CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
IT’S TRUE!
CCE is 16years old!
Well done to ALL posters
It soon became useful and entertaining. There are regular posters, people who add useful info occasionally and plenty more who drop by to watch. That's fine. If you want to add news/comments it's easy to register and become a member.
RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Some of us will have recently learned the value of a small political book with full references when engaging in a campaign to change entrenched attitudes.
This new publication looks like it might be very useful;
It frames the pro-cycling message in business friendly terms, such as risk and cost control, without being totally grim. I quite like it.
Thoughts?
Its seems very good, covers the main points, could be better laid out, not sure about the order. The dodgy stats at the beginning are probably a good idea.
@ed1 that sounds like a description of the blue one too, prefer the colour green for sure. Also better than the red one which is just about football.
Thanks for that link - I had a quick read through - looks like an excellent resource to me. As you say positive in message and looks well referenced… I may attempt to print a version the same size as the other wee book and keep it in my pocket.
Looking at the stats at the beginning, there is one figure I don't understand - even reading the Woodcock 2014 reference. "Shifting 10% of journeys from car to bike would reduce air pollution and save 400 productive life years".
I'm not entirely sure what this means - the closest interpretation I can get is that each year 100 premature deaths could be saved by shifting 10% of short urban trips from car to bike. Is there an assumption that the prematurity of each death is on average 4 years, and this figure is per year? I can't find the answer in the 2013 ITHIM paper either, but perhaps I am not reading carefully enough.
There sort of precise style figures are largely BS my spider sense tingled the moment I sore those figures, yet although effectively guess work get these in papers all sorts of things and may add to the report people like exactly precise figures even if built on weak assumption correlations not causation and general guess work.
There is too many variables cant typically isolate, they will likely use historic data even if were isolated, where going forward may be different, even if we imagine the historic data to be correct.
For interest would like to understand how they produced the figures but properly does not matter as not the sort of things you could make this precise, will no doubt be full of assumptions half truths weak correlations assumptions future behaves like the past. The figures
Are too exact for things that can really measure that exactly like the when get precise figures for guess work other than interest does not mean much.
I wrote a response to each of the figures earlier but sounded a tad subversive so did not post was more a devils advocate piece. Also did not bother reading how they calculated them as the weakness would apply on some irrespective, although would be interesting to look.
The figures make sense to be put in the report as people like these sort of figures they convey a lot of information in a quick and easy to read way, makes you read it when glance over something see an interesting figure its quick way to take something in, rather than say their may be advantages in bla de bla some nice figures. Could can and may etc etc.
This weakness does not matter as basically makes people think of the areas could be improvements and they would not be able to context the figures anyway, most people have no idea what the NHS cost or indeed what is 17 billion to NHS budget etc I don’t.
The figures are not there for the benefit of people that want to work it out and evaluate the figures, even if they are quite wrong the benefits as showing benefits etc are useful. If someone was to say for example oh its not 17 billion its only 6 billion or not 400 more like 150 etc no one would particular care. But even if someone did they would still be making assumption on assumption weak rigour most likely as boring answer would be "cant give precise figures of this nature" full figures and sever of those have can or could, can put a lot after a can or could, the other prob should but don’t.
That sentence does seem to have no meaning. It would need to be '...save 400 productive man years per year.' to be at all useful. Otherwise you'd have to assume the benefit was from now until eternity, suitably discounted.
If anyone uses Twitter we could ask her...@RachelAldred
I am guessing these are not her figures just ones she put it from sources that sound grand. Just because cant get exact figures like this does not mean there will be no benefits of these types. Would imagine almost certainly will be these types of benefits.
She has written quite a few good things on cycling.
Ed1 - I'm not questioning the validity of the figures - I haven't read the papers carefully enough. It's based on a medical model called ITHIM which I don't claim to understand. No doubt you are right about approximations but I am in no place to criticise the provenance of the figures. As IWRATS points out it's the lack of temporal quantification that bothers me - reading the references it seems to be per annum, but there is some further quantifiable assumption made about what a productive life year is, which is not stated.
In answer to my question - just had a reply from Rachel Aldred who says it's 400 Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) per year….
@i - I had to read the document in acroread - in everything else it looked like your image….
The document opens fine with IE8, old school.
However...is it just me, or has the guy on page 5 had a Union Flag photoshopped onto his shoulder? Most odd.
Yes the “one of” saving of 400 productive years, would assume would be annual saving of 400 productive years based on the 10 percent of course but not what it appears to say.
Also the productive years, can’t establish what this is.
From the woodcock references on the ITHIM model it seems to refer to the WHOS, DALY as far as I can gather.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0051462
http://www.cedar.iph.cam.ac.uk/research/modelling/ithim/
Personally I think cycling has made large benefits to my health as was an obese smoker. I suppose though if someone was already in good health, then it may provide no additional benefits so could increase risk with out benefit on rare occasion.
The exhaust pollution is also likely to go down. So would need to hold that constant, also the sample groups depend what there base health was I guess how much exercise diet, smoking or not, drinking or not, also age which don’t think includes. So always a tad weary of these types of figures even if took reference groups for last 20 years in London for example big changes drop in smoking rate, rise obesity etc.
Yep Adobe works well, I wonder if they are breaking the pdf standard?
The Union Flag must be much stiffer than the rest of the clothes, hence the folds you see around it, plus low resolution picture effects.
Regarding the savings of £17 billion, I can't remember what Denmark spends per person per year on infrastructure. (Netherlands is ~ £25)
If the UK did do Dutch levels of funding over 20 years it would cost £30 billion. But you'd probably get bigger savings in health and also savings in other areas.
Indeed, I'd guess that the key is getting the four National Health Services to pay for cycling infrastructure. That will take four separate and quite epic arguments I'd imagine.
If I were the cabinet secretary with responsibility for the SNHS I'd be taken aback to be asked for money for a bridge over the South Edinburgh Suburban Line, even if it made perfect sense. It probably wouldn't make perfect sense as KB students aren't particularly unhealthy. 'Sense' here is independent of voting intentions.
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