Street cycle parking: pilot survey review

This article was published in 2018, in Newsletter 140.

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The street cycle parking project is a key campaign for Camcycle, and has been for some time. This year it was also the key strategic project for the paid internship programme.

When I started in July, I was told that during my internship I would be responsible for this important Campaign project. As you can imagine, I was very nervous to be given such responsibility but excited and ready for the challenge. Luckily, I had the pleasure of meeting Simon Nuttall, the project’s lead volunteer, during my very first week. Simon patiently explained the whole project and kindly took me on a ride around Romsey and Petersfield so I could start to understand the problem. He also took me to the street cycle parking bay in Thoday Street, and I was thrilled to see what the Campaign had already achieved.

After this, Simon and I met on Wednesday afternoons at the Camcycle office and worked together to produce a draft survey for the street cycle parking project. We were very grateful for member feedback and, after several drafts, we produced our pilot survey.

The pilot street cycle parking survey went out at the end of July and was open for a few weeks before closing on 20 August. It went out to a sample area of residents in Catharine Street, Romsey, with Simon delivering the leaflets. Our aim was to understand how the questions were interpreted, and whether the results would provide data that we could use.

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The pilot was fairly successful: we had a 10% response rate showing that residents are engaged with this issue, and we received some interesting answers. The pilot suggested that most respondents feel positive about increasing street cycle parking. However, it also showed that we need to continue to make the case for street cycle parking.

We made some minor changes to the survey after the pilot, including changing the image of cycle parking in the street. This is because we decided that a stronger example was needed of what happens when there is not appropriate infrastructure in place, such as a street cycle parking bay.

The updated survey went live at the end of August, using invitation leaflets designed by Roxanne. The leaflets were delivered on Thursday 30 August. Simon had already calculated the number of terraced houses on each street in Romsey and we grouped leaflets into bundles to match his calculations. Simon, along with our very helpful volunteers, delivered the survey leaflets to the households in Romsey.

Just over a week after the survey was launched, we already had more than 80 responses. Seeing the responses come in has been a real highlight of my internship, and I look forward to reviewing them with Simon after the closing date at the end of September.

We will be keen to share the results with everyone and continue the campaign for better on-street cycle parking.

Emma Pritchard