Cycle Action

This blog continues from my old blog and I've started it mainly as a way of rationalising the many different things I contribute to around the place. 
I have the urge to write again.  As ever, I have major concerns about the state of our environment, the lack of action on the part of governments to deal with the issues and at the same time I'm keen to stay positive or at least, to face it all with some sense of equanimity. 

I've also been reflecting a bit on previous experiences - some of which I wrote about in the other blog.  One of these is working on cycling advocacy in Christchurch - something that at times has felt like a thankless task.  However, despite being considered slightly mad and not worthy of consideration, for quite some years, those of us who work on this considered it important to keep on doing it, albeit to trying doing some things differently.
One of those differences was to work on getting other people to support our work by putting pressure on the City Council.  This seems to have been the ingredient that we were missing because since we began this, there appear to have been some major shifts in policy (although they are yet to be put into action on the ground!).
I think my greatest learning from the work that we have done on this is that many people are not apathetic at all.  But they are busy, they do feel disempowered and they are not sure what to do. I guess all we did was highlight some relatively simple ways in which they might help, and many took up that challenge - it appears, to good effect! 
We may have to keep up the pressure, though, to ensure that our promised cycle network really does materialise!