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Home > About Cycle Shrewsbury

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About Cycle Shrewsbury

What is Cycle Shrewsbury?

Cycle Shrewsbury is Shropshire Council's campaign to get more people cycling more often in Shrewsbury.

The history of Cycle Shrewsbury

In the summer of 2008 Shrewsbury was awarded cycling town status by Cycling England. As a result, between 2008 and March 2011, Shrewsbury benefitted from £1.8 million of grant funding from the Department for Transport.

At the end of March 2011 Cycling England was disolved and Shropshire Council stopped receiving external funding to run the Cycle Shrewsbury campaign.

What was the cycling town initiative?

Cycling towns and cities was an initiative managed by Cycling England. 18 towns were awarded cycling town status. Each of the cycling towns had a unique vision and different projects but they all shared Cycling England's aim to help more people to cycle, more safely, more often.

Find out where the other cycling towns and cities were.

What did being a cycling town mean for Shrewsbury?

There were lots of great reasons for Shrewsbury to be a cycling town. It's a beautiful town with lots of traffic-free routes, including a wonderful route along the river Severn. We have some very flat areas and lots of people have short journeys to their school or workplace that can easily be made on a bicycle.

Our aim was to increase overall levels of cycling in the town by 2011, through:

• improvements to the cycle network
• more cycle training for adults and children, including Bikeability Level 3
• programmes to help more people to cycle to schools and workplaces
• promoting leisure cycling
• providing advice on practical issues such as buying a bike, maintaining it, and choosing a route.

For more details about Cycle Shrewsbury's origninal plans to make Shrewsbury a better place to cycle you can download the Cycle Shrewsbury delivery strategy or watch a short film about our plans. Alternatively, visit the schools, workplaces or proposed network sections of this website for details of specific projects which have been completed or which are still proposed.

Cycle Shrewsbury had support from a wide range of individuals and organisations. View a full list of our partners.

Shrewsbury is also benefitting from the Sustrans Connect2 lottery win which is helping to fund major infrastructure improvements in the town centre, completing the traffic-free riverside path through the town. More information about Sustrans Connect2.

End of programme report - June 2011

The Cycle Shrewsbury programme was part-funded between 2008 and 2011 by the Department for Transport.  They asked us to produce an 'end of programme' report by June 2011, to

• Assist the DfT monitoring and evaluation contractors to understand clearly what the activities or ‘outputs’ have been
• Give a ‘whole programme’ overview of the total investment in cycling in the town (including both grant and matched funding)
• Help DfT / Cycling England to identify transferable lessons for other local authorities
• Provide a way to report to local stakeholders about what has been done
• Provide evidence to support any application to the Local Sustainable Transport Fund.

The attached report is based on a standard template so that the information can be compared with the other cycling towns and cities.

If you would like more detailed information on any of the sections, or have any comments on the report, please let us know (cycleshrewsbury@shropshire.gov.uk).

What happens from April 2011?

There will be no separate funding for the work of Cycle Shrewsbury and the other cycling towns after 31 March 2011. Shropshire Council is hoping to bid for funding from the Local Sustainable Transport Fund during 2011 to support a package of sustainable transport measures including promotion of walking and cycling. 

This website will continue to be live until at least March 2012, so you will still be able to keep up to date with the latest news, events and advice about cycling in Shrewsbury.

Update - July 2011

Shropshire Council's Local Sustainable Transport Fund bid has been successful. Shropshire will be awarded £4.99 million by the Department for Transport over the period 2011-15 to promote sustainable transport, including continuing Cycle Shrewsbury. Find out more here.