The village of Westbury on Trym is the first community in the city to take up the challenge of Chooseday.

Local members of Sustainable Westbury on Trym (Suswot) are working to launch Chooseday there this November.
Many local schools, shops, the library and churches have agreed to advertise the campaign and there will be banners and posters on strategic sites.

The campaign will focus on the challenge to ‘Travel and Tell’.
Leaflets will be in local venues inviting people to try something new in terms of travel behaviour and then tell what happened through the leaflet or the Chooseday website.

The campaign is to be launched at 10.30am on Nov 4th with local leaders in the village centre…

… and rumour has it that a polar bear will put in an appearance.

If you live in Westbury and would like to help you can contact Suswot

Could this currently overgrown, neglected bridge become a key sustainable transport facility between Easton and Redland, connecting neighbourhoods that the M32 has long divided?

Josh Hart, long friend of Chooseday, has come up with an idea. Radical thinker that he is, he is proposing using the existing local rail tracks as pedestrian and cycle routes as well. Josh says

“Imagine being able to ride from Whiteladies Rd. in Clifton through Redland, across the famous Gloucester Rd. arches, through Montpelier, St. Werburgh’s, gliding safely across the M32, through Easton and it’s incredible new Eastside Roots Community Garden Centre, and finally arriving at Temple Meads station, without leaving a flat paved pathway, safely separated from the passenger rail line by a fence.”

Several people think this is a really interesting idea and wonder why no one has thought of it before.

For more on Josh’s proposal see Bristol cycle Expressway

You may have seen the great ‘Tuesday without Cars’ banner in Kings Square announcing the fact that Bristol Primary Care Trust are now very firmly on board with Chooseday.

The Chief Executive, Deborah Evans, is well known as a keen cyclist. She says, ‘I am particularly happy to support Chooseday, because it is a genuine home-grown, Bristol initiative and naturally combines our concern for healthy living with the need to address climate change.

As a result of Deborah’s active support the PCT now has a number of Chooseday champions in the organisation looking for ways to encourage the rest of the staff to leave their cars at home on Choosedays.

Bristol-based commercial law firm, Beachcroft recently relocated their Bristol office and they have celebrated that by embracing Chooseday.

Senior partner Michael Bothamley said,
Chooseday forms an important part of our green campaign and we are actively encouraging employees to get involved now we have moved to Portwall Place. The initiative will play a key role in our Green Travel Plan which will be formally launched later this month.”

We have found that moving to new premises is often a good opportunity for organisations to take a new look at how people are going to get to work and Chooseday can give fresh impetus and focus to green travel plans.

Around thirty people attended the Chooseday launch at Beachcroft on June 3rd. One enterprising partner, Nick Knapman, cycled in 17miles from Winscombe! We look forward to working with the Chooseday Champions there in the coming months.

It is amazing how the price of petrol has changed the conversation with people about Chooseday. There has been a general realisation that something is deeply wrong and that things have got to change. There will be much struggle along the way, but breaking our oil-addiction is now seriously on the agenda - and that has to be a good thing for us all and for the planet.

.
Thanks to Simon Carpenter and those who organise the Big Breakfast for scheduling it this year on June 17th, a Chooseday. Hundreds of people gathered on College Green with live music and free breakfast, all celebrating the joys of a healthy walking or cycling lifestyle. Meeting with such people gives me hope for the future.

Today is the day that our petrol has to contain 2.5% biofuels. It is also the day when at least 33 countries are facing the prospect of serious social unrest because of rising food prices. The biofuels - food equation looks like this. One tank’s worth (25 gallons) of ethanol requires land that might otherwise feed a person for a whole year. Wholesale turning over of land to biofuels has already made an impact on the world food situation.

What seemed like a worthy government initiative at first glance now looks horribly naive and points to a central flaw in our thinking. The inconvenient truth is that we will not be able to replace the cheap oil that we have consumed with such profligacy for the last 50 years or more. There is no quick techno fix to the issues of peak oil and climate change and transport may be the key area where these things begin to bite. We are going to need to change our lifestyles.

And that is where Chooseday comes in.

It is an extraordinary story. St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School are taking the environmental challenge seriously and when they heard about Chooseday they were straight in. Simon Stevens, the assistant head, came up with the idea of launching it there on April 1st so Chooseday April Foolsday was born. I never dreamt we would get such a response. A member of staff stood at the gates and gave every student who had not come by car a sticker. It was soon clear that the response had been overwhelming. Around 800 of the 1100 main school students and staff had chosen not to come by car. Two of the youngest girls in the school (Year 7) actually walked in from Sea Mills, which is 7 miles away. Two boys likewise walked from Westbury on Trym. Someone else skipped into school. We hope that lots more stories will come as the students use our ‘Travel and Tell’ facility on this website.
Well done St Mary Redcliffe!

As promised in this blog, Chooseday is proud to launch our new Travel and Tell campaign. Bristol needs to get real about transport possibilities. It is too easy to rubbish public transport when much of it is experienced as good. It is too easy to forget about walking and cycling as real and healthy alternatives for many of our journeys.

But there are real difficulties that we need to face as well.

Travel and Tell invites the people of Bristol to explore new opportunities for work and travel and tell us about what happened. We aim to create a stack of independent evidence about what really is happening and present this to the authorities. Travel and Tell postcards will soon be in libraries, cafes and workplaces. If you are interested in launching Chooseday within your workplace, let us know.

By the way did you see ‘The woman who stopped the traffic’ on Tues 9pm. It shows what can be done! The idea seems to be catching on. Go Chooseday!

It was Chooseday just before Christmas and some Chooseday folk had met for a drink. At about 7pm we went to the bus stop to catch the 48 or 49 to Emersons Green. They should come every 15 mins or so. An hour later we and about 40 others were still waiting.

Then someone said ‘anyone want to share a taxi’. Well enough was enough and we jumped in. That was OK until our co-passenger got out at Fishponds (fare £10, which we split)_ and then the driver said it would be a total of £25 to Emersons Green. Why so much? ‘Because it is outside the city boundary’, was the reply. Ugh! How can we get a sensible system of transport with the boundaries we have?

A few days later we heard that the various local authorities still could not agree on a joint strategic transport authority - and despair began to set in.

Since then I have travelled quite extensively by bus on a route (the X62) that has proved both reliable and friendly. So the picture is mixed and one bad story tends to  obliterate several good ones in our minds. But this we have decided… Chooseday needs to get real, collect evidence from the people of the city about their experience of transport and present this evidence to the authorities. And this we shall do with your help. More news about this soon.

By the way I just booked a train ticket to Oban in Scotland for a holiday. it cost £25 - the same price the taxi charged to get from the city centre to Emersons Green!