Dear Manchester City Council,

The current plans for the Great Ancoats Street improvement scheme don't include any provision for safe cycling infrastructure, when the team were asked why, the following reason was given: "We have looked at cycling facilities on the road itself but these would have an impact on the capacity of inner ring road resulting in congestion and traffic using other less suitable routes in adjacent neighbourhoods and the city centre" - when asked to reveal the evidence that lead to this decision there was no reply.

I am therefore requesting, under the FoI Act, all evidence, research, and reports used to arrive at the decision that supports the claim that: cycling infrastructure along Great Ancoats St. would negatively impact traffic capacity.

Yours faithfully,
Mr. Brindley

Dear Manchester City Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Manchester City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Evidence that cycling infrastructure on Great Ancoats Street would negatively impact traffic capacity'.

There are a number of issues I would like to raise regarding the handling of the FOI request. First of all the documents received from the Council reference additional documents that have not been provided. Secondly, the documents received do not mention anything about cycle lanes or cycling infrastructure, and provide no evidence that cycle lanes themselves would negatively impact traffic capacity.
In light of the above issues, it is clear that evidence has not been provided, and the response and handling of my FOI request has been insufficient.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours faithfully,

Mr. Brindley

Dear Manchester City Council,

Is there any update on when the information from the internal review will be provided? This was originally expected at the end of December before being pushed back to the New Year.

Yours sincerely,

Mr. Brindley

Dear Manchester City Council,

Thank you for the response and the related documents regarding the FOI request.

Having looked through the documents, I cannot find any evidence provided that states it was the cycle lanes specifically that negatively impacted the traffic capacity in the models.

Within the email discussions there are calls to reduce the cycle lane width from 1.8m to 1.7m (email 16 12 15) and then a subsequent consideration from TfGM (in email 15 3 16): "If we get rid of the Great Ancoat St cycle lanes at the junction, it may be possible..." (there is no reference to what "it" is here.) - yet there is nothing provided here that discusses the cycle lanes being the direct cause of the negative impact on traffic capacity, nor are there any calls or requests to completely remove the cycling infrastructure elsewhere along Great Ancoats Street.

Providing two drawings with and without cycling infrastructure isn't evidence that cycle lanes are the cause of the negative impact on traffic capacity, correlation does not imply causation, and indeed all the discussion around the various models pointed to the junctions rather than the segregated cycle lanes being the issue.

Would you agree, therefore, that evidence has still not been provided that shows that cycling infrastructure would negatively impact traffic capacity?

Yours sincerely,
Mr. Brindley