24 June 2024: Seven of us gathered at a new venue for us, the Well Centre in East Ham (home of the Bonny Downs Community Association.)
There are forthcoming rides on Saturday 7 July (Greensted Church), and on 14 July (West Ham United-themed Newham Ride).
There will be Fix Your Ride stalls at Woodgrange School Summer Fete on 29 June, and at Forest Gate Festival on 6 July. The roster for 6 July is looking thin so if you are able to help that would be most welcome.
At some of our recent Fix Your Ride events, we have helped repair bikes which have been donated to refugees in our borough. These bikes typically require more attention than many others, and often more than we can offer at the Woodgrange Market stall. In some cases we have had to turn people away from the stall due to a lack of capacity. We discussed how to manage this situation, and have decided to explore some suggestions of how we can more effectively help refugees get their cycles roadworthy.
Infrastructure
- Action in response to the 97 bus incident in Temple Mill Lane is ongoing.
- There is a meeting arranged with the Romford Road Active Travel Scheme team. We reviewed progress to date and prospects for further progress.
- We were pleased to attend a site visit of the in-progress Westfield Avenue scheme and meet with the engineers, project sponsors, and other stakeholders. This is a high quality scheme in which good progress is being made, and we are pleased to see efforts being made to retain safe pedestrian and cycle access throughout.
- The Royal Docks corridor scheme, again high quality, is progressing.
- We discussed the principles to be pursued at a forthcoming meeting with developers of a site on Stratford High Street. This is an excellent opportunity to influence in favour of active travel at an early stage of this project.
Outreach
We discussed outreach. There are 12 sign ups to the new discussion group; regular newsletters are being issued: we are rotating our meetings around the borough; we plan a QR code link to the sign up for the newsletter to extend its reach further; and discussed possible action at university Fresher’s Fairs in the area.
AOB
We have sent letters to candidates in the General Election for whom we were able to trace contact details.
If you would like further details on any of these matters, please get in touch.
Readout compiled by Arnold Ridout & Jonathan Rothwell.