The annual Active City conference, held this year at York Barbican, was an extremely positive event for York. It enabled the council, the York and North Yorkshire mayor David Skaith, local campaign groups and charitable organisations to meet colleagues and transport professionals from across the country. They spent two days sharing best practice, trading expertise and experience, and helping us imagine a transport future for York that prioritises walking, cycling & public transport. 

York Cycle Campaign were proud to play a part in the Active City experience, speaking about our work with the police and the council, to tackle bike theft and provide secure parking for York cyclists. We also took part in a ‘speed learning’ session where about a dozen delegates from across the country were given an insight into our ‘pop up’ secure bike parking experience and our campaign for a permanent secure bike park in the city centre. The slides from our session can be found here.

We held a pre-event social for informal discussion at the Cycle Heaven flagship store, where we were able to connect with an wide variety of locals and visitors, sharing experiences and giving us motivation for the months ahead. Many then joined us on our amazing mass ride on the Wednesday night – and thanks go to our fantastic membership and supporters for assisting as ride wardens, making it possible to have a fantastic ride and more cycling chat at the end! 

We believe many more people in York want to cycle. The council’s last big transport consultation showed overwhelming support for investing in safer cycle routes, and prioritising active travel and public transport. It’s crucial that transport in York is transformed now, before tens of thousands more homes are built in York and York Outer, so those residents don’t have to rely on cars to get to where they work, shop, learn, visit and play. York Civic Trust told us in 2023 that cycling had declined by a third in the previous decade, so there’s still a lot to do to get people back on bicycles. We also know there’s huge benefits to doing that; reducing traffic and pollution, improving people’s health, and saving them money and time. Sir Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer for England) spoke about that in his speech to conference.  

To help York get as successful at providing safe room to ride as some of the best cycling cities in Europe, we’ve already produced our ’42 Ways to Transform Transport’ which you can read on our website. We’d love to hear what you think about them.  

What can members do to help make York a cycling city? Tell people about our campaign, share our social media posts,  join in online discussion, and most importantly come to events, even if you can only pop by for a while – social rides, speakers, bike security sessions, ward rep meetings. We need more members, especially more active members, so we can identify problems that make cycling difficult, but crucially so we can support positive changes in the new transport strategy for York, encourage the council, the mayor and the government ministers to see Yorks potential to become a world-class active city.  

Dorinda Gear