcolchester and Cycle Colchester will join over ten other stall holders promoting sustainable lifestyles.
Plus the event will host a bike fashion show showcasing vintage, street, party and business/school looks from local retailers, showing how fabulous you can look on a bike at high street prices.
For more details about the Culver Square event, click here!
The local cycling community also have lots to offer this June, find out more here!
So there is lots to keep you all busy this bike week. If you have any questions about events mentioned or are hosting an event and want to let us know about, feel free to leave a comment and we will get back to you ASAP
Full set of spanners at CTPC workshop!
Not many schools can boast that cycling is an integral part of their curriculum. The Gilberd School teaches mountain biking and Bikeability within timetabled lessons, holds bike races as part of sports day, and has a weekly bike club. And the headliner is an impressive bike maintenance workshop which is run as a small business and where students can learn bike maintenance as part of a qualification. With bikes that don’t work, being one of the main reasons kids don’t cycle to school, The Gilberd’s bike maintenance workshop is about to go mobile and help out at other schools. Thanks to Roger Springett for hosting January’s CTPC event, and for the tour afterwards which included the bike workshop and facilities plus the impressive shiny new trailer which will soon be transformed into a mobile workshop.
So back to club news:
CTPC Governance: With the winding-down of Colchester2020, Jeremy Lucas (ECC) and Paul Wilkinson (CBC) talked about future governance of the club and member involvement in determining the direction the club goes in and priorities. Emily and Andrew have always responded and evolved to the needs of the TPC members and are happy to continue doing this. Paul will be organising a workshop for members to discuss governance issues/priorities etc. All agreed that any opportunity to bid for funding should be taken advantage of to help ongoing funding of the CTPC and new projects.
Summer Cycling Promotions: Get your costed ideas for promotions within your workplace into Andrew and Emily by the beginning of February. Funding may be available from ECC for training, events, Dr Bike etc and any new ideas you have. We all liked the Cycle Challenge as a cross CTPC promotion but the cost is an issue, could we develop our own online logging system? One for Andrew and Emily to explore…..
STEPS – Active Travel: Legs Eleven walking project is still happening, and is expected to be launched in the spring. A decision on ERDF funding is imminent, which will put more funding into this and other NCBP projects.
2012 Events: We are happy to support you in any events where you are promoting sustainable transport. One highlight in this year’s calender is the ACTTravelwise’s spring conference which is being hosted by Charlotte at UofE and has an exciting line up showcasing Transport in the 21st Century. There is a pre-conference event on the 29th March with the main conference on the 30th. Use the link above to see the full programme and to book your place.
Drive Colchester: £5000 is available to CTPC members to promote car sharing and smarter driving in 2012! A second grant from DEFR has given us this great opportunity for some more bespoke promotions over and above the central project we are currently working on. So please let us have your ideas…. whether it be advanced driving lessons, an on site mechanic, car share matching events, Love Your Car promotions, bespoke publicity material, dedicated car share bays or something else…
The central campaign will run over a couple of months starting around mid February, with a short funky film on carsharing and another on smarter driving. Radio (Heart, Dream, Uni, Garrison, Hospital?- are there others we can approach??) and billboard campaigns will promote the films and Drive Colchester website, plus publicity in TPC member organisations… watch this space for more info…
Travel Plan Accreditation scheme: Many of our members have achieved a silver and want to go for gold. Survey response rates are the main barrier and Rachel gave us ideas for maximising response rates by offering attractive inventives, offering a paper version, timing the survey to coincide with a change in parking arrangements etc.
Survey time is here again: We do a full survey across all members every two years, usually in May to measure our progress. Survey results have been good with a year on year 3% decrease in people driving to work and big increases in people mixing their modes. The challenge this year is to get the high response rate to help our members hit gold, as well as get some robust stats to measure our progress by. So we will be talking to members over the next few months on how best to tackle this for their organisation and noted that if we can put the month long survey back or forward a week it will help out the Uni as May clashes with exam time.
Abellio and public transport: Good news that Abellio want to focus on customer service in their 2 year franchise, with their eye keenly set on achieving the franchise in the longer term. This means new dedicated customer service desks at key stations (including Colchester) interest in integrated transport, more user-friendly timetables, marketing of under capacity trains (apparently there are very few that are overcrowded) We have had positive sounds about continuing our discount and hopefully they will be keen to work on some joint marketing of train travel with us. (Conversation today with our current contact at NXEA, Tanya, indicates business as usual from 5th Feb when Abellio take over – she is 99% certain existing discounts will continue.
CTPC public transport promotional material is all set to go, but ticket stock is still awaited from Network Colchester. Tony Mears has gone (Emily met new Regional General Manager Martin Evans after our meeting, hopefully the ticket stock will be appearing very soon so we can get on with our promotions).
ACTTravelwise: The CTPC pays for membership of ACTTravelwise , who represent and lobbies for sustainable travel and travel planning nationally. Full CTPC members have access via their own log in. It is a good resource for case studies, events, jobs and includes a forum for posting questions. Emily will sort out current log ins and passwords. Another good free resource to sign up to is Ways2Work funded by DfT and focused more on the private sector, with lots of good case studies, advice and best practice.
Helena encouraged us all to sign up for a Free Business in the Community & ACE conference masterclass promoting health in the workplace, 8th February 09:30 – 13:30, lunch included, at the Holiday Inn in Eight Ash Green.
Thanks, and if you want to know more please get in touch.
Legs Eleven gets green light
“I’ve got an idea for you.” Justin Lewis from Vacuumatic, at Severalls Business Park, got in touch with us recently. He’s keen on playing his part in reducing traffic congestion in the area where he works, and he’s also interested in people getting a bit of fresh air at lunchtime. He’s a leader of the business community in the area, although, with Justin’s modest nature, he would probably shrug his shoulders and say “well I’m just interested in what’s going on“.
“A few of us are keen on going for a walk at lunchtime, and we enjoy it so much, we thought others might like to try it – so maybe the Travel Plan Club would like to take on a walking project?” Yes indeed, the TPC is very interested, especially as we want to work with more businesses in North Colchester Business Parks (NCBP), and it ticks our “traffic congestion/ public health/ low-cost” boxes.
And so, the Legs Eleven project was born. Justin and colleagues have come up with nine routes round the business parks, and Emily and I have come up with two more walking routes taking us just off-site. Justin suggested a series of cards, to show people the route and places along the way – landmarks for wayfinding, places to eat, and snippets of interesting information. As it’s a community project we want to work with local businesses to prepare the cards, and promote the walks, so watch out for our appearance at your local networking events. (And give us an invitation to your event!)
What’s more, we’ll be there with you, stepping out. Look out for our led walks “Highwoods Ramble” and “Tesco Grab”, in spring 2012. With a media campaign, we expect Legs Eleven will capture the imagination, promoting the businesses at NCBP. We will soon be in touch with you so that your business can be part of this great local initiative. Says Andrew Budd “with Legs Eleven on its way, lunchtimes have never been such fun“.