Serious question.
— Katja Leyendecker (@KatsDekker) January 23, 2017
What does SUCCESS look like in cycle campaigning?
...to which I replied "8-80".
This may seem like a slightly flippant response to the serious question, but it certainly wasn't intended as such. Follow up replies from Katja quickly clarified this was as much about measuring on-going success as much as outcomes. Hard to grasp and define...
And therein lies the problem. Each cycling advocacy group will have a different measure of success. For example, some of my local group are very proud of the number of children trained. This is a valid measure, but I haven't seen an increase in the number of bicycles chained up at school (anecdote klaxon).
Other than perhaps, cycle counts, we have no national standard that can be used by local advocacy groups to measure their success (or effectiveness of their campaigning) against an objective target.
The measure of the success of any campaign can only really be measured by its outcomes. Objectively measuring ongoing progress towards an outcome is a little more challenging. We have had decades of political 'encouraging' rather than 'enabling', so perhaps it's time to start measuring success by who has been enabled.
8-80 (#8to80) is not a new concept (e.g. this, from David Hembrow (@DavidHembrow) in 2011). It is clearly the standard to aspire to for all urban transport infrastructure but may also be a useful way of consistently measuring effectiveness of campaigning and the implemented schemes.
Towns and cities are ever evolving, but schools, shopping centres, stations and industrial areas tend to remain fairly static. Routes to and from these destinations are like the most trafficked. They are frequently surveyed by LAs for start/destination of motor traffic use, but rarely (I have never been questioned) when walking or cycling. We have some counts of existing cyclists, but have little data on those who are not using these routes.
How onerous would it be to annually count those who are not cycling these routes?
Getting data at the lower end of the 8-80 could be done via (PTAs at) schools - to parents: "Would you (do you) allow your eight-year-old child to cycle from [home|school|town] to [school|town|home] unaccompanied by an adult".
Data for the upper end could be also gathered in this way ("Would you allow/encourage/discourage your childs grandparent to cycle from home to town?"), as well as for intermediate ages.
The collated data would give a consistent picture across the country. It will allow advocacy groups to compare apples with apples and provide on-going success markers.
TL;DR:
A year on year decrease in those not cycling at the two extremes of the 8-80 range is the surest measure of how successful the advocacy has been.
Of course all this may be already happening... but then why would Katja be asking the question?
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